Target 5 (12 page)

'You know that's unprecedented.'

'It's an unprecedented situation. The First Secretary can
sanction it - which is why I'm glad you're going to see him.'

'I'll come back to you,' Syrtov said tersely. 'Meantime continue your preparations.'

'I've made them - including ordering an alert nine hours
ago without your authority, which has gained us nine hours
of invaluable time ...' Papanin heard the click of the re
ceiver at the Moscow end with satisfaction. He looked up as
Kramer came in, eager for news. 'Pack your hot-water
bottle, Kramer - we'll be in the Arctic within twenty-four hours.'

At precisely one o'clock on Sunday morning in Washington
Lemuel Dawes switched on the light over the camp bed he had set up in his office and checked the time. As usual, his
internal alarm clock had woken him punctually. And he had
a headache, which was hardly surprising - the heat, the
lack of air and the tropical plants banked up against two
walls were building an atmosphere which could only be described as nauseous. Ten minutes later Adams knocked
on his door and came
in.

'No news from Helsinki,' he said grimly. 'But the plane
might have been delayed - he may still get through.'

'So we wait?'

'We wait...'

'Which could be a mistake.' Dawes scratched at his
rumpled hair. 'But we can't do a damned thing about it.
Gorov could be on the ice already, we could fly a plane into
Target-5 now, but I daren't do it - if Gorov hasn't left yet
any sign of unusual activity at Target-5 could alert the
Russians.'

So while Beaumont was climbing the walls at distant
Curtis Field at the edge of the Greenland icecap, while
Dawes waited for a signal from a man who had died forty hours earlier, Col Papanin's far-reaching preparations were gaining momentum and looked like winning him the game
before it had even started.

Leonid Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist Party
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, walked briskly into Col Papanin's office at noon on Sunday accompanied by General Boris Syrtov.

As always, when he removed his fur coat Brezhnev was smartly dressed in a dark business suit, his thick hair was
neatly brushed, and in Detroit he could easily have been
taken for a Ford executive. No one helped him to disrobe;
the First Secretary intensely disliked fuss. And as always he
came straight to the point.

'Papanin, you have control of six vessels of the trawler fleet,
the helicopter carrier
Gorki
and the research ship
Revolution.
None of these will make it look like a military operation
- they are civilian vessels, so to speak. You see the point?'

'There must be no international incident.'

'No international incident,' Brezhnev agreed. 'In May the
American President is coming to Moscow for a summit meet
ing and I want him to come - so be careful.'

'But there could be an international accident,' Papanin
said bluntly. 'I know that area - anything can happen there.
Men can fall into an open lead, they can get lost for ever in a
blizzard ...'

Brezhnev held up a well-kept hand. 'No details, please! There is, I agree, a world of difference between an incident and an accident - that is your sphere.' His thick eyebrows lifted as he spoke with great emphasis. 'But you must bring back Gorov - neither he nor the Catherine charts must ever
reach Washington. I have flown here personally to stress how vital this thing is.'

'We are three moves ahead of the Americans already,'
Papanin replied. 'That's what counts . . .'

'But we must keep ahead of them.' Brezhnev glanced at
Syrtov, a small, lean-faced man with irritable eyes who was
holding a leather folder. 'The general has the codes and
wavelengths for you to communicate with these ships. They
have already been ordered to proceed to the area involved.'

'I'd like to leave at once,' Papanin took the folder from Syrtov. 'I think we may just be in time . . .'

Brezhnev grasped the Siberian's arm. 'Igor, you have to
be in time. You have to be.'

It was 3
pm
in Murmansk when Papanin went aboard the
crowded Bison bomber. At 3
pm
on Sunday, 20 February, it was night at Murmansk, a clear moonlit night. The four jets
were tuning up to screaming pitch as the Siberian settled
into an improvised seat near the pilot's cabin while he
studied a map and marked the latest position of the
American icebreaker,
Elroy.
Behind him, spread out across
the bare deck, a large body of fur-clad men were packed in
close as they nursed their rifles. The enormous power of the jets increased, bursts of snow bounced up from the recently-
ploughed runway, then the control tower gave the go-
ahead and the throbbing machine began to move.

From the control tower they could see the fiery glow from
the rear of the jet pods as the machine taxied forward,
turned, moved on to the main runway. Then the machine
really came alive, the jets ejected the growl peculiar to the
Bison, the wheels whipped down the runway, left the earth.
As the bomber climbed steeply its jet ejection hit the run
way like gunfire, scouring snow from the concrete, hurling up clouds of whiteness. Five minutes later it was only a vapour trail in the night, thirty thousand feet high. Col Igor
Papanin was on his way. Destination: North Pole 17.

