Target 5 (37 page)

It was very warm inside the large chart-room behind the
bridge of the
Revolution
and the argument had been going on
for ten minutes. Papanin was, in fact, wearing down this prig of a captain, a tactic he had known would be neces
sary the moment he set eyes on him. Tuchevsky protested
again.

'When I took command of the
Revolution
it was to carry
out research, oceanic research . . .'

'Hypocrite! You have been tracking American satellites.
This is research, of course - military research!'

'We also do oceanic research,' Tuchevsky snapped.
'Water temperatures, salinity . . .'

'All of which vitally affects submarine operations! You
make me sick, Tuchevsky! You know that all the data you
collect goes to our military intelligence people - who decide
what scraps they will hand on to the professors . . .'

'I will not do it!' Tuchevsky shouted. 'I will not sink the
American icebreaker. You must be mad - we could never
get away with it...'

'You are wrong again,' Papanin observed cynically. 'The
Elroy
is steaming south without radar - we know this from
the,helicopter which found her two hours ago. And she cannot communicate with anyone - the jamming barrage
has completed her isolation.'

'She has a helicopter,' Tuchevsky said viciously. 'I sup
pose you'd overlooked that?'

'No.' Papanin went over to the chart table to hide his
irritation. Tuchevsky had touched a tender nerve there; for
hours the Siberian had tried to think of a way of immobiliz
ing the
Elroy's
Sikorsky. 'Gorov and the Catherine charts are
on board that ship,' he explained patiently. 'If we cannot
get them back we must destroy them ...'

.'I will not do it.'

'I don't remember asking you to do anything. But these
waters are littered with icebergs - and accidents can
happen. And you should think of your family,' Papanin
added casually.

'My family? What has this to do with my family?'

'Your wife, specifically,' the Siberian said woodenly. 'She
is a Jewess . . .'

'That is a lie!'

Papanin sighed. 'She is half-Jewish. Her mother was a
Jew. You seem to have forgotten that one of my duties is to
check on Jewish agitation in Leningrad . . .'

'She has nothing to do with that . . .'

'Tuchevsky! Please keep quiet! Have you forgotten the
signal ordering you to carry out my instructions ?' Papanin
went on explaining patiently. 'If it was discovered that your
wife is mixed up in certain anti-Soviet activities I could
easily arrange for her to be sent to Israel. You would never see her again, would you ?'

'You wouldn't dare ...'

'What would happen next? For a few years she would
hope - hope you would come. Women are very strong on
hope. Then she would realize it was all over, that she must
live her own life. We might even arrange for a divorce if she
requested it. . .'

'You bastard . . .'

'I have to be,' Papanin agreed calmly. 'It is one of the main qualifications for my job.'

'There must be some other way . . .'

'If you think of it, let me know.'

'Your Sikorsky is on the way back, Beaumont,' Schmidt said
without the trace of a smile.
Beaumont didn't reply as he stood on the
Elroy's
bridge
with Grayson and Langer. 'Your helicopter .,.' It was
Beaumont who had urged Schmidt to send up Quinn again
to check what lay ahead of them - if Quinn was willing. The fact was that Quinn had been itching to take up his
machine ever since they had emerged from the black frost.
Not unnaturally, Schmidt was most concerned at the
moment with the problems of navigation.

Icebergs surrounded them on all sides, icebergs only
dimly visible in the heavy sea mist drifting over the suddenly calm ocean. Two hours ago the scarred and battered
ship had been fighting for her life in forty-foot seas, and now
she was cruising slowly forward over water like cold milk. But she was still listing heavily to port, she still carried the
enormous burden of the great load of ice pressing against the
port rail, and it was still diabolically cold.

One massive berg, over a hundred feet high, a jagged cliff
of floating ice, drifted less than a quarter of a mile away on the port bow. Mist curled at her base, another belt of white
ness was wrapped round her waist, but her enormous peaked
head loomed up clear in the moonlit night. A smaller berg,
her summit fretted and turreted like a Spanish castle, floated
the same distance from the ship to starboard. They seemed
like mountainous islands from the bridge, appearing,
vanishing, then reappearing.

Langer moved closer to Beaumont, whispered the words.
'You asked me to check with DaSilva whether there were
explosives aboard. There are . ..'

'Later,' Beaumont murmured. He was worried about
Quinn - he felt responsible for this latest flight and he
wouldn't feel happy until the chopper was safely back on its pad. At his suggestion one of the powerful searchlights near
the bows had been switched on and elevated almost ver
tically into the night. It was this beacon poking up through
the mist which Quinn was homing back on from the south,
as yet only a tiny blip in the distance where it was caught by
moonlight. The mist drifted, the blip vanished. Beaumont
shifted his feet restlessly.

