Assignment - Black Viking (19 page)

“Under Red Chinese hegemony,” Durell said. “We could do without such blessings.”

Tsung looked distressed. “I do not like to think of political matters. They are not within my province. I am a scientist, nothing else. Professor Peter and I were only concerned with perfecting the process he devised.”

“But it got away from you?”

“Yes,” Tsung admitted. He was sweating now. “We have less than an hour left to correct it. And only Peter knows how to do it. And Peter is unconscious.”

“You could destroy the machinery,” Durell suggested. “Wouldn’t that help to stop the process?”

“We do not know. It may be self-generating by now.” “But it’s worth the risk, isn’t it?”

Tsung said shakily: “I have not the courage to try that.”

Durell kept his eye on a doorway in the opposite wall of the domed room. “You came up here into this bottleneck to get certain machine parts from Professor Peter’s laboratory, didn’t you? Have you found those parts?” Tsung shook his head. “We need Peter’s help. And he is dying.”

“Then the only choice is to destroy it all.”

“It would be a great risk.”

“Better a risk than the certainty of a new Ice Age for the world, isn’t it?”

Tsung rubbed a shaking hand over his mouth. “I cannot make that decision.”

“You can’t—or won’t? Has it been made for you? Does someone prevent you?”

Tsung said: “Olaf Jannsen is in command. He has armed men on guard, and they obey him. He prevents it.”

THEY stood in a long concrete corridor that sloped sharply downward into the rocky bowels of the island. Only a few dim lights glowed at intervals along the way. Ice formed where water dripped through a crack in the old fortifications, glittering weirdly in long crystalline daggers from the ceiling. Durell wished now he had taken more of Uccelatti’s crew with him. Mario guarded the rear, and Gino walked beside Elgiva. He kept Dr. Lin Tsung covered with the rifle as they proceeded silently down the long ramp. The two Chinese naval men walked sullenly ahead. Durell had to get rid of them. A small storeroom offered a way. He urged them inside the damp, cold cubicle, then barred the steel door.

Tsung watched, and spoke in a whisper. “Please, you must not destroy anything. It is too valuable. If it were properly adjusted and maintained, it could change the whole world.”

“I don’t think people anywhere want the world changed like this,” Durell said.

“But the blessings of rain in the desert—”

“Maybe. That’s not enough to pay for all the damage done elsewhere.”

“To destroy the machinery may not work,” Tsung insisted. “We risk everything. I told you, the process may not reverse itself.”

“Is the machinery in the sub?”

“No. Peter removed it to this laboratory so he could work on it. And then he fell ill.”

“AH right. Be quiet now.”

Lin Tsung had described the layout, and it seemed impregnable. There was only one approach from inside to the laboratory and the rocket emplacements that were in the embrasures, like concrete blisters in the sides of the bunker. Tsung guessed that Olaf had withdrawn about six seamen from the stolen submarine, to act as guards. In his madness, Olaf would sooner destroy the world than lose his private game of playing god to change the face of the earth. Perhaps, Durell thought, he should have killed Olaf when he had the chance, long ago. Ingrid had warned him, calling him the Black Viking, that awesome figure out of a misty past. Sigrid and Elgiva seemed to believe in such an entity. Could it be true? Durell shook his head. He was tired, and his brain was subject to phantoms and mirages. He drew a deep breath to steady himself. He would have to play it by ear. But that wasn’t good enough. Too much was at stake to risk defeat by gambling. Yet he couldn’t see any other way to proceed. He had to go on. There could be no parley, no compromise with the Black Viking. It was all or nothing. There was no retreat.

They came to a wide area in the corridor, where a flight of ice-coated iron stairs circled up to a railed platform and a door above.

“Where does that go?” Durell asked Tsung.

Elgiva answered for him. “There is a small observation dome up there, used to watch where and how the rockets lift off. But there is no other way down from there.”

“No way out at all?”

She hesitated. “Windows, yes.”

“And straight ahead?”

“The laboratory. Around that comer.”

Durell nodded and turned. “Gino?”

The boy nodded. “Anything you say, dad.”

“Come with me. Can you handle that rifle?”

“I used to belong to a rifle club in Chicago. I’m okay with it.”

“All right. Elgiva? Stay here with Tsung. You and Mario both keep an eye on him. Don’t let him leave under any pretext, and don’t let anyone go by in either direction. If you hear shooting, come into the lab fast.”

