Ice Reich (11 page)

"Where are we?" he asked Heiden. For all his recognition of the white wall of mountains that stretched as far as the eye could see in any direction, he could have been on the moon.

"New Schwabenland," the captain replied. "The newest part of greater Germany."

The immediate need was to go ashore, Drexler announced. The
Schwabenland
was the first vessel of the Third Reich to visit the southern continent, and a formal claim was paramount. They'd anchored in a bay bounded by two-hundred-foot-high glacial walls that the geographer, Feder, promptly named after their home port of Hamburg. Occasionally a chunk of ice would break away from the glacier face with a crack like a cannon shot, crashing into the dark clear water and bobbing away through the echoes of its own turbulence. A rocky point of land jutted from the southwest corner and it was there that they rowed in a lifeboat, the ever-silent mountaineers pulling at the oars. The boat crunched onto a beach of rocky cobbles and the passengers splashed through the shallows to mushy snow and granite outcrops. A gull-like skua flew overhead, shrieking a protest of prior occupation.

Feder had brought a movie camera, which he proceeded to erect on a tripod. Greta had her silver Leica. Drexler carried a small Nazi flag tied to a boat-hook pole. Since there was no breeze to flaunt the swastika, he had one of the soldiers hold the flag outward while Greta snapped a picture. Then he ushered Heiden in front of the movie camera, pulling down the captain's parka hood so that his steel-gray Prussian features were clearly visible.

"We claim this land for the German Reich in the name of Adolf Hitler," the captain proclaimed, his voice thin in the immense landscape. "May its challenge and resources inspire the German people for generations to come!"

Schmidt stumbled off to peer at small stains of lichen on the rocks. "Life at its most elemental," he muttered, scraping some off.

There was also a colony of Adélie penguins nearby, and a trio of avian ambassadors waddled across the snow to inspect these curious goings-on. "Look, they're already dressed for the New Year," Greta exclaimed in delight. Indeed, the penguins looked like a delegation in tuxedos.

"They're welcoming our protection and administration," Drexler said, winking. He strode toward the birds, which scuttled away warily. "Thank you for your hospitality, we bring you civilization in return," he said, bowing. Then he stood erect and gave a stiff-armed salute. "Heil Hitler!" Greta laughed and snapped his picture.

Hart sighed and walked over to inspect the penguin colony. There were hundreds of birds jockeying for nesting position on the bare dirt that had emerged from surrounding snow. The rookery smelled rank from bird excrement, which stained the area reddish brown. Periodically a group of the birds would walk or belly-slide to the water's edge, hesitate, and then follow a leader, their awkwardness instantly changing to grace as they glided away like sibilant torpedoes.

Greta came too, clicking away with the Leica. Hart felt slightly irritated with her for photographing the Nazi posturing and then reminded himself it was her country. She was oblivious to his mood, delighted at being ashore again. He slowed to wait for her to catch up.

"They look like little people," he said to her.

"This is their nesting time. No one knows yet where they go in winter, but in summer they swim to places like this to breed."

"It's funny to see them pause at the water's edge like we might, as if it was too cold."

"They're not pausing for the cold. They're checking for leopard seals. The leopards lurk just below the surface, looking upward for the silhouette of a penguin before they strike. Stay away from the edge yourself, if you venture onto the pack ice."

"Yes, ma'am," Hart said, mock saluting. "So why are the penguins clustered here?"

"They use pebbles to build their nests and return year after year to rookeries that have a supply of them. You can see them quarreling over the stones now."

Hart watched. Some penguins were simply searching the ground for rocks but others eyed the cache of their neighbors. Sometimes they'd stage a raid and snatch a pebble to much tumult and squawking. Often their own supply would be raided by still other penguins at the same time. It was a pointless competition that seemed, well, very human.

"They're not very bright," the pilot said.

"No, they're little more than hormone boxes, driven by instinct. Skuas and the gulls are the brighter birds. They'll work as a team at breeding time, one bird distracting a parent penguin from its egg while the other snatches it. But there are so many penguins that I guess enough survive."

