Ice Hunt (54 page)

A horrified expression widened the man’s eyes as understanding dawned. His gaze took in the boy in his lap. “Impossible. We would never take part in such actions. It goes against everything the United States stands for.”

Viktor educated him. “In 1936, a crack unit of the United States Army was dropped near Lake Anjikuni. They emptied a remote village. Every man, woman, and child.” He stroked the boy’s hair. “They even collected dead bodies, preserved in frozen graves, as comparative research material for the project. Who would miss a few isolated Eskimos?”

“I don’t believe it. We wouldn’t participate in human experiments.”

“And you truly believe this?”

Pike glared, defiant.

“Your government has a long history of using those citizens it considers
less desirable
as research subjects. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Two hundred black men with syphilis are used as unwitting research subjects. They are not told of their disease and treatment is withheld from them so that your American researchers could study how painfully and horribly these men would die.”

The prisoner had the decency to glance down. “That was back in the thirties. A long time ago.”

“It didn’t stop in the thirties,” Viktor corrected him. “Nineteen-forty, Chicago. Four hundred prisoners are intentionally sickened with malaria so experimental drugs could be evaluated. It was this very experiment that the Nazis used later to justify their own atrocities during the Holocaust.”

“You can’t compare that to what the Nazis did. We condemned the Nazis’ actions and prosecuted all of them.”

“Then how do you justify Project Paperclip?”

The man frowned.

“Your intelligence branches recruited Nazi scientists, offering them asylum and new identities, in exchange for their employment into top-secret projects. And it wasn’t just the German scientists. In 1995, your own government admitted doing the same to Japanese war criminals, those who had firsthand involvement with human experimentation on your own soldiers.”

By now, the color had drained from Pike’s face. He stared at the Inuit boy, beginning to comprehend the truth here. It was painful to have one’s innocence ripped away so brutally. “That was long ago,” he mumbled, struggling to justify what was too hard to accept. “World War Two.”

“Exactly.” Viktor lifted his hands. “When do you think this base was built?”

Pike simply shook his head.

“And don’t delude yourself that such secret experimentation upon your own people was ancient history, something to be dismissed. In the fifties and sixties, it is well documented that your CIA and Department of Defense sprayed biological and chemical agents over major U.S. cities. Including spreading mosquitoes infected with yellow fever over cities in Georgia and Florida, then sending in Army scientists as public health officials to test the unwitting victims. The list goes on and on: LSD experiments, radiation exposure tests, nerve-gas development, biological research. It is going on right now in your own backyards…to your own people. Does it still surprise you it was done here?”

The man had no answer. He stared, trembling slightly—whether from his recent near drowning in the Arctic Ocean or from the truth of what really had gone on here, it didn’t matter.

Viktor’s voice deepened. “And you judge my father. Someone forced at gunpoint into service here, torn away from his family…” Viktor had to choke back his anger and bile. It had taken him years to forgive his father—not for the atrocities committed at the station, but for abandoning his family. Understanding had come only much later. He could expect no less from the man seated before him. In fact, he didn’t know why he was even trying. Was he still trying to justify what happened here to himself? Had he truly forgiven his father?

He stared into the face of the boy on his lap. His voice grew tired, fingers waved. “Take him away,” he called to the guard. “I have no further use for this man.”

The motion startled the little boy. A tiny hand raised to a cheek. “Papa,” he said in Russian. The child had imprinted to him like a gosling after first hatching.

But Viktor knew it was more than that. He knew what the child must think. Viktor still had a few worn pictures of his father. He knew now how much he looked like his father did. Same white hair. Same ice-gray eyes. He even wore his hair like the last picture of his father. For the boy, fresh from his frozen slumber, no time had passed. He awoke to find the son had become the father. No difference to the boy.

Viktor touched the child’s face.
These eyes looked upon my father. These hands touched him
. Viktor felt a deep bond with the child. His father must have cared for the boy to engender such clear affection. How could he do any less? He ran a finger along one cheek. After losing all his family, he had finally found a connection to his past.

