Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event

by Robert Ludlum

“I don’t know. A lot depends on how much of this is simple exhaustion and how much is exposure. Hypothermia can be very mean and very tricky.” Smith rested his fingertips against Randi’s throat, taking a carotid pulse. “She’s been preloaded with a massive dose of antibiotics. That’ll help with any pulmonary complications. And she was keeping her hands and face covered. I don’t think she’s been too badly frostbitten.”

  Smith shook his head, lightly stroking Randi’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. “If her core temperature hasn’t fallen too far, she might be able to bounce back. She’s tough, Val, as tough as they make them. If her temperature has dropped too low...I don’t know. All we can do is keep her warm and wait.”

  Valentina half-smiled. “You care a great deal about this lady, don’t you?”

  Smith tucked the mouth of the sleeping bag closer around the two women. “I’m responsible for her. Both for her being here and for her being who she is.”

  “You’re responsible for all of us, Jon,” Valentina replied, looking up at him. “And may I say that’s a rather comforting thought at the moment.”

  Smith grinned back and lightly stroked back her dark hair. “I hope that confidence isn’t misplaced. Try and get some sleep.”

  Taking the SR-25 and his medical kit with him, Smith moved up toward the mouth of the cave. En route he paused to fill an aluminum pan with ice fragments, balancing it atop the pellet stove.

  Smyslov had finished walling off the entrance, leaving only an air vent at the top. Eliminating the wind chill gave their arctic clothing a chance to cope with the still air temperature, making the little cavern seem warm.

  “How’s the arm doing, Major?”

  Smyslov shrugged. “It isn’t a problem.”

  “I’ll have a look at it anyway. You up on your tetanus shots?”

  “I am good.”

  With their backs to the opposing sides of the cave, Smith treated Smyslov’s arm. Working around the Russian’s blood-sodden sleeves, he removed the crudely applied field dressing. Cleaning and disinfecting the wound, he dusted it with sulfa powder and applied a fresh water-and-cold-proof bandage.

  “You’re lucky,” Smith commented. “It’s a nice, clean penetration.” He lifted an eyebrow at the Russian. “In fact, it looks like it was made by one of Val’s knives.”

  Smyslov grimaced. “It was, but with my approval.”

  “What did happen up on that ledge while I was hanging at the other end of that safety line?”

  Smyslov sketched out the chain of events from the icefall through Smith’s rescue. “Thanks for the assist.” Smith nodded. “It was greatly appreciated. Mind if I ask you a personal question, though?”

  “Go ahead, Colonel.”

  “Why didn’t you just cut Val’s throat and the safety rope?”

  Smyslov was quiet for a moment. “That would have been in line with the standing orders I have received from my government,” he replied finally. “But you have a term in the American military for a situation such as I find myself in: ‘FUBAR.’ I believe it means ‘fucked up beyond all recall.’”

  Smith applied a last strip of surgical tape. “It does.”

  “Such is my current state,” the Russian continued. “I was placed within your team to prevent an international embarrassment for Russia and a shattering of relations between our nations. The Spetsnaz were inserted onto this island for that purpose as well. But now it is all FUBAR. Even had I chosen to kill you and the professor on the mountain, there would have been no realistic way to prevent this embarrassment and alienation. Things are too out of control now. Too chaotic. Your nation would investigate, and the truth would undoubtedly come out in the end. Probably it has been so from the beginning. This I have come to recognize, and I did not wish to murder my...comrades in an act of futility.”

  Again Smyslov gave a bitter smile. “You see? We are not all like the Misha’s political officer.”

  Smith rucked Smyslov’s bloodstained parka sleeve down over the fresh dressing. “I’d already come to that conclusion, Major.”

  He closed his medical kit and leaned back against the green ice wall of the cave, the SR-25 propped beside him. “I’ve also come to the conclusion that you’re right about the attack on the science station. The numbers don’t add up for it to have been Spetsnaz. I’ve got to assume our third faction is now present on the island, and given the way Randi was handled, that presence is nasty and formidable.”

  “I would agree, Colonel.”

