Liz Jensen - The Rapture

Kristin gives a wan smile. ‘The next best thing,’ she says, tightening the blinds.

A second later the images of the four rigs have reappeared on the wall-screen. The blue of the water in the fourth image is a virulent turquoise but in the others it’s darker.

‘These are the main suspects. They’re all drilling for methane. They’re located off Siberia, Indonesia, in the North Sea and in the Caribbean south of Florida,’ says Ned. ‘We’ve ruled out the rest for various reasons to do with their operational mode. These four all have yellow cranes.’

‘These are good-quality pictures,’ comments Harish Modak, looking quizzical. ‘Better than anything from a satellite.’

‘The sort of thing spies kill each other for,’ murmurs Ned, adjusting the focus, clearly pleased that Harish has noticed. ‘They’re from the military.’ He clicks and three of the rigs disappear. ‘This is the Siberian one. Endgame Beta,’ he says, zooming in first on the spire of the derrick, and then the yellow crane, which is perched to one side of the rig.

‘Go in closer,’ commands Bethany. We’re suddenly confronted by the broad, spilling stomach of a middle-aged man sitting at the controls of the crane’s cabin. His mouth hangs open, as if he is singing or yawning. He has no idea he has been caught on camera.

‘See anything you recognise now, Bethany?’ asks Ned. ‘This bloke here? Anything familiar?’

Bethany shrugs and points at the family photographs on the wall of the man’s cabin. ‘No intimate flesh. No pew-denda . I’d say Mr Clean from Siberia is sitting in a fanny-free zone.’

Ned moves to the next image: nothing. On the next, Lost World in the Caribbean, the crane is unmanned — but on the inside wall of the cabin, to the left of the joystick and controls, is a rectangle of pink. Ned tightens the picture and adjusts the focus. Then, too suddenly, the slur of flesh has taken on silhouette and texture and we’re staring at a pair of hugely swollen breasts with dark, saucer-like nipples. Perched above them, the smiling face of their brunette owner.

‘Pass the sick-bag!’ Bethany guffaws. Ned scrolls down the image but it stops just north of the jewel-studded belly-button.

‘No mons Venus . So shall we rule out Miss November in the Caribbean,’ says Ned drily, ‘and move on?’

In the next image, the windscreen of the manned crane has sunlight on it, making it hard, initially, to distinguish much beyond the outline of the operator’s head. But Bethany is pointing excitedly.

‘Let’s see the top right. Behind his left shoulder and up a bit.’ The fair-haired man is lifting a can of Dr Pepper to his lips with a gloved hand. ‘Higher,’ commands Bethany. Something pink and glistening comes into lurid focus. Ned pulls out until the entire girl materialises. She is Chinese.

Her legs are spread wide.

Between them, a slick, meaty confusion.

‘That’s the one,’ says Bethany, non-committally. She seems to have lost interest.

Ned flicks the screen off, engulfing us again in the room’s gloom. When he speaks, his voice is constricted. ‘It’s Buried Hope Alpha.’

‘Christ,’ says Kristin Jons dottir. ‘It’s in the North Sea. A hundred kilometres off the coast of Norway.’

‘Norway,’ repeats Harish Modak. He breathes in deeply and exhales in silence. I think: mountains. Cruises in fjords. But then stumble, stuck. Looking bored, Bethany rummages about in the chocolates, mews in disgust at the cheese, and settles for a lychee.

‘Buried Hope Alpha belongs to Traxorac,’ says Ned. The colour has abandoned his face, making his dark stubble stand out. He has a haunted look. It strikes me that he feels as lonely as I do.

‘Can you get the exact co-ordinates?’ asks Frazer Melville. Kristin Jons dottir is biting her lip.

After a false start, a geological map fills the screen: a huddle of thin concentric rings intersected with lines of latitude and longitude, with a small red dot indicating what I assume is the rig. Bethany is now yawning widely, frustrated at no longer being the centre of attention.

‘I see. Well, this is not good,’ says Harish Modak. He has become as sombre as the others.

‘I told you,’ says Bethany casually. We all look at her. ‘I kept saying it was close. I told you we’d be drowned. I said all along. But no one listened. Story of my fucking life.’

‘Can someone explain?’ I ask.

Frazer Melville removes his exhausted face from his hands. ‘Have you heard of the Storegga Slide?’ I shake my head, still unable to look at him directly. It’s all too raw, too agonising. I want to leave this place and never come back. ‘It’s a massive package of sand and mud off the continental shelf that stretches for eight hundred kilometres, from Norway to Greenland. It’s the result of the biggest submarine upheaval we know of, eight thousand years ago. It generated a huge tsunami that washed over most of the British Isles. This rig is sited on the edge of Storegga.’

But somehow, he can’t continue.

If I loved him I would feel sorry for him. I would want to take him in my arms and kiss his cheekbone. I glance at Kristin Jons dottir. She seems too busy with her own reactions to be concerned with his. Her delicate eyes have become glassy and perturbed.

Harish Modak clears his throat and takes over. ‘It seems, Miss Fox, that we are faced with the interesting prospect of a disaster which will begin very, er… locally . A huge underwater collapse anywhere in the Storegga region will cause a tsunami that will devastate the entire area. Norway’s coastline is the closest to Storegga but the sediment package will push the water into the basin in the other direction to begin with, projecting it faster east than west. Making your country the first to be hit. It will be amplified in the river estuaries and in the funnel of German Bight.’ There’s a gape of quiet, as though the air’s molecules have squeezed into a new shape and sucked out noise. ‘Norway and Denmark will be hit next, and the rest of northern Europe. The tsunami will certainly reach Iceland, and if it’s big enough, the United States.’

‘And the date?’ asks Frazer Melville. His breathing is ragged. ‘Bethany, are you still sure about the date?’

‘The coming of the dragon and the false prophet! The battle of Armageddon!’ Bethany chortles, peeling off the shell of a lychee.

‘Bethany,’ I say. My throat is bunching up. ‘You said October the twelfth.’

She is rummaging around in her tartan robe for a piece of lychee shell, dropped during the peeling process. ‘Did I? I don’t know. Maybe before. There’s a thunderstorm. It’s after that. But this thing’s different from everything else.’ She fishes out the piece of shell and flicks it across the room, then returns her attention to the fruit.

‘Miss Krall has been correct before,’ says Harish Modak, watching Bethany intently. ‘For the sake of argument we should perhaps assume that she is correct again.’

‘Too right you should. You know,’ Bethany murmurs, holding up the pearly orb of her lychee to the light, ‘these things look like eyeballs.’

For a long time there is a pensive silence, broken only by Bethany’s tuneless humming. It’s Kristin who breaks it. ‘Harish, it’s the tenth. You must help us.’

He turns to her as if in pain. ‘Must? Must is an interesting word. It belongs with should and ought . I do not trust it.’ Bethany looks interested.

Kristin flares. ‘You mean you came all this way—’

‘My dear Kristin. You know me well. So you know the question I shall ask. The same question I have spent half my life asking. To what end?’ Kristin shoots a hopeless look first at Frazer Melville, then at me. Harish smiles. Bethany is nodding perkily, as though egging him on. ‘To what possible end, when the world that remains beyond this disaster will be unrecognisable?’