“But you don't.”
“I know them better.”
“They've made sacrifices, Brian. Your uncle was killed. Your father took a bullet of his own.”
“This will sound mean-spirited, but it wouldn't if you knew them. Rita, neither of them
“Some people get into politics to make a better world.”
“Not anyone I've known. It's dirty, Rita. It's all about envy and power. But out here, everything's so clean. The work is hard, the environment is hostile — but
She had never taken her eyes from his. He couldn't recall anyone ever having met his gaze as unwaveringly as she did. After a thoughtful silence, she said, “So you're not just a troubled rich boy out for the thrills, the way the media would have it.”
He broke eye contact first, taking his foot off the bench and contorting himself in the small space in order to slip his arms into the sleeves of his coat. “Is that what you though I was like?”
“No. I don't let the media do my thinking for me.”
“Of course, maybe I'm deluding myself. Maybe that's just what I am, everything they write in the papers.”
“There's precious little truth in the papers,” she said. “In fact, you'll only find it one place.”
“Where's that?”
“You know.”
He nodded. “In myself.”
She smiled. Putting on her coat, she said, “You'll be fine.”
“When?”
“Oh, in twenty years maybe.”
He laughed. “Good God, I hope I'm not going to be screwed up that long.”
“Maybe longer. Hey, that's what life's all about: little by little, day by day, with excruciating stubbornness, each of us learning how to be less screwed up.”
“You should be a psychiatrist.”
“Witch doctors are more effective.”
“I've sometimes thought I've needed one.”
“A psychiatrist? Better save your money. Dear boy, all you need it time.”
When he followed Rita out of the snowmobile, Brian was surprised by the bitter power of the storm wind. It took his breath away and almost drove him to his knees. He gripped the open cabin door until he was certain of his balance.
The wind was a reminder that his unknown assailant, the man who had struck him on the head, was not the only threat to his survival. For a few minutes he'd forgotten that they were adrift, had forgotten about the time bombs ticking towards midnight. The fear came back to him like guilt to a priest's breast. Now that he had committed himself to writing the book, he wanted very much to live.
The headlamps on one of the snowmobiles shone through the mouth of the cave. In places, the fractured ice deconstructed the beams into glimmering prisms of light in all the primary colors, and those geometric shapes shimmered jewellike in the walls of the otherwise white chamber. The eight distorted shadows of the expedition member rippled and slid across that dazzling backdrop, swelled and shrank, mysterious but perhaps no more so than the people who cast them — five of whom were suspects and one of whom was a potential murder.
Harry watched Roger Breskin, Franz Fischer, George Lin, Claude, and Pete as they argued about the options open to them, about how they should spend the six hours and twenty minutes remaining before midnight. He ought to have been leading the discussion or at the very least contributing ot it, but he couldn't keep his mind on what the others were saying. For one thing, no matter how they spent their time, they could not escape from the iceberg or retrieve the explosives, so their discussion could resolve nothing. Furthermore, although trying to be discreet, he couldn't prevent himself from studying them intensely, as though psychotic tendencies ought to be evident in the way a man walked, talked, and gestured.
His train of thought was interrupted by a call from Edgeway Station. Gunvald Larsson's voice, shot through with static, rattled off the ice walls.
The other men stopped talking.
When Harry went to the radio and responded to the call, Gunvald said, “Harry, the trawlers have turned back. The
Pete, Claude, and the others had crowded around the radio, baffled by the Swede's excitement.
Harry said, “Gunvald, what in the hell are you talking about? What do you mean, it doesn't matter?”
Static shredded the airwaves, but then the frequency cleared as Larsson said, “…just got word from Thule. Relayed from Washington. There's a submarine in your neighborhood, Harry. Do you read me? A Russian submarine.”
CHAPTER FOUR
NIGHT
8:20
DETONATION IN THREE HOURS FORTY MINUTES
Gorov, Zhukov, and Seaman Semichastny clambered onto the bridge and faced the port side. The sea was neither calm nor as tumultuous as it had been when they had surfaced earlier to receive the message from the Naval Ministry. The iceberg lay off to port, sheltering them from some of the power of the storm waves and the wind.
They couldn't see the berg, even though the radar and sonar images had indicated that it was massive both above and below the water line. They were only fifty to sixty yards from the target, but the darkness was impenetrable. Instinct alone told Gorov that something enormous loomed over them, and the awareness of being in the shadow of an invisible colossus was one of the eeriest and most disconcerting feelings that he had ever known.
They were warmly dressed and wore goggles. Riding in the lee of the iceberg, however, made it possible to go without snow masks, and conversation was not as difficult as when they'd been running on the surface a few hours previously.
“It's like a windowless dungeon out there,” Zhukov said.
No stars. No moon. No phosphorescence on the waves. Gorov had never seen such a perfectly lightless night.
Above and behind them on the sail, the hundred-watt bridge lamp illuminated the immediate steelwork and allowed the three men to see one another. Clotted with scattered small chunks of ice, choppy waves broke against the curved hull, reflecting just enough of that red light to give the impression that the
Most of the bridge rail was sheathed in ice. Gorov gripped it to steady himself as the boat yawed, but he happened to take hold of a section of bare metal. His glove froze to the steel. He ripped it free and examined the
