Eastman leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Can you believe anyone ever came here to mine coal?’ I shook my head. ‘I mean, they can’t make that pay in West Virginia. How the fuck did they ever expect to turn a cent here?’

‘I don’t suppose it was about the coal,’ I said.

‘I’ll tell you a story I heard. During the Cold War, the CIA was one hundred per cent positive there had to be more to this place than coal. Uranium mining, or rare earths, or else the mine shafts were really launch silos for nukes. They spent millions trying to infiltrate this place: spy satellites, Blackbirds, never got anywhere. Soon as the Ruskies pulled out, a big-shot team from Langley arrived to pull it apart. You know what they found?’

I let him have his punchline.

‘A coal mine.’

I laughed with him. ‘I suppose it was nationalism. Staking their claim.’

‘Right. Governments see a place like this, pure and virginal. What do they want to do? Fuck it in the ass. You know, the only reason they let us do science here is because they haven’t figured out how to make money off of it. We’re just the hold music. Soon as they think of something better, we’re outta here.’

The depressing thing is, he was probably right. ‘Doesn’t that worry you — as a scientist?’

He laughed. ‘I’m not like Fridge. I never made the mistake of thinking what I’m doing is worth a damn.’

We made a quick drop at the edge of town, scrambling out the door, wincing as the rotors pummelled us with icy air, racing away to get behind a cluster of rocks. Jensen gave us a thumbs up from the cockpit and took off in a swirl of snow.

We trudged up a gully that had once been a road, between the dead buildings. After the helicopter racket, the silence took on an almost physical dimension, oppressive with its weight. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone might be watching. The old barracks loomed over us, the paint almost stripped away. In the faded murals that survived, the ghosts of happy workers traipsed through flowery meadows, enjoying picnics and cuddling children.

I thought of the men — they must have been men — who’d walked past those murals every day on their way to hack open the mines. Did the pictures remind them of home? Or just harden their hearts?

‘What are you looking for here?’ I asked Eastman.

‘I still haven’t figured out the interference I’m getting. I thought maybe there could be some old electrical equipment, generators or something, giving off some kind of a signal.’

I pointed up. Over our heads, a skein of cables and wires drooped between the buildings like some enormous spiderweb.

‘There must have been something.’

‘Once upon a time.’

We climbed a snow bank that had been a flight of steps and came out in the old central square. A brick building with a rusty hammer and sickle above the door stood on the uphill side — the most permanent place in town. In front of it, in the centre of the square, a tall man stood striding forward on top of a granite plinth. I’m sure the sculptor meant it to look purposeful; to me he seemed to be stepping off a cliff. I couldn’t read the inscription, but I recognised the face from the history books: the bald head and iconic beard; the bulging forehead; the twisted lip and sneer of cold command. Lenin.

‘“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair,”’ I murmured. I wanted to touch him, though the sculptor had made sure I could only reach his foot. So much for the brotherhood of man. Even through my mitten, I felt the deep cold seared into the metal. I almost felt sorry for him. Not even a hundred years ago, his name had shaken the world. Now his empire was broken windows and snow gathering in empty doorways.

‘You think in a hundred years people will look at our statues and pity us?’

‘They’ll probably have smashed all the statues because they’re so pissed at the way we trashed the planet.’

It sounded like the sort of thing Fridge would have said. ‘I thought you were an optimist.’

Eastman grinned. With his shaved head and trim beard, there was a touch of Lenin about him I hadn’t noticed before.

‘I’m a fatalist. Same difference.’

He pointed up the mountain. ‘I think they kept most of the technical stuff up top. I should check it out.’

I hadn’t told him about Ashcliffe. I was keen to do some exploring on my own. ‘I’ll stay down here.’ I tapped the bulge under my jacket. ‘I’ve got the VHF.’

‘Don’t go too far.’ He stretched his arms and made a whoo-whooing noise. ‘Never know who’ll turn up in a ghost town.’

Once Eastman had disappeared, I got out my GPS and tried to read the map on the tiny screen. The Soviets had sunk mines all along the valley, with Vitangelsk more or less in the middle. To the west, the valley wound down to the coast; east, it continued another few miles until it ran into another mountain, the last bulwark against the eastern ice dome. Go around that mountain, and you’d eventually come out on the Helbreen.

I put the GPS away and looked around. For a ghost town, Vitangelsk had seen a lot of traffic of late. There were footprints and ski tracks everywhere. Flying in, I’d seen a corrugated Sno-Cat track approaching from the south, and what looked like a couple of snowmobile trails heading east.

One set of prints looked fresher than the rest. Big and heavy, putting me in mind of a Yeti. Easy to follow, so I did: along the street, round a corner, and up to the front door of one of the barracks. I say front door, though the door was long gone. All that survived was splinters in the frame. But someone had trampled the snow flat all around.

I looked at the footprints again. Fresh-ish — but not so much you expected to see the owner come whistling round the corner. Still, I hesitated.

Will you be running away from ghosts, Dr Kennedy? I asked myself.

Angry with myself for being so foolish, I went inside.

In a queer way, it reminded me of the Zodiac Platform. A long corridor, lined with doors and the remnants of doors. So dark, I couldn’t see the far end. Snow had blown in, gathering in little piles by the door frames.

Now, I don’t believe in ghosts — but I don’t read ghost stories either, if you get my drift. Still, I’d come that far: I made myself go on. Just so I could satisfy myself I’d done it. I looked in a couple of the rooms and found what you’d expect: broken bunks, mattresses with the stuffing knocked out, some Soviet pornography pinned to the walls. Surprisingly tasteful.

You’d think that would have calmed me down, finding nothing. But the longer I stayed there, the more desperate I was to go. Each step, I had to swallow a little more panic.

One more room, I told myself. Just to prove I was bigger than my fears.

I was in such a hurry to go, my head was almost out the door before I’d looked in. But something made me look again.

This room wasn’t like the others. The snow had been swept out, and the broken furniture cleared. It had been replaced by a mattress, a sleeping bag, an oil lamp, a pile of books and a few tins of baked beans.

I checked the dates on the beans. They didn’t expire for a couple of years — and I didn’t think the Soviet Union had imported Heinz. The books were well read, but relatively new to judge from the covers, all in English. Milton’s Paradise Lost; Watson’s The Double Helix; one of Stieg Larsson’s. Eclectic tastes.

Paradise Lost still had a bookmark in it. Feeling like a thief, I opened to the page. Two lines had been underlined in pencil.

A crack ripped open the silence. Probably just an icicle falling off the roof, or a piece of wood the frost had got to. But it was too much for me. The next thing I knew, I was outside in the snow, blinking at the daylight.