***
Lt. Richards strode into the Flight Operations Center looking like the consummate professional officer that he was. Since no one knew him except the Captain, who was busy back at the Chalet, he neither expected nor received any notice, nor was he challenged by any of the other staff. He first checked in on the weather center and read the forecast that anticipated the gathering storm in the Ross Sea. Good. That meant that further flights would be shut down until it passed. With that being the case, it became only necessary to rewrite the past, which was far easier than creating a future.
In the communications room he nonchalantly examined the outgoing flight manifests for the day. He paged through a couple until one caught his eye. There were a pair of aging bases in what was referred to as West Antarctica, in an area that the Chileans claimed as their territory. The United States had gone to great effort to actively debase that claim, most notably by building stations there and refusing to acknowledge the Chileans as their host. The Chileans, by contrast, tended to show up at the camps at regular intervals, giving the appearance that they considered the occupants as their guests, uninvited or not.
As the time approached for the bases to be abandoned, the Chileans turned up more often, shamelessly taking measurements and inventory of what they thought would soon become their own. For a reason that was not immediately obvious from the manifest, a group had flown to McMurdo with intentions posted that indicated a stop at one of the bases before returning to Tierra Del Fuego. They looked like very likely prospects for incrimination.
Flight manifests were taken very seriously by all parties, since they were often the only link to discovering if someone were alive or dead, accounted for or lost. They were always managed with accuracy. For this reason Lt. Richards found it to be highly unlikely that anyone would suspect that the forgery he was about to commit could possibly be a forgery. Besides, if there were to be a forgery in this case, it would be to hide the Russians’ presence, not record it. And the Chileans could not have any more known they were doing anything untoward by carrying an extra passenger than they did now.
Simply adding a name to flight that was already in progress would not end up being sufficiently helpful, there needed to be an incident which would require the manifest to be reviewed. Unfortunately, the flight would have to meet with some disaster more or less grave. The Lieutenant mollified his conscience by reminding himself no real harm would come to the innocent Chileans, at least he hoped not.
He slipped the page out of the binder on the flight following table, made a quick change, then inserted it back in before anyone could see him. Then he made notes on a small pad with the crafts call signs and (real) passengers. Then he continued on his way through the facility before exiting through the rear door.
“So?” Susan asked him.
“Done.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s go see where we are with the fuel situation.”
They walked down the hill toward the coastline where their equipment was lined up on the ash beach. They found Walt finishing fueling the Alpines and filling the spare Gerry cans. Connie sat on the seat, tucked deep into her parka. Jake was supervising.
“All ready?” Susan asked him.
“One completely outfitted expedition at your service. We were loaded to traverse from the Beardmore camp to here. We are just as ready to go anywhere else now. Name your destination.”
“Well, since we lost our own overland journey from there to here, I feel like they kind of owe us one,” she said, seemingly to justify her intentions to those who supported her. “There are going to be some pretty pissed off people around here soon, if this goes well anyway.”
“Darling,” Jake said to her. “It would appear as if the answer to that is to not be around here any longer. Are we going or not?”
She didn’t answer immediately, but bit the tip of her glove.
“Connie and Walt,” Susan said firmly. “I want you two to stay here. There’s only so much that can happen to me, but you two could end up getting expelled. I can’t ask you to do that.”
Connie looked up sharply at that, as if she had been granted a longed for, though not much expected, furlough. Walt looked crestfallen, but determined to fight.
“If we get left here, there won’t be anyone to blame except us. You can’t!” he explained.
“Fear not, my young apprentice,” Jake told the distraught grad student, patting him on the shoulder. “There is much yet you can accomplish here.”
“There is?” both Walt and Susan asked at the same time.
“Quite.”