Ice Reich (46 page)

"I feel like we're the last living things on earth," he told her.

She was biting off a piece of bread, her eyes shining. To have awakened this morning was like awakening from her terrible dream. She'd never felt such relief.

"No, Owen. The sea is still alive. Look." She pointed.

There was a hiss. A cloud of rank vapor, evidence of another huge beating heart, puffed above the water. The surface roiled as the small hillock of a whale's back appeared. Then it submerged again and the tail broke the surface, waving. Beckoning them to the sea.

"It's a good sign," she promised. "That despite all the kilometers ahead we're going to make it."

Hart unhooked the boat from the ice and they began to row, following the whale. Slowly they worked out of the pack ice that clung to the island.

As they neared the open ocean the wind began to pick up. They hoisted the sail and huddled for warmth in the stern, the lifeboat taking on an easy motion as it slid up and down the swells. An iceberg passed by on the starboard side and they saw penguins standing on it. Yes, there was life after all.

"How far to land?" she asked.

"About four thousand kilometers to Africa."

"My God." The impossibility was obvious.

"We have to try."

They sailed on. Strangely, their mood was not despair but contentment. They were alone and with each other. It was enough. The sea was gray, the swells cresting with foam but not yet threatening to overpower their little boat. Seabirds appeared and began trailing them, riding the wind in long, looping circles. The overcast broke and a tantalizing rift of blue showed through. Behind, the island began to look simply like a gigantic dark cloud.

Hours passed. Greta dozed in Owen's arms, lulled by the roll of the sea. Then she lazily came awake again, watching the water. It was hypnotic, swells marking a timeless rhythm. She squinted, her gaze caught on something that broke the pattern. Something above the surface. Something hard. "My God. Is that a ship?" She pointed.

He followed her arm eagerly, then looked uneasy. "I think it's the submarine. I think it's the
U-4501.
"

"No." She put her arms around him. "This is too much."

He studied the craft. "It would be. Except it isn't trying to intercept us, I think."

"Hasn't it spotted us? Should we drop the sail to hide?"

"No," he said, now more puzzled than alarmed. "That's not it. The sub isn't trying to do anything. I think it's dead."

"Dead?"

"Plague." He aimed for the vessel.

The U-boat was wallowing sluggishly, drifting as if it had lost all power. The main deck was awash, only the conning tower clear of the sea. It rocked back and forth like a lonely buoy.

"I don't see anybody," Greta said quietly.

Owen hove to and then watched the submarine for a while in grim wonder. "No," he replied. "I suspect there's no one to see. It's a ghost ship now, like the
Bergen.
"

"So I really killed them. I'm looking at their tomb."

"No, they killed themselves."

She crossed herself. He turned the rudder and began sailing away.

"The conning tower looks like it's slowly sinking," she judged, staring after the disappearing U-boat.

"Maybe Freiwald's taking her to the bottom. Maybe there's a leak."

"So it's really over, isn't it?"

"That part is."

They sailed on, the day getting late. They took turns eating and steering, catching snatches of sleep. Both felt immensely tired. The euphoria of escape was wearing off and life's insistence at worrying about the next danger was pecking persistently at their mood. Night fell, a cloudy one as dark as the cave, and then the gray dawn revealed mostly empty ocean. A few icebergs drifted miles from their position but the island was lost below the southern horizon.

"I want to talk about our future," Greta said. "A future that will keep my spirits up."

"All right." Hart thought a moment. "What kind of house shall we have?"

"A sunny one," she said promptly. "With a tree, and a table under the tree. Not big, like I had in Berlin. But bright."

He laughed. "It sounds affordable. And what kind of car?"

"Do ordinary people really have cars in America?"

"Yes, some of them. You need one. The country's big."

"Well then, I want one of those too. But not black. A happy color."

"Like in a children's book?"

"Exactly."

The clouds parted briefly and for a while the horizon sparkled. Then the weather closed again and the wind began to rise ominously. The tiny boat was like a leaf on a prairie, the sea slowly building and breaking white. The sky was darkening. Hart shortened sail.

"They call this latitude the Furious Fifties," he said. "Now we'll see why."