Practicing a smile, the boy spoke to him, softly. It was not Russian. He didn’t understand.

The American did. “He’s speaking Inuit.” Pike had stopped by the door, held at gunpoint, staring back.

Viktor crinkled his forehead. “What…what did he say?”

The man stepped back into the room. He leaned toward the boy, bowing down a bit.
“Kinauvit?”

The child brightened, sitting straighter and turning to Pike. “Makivik…
Maki!”

The man glanced to Viktor. “I asked him his name. It is Makivik, but he goes simply by Maki.”

Viktor pushed a wisp of hair from his face. “Maki.” He tried the name and liked it. It fit the boy.

The child reached up and pulled a lank of his own hair.
“Nanuq.”
This was followed by a giggle.

“Polar bear,”
the prisoner translated. “From the color of your hair.”

“Like my father,” Viktor said.

Pike stared between them. “He mistakes you for your father?”

Viktor nodded. “I don’t believe he knows how much time has passed.”

Maki, now with an audience, chattered blearily, rubbing an eye.

Pike frowned.

“What did he say?” Viktor asked.

“He said that he thought you were supposed to still be sleeping.”

“Sleeping?”

The men stared at each other, realization dawning on both of them.

Could it be?

Viktor’s gaze flicked off in the direction of the outer hall, toward the circle of frozen tanks. “
Nyet
. It is not possible.” His voice trembled—something it never did. “A-ask him.
Where?”

Pike stared silently at him, clearly knowing what he wanted, then concentrated on the child. “Maki,” he said, gaining the boy’s attention.
“Nau taima?”

The exchange continued, ending with the boy crawling off Viktor’s lap.

“Qujannamiik,”
Pike whispered to the boy, then in English. “Thank you.”

Viktor stood. “Does he know where my father might be?”

As answer, Maki waved.
“Malinnga!”

Pike translated. “Follow me…”

7:18 P.M.
OMEGA DRIFT STATION

Amanda sat at the table as the decoding of the journals continued. Jenny read from the text, translating the Inuktitut symbols, speaking slowly so Craig could decipher the spoken Russian.

The first book was skimmed. It was the history behind the founding of the station, dating back to the infamous tragedy of the
Jeannette
back in 1879.

The U.S. Arctic steamer
Jeannette,
captained by Lieutenant George W. DeLong, had been sent to explore for a new route between the United States and Russia, but the boat became trapped in the polar ice cap, frozen in place. The steamer remained icebound for two winters until it was crushed by the floes in 1881. The survivors escaped in three life rafts, dragging the boats over the ice until they reached open water. But only two boats ever reached landfall in Siberia.

The fate of the third was lost to history—but apparently not to the Russians. “Saturday, the first of October, in the year of Our Lord, 1881.” Jenny and Craig translated a bit of a diary entry included in the journal. “We are blessed. Our prayers have been answered. After a night of storms, huddled under a tarp, bilging our boat hourly, the day broke calm and bright. Across the seas, an island appeared. Not land. God is not that kind to sailors. It was a berg, pocked with caves, enough to get out of the storms and seas for a spell. We took what refuge we could and discovered the carcasses of some strange sea beasts, preserved in the ice. Starving as we were, any meat was good meat, and this was especially tasty. Sweet on the tongue. God be praised.”

Jenny glanced around the room. Everyone in the barracks room knew what “beasts” had been discovered on that lone iceberg.
Grendels
. Even the meat being notably sweet was consistent with Dr. Ogden’s comparison of the grendel’s physiology to that of the Arctic wood frog. Like the frogs, it was a glucose, or sugar, that acted as the cryoprotectant. But Amanda kept quiet about this as Jenny and Craig continued.