* * *

'Still no word from Helsinki.' Adams handed Dawes the message form as he sat down. 'That just came in - I'm beginning to think something's happened to Winthrop . . .'

'I guessed that hours ago.' Dawes hardly glanced at the
form. 'My bet is you won't have heard from your boy come Christmas.'

It was ironical that Papanin was the man who alerted
Dawes. For hours with growing alarm he had received a
stream of reports coming in from ships, from weather
planes, from satellites orbiting high above the Arctic - and all the reports indicated that something very big was on the
move.

First Dawes heard that the Soviet carrier
Gorki
had
changed course, that she was now steaming north at top
speed towards the icefield. An hour later the report came
through that six vessels of the trawler fleet k49, ships
crammed with electronic gear, had also turned due north,
abandoning their obvious spying rendezvous with the
NATO naval exercise
Sea Lion.
Finally he had heard that
the huge new Soviet research ship
Revolution,
on its maiden
spying exercise from the Nikolayev shipyard on the Black Sea coast, had also changed course. 'She's heading into the
gullet of Iceberg Alley,' he had told Adams. Then he had
made his urgent phone call.

Only thirty minutes later a quietly dressed man wearing horn-rimmed glasses had arrived at Dawes's office. The President's assistant, his closest confidant, he had listened
intently for a quarter of an hour before he spoke.

'Lemuel, this is the position. If the President goes to the
Moscow summit with the Catherine charts in his pocket,
then he'd be talking from a position of great strength - and
we may get the concessions we want from the Russians...'

So Dawes had been given permission to take his own deci
sions without further reference back to Washington, 'Pro
vided you don't stir up an international incident,' the
brilliant, German-born assistant had warned him. 'That
might spoil the summit meeting ...'

Dawes was thinking of this proviso when he took a piece of
paper out of his pocket and handed it to Adams. 'I didn't
show you the met report which came in at the last minute. Dense fog has come in out of nowhere - and blanketed
Target-5 - Looks like this is going to be Operation Beaumont
after all.'

Adams said nothing as he read the report and then
fastened his seat-strap. The Boeing they were travelling
aboard was descending and in the distance twin chains of
landing lights glowed in the whiteness of the night. Dawes
had taken the first of his decisions - he was flying to the edge of the chess board to see for himself. Destination:
Curtis Field.

Running Game

THE FROZEN SEA

Sunday, 20 February

The meagre airstrip on North Pole 17 rushed towards the
Bison, the Soviet pilot pointed its nose between the rows of
lights now blurring into continuous bands, throttled back
and prayed. The strip was too short for the Bison.

The ice flew up at him, sped away below, the wheels
touched down, the bomber lurched. The pilot gritted his
teeth, braked. Snow clouds stormed up, splashed over the windows like white fog. Fragmented ice bombarded the undercarriage, struck it like a million machine-gun bullets.
The plane hurtled on, running out of airstrip ...

'Exciting, isn't it, Kramer?' Papanin remarked.

In the seat beside him Kramer was rigid with fear, almost
in a muscular spasm as his gloved hands grasped the seat arms. The Siberian watched with interest as the Bait stared straight ahead without replying; and this, Papanin thought,
is a trained interrogator, the man who goes down into the
cellar and screws information out of poor broken-down sus
pects. Sweat it out, my little Bait, sweat it out. The bomber halted fifteen metres from disaster. 'Now you can relax,
Kramer,' Papanin said genially.

He glanced out of the window, stared out for a moment,
then tore off his seat-strap. He was at the door before the
fifty-odd security men lying on the deck behind him had
stirred. He had the door open before the ground staff out
side had time to perch a metal ladder against the fuselage,
then he was hanging half-out of the machine as he stared up
into the moonlit night.

'Has it gone? Bloody hell!'

Papanin asked the question, fired the expletive as he
stood at the foot of the ladder propped against the Bison, hands thrust deep inside his parka as he stared down at the
base leader, Dr Alexei Minsky. Like Kramer, the base leader
was short and stocky and he wore snow-goggles which, be
cause the moonlight reflected off them, gave him a sinister
appearance. He immediately infuriated Papanin.

'Has what gone, Colonel?'

'For God's sake! That plane I saw when we were coming
in.'

'It has flown off to the west...'

'The radar? You've checked the radar?'

'No, Colonel. One moment - I will be back ...'

'He's shit-scared,' Papanin snapped to Kramer who had come down the ladder behind him. 'He's more dangerous than a polar bear - he's an idiot! From now on Minsky must be kept inside.'* He stood with his hands in his parka looking round, observing everything. The bleakness of the Soviet
base impressed him: for a quarter of a mile in every direction the ice was reasonably level, but beyond it lay the frozen maelstrom of the pack, a hellish jumble of heaped-up ice which looked to be on the verge of lapping over the island.