Ice Station (5 page)

“Then we leave him in there,” Schofield said as he started
walking back down the ice tunnel. “We've got other things to
worry about. The first of which is finding out what happened to your
divers down in that cave.”

The sun shone brightly over Washington, D.C. The
Capitol practically glowed white against the magnificent blue sky.

In a lavish red-carpeted corner of the Capitol Building, the meeting
broke for recess. Folders were closed. Chairs were pushed back. Some
of the delegates took off their reading glasses and rubbed their eyes.
As soon as the recess was called, small clusters of aides immediately
rushed forward to their bosses' sides with cellular phones,
folders, and faxes.

“What are they up to?” the U.S. Permanent
Representative, George Holmes, said to his aide as he watched the
entire French delegation—all twelve of them—leave the
negotiating room. “That's the fourth time they've called
a recess today.”

Holmes watched France's Chef de Mission—a pompous, snobbish
man named Pierre Dufresne—leave the room at the head of his
group. He shook his head in wonder.

George Holmes was a diplomat, had been all his life. He was
fifty-five, short, and, though he hated to admit it, a little
overweight.

Holmes had a round, moonlike face and a horseshoe of graying hair, and
he wore thick horn-rimmed glasses that made his brown eyes appear
larger than they really were.

He stood up and stretched his legs, looked around at the enormous
meeting room. A huge circular table stood in the center of the room,
with sixteen comfortable leather chairs placed at equal distances
around its circumference.

The occasion, the reaffirmation of an alliance.

International alliances are not exactly the friendly affairs the TV
news makes them out to be. When Presidents and Prime Ministers emerge
from the White House and shake hands for the cameras in front of their
interlocking flags, they belie the deal making, the promise breaking,
the nit-picking, and the catfighting that go on in rooms not unlike
the one in which George Holmes now stood. The smiles and the
handshakes are merely the icing on very complex, negotiated cakes that
are made by professional diplomats like Holmes.

International alliances are not about friendship. They are about
advantage. If friendship brings advantage, then friendship is
desirable. If friendship does not bring advantage, then perhaps merely
civil relations may be all that is necessary. International
friendship—in terms of foreign aid, military
allegiance, and trade alignment—can be a very expensive
business. It is not entered into lightly.

Which was the reason why George Holmes was in Washington on this
bright summer's day. He was a negotiator. More than that, he was a
negotiator skilled in the niceties and subtleties of diplomatic
exchange.

And he would need all his skills in this diplomatic exchange, for this
was no ordinary reaffirmation of an alliance.

This was a reaffirmation of what was arguably the most important
alliance of the twentieth century.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO.

“Phil, did you know that for the last forty years, the one and
only goal of French foreign policy has been to destroy the United
States' hegemony over the Western world?” Holmes mused as he
waited for the French delegation to return to the meeting room.

His aide, a twenty-five-year-old Harvard Law grad named Phillip Munro,
hesitated before he answered. He wasn't sure if it was a
rhetorical question. Holmes swiveled on his chair and stared at Munro
through his thick glasses.

“Ah, no, sir, I didn't,” Munro said.

Holmes nodded thoughtfully. “They think of us as brutes,
unsophisticated fools. Beer-swilling rednecks who through some
accident of history somehow got our hands on the most powerful weapons
in the world and, from that, became its leader. The French resent
that. Hell, they're not even a full NATO member anymore, because
they think it perpetuates U.S. influence over Europe.”

Holmes snuffed a laugh. He remembered when, in 1966, France withdrew
from NATO's integrated military command because it did not want
French nuclear weapons to be placed under NATO—and therefore
U.S.—control. At the time the French President, Charles de
Gaulle, had said point-blank that NATO was “an American
organization.” Now France simply maintained a seat on NATO's
North Atlantic Council to keep an eye on things.

Munro said, “I know a few people who would agree with them.
Academics, economists. People who would say that that's
exactly what NATO is designed to do. Perpetuate our influence
over Europe.”