"If only they'd cooperate with each other."

"Sometimes they do. See there? That penguin is giving his pebble to another. He's probably a male, demonstrating his attention to a female. Romantic, yes?"

Hart grinned. "The rocks we humans give are usually prettier. But yes, they seem to imitate us."

"That's why biology is so fascinating. I see us in them."

"Even krill?"

She laughed. "It's hard to love krill, which drift in the ocean like aimless clouds. But whales? We know so little about them, except their magnificence. Did you know some can dive more than an hour, more than two kilometers deep?"

Hart wondered whether she'd learned that from the book Jürgen had given her. With a slight air of irritation, he gestured toward the political liaison and his men, inspecting a nearby glacial fissure. "What do you think of them claiming the whales' home?"

She shrugged. "Such a claim lets people like me do science. And Jürgen says that if Germany doesn't act, some other nation will. In fact other nations have. The British, the Norwegians, you Americans, the Argentines, the Chileans... everyone planting flags."

Hart nodded reluctantly. "I suppose you're right. Still, Drexler seems so... arrogant about it all. Germany this, Germany that. So damned serious."

"He just made a joke with the penguins— he's not as severe as you think. And you're pretty intense yourself. No talk of home or family or sports. Do you know what I think? You two don't like each other because you're too much alike. Both loners, both rigid in your opinions, both interested in... well, very alike." She flushed a bit.

Hart was miffed by the comparison. "I just find him...
self-important.
Claim this icebox? For what? No one can really live here. The weather is fine today but wait for the first storm. The darkness of winter. It's insane."

"Then why are
you
here?"

"To explore. To fly. Not to give a Hitler salute to penguins."

"Maybe Jürgen can see humor where you can't," she retorted. "He's not so bad if you'd get to know him. And he befriended me. I had a... a mentor, a professor, who was killed in a car crash, and I had no support in my career as a woman, no means to establish myself at a university, and then I met Jürgen and suddenly I was offered this job in Antarctica... God, the opportunity! I could have kissed him! And he's sincere in his dreams. You never listen to him with an open mind."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Kiss him?"

"No. No! And what if I did! It's none of your business!"

"After that party you have to wonder what his motive is in having you aboard..."

"Good biology." Her voice was flat.

"I know you're a good biologist, but just see him for what he is."

"How dare you!" Her temper was rising. "Who did
you
kiss to get your berth on the
Schwabenland
? You haul this checkered past on board with you, and then act superior and condescending about a scientific mission— "

"A
political
mission."

"Both."

Hart sighed. She was angry and defensive and he knew he was making a mess of the situation: that he was alienating a woman who fascinated him, pursuing a woman who could only bring trouble.

"Look, I'm sorry. I... I just don't want to see you hurt."

"My friendships are none of your business!"

"Let's drop it."

"I couldn't care less what you think!"

He looked at her hopelessly. "Greta, please, I'm not criticizing you..."

But she was stalking away on the beach. He could see Jürgen waiting, a narrow look of curiosity on his face.

Hart thought Greta would cool down by the time they returned to the launch but she sat in the bow away from him, close to Drexler, leaning close to whisper to the German. Feder grinned at the pilot. Great, Owen thought: his ineptness would be the talk of the ship. He was told by the coxswain to take an oar because some of the German SS troops were staying on the beach to exercise their snow skills. He complied, pulling as hard as he could with his back to the German couple.

* * *

They began to fly. The initial reconnaissance was simple, the Dornier Wal the pilots had dubbed
Boreas
to the west,
Passat
to the east, each rocketing off the catapult to soar like giant petrels. Hart recognized none of the geography— they were in an unexplored area east of the Weddell Sea, below the Atlantic Ocean and Africa— but he found himself playing a useful role in his advice on icing, weather patterns, the dangerous downdrafts off the mountains, and the importance of careful navigation.

