Ice Reich (38 page)

The group worked slowly, bracing themselves against a sudden fall. Periodically a rock would break loose and roll down through the spelunkers, banging its way ahead of them into the pits below.

"Dammit! This is worse than that midget-designed submarine," Hans complained after sliding through a tight spot on his back, dragging his pack behind him.

"At least it's warmer in here than outside," Bristle-Head responded.

"It's warmer anywhere than outside."

Hart had to pause several times, occasionally backtracking. The lava tubes were a labyrinth; it'd been a miracle he'd found his way back out in the dark. Now he deliberately took a periodic wrong turn, trying to develop a mental picture of where all the alternate routes led. The rest of the party rested gratefully while he explored. "I nearly died in here once and I don't want to make a wrong turn again," he explained.

The chimney remained the most daunting. The lava tube descended to its roof with the dangerous pitch of a children's slide, then opened to a vertical well hundreds of feet deep. Owen cautiously let himself down on a rope to that junction and, letting his legs dangle in space, dropped a rock to emphasize the need for caution. It fell into the blackness without a sound for what seemed like an eternity of time, finally banging and bouncing somewhere far below. Its echoes drifted up to them.

"Jesus," one of the SS men said. "This dung hole is virtually bottomless. We're climbing down there?"

"Not only that," said Hart, "but you're going to have to climb back out. With a heavier pack than you have now."

"I hate this fucking war."

"Finally, we agree."

The pilot unreeled a rope into the darkness and started down, pausing periodically to drive climbing pitons to anchor the line. Gingerly, the others followed.

At the shelf where the tube from the old entrance joined the chimney, Hart paused until the group reassembled. Everyone was breathing hard. He glanced at Greta. She'd been compliant but silent, freezing the Nazis out, and the soldiers tended to keep a wary distance. Drexler stayed nearer, always between his wife and Hart, and yet avoided looking at her.

She was gazing down the chimney to where they'd descended before, lost in memory, when Hart jerked his head down the horizontal tube and said, "This way." Greta's mouth opened in surprise and then closed. They walked as if exiting the mountain from the tube that had collapsed.

"Jürgen!" Hart called. "Can you come up to the front? I want to show you something."

Drexler pushed ahead. The beam from his headlamp picked out a wall of cascading rock from the cave-in, and it was obvious that Hart had led them to another dead end. He was impatient with the frequent detours but had refrained from complaining: he still needed the American. "What is it?" he asked grumpily.

"The result of German purpose." Hart was searching with the beam from his own helmet. "There." He pointed.

Greta gasped. Bones. Lying broken in a heap of rubble was a body, decay far advanced in the relative warmth of the cave. The skull still had a few leathery scraps. A buckle, buttons, and a pocketknife were ensnarled on the web of tendrils clinging to the skeletal ribs. Rocks still obscured the mashed legs.

Drexler had gone rigid.

"Why it's Fritz, Jürgen!" Hart said. "Lying right where that cave-in you started crushed the life out of him."

There was a murmur of unease among the SS men. "This is bad luck," one muttered.

Drexler looked balefully at Hart. "What's this got to do with our mission?"

"Just underscores your deep concern for the men who serve under you."

"Spare me the finger pointing, Hart. Smart-mouthed communist or not, Eckermann was not someone I wished dead. He simply was in the wrong place at the right time."

"Well, we're going to bury him."

"We don't have time for this maudlin pity!"

Hart crossed his arms. "We're staying here until he's covered with rocks and a prayer said over his grave."

No one wanted to spend more time arguing in the depth of the cave. The little German was swiftly covered with stones and Hart led the others in the Lord's Prayer, a couple of the SS men stumbling over the words. Then he turned to the others. "This was one man. Before we go farther on this mission, I want you to imagine burying a million others: the victims of a new plague."

"We're all tired of your moral pretensions, Hart," Drexler added. "There's a war on. And we're down here to
save
lives, not kill them: to get a cure, not a disease. I suggest the first life you should worry about is your own. So. Lead on."

