Icebound

“Looks okay!” Harry shouted, though his mouth was no more than an inch from the other man's head.

Pete looked at him, not sure what he'd said.

“Okay!” Harry bellowed, and he made a thumbs-up sign.

Pete nodded agreement.

They hesitated, however, because they didn't know if the Russian submarine was going to launch another torpedo.

If they reentered the cave with the radio and then the Russians fired on the ice again, the concussion might bring the ceiling down this time. They would be crushed or buried alive.

The malevolent wind at their backs was so powerful and fearfully cold, however, that Harry felt as though someone had dropped several ice cubes down his back, under his storm suit. He knew they dared not stand there much longer, paralyzed by indecision, so at last he stepped inside. Pete followed with the flashlight, and together they hurried toward the rear of the chamber.

The cacophony of the storm diminished drastically as they went deeper into the cave, though even against the back wall there was so much noise that they would need to turn the receiver volume all the way to its maximum setting.

The orange utility cord still trailed inside from one of the snowmobile batteries. Harry plugged in the radio. He preferred to power it from the sled so long as possible and save the batteries in the set, in case they were needed later.

As they worked, Pete said, “You've noticed the wind direction?”

They still had to raise their voices to hear each other, but it wasn't necessary to shout. Harry said, “Fifteen minutes ago it was blowing from another quarter of the compass.”

“The iceberg changed direction again.”

“What do you make of that?”

“Damned if I know.”

“You're the demolitions expert. Could the torpedo have been powerful enough to push the whole berg temporarily off its previous course?”

Shaking his head emphatically, Pete said, “No way.”

“I don't think so, either.”

Suddenly Harry was desperately weary and oppressed by a sense of utter helplessness. It seemed as if Mother Nature herself had set out to get them. The odds against their survival were growing by the minute and would soon be insurmountable — if they weren't already. In spite of the Vaseline that coated his face and the knitted snow mask that was usually so effective, in spite of layers of Gore-Tex and Thermolite insulation, in spite of having been able to shelter in the cave for part of the night and periodically in the comparative warmth of the heated snowmobile cabins, he was succumbing to the unyielding, merciless, thermometer-bursting cold. His joints ached. Even in gloves, his hands felt as cold as if he had been arranging things in a refrigerator for half an hour. And an unnerving numbness was gradually creeping into his feet. If the fuel tanks on the sled ran dry, denying them periodic sessions in the fifty-degree air of the cabins, frostbite of the face was a real danger, and what little energy they still possessed would be sapped quickly, leaving them too exhausted to stay either on their feet or awake, unable to meet the Russians halfway.

But no matter how heavily weariness and depression weighed on him, he could not buckle, for he had Rita to think about, he could not buckle, for he had Rita to think about. She was his responsibility, because she was not as comfortable on the ice as he was; she was frightened of it even in the best of times. Come what may, he was determined to be there when she needed him, till the last minute of her life. And because of her, he had something to live for: the reward of more years together, more laughter and love, which ought to be enough to sustain him no matter how fierce the storm became.

“The only other explanation,” Harry said as he switched on the radio and turned up the volume, “is that maybe the iceberg was picked up by a new current, something a whole lot stronger that pulled is out of its previous course and got it moving due south.”

“Is that going to make it easier or harder for the Russians to climb up here and get us?”

“Harder, I think. If the ice is heading south, and if the wind is coming pretty much from the north, then the only leeward area is at the bow. They can't put men onto the ice as it's rushing straight at them.”

“And it's nearly ten o'clock.”

“Exactly,” Harry said.

“If they can't get us off in time… if we have to stay here through midnight, will we come out of this alive? Don't bullshit me now. What's your honest opinion?”

“I should ask you. You're the man who designed those bombs. You know better than I what damage they'll do.”

Pete looked grim. “What I think is… the shock waves are going to smash up most of the ice we're standing on. There's a chance that five or six hundred feet of the berg will hold together, but not the entire length from the bow of it to the first bomb. And if only five or six hundred feet are left, do you know what's going to happen?”

Harry knew too well. “The iceberg will be five hundred feet long and seven hundred feet from top to bottom.”

“And it can't float that way.”

“Not for a minute. The center of gravity will be all wrong. It'll roll over, seek a new altitude.”

They stared at each other as the open radio frequency produced squeals and hisses that competed with the wind beyond the cave entrance.

At last Pete said, “If only we'd been able to dig out ten of the bombs.”

“But we weren't.” Harry picked up the microphone. “Let's see if the Russians have any good news.”

* * *

Gunvald found nothing incriminating in the lockers that belonged to Pete Johnson and Claude Jobert.

Five suspects. No sinister discoveries. No clues.

He got up from the wooden crate and went to the far end of the room. At that distance form the violated lockers — although distance itself didn't make him any less guilty — he felt that he could fill and light his pipe. He needed the pipe to calm him and to help him think. Soon the air was filled with the rich aroma of cherry-flavored tobacco.

He closed the eyes and leaned against the wall and thought about the numerous items that he had taken from the lockers. At a glance he had seen nothing outre in those personal effects. But it was possible that the clues, if any existed, would be subtle. He might discover them only on reflection. Therefore, he carefully recalled each of the things that he had found in the lockers, and he held it before his mind's eye, searching for some anomaly that he might have overlooked when he'd had the real object in his hand.

Roger Breskin.

Franz Fischer.

George Lin.

Claude Jobert.

Pete Johnson.

Nothing.

If one of those men was mentally unbalanced, a potential killer, then he was damned clever. He had hidden his madness so well that no sign of it could be found even in his most personal, private effects.

Frustrated, Gunvald emptied his pipe into a sand-filled waste can, put the pipe in his vest pocket, and returned to the lockers. The floor was littered with the precious detritus of five lives. As he gathered up the articles and put them back where he had found them, his guilt gave way to shame at the violation of privacy that he had committed, even though it had been necessitated by the events of the day.

And then he saw the envelope. Ten by twelve inches. About one inch thick. At the very bottom of the locker, against the back wall.

In his haste, he had overlooked it, largely because it was a shade of gray similar to that of the metal against which it stood and because it was in the lowest part of the locker, at foot level, tucked back at the rear of the twelve-inch-high space under the lowest shelf. Indeed, he was surprised that he'd noticed it even now. The instant he spotted the envelope, he was overcome by a vivid premonition that it contained the damaging evidence for which he had been searching.