“October second…we are only three now. I don’t know what sins we cast upon these seas, but they have returned a hundredfold. In the night, the dead awoke and attacked our sleeping party. Creatures that had been are meals became the diners that night. Only we three were able to make it to the lifeboat and away. And still we were hunted. Only a fortuitous harpoon stab saved us. We dragged the carcass behind our boat until we were confident it was deceased, then took its head as our trophy. Proof of God’s wrath to show the world.”

This last decision proved not a wise choice. After three more days at sea, the survivors made landfall at a coastal village of Siberia, bearing their prize and story. But such villagers were a superstitious lot. They feared that bringing the head of the monster into their village would draw more beasts to them. The three sailors were slain, and the head of the monster was blessed by the village priest and buried under the church to sanctify it.

It wasn’t until three decades later that the story reached a historian and naturalist. He traced the tale to its source, exhumed the skull of the monster, and returned to St. Petersburg with it. It was added to the world’s most extensive library of Arctic research: the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. From there, a search began to discover the whereabouts of this infamous ice island. But even using the maps of the slain sailors, it would take another two decades to rediscover the berg—now frozen and incorporated into the ice pack. But it was worth the search.

The sailors’ story proved true. The grendels were found again.

At that part of the story, Craig, growing impatient, had Jenny stop reading the history text and jump ahead to the last two journals, the research notes of Vladimir Petkov, the father of the admiral who had attacked Omega and the ice station.

“That’s what we really need to know about,” Craig said.

As the new translations began, the Delta Force team leader—who gave his name only as Delta One—entered the barracks room, pushing through the double doors, flanked by two of his men.

He strode over and reported to Craig. Amanda read his lips. “The bird’s ready to fly on your word. All we need is the go-ahead to proceed to Ice Station Grendel.”

Craig held him off with a raised hand. “Not yet. Not until I know for sure that we have all we need.”

As time was critical, they did a quick scan through the next sections, looking to make sure they had the final notes on the research here. But what quickly became apparent was that Dr. Vladimir Petkov was no fool. Even in the coded text, the researcher had been wary of revealing all.

His scientists had isolated a substance from the deep glands of the grendel’s skin, a hormone that controlled the ability to send the beasts into suspended animation. It seemed these glands responded to ice forming on the skin and released a rush of hormones that triggered the cryopreservation.

But all attempts to inoculate test subjects with this hormone had met with disastrous failure. There were no successful resurrections after freezing.

Craig recited, troubling over some of the words: “ ‘Then I made an intuitive leap. A…a cofactor that activated the hormone. This led to my first successful resuscitation. It is the breakthrough I had been hoping for.’ ”

The victim had been a sixteen-year-old Inuit girl, but she did not live long, dying in convulsions minutes later. But it was progress for Dr. Petkov.

Jenny paled with the telling of this last section. Amanda understood why. These were the woman’s own people, used so cruelly and callously.

According to the dates of the journal, Dr. Petkov spent another three years refining his technique, going through test subjects. Craig had Jenny skimmed these sections, much of it ancillary research into sedatives and soporifics. Sleep formulas that had no bearing on the main line of research.

But near the very end, Craig found what he had been looking for. Vladimir finally hit upon the right combination, as he stated, “an impossible concoction that would be maddening to reconfigure, more chance than science.” But he had succeeded. He synthesized one batch of this final serum.

Then the journal abruptly ended. What had become of those samples and the fateful end of the station remained a mystery.

Jenny closed the last book. “That’s all there is.”

“There must be more,” Craig said, taking the book.

Amanda answered, speaking from experience with scientists. “It looks like Dr. Petkov became more and more paranoid as his successes grew. He split his discovery into notes and samples.”

Craig frowned.

Delta One stood straighter. “Sir, what are your orders?”

“We’ll have to go back,” Craig mumbled. “We only have half the puzzle here. I have the notes, but the Russians control the samples. We must get to them before they’re destroyed by Admiral Petkov.”

“On your word, we’re ready to head out,” Delta One said gruffly.

“Let’s get it done,” Craig said. “We can’t give the Russians time to find the sample.”

Delta One barked orders to his two flanking men, heading away.