Owen looked at them sadly. "Very well." He pointed. "We go back to the shaft." The men moved off, anxious to get away from the body. Drexler led this time.

The pilot caught up to Greta, looking at her with concern. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Yes. We only quarreled."

"It worries me to leave you alone with him."

"I'm not afraid of Jürgen."

"I am."

* * *

The American Intelligence officer sat on the embassy terrace in Lisbon, the contents of a folder spilled across the table. It was evening, the night cool but not unpleasant. The naval attaché had called them there.

"Maybe the kraut isn't a liar after all," he told them.

"Come on, Sam," the OSS man scoffed. "He doesn't have a shred of evidence for his wild story. And how do we know he didn't just murder Hart? The German is either a plant or a psychotic."

"I thought that too." The attaché pointed to the papers. "Except that his story is beginning to check out."

"What do you mean?"

"Six days ago an escort carrier task force transiting to the Indian Ocean put up a routine air patrol and encountered a German submarine in the South Atlantic, far away from any convoy route or the normal battlefields. A big boat, the pilots thought, and their guess was that it was heading for Japan on some kind of swap mission. They depth-charged and got a slick. They couldn't confirm the kill, however."

"So?"

"Two days later we intercepted a coded radio message from a sub even farther south. It said the pig-boat was short on fuel and needed resupply to get back to Germany. Asked for a future rendezvous with a milch cow, but not immediately: it was going somewhere first. The timing is odd. Not enough time to get to Japan, certainly. South America, possibly. Or... Antarctica."

The OSS man frowned.

"Think about it, Phil," the naval attaché reasoned. "This man Kohl shows up raving about a secret mission and then we independently find a submarine about where he predicted it would be. Besides, why would this Kohl come here when he's an escapee from France?"

"Because he wants us to divert resources way the hell down into Antarctica. It's a Nazi ploy."

"Maybe. But what if he's right? What if he's really changing sides? An opportunist like him, this late in the war..."

"Sam..."

"We've got a destroyer at Punta Arenas. We've got the biggest damn navy in the world, Hitler is on the ropes..."

"Tell that to the guys getting pasted in the Bulge!"

". . . and we can afford to divert one ship. Dammit, Phil, what if he's right?"

"Or what if the krauts are building some kind of secret hideout down there?" the deputy ambassador interjected quietly. "To hole up after the war. I think Sam is right. I think we should ask the navy to check this out."

"I don't know if we can convince Washington."

"We can if we promise them a sub to bag," the attaché said.

"And we can put that damned oily Nazi on board," the deputy ambassador suggested. "To either help us find this sub or be left down there for causing us the trouble."

Greta felt violated. The grotto in the cave had been a secret place, a sweet memory she'd clung to during all the dark years of the war. Now Jürgen's SS ruffians occupied it like lords, their coarse laughter a despoiling sacrilege. It was as if fate was determined to ruin all she held dear. She loathed Jürgen for coming here. Even if he didn't know what had happened on the blankets then perhaps he could guess, and if he guessed it was like an invasion of her deepest privacy, her fondest moment. The memory had become stained.

Owen was wet and shivering: the Germans were using him as a slave. They'd rigged a rope down the chute of water that led to the underground lake and sent him down with small steel buckets, hoisting up his harvest of the mysterious drug organism. The lake was as warm as ever, Owen had reported, but the constant soaking and the exhausting climb left him weary and chilled. Now he'd been allowed a respite to throw his soaked clothes on the hot rocks and wrap himself in a blanket. He looked frustrated and helpless. Sometimes Greta caught him looking at her sadly and she had to look away, not wanting to reveal her own despair.

As she squatted on the banks of the underground river, the biologist's own muscles ached as she sieved the slime into a concentration that would be packed to the surface. Two of the SS men had already departed with a load. Now Jürgen came over and gazed downward at her. His gloom had metamorphosed into nervous excitement now that the work had begun.

"Is this what we want?" he asked. "Is this going to cure the disease?"

She put down her sieve and tiredly rocked back on her heels. "I don't know, Jürgen. Yes, this is what Owen and I found, but who knows if it can be grown in mass quantities? This is such an unusual place, a dark cavern, its water full of unknown microscopic life and chemicals. It may take a long time to duplicate in a laboratory."