228

'I wonder whether he found those ships,' Grayson ruminated aloud.

'If they're still steaming north he probably has,' Beaumont guessed. 'He had seven vessels to look for - he should have spotted one of them . . .'

'I
don't give a damn where they are,' Schmidt growled as
he looked to starboard. 'We're on the high seas - we'll
steam straight past them.
5

Behind the captain's back Beaumont caught DaSilva's
glance, a very dubious glance. The acting mate did not
share Schmidt's sublime confidence in the freedom of the seas, a doubt which Beaumont had detected earlier, which had encouraged him to ask Langer to talk to DaSilva about
explosives. 'Find out if they have any on board,' Beaumont
had suggested. 'It's likely they're carrying something to
blast their way out of ice. You're an explosives expert, so he
won't think the question funny.'

The ship throbbed its way slowly forward over the oily
sea, a sea which was dark and shiny in the moonlight, which
made it look very much like a lake of oil. The mist so far
was patchy, clinging to the iceberg zone on either side, and at this time of the year the sea was often calm like this in
these waters. Perhaps it was the great weight of the floating masses of ice which gave it stability. Faintly, they heard the
beating of Quinn's chopper coming in, but they still
couldn't see him.

Beaumont looked to starboard where a searchlight was
playing on the nearest berg. Illuminated, it looked gigantic,
more like a Spanish castle than ever as the light shone
through windows high in the turrets, through holes which
penetrated the ice to the atmosphere beyond. It was almost
frightening in its proximity and vastness. 'Couldn't be a
ghost berg, I suppose?' Grayson murmured.

'I hope not - they're liable to collapse if you shout a rude word at them.
5

Which was literally true, Beaumont thought, incredible
though it might seem to people with no knowledge of the
Arctic - that an unguarded human voice could bring down
a colossus weighing millions of tons. Eskimos knew this; in
their kayaks they glided past a ghost berg, not even daring
to whisper, so fragile were these floating giants on the verge'
of collapse. Beaumont watched the light playing over the
castled berg, hovering at its summit, then the summit
burst.

One minute the peak was there, then it had gone, vanishing in a cascade of ice bursting outwards in all directions as
the echo of its detonation reverberated across the ocean,
echoing from berg to berg. Fragments of ice shot down the beam of the searchlight, vanished into the floe-littered sea.
At least twenty feet of the summit had disintegrated.
Schmidt gave a quick order, altering course a few degrees to
port, away from the monolith.

'Not a ghost berg - an exploding berg,' Grayson com
mented. 'I don't want to meet any more of them.'

Quinn's Sikorsky came into view, was close enough now
to see the rotor disc haloed by the moon, was less than a quarter of a mile away as it lost altitude and came down to
two hundred feet, heading for the
Elroy
on a course which
would take it over the summit of the huge berg to port.
Schmidt gave a fresh order to slow the engines while Quinn
landed. The mist round the berg's waist had drifted away,
showing the immensity of the great cliff of ice rising sheer
from the mist at its base.

'I hope he found the
Revolution,'
Langer said.

The vast berg exploded as Quinn flew over it, exploded like a gigantic bomb no longer able to contain the pressure inside. But this time it wasn't just the summit which dis
appeared - the whole berg blew up with a boom that
thundered out across the ocean, deafening the men on deck
below the bridge. The bridge itself shuddered under the
shock wave. The face of the overhead compass shattered,
showering glass over the helmsman. Schmidt grabbed at the
wheel to keep them on
course.

The roar went round and round among the bergs, and
came back to the ship as a shattering echo. Foam and vapour
where the berg had been shot five hundred feet up into the night, a massive geyser which rivalled Old Smoky. As the vapour column fell back to sea level it revealed nothing but
boiling water. The berg had gone, the Sikorsky had gone,
and Quinn had gone.

Beaumont went to Schmidt who had handed back the
wheel to the helmsman and was standing close to the window, staring at the frothing lake of sea. 'He was right over
the summit when it exploded . . .'

'I know,' Schmidt replied quietly. 'Dear God ... Quinn.'
He squared his shoulders and spoke without looking at the man beside him. 'If you get any more bright ideas, Beau
mont, you know what you can do with them.'

It wasn't so much the words as the quiet way he said them
which expressed the bitterness. Beaumont walked away, nodded to Grayson and Langer, and they followed him off
the bridge. He was appalled at the death of Quinn, but if
possible he was even more appalled at the loss of the helicopter. The radar was gone, the wireless-jamming made it impossible to send or receive any signal, and now their last
link with the outside world had been taken away from them.
With Papanin to the south of them they were isolated. One
hour later the
Elroy
struck the berg.