CHAPTER EIGHT
'Merry Christmas!'
It woke me from the sleep I'd tried so hard to avoid. I blinked, sure that I must still be dreaming. My eyes refocused on Ungilak standing over me, a big grin on his face.
'Merry Christmas!' He repeated it.
Nothing seemed to add up in my fogged brain. Was it really Ungilak? Or was it some vision conjured up from my delirium? If it was him, then how come he was suddenly speaking English? And what was this about Christmas?
'Merry Christmas!' He said it a third time, obviously waiting for some response.
'Merry Christmas.' I responded.
My mind went off on a minor obsession, trying to add up the days. Somehow this Christmas bit seemed the easiest thing to cope with at the moment. Allowing for half a dozen or so days that I'd lost in the Arctic cold, I realized that it might indeed be Christmas.
Ungilak was rattling off some of his Eskimo dialect now. I understood that 'Merry Christmas' was the extent of the English he'd picked up. When he saw that he wasn't getting through to me, he switched over to sign language. It clicked after a moment, and I understood he was asking where Olga was.
I took him outside and showed him where I'd stashed her corpse. He looked at it and his face grew dark with anger. He thought I'd killed her!
I backed away from him, shaking my head. I pointed to the hatchet still buried in her breast and made gestures to tell him that it wasn't mine. Finally I pointed out the tracks the Chinese had made when he ran away. Ungilak examined them and then nodded to show that he believed me.
I followed him back to the rescue party he'd brought with him. There were five Eskimos besides Ungilak, and two dogsleds. He spoke to them in their native tongue, evidently explaining about Olga's murder, and pointed out the tracks to them. They nodded, and four of the five set out to follow the tracks.
We waited. I guess it was about three hours later that they finally returned. They had the Chinese with them. He was half-dead from frostbite and in no condition to put up a fight, but they tied him down to one of the sleds anyway.
I settled in alongside him as we got under way. The other sled was laden with supplies, and Ungilak didn't seem to want to take the time to shift them. I didn't mind. The Chinese was in no condition to give me any trouble.
We were three days on the trail before he regained some of his strength. I tried talking to him then as we skimmed over the endless snow. To my surprise, he spoke flawless English.
'Why are you here?' I asked him.
'The same reason you are. To find Dr. Nyet.'
'How did you know where to look?'
'We had the Russian agent followed.'
'Why did you kill him?'
'We felt he was getting close. Indeed, we thought he might have found Dr. Nyet. We thought it was the young lady with you. We didn't want the Russians to have her. Nor you, for that matter. We wanted to take her ourselves. And so we eliminated the Russian to expedite matters.'
'And you also may have eliminated Dr. Nyet,' I pointed out.
'Possibly. It couldn't be helped. My reflexes simply worked too fast. She screamed and I killed her before she might have had a chance to kill me.'
'Just like that.' The hatred for him that came through in my voice then was genuine.
'What is done is done.' He shrugged it off. 'Right now our aims are the same, and we must think about how best to cooperate with each other.'
'Oh? So now you want to cooperate.'
'Yes. Are you agreeable?'
'Drop dead!' I told him, ending the conversation.
A few hours later we came in sight of the S.M.U.T. settlement at last. There were perhaps thirty or forty igloos spaced out in a wide circle. Ungilak called a halt and strode over to me. He took my hand between both of his and then leaned over to rub his nose against mine affectionately.
'Poli,' he said, pointing back the way we'd come. 'Poli.' He repeated it and I understood that he was saying goodbye, that he was going to leave now because he wanted to get back to his wife. He made signs to tell me that the other Eskimos would see me to the conclusion of the journey, and then he turned the other sled around and started back to Poli.
Before he was out of sight, we were on our way to the settlement. As we drew closer, I was surprised at the number of Eskimos hard at work there. The tribal life of Eskimos is very loose, and it's rare for more than two or three families to congregate together. Yet I guessed there were more than a hundred in sight as we approached. Not one of them, I knew, was a native of Franz Josef Land. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to relocate them here. And someone was seeing to it that they were kept busy building still more igloos.
It wasn't long before I came face to face with that someone. The ice-structure in the center of the circle of igloos turned out to be only an entrance to a vast underground complex. The Chinese and I were escorted down in an elevator and then taken through a series of chambers hinting at the magnitude of the operation. Two of the Eskimos flanking me indicated that I should be seated in one of these chambers while the others took the Chinese through a door opposite the one by which we'd entered.
It was an hour or more before the Chinese reappeared. He looked like he'd been given a going-over. The Eskimo guards hustled him out, and then it was my turn. They prodded me through a door, and I found myself facing a man seated behind a plush desk. The man was Peter Highman!
'We meet again, Mr. Victor.'
'So it seems.' I was too shaken to say anything else. I had hoped to come up against some S.M.U.T. official I could con the way I'd conned Olga. Instead, I'd hopped out of the arctic frying pan and straight into the fire of Peter Highman's clutches.
'I congratulate you on your persistence,' Highman said.
'Thanks. I take it I'm your prisoner.'
'Yes.'
'And I suppose you're going to kill me.'
'At my leisure, Mr. Victor. There is no cause for immediate alarm on your part.'
'Why wait?' I asked.
'There is certain information I would like from you and your Chinese friend, Mr. Victor.'
'He's no friend of mine.'
'Quite so. Nevertheless, there are things that you can tell us.'
'Like what?'
'Like just how much your government has managed to learn about S.M.U.T. Like why they are cooperating with the Russians and even the Chinese in their quest for Dr. Nyet.'
'You tell me your secrets, I'll tell you mine,' I singsonged.
'I don't mind satisfying your curiosity, Mr. Victor. You are no longer in a position to do S.M.U.T. any harm. It's a human failing that I hope you'll forgive, but the truth is I rather enjoy this opportunity to gloat over a vanquished adversary.'
'Why not call Dr. Nyet in to gloat with you?' I suggested.
'Alas, she has already left. She had to keep a previous engagement. I know she'll be devastated when I tell her how closely she missed you. Indeed, you made quite an impression on her.'
'Then it was the blonde back in New York! The one who liked to go up in flames while making love!'
'It was. And it is. But she's not really a blonde, you know. She's a natural brunette. We simply prevailed upon her to dye her hair.'
'She's the last one I would have picked,' I admitted. 'She talked like a born and bred Yankee.'
'Among Dr. Nyet's other talents is a sure tongue for linguistics,' Highman told me.
'Olga had that talent, too,' I mused. 'But then she was exactly what she said she was. Except she was also a