Holmes smiled. Munro was good value. College-educated and an ardent
liberal, he was one of those
let's-have-a-philosophical-debate-over-coffee types. The kind who
argue for a better world when they have absolutely no experience in
it. Holmes didn't mind that. In fact, he found Munro refreshing.
“But what do you say, Phil?” he asked.

Munro was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “NATO makes
European countries economically and technologically dependent upon the
United States for defense. Even highly developed countries like France
and England know that if they want the best weapons systems, they have
to come to us. And that leaves them with two options—come
knocking on our door with their hats in their hands or join NATO. And
so far as I know, the United States hasn't sold any Patriot
missile systems to non-NATO countries. So, yes, I think that NATO does
perpetuate our influence over Europe.”

“Not a bad analysis, Phil. But let me tell you something; it goes
a lot further than that, a lot further,” he said.
“So much so, in fact, that the White House maintains that the
national security of the United States depends upon that
influence. We want to keep our influence over Europe, Phil,
economically and especially technologically. France, on the other
hand, would like us to lose that influence. And for the last ten years
successive French governments have been actively pursuing a policy of
eroding U.S. influence in Europe.”

“Example?” Munro said.

“Did you know that it was France who was the driving
force behind the establishment of the European Union?”

“Well, no. I thought it was—”

“Did you know that it was France who was the driving
force behind the establishment of a European Defense Charter?”

A pause.

“No,” Munro said.

“Did you know that it is France who subsidizes the
European Space Agency so that the ESA can charge vastly cheaper prices
for taking commercial satellites up into orbit than NASA can?”

“No, I didn't know that.”

“Son, for the last ten years, France has been trying to unite
Europe like never before and sell it to the rest of the world. They
call it regional pride. We call it an attempt to tell European nations
that they don't need America anymore.”

“Does Europe need America anymore?” Munro asked
quickly. A loaded question.

Homes gave his young aide a crooked smile. "Until Europe can
match us weapon-for-weapon, yes, they do need us. What
frustrates France most about us is our defense technology. They
can't match it. We're too far ahead of them. It
infuriates them.

“And as long as we stay ahead of them, they know that they've
got no option but to follow us. But”—Holmes held
up a finger—"once they get their hands on something new,
once they develop something that tops our technology, then I
think things may be different.

“This isn't 1966 anymore. Things have changed. The
world has changed. If France walked out of NATO now, I think
half of the other European nations in the organization would walk out
with her—”

At that moment, the doors to the meeting room opened and the French
delegation, led by Pierre Dufresne, came back into the room.

As the French delegates returned to their seats, Holmes leaned close
to Munro. “What worries me most, though, is that the French may
be closer to that new discovery than we think. Look at them today.
They've recessed this meeting four times already. Four
times. Do you know what that means?”

“What?”

“They're stalling the meeting. Drawing it out. You only stall
like that when you're waiting for information. That's why they
keep recessing—so they can talk with their intelligence people
and get an update on whatever it is they're up to. And by the
looks of things, whatever that is, it could be the difference between
the continued existence of NATO and its complete destruction.”

The sleek black head broke the surface without a
sound. It was a sinister head, with two dark, lifeless eyes on either
side of a glistening snub-nosed snout.

A few moments later, a second, identical head appeared next to the
first, and the two animals curiously observed the activity taking
place on E-deck.

The two killer whales in the pool of Wilkes Ice Station were rather
small specimens, despite the fact that they each weighed close to five
tons. From tip to tail they were each at least fifteen feet long.

Having evaluated and dismissed the activity taking place on the deck
around them—where Lieutenant Schofield was busy getting a couple
of divers suited up—the two killer whales began to circle the
pool, gliding around the diving bell that sat half-submerged in the
very center of the pool.

Their movements seemed odd, almost coordinated. As one killer would
look one way, the other would look in the opposite direction. It was
almost as if they were searching for something, searching for
something in particular....

“They're looking for Wendy,” Kirsty said, looking down
at the two killers from the C-deck catwalk. Her voice was flat,
cold—unusually harsh for a twelve-year-old girl.

