Night Without End (33 page)

     Hillcrest was a great bull of a man, red-faced, black-bearded, jovial, confident, with a tremendous zest for living, a deceptive external appearance that concealed a first-class brain and a competence of a very high order indeed. It did me good just to sit there, glass of brandy in hand, relaxed - if only for a moment - for the first time in five days and just to look at him. I could tell that it hadn't done him the same good to look at us - in the bright overhead light I could clearly see our yellowed, blistered, emaciated faces, the bleeding, black-nailed, suppurating all but useless hands, and I was shocked myself - but he concealed it well, and busied himself with handing out restoratives, tucking away Mahler and Marie LeGarde in two deep, heat-pad-filled bunks, and supervising the efforts of the cook who had a steaming hot meal ready prepared. All this he had done before he had as much as asked us a question. 

     "Right," he said briskly. "First things first. Where's the Citroen? I presume the missile mechanism is still aboard it. Brother, you just don't begin to have any idea how many heart attacks this thing is causing." 

     "That's not the first thing," I said quietly. I nodded to Theodore Mahler, whose hoarse gasping breath filled the room. "This man is dying." 

     "All under control," he boomed. He jerked a thumb at Joss who, after the first delighted greeting, had returned to his radio set in the corner. "The boy here hasn't left his set for over twenty-four hours - ever since we got your 'Mayday' call." He looked at me speculatively. "You took a chance there. I wonder you didn't stop a bullet for your pains." 

     "I just about did. . . . We were talking about Mahler." 

     "Yes. We've been in constant contact, same wave-length, with two ships hi that time - the destroyer Wykenham and the carrier Triton. I had a fair idea your friends must be heading in this direction, so the Wykenham has been moving up overnight and is lying off the coast. But the leads and patches in the ice aren't big enough for the Triton to manoeuvre to fly off planes. She's about eighty miles south, in clear water." 

     "Eighty miles!" I didn't bother to conceal my shock and my disappointment, I'd begun to have a faint irrational hope that we might yet save the dying man. "Eighty miles!" 

     "I have news for you, Doctor," Hillcrest announced jovially. "We have moved into the air age." He turned towards Joss and raised an inquiring eyebrow. 

     "A Scimitar jet fighter is just taking off." Joss tried to speak unemotionally, but failed. "It's airborne-now. Time-check 0933. We're to fire our first rocket at 0946 - thirteen minutes from now. Then two more at intervals of thirty seconds. At 0948 we're to set off a slow-burning magnesium flare where we want the stuff dropped, at least two hundred yards from the tractor." Joss listened for another few moments and grinned. "He says we're to get the hell out of it after we've lit the flare or we're liable to collect a headache or worse." 

     I didn't know what to say, where to look, moments like this came all too seldom. Not until that moment did I realise how much of a symbol Theodore Mahler had become, how much his survival had meant for me. Hillcrest must have had some intuitive understanding of how I felt, for he spoke at once, his voice normal, matter of fact. 

     "Service, old boy. Sorry we couldn't have laid it on earlier, but the Triton refused to risk an expensive plane and an even more expensive pilot flying low over virtually uncharted territory unless they definitely knew that Mahler was alive." 

     "They've done all anyone could ask." A sudden thought struck me. "These planes don't usually carry ammunition in peace-time, do they?" 

     "Don't worry," Hillcrest said grimly. He ladled some steaming stew on to our plates. "Nobody's playing any more. There's been a flight of Scimitars standing by since midnight, and every cannon's loaded. . . . Right, Doctor. Give with the story." 

     I gave, as briefly and concisely as possible. At the end, he clapped his hands together. 

     "Maybe five miles ahead, eh? Then it's tallyho down the old glacier and after 'em." He rubbed his hands in anticipation. "We're three times as fast and we've three times as many rifles. This is the way any decent IGY expedition should be run!" 

     I smiled faintly, a token response to his bubbling enthusiasm. I never felt less like smiling: now that the worry of Mahler - and in that warmth and with hot food, almost certainly also the worry of Marie LeGarde - was off my hands, my anxiety about Margaret had returned with redoubled force. 