"We don't have a long time. We barely have even a short time. That's why it's imperative to start experimenting now, in the submarine. I want to know what's necessary for success before we leave this island. If we have to pump some of this water to propagate this organism, we'll do it."

She wearily wiped her forehead with her arm. "So Germany can unleash your microbe?"

"No! So I can end this war."

She looked up skeptically. "Jürgen, can't you see how insane this is?"

"Why do you insist on seeing me as a monster?"

"Maybe because I'm a captive?" She stood stiffly, her hands at the small of her back. "Maybe because you named this island after the Greek Fate who ends life?"

He scowled.

"Yes, I looked it up."

"Listen, I don't
want
a captive," he said impatiently. "I want a partner. I wouldn't have had to confine you if you'd exhibited the loyalty and faith of a proper German wife."

"And when have you ever behaved like a proper German husband? When have you ever let love compete with ambition?"

He half raised his hand at that and the SS men looked their way with interest. Then his hand dropped. "For God's sake, let's stop this silly quarreling," he hissed. "Six years of marriage and still you don't know me, still you don't understand me."

"I understand that unless we move cautiously, nothing good can come of this."

He looked impatient. "And that's where you're wrong. Only speed can win success." He considered a moment. "You're right, our motives are more complex than what I revealed in Berlin. But not in the way you think. I told you I had more to reveal about my plans and now is the time, I think. Time to comprehend what we're doing here. Time you learned the true Jürgen Drexler." He turned to the American. "Hart! Come over here!" Then he turned back to Greta. "I'll tell you both, and then you'll understand why we've come back this long, hard way."

The trio moved out of earshot of the remaining three SS men and Drexler stood, thinking about what he was going to say. Their triangle looked bedraggled. Hart was wet, his eyes tired, and Greta and Jürgen were grimy. No one had slept properly in weeks.

"Listen," Drexler finally began. "Do you think I'd be down in this dank asshole of the earth, processing scum, if not for a great purpose? I mean, my God! This is hell, I think!" He waved at the grotto.

"Interesting that you claim to know, Jürgen," Hart said.

Drexler scowled. "Shut up for once, you uneducated buffoon. I'm tired of mockery from a man who has accomplished nothing with his life except the theft of my wife." He let that hang. "Has it penetrated your dim brain yet that I don't need you anymore now that you've led us back into the mountain? That you've become superfluous to our expedition? One more sneering comment and I'll shoot you myself!"

The pilot opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

Drexler took a deep breath. "All right. Good. Now. It's true that when we came to this island the first time, my initial interest was solely in the disease. A tool for German defense, I thought, or at least for research. But then my men got sick and died and it seemed over, at least until we could return."

"So why not leave it be?" she asked.

"I'm coming to that. Will you please
listen?
" He looked at her with frustration. "We reported what we'd found, of course, but Reich strategists pointed out such a disease was too dangerous for us to use unless our own troops were immune. And then the war began, our victories were stunning, Antarctica was far away, and the matter receded from my mind. But as the Reich's fortunes darkened my thoughts returned to this island. I remembered Greta's excitement after your exploration of this cave and wondered if I'd been too hasty. And then
you
appeared, Hart! A personal disaster, yes. But also a revelation. An inspiration! Because I realized that in our personal problems was a key to success. Not to destroy, but to end the destruction. To force an armistice to this war."

"Jürgen, the war's ending soon anyway," Hart objected. "Maybe by Christmas."

"That's where you're wrong. That's what you don't understand. Even as we speak Germany is launching a great new offensive in the West that will take the Allies totally by surprise. And this is only the beginning of what our Führer promises. This remarkable new submarine that saved your life is merely one of hundreds being built that will soon reverse the tide of the naval war. The Reich has developed a new kind of airplane with a revolutionary jet engine. And Germany is building rockets capable of reaching America. The war is not nearly finished, Hart. It could go on for years. Years and years. Unless
we
act. Unless we succeed."