Target 5 (10 page)

Without a word the Siberian stood up, strode out of his
room into the office next door where the American tele
printer was still chattering away, spewing out a stream of
reports from Soviet bases spread out across the Arctic. Be
hind chromium-leg desks four men were working away on
reports and answering telephones. Papanin took a small
curved pipe from his tunic pocket and started filling it from
an old pouch as he stared up at the wall map.

It was not unlike the huge wall map in Gen Dawes's office, but here the Arctic was seen from a different angle: the Russian coast low down, near the floor, the distant coasts of Greenland and Canada and Alaska high up near the ceiling. 'There is Curtis Field,' he said to Kramer,
pointing with his pipe-stem to the airfield on the Greenland coast nearest to Target-5- He called to one of the men behind the desks. 'Petrov, fill me in on the position of the ships in this area ...'

'The trawler fleet k49, sir?'

'That will do for a start.'

'As you see, it's a long way north of Iceland at the
moment, but it's heading south now - to watch the NATO
sea exercise
Sea Lion,
There are twelve ships - all equipped
with the normal electronic gear ...'

'Including wireless-jamming apparatus?'

'Yes, sir. The helicopter carrier
Gorki
west of Spitsbergen
has also turned south with the same mission ..,'

'What about the
Revolution?
It's the closest vessel to Ice
berg Alley.'

'She'll be there for several weeks - she's tracking
American satellites.'

'This American vessel . .,' Papanin's pipe-stem stabbed
at a marker higher up.

'The American icebreaker
Elroy,
sir. We've just moved her
position, less than an hour ago. She was heading south and
now she's turned due north again - a helicopter from the
Gorki
saw her.'

'Thank you.' Papanin was always polite to junior members
of his staff: the more senior men like Kramer could look
after themselves. He marched straight back inside his office
and went behind his desk. His normally explosive manner had gone and when he issued the dramatic order to the Bait his voice was quiet and calm.

'Order a state of alert throughout the entire Arctic Zone. Every coastal base, every airfield, every ice island - includ
ing those off the Alaska coast. Radio Murmansk that I want
a Bison bomber standing by night and day, fully tanked up.
Warn Leningrad airport to have a plane ready to fly me to
Murmansk at one hour's notice ...'

'I clear this with Moscow first, of course . ..'

'Send Vronsky and his special security detachment to
Murmansk - they must be in the air in thirty minutes ...'

'Surely we must refer this to Moscow?'

'The detachment will wear civilian clothes and will be
fully armed with personal weapons. Bring me the latest met
reports of the Target-5 area ...'

'Without reference to Moscow, sir? Operations on this
scale need General Syrtov's approval.'

Papanin removed the pipe he had just placed in his wide mouth. 'You don't understand any of this, do you, Comrade? You can't stand the pressure of having two large holes to look into at the same time, can you?'

'Crocodile's message doesn't make sense ...'

'It does, if you know Crocodile. The Americans are planning some big operation near their floating base, Target-5-They are using the code-word Beaumont for the operation. We have to get in our opening gambit first.'

'You still want Peter Gorov brought here from Tallinn?'

'Of course.' Papanin relit his pipe, watching Kramer.
'That is a separate problem. And now,' he went on with
out any change of tone, 'get the bloody lead out of your
boots.'

Curtis Field stands on top of a three hundred foot high cliff
rising sheer from the east Greenland coast. It is debatable
whether flying in or out is the more chilling experience - but
probably the latter is worse. The plane takes off along a
runway which ends at the brink of a cliff; as Beaumont put
it, 'When you see nothing ahead you'll go either up or
down ...'

At nine in the evening of Saturday, Washington time,
Beaumont was ready to go, a feat of organization which was
little short of miraculous. In the past sixteen hours he had flown from Washington to Thule; in pursuit of Tillotson he
had flown to the Humboldt Glacier and back again; since
then he had flown the breadth of Greenland to Curtis Field.
And by nine in the evening' everything was ready - and
Curtis Field knew that a whirlwind had hit them.

'I need those two Sikorskys fully serviced, fully tanked up
within two hours . . .'

'Not possible,' Fuller, the airfield controller had snapped.

'Put more men on the job! Do I have to phone Dawes in
Washington? It's your damned emergency ...'

The helicopters were ready to fly by 9.5
pm.
A plane had flown out to check weather conditions near Target-5 - and came back to report no sign of fog. The two Eskimo-type sleds had been brought from Camp Century, had been packed with food, a powerful radio transceiver, rifles, ammunition - and an Elliott homing beacon.

'What's that for?' Fuller had asked.

'Insurance.'