It had been almost two hours since Schofield and his team had arrived
at Wilkes, and now Schofield was down on E-deck, preparing to send two
of his men down in the Douglas Mawson to find out what had
happened to Austin and the others.

Fascinated, Kirsty had been watching him and the two divers from up on
C-deck when she had seen the two killer whales surface. Beside her,
stationed on C-deck to work the winch controls, were two of the
Marines.

Kirsty liked these two. Unlike a couple of the older ones who had
merely grunted when she had said hello, these two were young and
friendly. One of them, Kirsty was happy to note, was a woman.

Lance Corporal Elizabeth Gant was compact, fit, and she held her MP-5
as though it were an extension of her right hand. Hidden beneath her
helmet and her silver antiflash glasses was an intelligent and
attractive twenty-six-year-old woman. Her call sign, “Fox,”
was a compliment bestowed upon her by her admiring male colleagues.
Libby Gant looked down at the two killer whales as they glided slowly
around the pool.

“They're looking for Wendy?” she asked, glancing at the
little black fur seal on the catwalk beside her. Wendy backed
nervously away from the edge of the catwalk, trying, it seemed, to
avoid being seen by the two whales circling in the pool forty feet
below.

“They don't like her very much,” Kirsty said.

“Why not?”

“They're juveniles,” Kirsty said. “Male
juveniles. They don't like anybody. It's like they have
something to prove— prove that they're bigger and stronger
than the other animals. Typical boys. The killer whales
around these parts mostly eat baby crabeaters, but these two saw Wendy
swimming in the pool a few days ago and they've been coming by
ever since.”

“What's a crabeater?” Hollywood Todd asked from over by
the winch controls.

“It's another kind of seal,” Kirsty said. “A big,
fat seal. Killers eat them in about three bites.”

"They eat seals?' Hollywood said, genuinely
surprised.

“Uh-huh,” Kirsty said.

“Whoa.” Having barely graduated high school, Hollywood
couldn't exactly claim to possess a love for books or academia.
School had been a hard time. He'd joined the Marines two weeks
after graduating and thought it was the best decision he'd ever
made.

He looked down at Kirsty, assessing her size and age. “How come
you know all this stuff?”

Kirsty shrugged self-consciously. “I read a lot.”

“Oh.”

Beside Hollywood, Gant began to laugh softly.

“What're you laughing at?” Hollywood asked.

“You,” Libby Gant said, smiling. “I was just thinking
about how much you read.”

Hollywood cocked his head. “I read.”

“Sure you do.”

“I do.”

“Comic books don't count, Hollywood.”

“I don't just read comic books.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about your prized subscription to
Playboy magazine.”

Kirsty began to chuckle.

Hollywood noticed and frowned. “Ha-ha. Yeah, well, least I
know I ain't gonna be no college professor, so I
don't try to be somethin' I'm not.” He raised his
eyebrows at Gant. “What about you, Dorothy, you ever try
to be somethin' you're not?”

Libby Gant lowered her glasses slightly, revealing sky blue eyes. She
gave Hollywood a sad look. “Sticks and stones, Hollywood. Sticks
and stones.”

Gant replaced her glasses and turned back to look at the whales down
in the pool.

Kirsty was confused. When she'd been introduced to Gant earlier,
she'd been told that her real name was Libby and that her nickname
was Fox. After a few moments, Kirsty asked innocently, “Why did
he call you Dorothy?”

Gant didn't answer. She just kept looking down at the pool and
shook her head.

Kirsty spun to face Hollywood. He gave her a cryptic smile and a
shrug. “Everybody knows Dorothy liked the scarecrow better than
the others.”

He smiled as if that explained everything and went back about his
work. Kirsty didn't get it.

Gant just leaned on the rail, watching the killer whales, determinedly
ignoring Hollywood. The two killers were still scanning the station,
looking for Wendy. For an instant one of them seemed to see Gant and
stopped. It cocked its head to one side and just looked at her.