She glanced across the darkened room at her colleague, still busy on the line to Ny-Ålesund, cupping his hand over the phone. The door of the hut was still open and flurries of snow were blowing in so she couldn’t catch everything he was saying. But from the way Coppinger was casting sideways glances at her she caught the gist of their conversation. ‘Standing right next to him … heavy dose … full in the face.’

She looked down at her feet and saw that the sick man had shifted his position slightly. He was still alive, but desperately ill. She did not rate his chances in these conditions.

It was only then that she realized someone was missing. The third member of their team, Victor Skeet, had simply disappeared.

‘Chris?’ She interrupted his phone call. ‘Where the hell has Skeet gone?’

4

Longyearbyen Hospital, Svalbard, Norway

Monday, 7 March, 1617hrs GMT, 1717hrs local

DR JAKOB PEDERSEN was on his tea break in the hospital canteen when the call came through from the Arctic Research Station, far away across the ice and snow in the early sub-zero night. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t tea he was drinking from the steaming mug in front of him. It was gløgg, a non-alcoholic version of the mulled wine that warmed him on these endlessly long winter nights here on Svalbard. He took a brief sip from his personal mug, emblazoned with his favourite motto that read: ‘Null stress’ – Norway’s version of ‘No worries’ – and answered the call.

Pedersen was a famously placid man. His craggy, weather-beaten features rarely betrayed any emotion. But ten seconds into the call, that changed. He hurriedly pushed away the mug to reach for a writing pad and pen. In his twenty-seven years as the resident doctor in Svalbard’s main hospital, he had never heard of anything like this before. Broken limbs from a snowmobile accident? Sure. A twisted ankle when someone had slipped on the ice? Frequently. He had even, very occasionally, had to attend to some horrific wounds caused by a marauding polar bear. But this? This was unprecedented. When the world had first gone into lockdown with Coronavirus in the early months of 2020, Svalbard had simply shut its doors to international visitors and not registered a single death. But Dr Jakob Pedersen was far from complacent. He knew immediately that this was more, far more, than anything his remote provincial hospital would be able to cope with.

‘A helicopter? Now? At this time?’ He was already shaking his head, although there was no one in the room to see it. One glance at the window told him the storm outside had not abated. If anything it was getting worse. He could hear the wind howling from halfway across the canteen and could just make out the snow piling up in the corners of the window frame.