     "We're not tallyho-ing-down any old glacier, Captain Hillcrest. Apart from the fact that it's a rotten surface, which would bring your speed down to about the same as the Citroen's, open pursuit is a pretty sure way of guaranteeing that Margaret Ross and Mr Levin get a bullet through their heads. Incidentally, Mr Levin is the father of Mr Zagero." 

     "What?" Both Hillcrest and Joss had spoken at the same time. 

     "Yes. But later. Have you a map of the area?" 

     "Sure." Hillcrest handed it over. Like most Greenland maps it showed topographical detail for no more than the first twenty miles inland, but it was sufficient for my purpose. It showed the twisting Kangalak glacier debouching into the Kangalak Fjord, the wide deep bay beyond the southern headland of the fjord, the northern headland continuing in a wide shallow smooth curve for many miles to the north. 

     "Where did you say the destroyer was?" I asked. 

     "The Wykenhaml I'm not sure." 

     "Blocking the Kangalak Fjord here, perhaps?" I indicated the spot on the map. 

     "No, that I'm certain of." He shook his head regretfully. "Captain said the pack-ice was too heavy, he couldn't risk his destroyer in any of the leads in case they closed." Hillcrest snorted in disgust. "I gather its hull is made of paper." 

     "It's not much thicker - I've served in destroyers. I don't blame him. But I'll bet his trawler, probably a specially strengthened job, is well inside the fjord - and a submarine no great distance away. Look, this is all we can do." I traced my finger on the map. "We must parallel the glacier, maybe a mile away. With the slope of the valley sides Smallwood won't see us, and with his own engine running he can't hear us. Down here-" 

     "What's to stop him from cutting his engine now and again to listen?" Hillcrest demanded. 

     "Because what Smallwood and Corazzini don't know about engines would fill an encyclopedia. They'd be dead scared to stop it in case they couldn't start it again.. . . Down here, at the base of the headland separating the fjord from the bay to the south -about a mile from the end of the glacier, I would say - the sides of the glacier valley fall away and level off into the plateau on either side. But there's bound to be some kind of moraine or shelter there. That's where we'll ambush them." 

     "Ambush?" He frowned at me. "What's the difference between that and pursuing them? It'll still come to a fight - and they can still hold pistols to the heads of Levin and the stewardess, and bargain from there." 

     "There'll be no fight," I said quietly. "They've been following the left-hand side of the glacier all the way down, I see no reason why they should change. They should come into sight maybe fifty yards from where we're hiding - farther out on the glacier the going is impossible for tractors." I nodded at the telescopic sighted .303 in the corner. "With that Jackstraw can hit a three-inch target at a hundred yards. A man's head at fifty yards is six times that size. First he gets Corazzini, who's probably driving, and when Smallwood sticks his head out the back as he certainly will - well that's it." 

     "But, good God, man, you can't do that!" Hillcrest was horrified. "Without a chance, without warning? It's murder, simple murder!" 

     "Want me to go over the number of people they've murdered?" I shook my head. "You just don't begin to know those two, Hillcrest." 

     "But-" He broke off, turned to Jackstraw. "It's you he's asking to do it. What do you say?" 

     "It will be a pleasure," Jackstraw said very softly. 

     Hillcrest stared at us both, baffled incomprehension in his eyes. I suppose he thought he knew both of us well. And he did. But he didn't know what we had been through, words couldn't even begin to make him understand. The atmosphere was uncomfortable, tense even, and I was grateful for Joss's sudden calm words. 

     "0943, Captain Hillcrest. Three minutes to go." 

     "Good." He was, I could see, as glad of the interruption as I was. "Barclay" - this to the cook, the only other of Hillcrest's men there, the other three were in the big driving cabin to make room for us - 'three Wessex rockets. Line them up on the and stand wait for the word. I'll go myself with the flare, two for safety. Give a beep on the horn, Joss, when it's time to set 'em off." 