“Yes, Sam,” she said.

“Good. Let’s go, Gino.”

He started up the circular ladder to the observation post above. Once through the doorway, with the boy at his heels, he could no longer see the others. He stepped into a gloomy, frigid darkness. The dome obviously had not been equipped with the heating system that served other parts of the structure. It was growing lighter again as the short sub-Arctic night began to wane. Up here, the sound of the wind was like the groaning of a tormented monster, held in check by the thinnest of reins. Faint rectangles of snow-covered glass loomed here and there around the ice-crusted dome. A narrow gallery ran around the top above window level.

“Up you go, Gino. Put on your face mask.”

Gino was doubtful. “We’re going outside again?”

“And back in through the rocket silo. The rear door, so to speak.”

“You do this for a living all the time, Mr. Durell?” 

“Not always.”

“But you like it, hey?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Listen, maybe some day you’d take me to your boss in Washington and ask him for me—”

“Maybe. Let’s see how this works out.”

He had difficulty getting one of the windows open. Now and then he paused to listen for a sound of alarm from below; but nothing happened. Gino added his slim weight to the ice-sealed glass, and all at once it yielded and a gust of freezing wind, carrying stinging ice, drove in their faces. Durell put on his own face mask and goggles. He had to pound on the frozen frame for another moment before he got the port open wide enough to squeeze through and tumble outside.

A scene of desolation and gloom greeted him. The storm was worse, the snow had gotten deeper and heavier in the brief quarter hour they had been inside. It seemed to him that the temperature had dropped several more degrees, too. Through the gray of early dawn, he saw cyclonic clouds swirling in heavy, laborious movement above Skelleftsvik. The wind shrieked wildly and tore the window casing from his grip and slammed it shut behind him. Gino instinctively tried to tug it open again, but it would not move.

Durell signaled to go ahead. It was impossible to talk above the roaring gale.

The dome fortunately had a broad lip around it, a ledge wide enough to support them. A roof-line showed dimly through the distorting snow shapes all about, and led them forward. Heads down, shuddering with the cold that lanced through their clothing and hoods, Durell and the boy edged perilously across the roof. At times, they had to pause and crouch to prevent the wind from blowing them helplessly across the icy surface and down over the edge, where ice-flecked surf thundered on the island beach. An ice-crusted railing helped them to proceed. Then Durell saw a hump of snow that projected above the roof platform, and a dim glow of light seeped through the ice crystals. Carefully he knelt and brushed the snow aside, then broke off a lip of ice beneath the snow to look through the heavy glass into the room below.

He was above the laboratory.

There were bright surgical lights hanging from the ceiling on which he lay, making a brilliant scene below. Snow settled swiftly on the skylight, and he moved his gloved hand cautiously to brush it aside and keep his vision clear. He saw a control console, a bank of computer equipment, steel swivel chairs and files, and a table on which a beared man lay, covered with a white blanket. That would be Professor Gustaffson. Durell could not see the lined and aged face clearly, but the mouth was open and the patient’s breathing lifted the blanket in a quick rhythm. He did not look as if he would last long.

Durell wiped snow from the glass again, careful to move slowly so as not to attract attention from the men working in the room under him. The wind cut viciously through his coat, and he shivered; he could hear Gino’s teeth chatter as the boy lay beside him. Half a dozen men were absorbed in their tasks down there. Some wore white jackets, others had on black seamen’s uniforms.

They ignored the sick man on the table. Then he heard a rumbling, and the roof vibrated under him. Through a wide double door at the far end of the room he saw more sailors moving a small rocket, smaller than the outmoded Nikes at home, on a railed trolley. Their destination was beyond his line of vision. The men seemed to be working with a slow but desperate speed.

“There’s a lot of them,” Gino gasped through his chattering teeth.

Durell nodded. He searched for one outstanding figure in the scene. Olaf had to be down there. Olaf—murderer, traitor, renegade. The Black Viking, harbinger of doom, sword of Odin and Thor.

And where was Sigrid? he wondered.

He felt an uneasy responsibility toward her. Tom between love and duty, she had given him a lot of trouble until now; and yet he felt as if he owed her something. Without Sigrid, he could not have gotten up here, would not have known about her father and her uncle Eric. She was somewhere down there, wounded, perhaps as desperately near death as her father who lay gasping out his life on the table below.

Gino clutched his arm. “There he is.”