The boat was beginning to toboggan down one side of the swells and climb laboriously up the next, the wind singing in the rigging. Spray breaking across the prow began to wet them. It would be a long second night.

Greta looked across the cold seascape, her hair blowing past her cheeks with a sad, faraway look that reminded the pilot of their days on the
Schwabenland.
He wondered what her picture of America was, and what she would think of it if they ever got there. The boat rolled steeply and she shifted her body automatically to help balance. A streak of foam hissed away from their stern. She began to bail, barely keeping pace with the rain of spray.

"We're not going to make it, are we, Owen?" she asked finally when she rested. "We could never make it. Like you said."

He was looking out across the water, his eyes narrow, his mouth in its half smile of concentration. "I was wrong. We'll make it."

"Ah, the optimistic American." She couldn't help smiling. "You don't give up easily, do you?"

"Not anymore."

"And how do you
know
that we'll make it, Mr. Hart?"

"Well, for one thing, we've only got three thousand and nine hundred kilometers to go. Much less if you count in nautical miles."

She laughed. "I hadn't realized we were so close!"

"And for another thing, you have an angel on your shoulder."

"Oh really?" She turned to look. "Very small, I think. But that's what your Eskimo friend promised, yes?"

Hart nodded. "And Elmer was right."

She slumped in the bottom of the boat, huddling against the cold. "I wish he was but I don't see this angel, Owen. The angels have deserted me, I suspect."

"No they haven't." He pointed. "
I
can see it."

She didn't bother to look this time. Her eyes closed.

"Greta?" he said impatiently.

"Hmmmm?"

"Please get out the flare gun you packed."

"What?" Her eyes opened wide.

"For your angel." He pointed again. And this time she swung to look.

There was a gray shape on the horizon. Another ship.

"My God. It's true!"

Owen was beaming now, his face stung with spray, his hair whipping in the wind. "Of course it's true. Because of the person I'm with, I suspect." He leaned and seized and kissed her, passionately happy. "Get out the flare, dammit!"

She did so and a red star shot skyward in the gloom. They waited a few minutes. Then another.

The ship began pointing toward them.

Owen whooped, waving his hand wildly as if they could see it at such a distance. Then he beamed at his companion. "Did I ever tell you that women are good luck?"

* * *

The American destroyer
Reuben Gray
picked them up at dusk. Greta went up the rope ladder first, sailors eagerly lifting her the last few feet and marveling at the novelty of a woman.

Then a sailor pointed to the ladder urgently and gestured at Hart.

"Speak English, kid!" the pilot asked.

His mouth dropped open. "You sound American!"

"Montanan. Never thought I'd see so much fucking water in my life." The Norwegian lifeboat was heavy with it, he realized, accumulated spray sloshing under the floorboards. They wouldn't have lasted the night. He grabbed the ladder and hoisted himself aboard.

"Where'd you come from?" The sailor's wide eyes looked out at an empty sea.

"Heaven. And hell."

Hart looked down at the lifeboat a last time with appreciation. On its second chance it had done its job.

"Big wave!" someone called from the deck, pointing. The two men looked. A dark hill was mounding, aiming for the destroyer's stern quarter.

"Hang on!" the sailor shouted, shoving Hart. The pilot needed no encouragement. He wrapped an arm around a metal rack. The stern of the ship dipped, a mountain of gray water looming over it. Then the wave broke, spray crashing against the stern like breakers on a rocky coast.

There was a splintering crack. The stern rose, twisted, dropped again. The destroyer tilted as it sought equilibrium.

Hart let go and looked back over the side. The Norwegian lifeboat had been hurled against the steel ship's side and shattered. It was gone, except for a scrap of wood attached to one line. The destroyer began to accelerate and steered a more favorable course into the waves, steadying. And at last the island seemed reassuringly remote. They were safe. But what was an American destroyer doing way down here?

Owen walked across the fantail to a hatchway where yellow light beckoned. Greta was there, her hood down and a halo of illumination around her hair. And there was someone else too.

"Fortune is curious, isn't it, Mr. Hart?"