     I went with him to watch and the whole thing went off without a hitch. Dead on time, just seconds after the third rocket had been fired to curve upwards and explode into incandescent light in the star-dusted darkness above, we heard the high-pitched whine approaching out of the south-west, and in an incredibly short space of time a vague dark blur, carrying no navigation lights, screamed by five hundred feet overhead, banked in the distance, came at us again at much reduced speed, banked a second time and then, with a crescendoing banshee shriek of the jet engine, had vanished again into the vaguely lightening darkness to the south-east before we had realised that the pilot had made his drop. It was a measure of his complete self-confidence that he didn't even trouble to check the accuracy of his drop: but for a man skilled in landing on the handkerchief-sized flight deck of a carrier in the middle of the night this must have been a childishly simple exercise. 

     There were two packages, not one, attached not to parachutes but to insignificant little drogues that seemed to let them fall much too fast for safety: they landed almost together not forty yards from the magnesium flares and with such force that I was sure that their contents must be smashed. But I had underestimated the Fleet Air Arm's skill and experience in these matters, the contents were so beautifully packed and cushioned that everything was completely intact. The packages were duplicated: two ampoules of insulin and three hypodermic syringes in each package: whoever had packed these had been taking no chances. But gratitude was the last thought in my mind at that moment: I just tucked the boxes under my arm and made for the tractor at a dead run. 

     For close on two hours Hillcrest's driver pushed the big Sno-Cat along at its maximum speed, and despite the inherent stability afforded by its four wide caterpillars, the tractor swayed and lurched in terrifying fashion. This was bad country, this was crevasse country, and we had been forced to make a wide detour that had carried us more than three miles away from the Kangalak glacier. And once again Jackstraw's big Siberian wolf proved how invaluable he was: running tirelessly ahead, he repeatedly guided the Sno-Cat away from dangerous territory, but even so our route was a necessarily devious and twisted one, though the picking out of a path became considerably easier after the pale grey light of the arctic noon spread across the ice-cap. 

     For all of us it was a time of tension, of an ever-mounting anxiety that reached intolerable proportions. For the first half-hour or so I was busy enough in broaching the tractor's first-aid kit and doing what doctoring I could to Mahler - a Mahler whose dyspnoea was already dramatically easing - Marie LeGarde, Helene, Jackstraw and, above all, to Zagero's shattered hands. Then I myself submitted to Hillcrest's rough and ready ministrations, but after that there was nothing for me to do, nothing for any of us to do except try to avoid the bitterness of thinking what must happen if the Citroen reached the tongue of the glacier before us. 

     Suddenly, exactly on noon, the tractor stopped abruptly. We jumped out to see what the matter was, and it became apparent soon enough the driver was awaiting instructions. We had abruptly rounded the humpback of the last ice ridge that had lain between us and the glacier itself. 

     Even in the half-light of the arctic day the panorama suddenly unfolded before us was a breathtaking one. To the north, the ice-sheet extended all the way down to the coast, forming vertical and in some places overhanging cliffs, the well-known phenomenon of the Chinese Wall fronts: nobody, nothing, could hope to land there. 

     To the south and separated from the fjord by the mile-long ridgeback of the seaward-projecting southern wall of the fjord, was a wide bay, fringed by a low, ice-bare rocky coast, quilted here and there with drifts of snow blown off the ice-cap. There, if anywhere, was where we would have to leave. 

     In the centre, between the low walls of the fjord, the Kangalak glacier itself, here, at its tongue, about 300 yards wide, ran down to the waters of the fjord in a great dog-leg curving sharply thirty degrees right about half-way down its length, ending abruptly with its upper surface a hundred, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the pack-ice-strewn water beneath. For the first half of its length the tongue of the glacier sloped fairly sharply from right to left down to the nunataks, crescent-fringed by the debris of moraines, that thrust up through the ice at the far corner of the dog-leg: the surface of the glacier was a nightmare of transverse and longitudinal fissures, some of them anything up to two hundred feet deep, great gaping chasms fanged with seracs - the irregular, often needle-pointed ice pinnacles that reached up between the walls of the larger crevasses. Surely Smallwood could never be so desperate, so insane as to drive the Citroen out on that: apart from the fissures, the very steepness of the slope downwards and to the left would be enough to send him into an uncontrollable slide.