Icebound

century or maybe the twelfth century or maybe even since the dinosaurs had given up the turf. One clipping claimed that in China girls were raised from infancy on government-funded “prostitute farms” and given at the age of ten to sexually demented politicians in the West in return for national-security secrets. Greedy businessmen were said to be polluting the planet, so money-crazed that they didn't give a damn if they killed every baby seal in existence, made patio furniture out of the last of the mighty redwoods, poisoned children, and destroyed the earth in pursuit of the almighty dollar; their evil conspiracies were so complex and so extensive that no one could be sure that even his own mother wasn't in their employ. Space aliens from another galaxy were trying to take over the world, too, with the nefarious, clandestine cooperation of (pick one) the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Libertarian Party, Jews, blacks, born-again Christians, liberals, conservatives, middle-aged white trucking-industry executives. The tenor of the clippings was such that Gunvald wouldn't have been surprised to find one about Elvis faking death in order to secretly control the international banking establishment from an underground mansion in Switzerland.

With the newspaper clipping on page twenty-four, the notebook became uglier and more disturbing. It was a photograph of the late President Dougherty. Above the photograph was a headline: DOUGHERTY ASSASSINATION — TEN YEARS AGO TODAY. In the margin, in cramped but carefully hand-printed red letters, was a psychotic rant: His brain has rotted away. His mind no longer exists. His tongue can't produce any more lies. He has gone to the worms, and we're spared any more children he might have had. I saw a poster today that said, “I cannot convince a man of my truth simply by silencing him when he tries to speak his own.” But that is a lie. Death does convince a man. And I believe it helps to convince his followers. I wish that I had killed him.

From that point forward, more and more space in the notebook was devoted to the Dougherty family. By page one hundred, a third of the way through the book, they had become his sole obsession. Every clipping in the subsequent two hundred pages dealt with him. He had saved important and trivial stories: a report of a campaign speech that Brian's father had made two years ago, a piece about a surprise birthday party given for the late President's widow, a UPI dispatch concerning Brian's adventures in one of Madrid's bullrings…

On page two hundred ten was a Dougherty family portrait taken at the wedding of Brian's sister and reprinted in People magazine. Beneath it was a two-word, handwritten notice in red: The enemy.

On page two hundred thirty, the last lingering veils of sanity were cast off, and the screaming face of purest madness was revealed. The compiler had pasted up a page from a magazine, a color photograph of Brian's oldest sister, Emily. A pretty young woman. Button nose. Large green eyes. A splash of freckles. Auburn hair to her shoulders. She was facing sideways and laughing at something that someone had said or done out of camera range. Neat printing spiraled around her face, hundreds of repetitions of three words that filled the rest of the page to every border: pig, whore, maggot, pig, whore, maggot, pig, whore, maggot…

The pages that followed were hair-raising.

Gunvald tried calling Harry once more. No response. He could communicate with no one. The storm was his only companion.

What in the name of God was happening on that iceberg?

* * *

Brian Dougherty and Roger Breskin were the only members of the group who had extensive diving experience. Because Brian was not an official member of the expedition, merely an observer, Harry didn't think the kid should have to assume the front position in the descent through the tunnel, which might prove to be dangerous in ways that they had not yet imagined. Therefore, Roger Breskin would lead.

They would follow Roger in an orderly procession: Harry second, then Brian, Rita, George, Claude, Franz, and Pete. A lot of thought had gone into that arrangement. Brian would be between Harry and Rita, the only two people that he could fully trust. George Lin was behind Rita and might be a threat to her and Brian. Because of his age and convivial temperament, Claude Jobert seemed the least likely of all suspects other than Pete, so he would be behind Lin, where he would surely notice and attempt to prevent any foul play. If Franz was the guilty party, his freedom to strike out at Brian would be severely limited by the fact that Pete would be keeping a watch on him from behind. And in the unlikely event that Pete Johnson was the would-be murderer, he wouldn't find it easy to get past Franz, Claude, Lin, and Rita to reach Brian.

If they had been descending through the water-filled tunnel in darkness, their order on the line wouldn't have mattered, because in darkness anything could have happened. Fortunately, the aluminum cargo boxes had contained three powerful halogen lamps designed for use underwater at levels of considerable pressure. Roger would carry one at the front of the procession; in the middle, George Lin would have one; and Pete would be in charge of the third. If each member of the group maintained then feet between himself and the person he was following on the way down, the distance from the first to the third light would be approximately forty yards. They wouldn't be swimming through bright light, but Harry figured the illumination should be sufficient to discourage murder.

Each of the heated wet suits came with a waterproof watch that featured a large, luminescent digital readout. Harry looked at his when he finished suiting up. Eighteen minutes past eleven.

Detonation in forty-two minutes.

He said, “Ready to go?”

Everyone was suited up, masks in place. Even George Lin.

Harry said, “Good luck, my friends.” He slipped on his own mask, reached over his left shoulder to activate the air feed on his tank, and took a few deep breaths to be sure that the equipment was working properly. He turned to Roger Breskin and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

Roger picked up his halogen lamp, sloshed through the shallow edge of the pool, hesitated for only a second — and jumped feet-first into the forty-foot-wide mouth of the tunnel.

Harry followed, cutting the water with less of a splash than Roger had made. Although he knew better, he expected the ice-cold embrace of the sea to snatch his breath away and make his heart stutter, and he gasped involuntarily as the water closed around him. But his battery pack and the heated lining of his wet suit functioned extremely well, and he felt no temperature change from the cavern to the tunnel.

The water was murky. Millions of particles of dirt, clouds of tiny diatoms in sufficient quantity to feed a pack of whales, and beads of ice drifted in the diffused, yellowish beam of the waterproof lamp. Behind the halogen glow, Roger was a half-seen shape, perfectly black and mysterious in his rubber suit, like a shadow that had escaped from the person who had cast it, or like Death himself without his customary scythe.

As instructed, Brian plunged into the water without delay, to thwart a possible attempt on his life after Harry and Roger had departed the cavern.

Roger had already begun to pull himself downward on the multicommunications wire that led back to the Ilya Pogodin.

Harry brought his left wrist close to his face mask to look at the luminous digital readout on his watch: 11:20.

Detonation in forty minutes.

He followed Roger Breskin down into the unknown.

11:22 DETONATION IN THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES

“Officer's mess to captain.”

In the control room, Nikita Gorov reached for the microphone. “Report.”

The words came out of the squawk box so fast that they ran together and were nearly indecipherable. “We've got sweat on the bulkhead here.”

“Which bulkhead?” Gorov asked with businesslike calm, though his stomach fluttered with dread.

“Starboard, sir.”

“How serious?”

“Not very serious, sir. Not at this point. It's a thin dew, two yards long, a couple of inches wide, just below the ceiling.”