The immensity of Antarctica unexpectedly intimidated the German pilots. Within minutes of their launching the planes seemed swallowed in the wildest, most epic landscape they'd ever seen. Not only was there no town or road or light or landmark, there never had been. In all of human existence they were the first of their species to see this hostile shore.

The flights were mostly in clear, calm weather, not unusual during Antarctica's high summer of December and January. Hart and Feder would often have a chance to accompany them, the pilot working on his own launchings and landings. They began sketching out maps, Feder sometimes giving names that seemed sure to curry favor: the Hitler Range, Mount Göring, Goebbels Glacier, Bismarck Bay. The German pilots seemed particularly interested in anchorages and adjoining bits of snow-free land. Sometimes after they discovered one the
Schwabenland
worked around the coast to it, threading its way past towering bergs and through patchy pack ice. Hart realized they were looking for a harbor to return to. Drexler used a word he had apparently picked up from Hitler's speeches or writings:
Lebensraum,
living room.

Heiden's greatest fear was the unpredictable ice. Sometimes pack ice skidded before a breeze one way while the larger, deeper icebergs perversely went the opposite because their underwater bulk was being pushed by ocean currents. The
Schwabenland
was not a true icebreaker and could make progress only by searching out openings, or leads. The pilots scouted for them.

"Look for a rain squall," Hart told the aviators at one point.

"It's too cold to rain in Antarctica," Kauffman objected.

"It's the reflection of open water on an overcast sky. The ice shines light back up onto the clouds and makes them whiter than they are, but the dark open water throws a patch of shadow. It looks like an approaching storm, but go that way and you'll find a lead or polynya." Thereafter the Germans began making their way through the ice with more confidence.

The most bizarre part of each flight came when the airplanes reached the farthest point of their range. It was then that the mystery of at least some of the crates was solved. Each morning the sailors would load one into a Dornier. Inside were four-foot-long metal stakes with a small flattened oval and engraved swastika at one end. "This will substantiate our claim that we saw these lands before any other nation," Drexler solemnly told the pilots. "Drop them at the far limit of your penetration. They're designed to fall point down and stick into the ice."

Hart could barely restrain himself from laughing out loud at the conceit but he found that as aerial observer it was often his job to drop the damned things. The pilots would signal at the appropriate moment and he'd have to crank open a side hatch to a blast of shrieking air, watching through his goggles as the stakes tumbled until they were lost in ice glare. Afterward he could see no evidence of their existence; he suspected they'd simply been engulfed by the snow. But the pilots didn't care so long as the stakes were gone.

Meanwhile, Greta ignored Owen. Fine, he thought, I'm exhausted from the constant flying anyway. Let Drexler entertain her. Sometimes when returning to the ship in a Dornier he'd spot her in the launch, dragging a net or hauling up water. She'd come in late, wet and cold, and go wordlessly to her laboratory with her samples. She was quieter and more distracted at mealtimes, only summoning the energy to smile wanly at Drexler during his monologues about Greater Germany and a Thousand Year Reich. Fritz had been right: Hart was weary of the speeches. If Jürgen tried any harder, the pilot thought, he'll break a sweat.

A storm moved in. A pale sky taut as a balloon was invaded by a great scudding fleet of storm clouds and landmarks were devoured. The
Schwabenland
prudently dropped anchor and waited out the wind, midsummer snow giving a wintry cast to the decks. Ice rasped and clanked by as Heiden brooded on the bridge. The weather provided a welcome respite from flying and Hart seized the opportunity to nap. The hiatus also gave him time to think, however, and it bothered him that he thought so much about Greta.

He scarcely knew her. He wanted to avoid being distracted by her. Yet he couldn't get her out of his mind. He didn't understand it; she had none of the California glamour of Audrey. Half the time the woman simply upset him. Yet he missed her company, the ease of talking with her, the surprise of what she would say— and cursed himself for both missing it and being an ass every time he was around her.

Then New Year's came.

They stayed up late in the officer's mess, drinking toasts to 1939 by candlelight and playing scratchy records, some of them American, on the ship's sole phonograph.

"To
Amerika!"
a boozy Feder offered.