"I don't believe it."

Otto Kohl smiled like the proprietor of a private yacht. "You're lucky we found you in time. And I'm lucky you found us. I think the captain was ready to pitch me overboard if I didn't find a submarine to sink or an island to invade. And I feared I was going to help him kill the two of you. Instead I saved you. Now perhaps you can convince him of the truth of what I've been saying."

Hart stepped inside, feeling himself sagging in the relative warmth. "I'll try. But what are you
doing
here?"

"I went to the Americans. I confessed all. They didn't believe me until they intercepted a radio signal from your U-boat. Then they made me a captive guide, exhibiting a sorry mistrust I've only slowly been overcoming."

"Well, it's too late to guide them, Otto. They're all dead, even Jürgen. The submarine is gone, the island volcano erupting, the disease and cure lost. Forever, I hope. It would be insane to go back there."

"The submarine... gone?"

"It was full of plague and slowly sinking the last time we saw it. This destroyer can look in hopes of practicing its naval gunnery, but I don't think they'll find it."

"And was anything salvaged from this vessel?"

"Of course not. You want a souvenir?"

Kohl sighed. "No. Just that Jürgen was holding some... papers of mine."

"Ah. I saw those come aboard. Important?"

The German thought about that. Then he shook his head. "No. Not important. Not anymore. Because life goes on, I think. Because it's time to start over and make up for the past, no?"

Hart nodded. "Admiral Byrd once remarked that Antarctica can provide a man with a chance to remake himself. Maybe he was right. But I'm sorry about your papers, Otto. I don't know what other evidence we have to back up your story."

He shrugged. "Yourselves, certainly. How else did you come to be down here in an open boat?"

The pilot nodded. "There's that."

"And one other thing." Greta fished into her clothes and pulled out her bottle. "An algae or a sponge, a strange organism. Perhaps some scientist will confirm its novelty."

"Greta! You saved some?" The pilot was surprised.

"Just this raw sample, when I destroyed the rest. I'm curious. As a scientist, you know."

Otto peered. "This is what all the fuss has been about?"

"This and how humans could misuse it."

Kohl nodded. "That I understand." He paused then, considering the way the couple looked at each other. "Well. Would an engagement present be appropriate?"

"It would be
very
appropriate," Hart said. Greta smiled.

"Good. Because I've been carrying this halfway around the world and don't have a clue as to why." He reached into a pocket and took out a scrap of soiled ribbon, handing it to Greta. "But I kept it as you asked."

She looked happy as she unwrapped the pebble.

"What the devil
is
that rock?"

She lifted the locket out of her clothes and unsnapped it. "It's memory, Papa." She slipped the pebble in and closed the tiny container. "It goes here, near the heart."

Her father nodded. "And now you two go on to... ?"

"California, I hope." Greta looked shyly at Owen. "It's warmer than Montana, I hear. And I want to be near the sea to study whales. Not to hunt them, but to learn from them."

"And you, Owen?"

"I think commercial aviation is going to increase after the war. I want to fly and I suspect California will be as good a place to start as any. I once spent some time there."

"Good. And I think I want to help rebuild some of what we destroyed after the Reich finally dies. They will need Otto Kohl, I think."

An ensign stepped into the room. "The captain wants to talk to you three. You have a lot of explaining to do."

"Of course, of course!" Kohl nodded. "What a story we have to tell! Lead the way, young man!" He put a cautious hand on Hart's shoulder. "Captain Reynolds and I are slowly becoming the best of friends," he whispered. "It's taking time but he's warming to me, I think. So you, of course, must let me do most of the talking."

As the trio climbed toward the vessel's bridge, Owen Hart slipped his arm around the woman he loved.

This book was inspired by a true incident. In 1938–39, Germany's Hermann Göring did send an expedition to Antarctica on the seaplane tender
Schwabenland.
Its pilots were the first to fly over the coastal ranges of Queen Maud Land and they assigned some names to the region that persist today. The Germans did drop swastika-engraved darts from their flying boats to establish a claim to the continent, and did greet curious penguins with a "Heil Hitler!" They named the area New Schwabenland.