Olaf strode into the room from the corridor where the men had trolleyed the gleaming rocket out of sight. He wore a heavy parka, with the hood thrown back to reveal his black hair and proud, handsome face. His mouth looked cruel. He pushed Sigrid ahead of him, and the girl stumbled and almost fell. She turned angrily to say something, and then rushed to her father’s side. Olaf watched her for a moment, biting his lip, then went to the technicians working at the computers.

“I’m freezing, man,” Gino muttered.

Durell nodded. It was time. He reversed his rifle and smashed hard at the glass window with the heavy walnut stock. The glass seemed to shatter without a sound as the wind shrieked bitterly around them. Durell was up, crouching at the window frame instantly. It was a long drop down to the floor below. He kept his rifle close to his body.

He counted on surprise, for he knew how swift and deadly Olaf's reactions could be. Even so, it did not work out as he hoped. A girder which he hadn’t seen from the roof caught at his arm and knocked the rifle from his grip. It went spinning aside as he landed with a jolt that winded him. He rolled loosely, and the gun clattered several feet away. At the same time, the technicians at the console ducked and shouted as the broken glass showered on them.

Sigrid screamed. Durell came up in time to get a boot in the side of his head that knocked him halfway across the room. He came up against the surgical table. He glimpsed a complicated array of shining machines, complete with tanks, from one of which a fine white crystal had spilled. His head rang with the shock of Olaf’s kick. His rifle had landed near Sigrid, out of reach. The thought flickered through his mind that maybe Elgiva was right— the ancient gods had taken a hand in the game, snatching his rifle from his grip.

He narrowly missed another savage heel stamping down to crush his throat. Olaf looked dark and enormous, towering over him. The man’s teeth gleamed in a tight grin. His yellow eyes were tigerish. Durell tried to get to his feet and Olaf kicked him again. He rolled away under a table, toward the console. A chair came into his grip as one of the white-smocked technicians scrambled hastily away. He hurled the chair at Olaf, but Olaf ducked and it crashed into some of the machinery. Sparks flew. The icy wind had begun to roar down through the broken ceiling window. Rolling again, he saw Gino’s olive face at the skylight, snow blowing in around him. Gino had his rifle ready, but his young eyes were uncertain.

“We finish it this time, Cajun,” Olaf grunted. “You are too late.”

“You can’t stop the storm with that rocket,” Durell gasped. He was on his haunches, eyes wary, watching the technicians gathered across the room. They were unarmed. But the sailors from the sub had weapons, and would use them if Olaf so directed them. But Olaf still grinned, taking pleasure in a personal resolution of their enmity.

“We do not stop the storm,” Olaf said. “We make certain it goes on. Then our job is done. I have decided.” 

“That’s not what Dr. Tsung wants.”

“Tsung is a coward, afraid of what he has created. But I fear nothing. It is the end for you, Cajun.”

Durell saved his breath. Behind the giant Olaf, he saw Sigrid stir, a slim figure near the sparking machinery. Her face was very pale, as white as the snow that blew down from the broken skylight.

“Olaf, listen to me,” she whispered.

He did not turn his head. His eyes watched Durell. “Tell your boy to jump down now. Don’t wait.”

Olaf had a heavy PPSH in his hand.

“Gino?” Durell called. “Did you hear him?”

Gino’s face disappeared from the broken skylight. Olaf grinned. “The boy is foolish. He will die up there when the rocket is flown.”

“Gino!” Durell called again.

The wind howled at the broken glass and cut itself into thin slivers of sound that fell into the big room. It grew colder inside by the minute. The lights flickered, turned blue and dim, then brightened again.

Sigrid spoke in a thin, rapid voice. “Olaf, I have pleaded with you before, I told you that for the sake of our old love, of everything between us, you must give this up and help my father to live.”

“Be quiet,” Olaf grunted.

“I will not. I never thought you would shoot me. I have been asleep all these years. A foolish girl. A stupid girl.” She took a step closer to the machinery, where Durell had thrown the chair. “You must not kill Durell. You must not fire the rocket. Listen to me, Olaf. I beg of you.” Her words were a desperate prayer. The technicians, gathered in a knot at the far end of the room, watched with wondering, Oriental faces. Durell did not dare move as he looked into the dark muzzle of Olaf’s gun. The man’s eyes glared with a wild determination to follow his end toward destruction. Nothing could stop him. Sigrid’s plea was hopeless.