Beaumont's reply had been abrupt and totally non-
informative. Restlessly, he had prowled round the hangar
where icicles hung from the girders, poking his nose into everything, checking the controls of a Sikorsky, giving a
hand with packing the sleds, frequently striding into the radio room to ask whether a message had come in from
Washington. His energy, which seemed boundless, injected
Urgency into the airfield staff, made them work twice as fast
as normal: Had Col Igor Papanin been able to witness the performance it would have made him thoughtful.

But Beaumont would never have achieved the impossible without the aid of the short, wiry, thirty-
five-year-old American, Sam Grayson. It was Grayson who spent nerve-racking hours on the phone calling Thule, the huge American air base at the top of Baffin Bay. 'I want those dogs sent here now. No plane available? Only a Hercules just taking off for Point Barrow? Then drag yourself out of that armchair and stop it. Listen! If it takes off I'll get on to Dawes and have it turned round in mid-air ...'

'Those dogs were due here one hour ago,' Beaumont
rumbled behind him.

Grayson twisted round in his seat. 'Keith, do you want them now or when they arrive?' he demanded.

Beaumont grinned bleakly. 'Both - and sooner!'

Most Arctic teams function in one of two ways. A British
team has a leader and the rest do what he tells them to;
other nationalities work differently - Americans and Nor
wegians work democratically, they exchange opinions. Beaumont's three-man team was unique. As he put it with a dry smile, 'They do what I tell them because they know I'm
right.' Grayson's version was different. 'In a crisis we follow
Beaumont, then argue it afterwards.' Horst Langer's version was different again. 'We have three bosses - and it
works. Don't ask me how!'

Sam Grayson, brilliant navigator, marine biologist, and a
first-rate marksman, came from Minneapolis. Before going
with Beaumont and Langer on the epic Spitsbergen crossing
he worked for the U S Geological Survey and the Lament
Geological Observatory of Columbia University. An old
Arctic hand, he assured his wife before each trip, 'Maybe
this will be my last crack at the ice - could be I'm getting
sick of it . . .' That was until the next trip came up.

"The dogs just came in,' he informed Beaumont two
hours after calling Thule.

'Horst had better check them right away
..."

Beaumont swung round as the third member of the team,
Horst Langer, came into the tiny room Grayson was using
as his headquarters. 'The dogs are here - and what's that sinister bit of paper you're waving about?'

'An urgent signal just came through from Dawes - we're
to stand by ready for instant departure.'

Because it was unprecedented the depression caught all the
met experts off balance, the vast filling depression gathering
over northern Greenland in late February 1972. This was
the depression which affected the whole of north America and western Europe later in the year, which turned summer
into something like winter, which sent icebergs further south
than they had ever reached before, which invaded transatlantic shipping lanes and caused great liners to change
course. And this was the depression which brought the fog.

The Soviet met people on Novaya Zemlya didn't see it
coining. The U S weather plane which flies daily across the roof of the world from Mildenhall in East Anglia to Alaska missed it. The U S Weather Bureau failed to foresee it. But
as Beaumont prowled restlessly round the ice-cold hangar at
Curtis Field a great bank of fog, half a mile high, many
miles wide, a bank of freezing black fog appeared north of
Target-5 and began to drift steadily south.

Sunday, 20 February

You can only die once, but sometimes it seems you are dying
a hundred times over.

For Peter Gorov the flight from Tallinn to Leningrad was a nightmare. No one would give him a reason for his recall,
no one would tell him who he was going to see in Leningrad,
but he was treated like royalty when he disembarked from the
Girolog
at one in the morning.

A black Zil limousine with chains on the wheels took him
through a snowstorm to the airport. When he went aboard the waiting plane the two pilots shook hands with him. He
was invited to travel in the control cabin and was given a
seat behind the co-pilot. The nightmare started from the moment the plane moved off down the runway.

It almost crashed as it was taking off- they were heading
direct for the airport control tower, still on the ground, when
the co-pilot shouted, 'You'll never make it!' He threw up a hand as though to ward off the collision when metal struck
steel, then the pilot lifted the machine and it cleared the tower by feet, so it seemed to the petrified Gorov.

But this was only the beginning. As the plane gained
altitude and turned east away from the ice-laden Baltic, a fierce, long-drawn argument broke out between the two
pilots, each accusing the other. 'You fool, Serge, there was
not enough power ...'

'Idiot! There was too much power! Would you sooner
take over yourself?'

The argument raged on, the technical terms beyond
Gorov. The plane suddenly side-slipped, started to drop at
an alarming rate. With an oath the pilot regained control,
then continued arguing at the top of his voice. Gorov
watched from behind fearfully: it seemed they were more
intent on their quarrel than on flying the plane. His fear was
intensified when the machine climbed abruptly, heading
up at an acute angle. Pressed back against his seat, Gorov
was terrified. It was his first experience of flying. Halfway to
Leningrad they began drinking.