  “Then, given that your mission to prevent the truth being revealed about the Soviet first strike is indeed FUBAR, would you agree that we again have common cause over our mission, preventing the Misha’s bioweapons from falling into the wrong hands?”

  Smyslov smiled without humor. “My superiors might not agree, but personally, I should like not to fuck up entirely. That anthrax could find its way into the hands of the Chechen rebels or another of our domestic terrorist groups. It could be used against Moscow or St. Petersburg as easily as against New York or Chicago. This is what matters now.”

  Smith extended his hand. “Welcome back, Major.”

  The Russian accepted his handclasp. “It’s good to be back, Colonel. What are your orders?”

  Smith glanced toward the rear of the cave. “Our best intelligence source concerning this new faction is unavailable for the moment. When and if we can talk with her, then we can make some plans. For now, how about a cup of tea?”

  A few minutes later the two men hunched over steaming canteen cups, letting the warmth seep in through their fingers.

  “I have to admit, Major,” Smith said, “that one question still keeps nagging at me. It’s the other half of the March Fifth equation: why the Soviet attack was recalled at the last minute.”

  Smyslov shook his head. “I’m sorry, I cannot say, Colonel. I must respect the last remaining rags of my nation’s security.”

  “You might as well tell him, Gregori,” Valentina’s voice issued from the mound of sleeping bags. “I’ve figured that bit out as well.”

  Smyslov’s head snapped around. “How could you?”

  Valentina’s sigh whispered in the ice cave. “Because I’m a historian and because I’m very good at playing connect-the-dots. The Misha 124 crashed on Wednesday Island on March fifth, 1953, and the USSR came within a hairsbreadth of starting the Third World War on March fifth, 1953. One other major sociopolitical event involving the Soviet Union took place on that date as well. Logic indicates this one must be related to the other two.”

  “What was it?” Smith demanded.

  “March fifth, 1953, was the day Joseph Stalin died.” Valentina twisted around so they could make out the pale oval of her face. “Or rather, the day he was assassinated. Your people did off the bastard, didn’t they, Gregori?”

  For a long moment, the only sound was the nagging whine of the wind.

  “We’ve always suspected,” Valentina went on. “As history currently records it, Stalin was stricken by a massive cerebral hemorrhage on the night of February the twenty-eighth, while he was in residence at the Kremlin. Supposedly he was incapacitated and rendered semicomatose by the stroke, remaining in that state until his death on March fifth. But the world has always wondered. It was held there was something ‘funny’ about the rather sketchy account made by the Soviet government of Stalin’s death. There were also rather broad hints made by Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, that the true story of her father’s demise was not being revealed.”

  The historian shifted her position, trying not to disturb Randi. “Of course, rumors and conspiracy theories cluster like flies around the death of any controversial national leader. Call it the ‘grassy knoll syndrome.’ But given Stalin’s decidedly notorious nature and the nature of the Soviet regime at the time, this conspiracy theory seemed a little more solidly founded than most.

  “Now, with the truth about the Misha 124 and the Soviets’ aborted first strike coming out, the whole question is going to blow wide open again
. I’m sorry, Gregori, but there is not going to be a plausible deniability here, and anything we guess will likely be worse than the reality.”

  Disgusted, Smyslov looked up at the roof of the cave. “Shit!” Closing his eyes, he was silent for a few moments more before replying. “You are quite right, Professor. As you say, Stalin was stricken with a stroke, but he did not pass into a coma. He was partially paralyzed but he remained conscious, alert, and capable of giving orders. And his orders were for the immediate launching of the decisive finishing attack against the Western democracies.

  “Who can say why? Possibly his mental capacities were diminished by the stroke. Possibly he foresaw his imminent death and he wanted to witness the final triumph of the People’s Revolution before he died. Or possibly he just wanted the world to end with him. Be that as it may, there were other members of the Politburo who viewed such an attack as national suicide.”

  “Would it have been?” Smith inquired.

  “In the spring of 1953, yes,” Valentina answered. “The West would have had a decisive edge in any nuclear exchange. By then, the United States and Great Britain possessed several hundred atomic weapons and even a couple of prototype hydrogen bombs. The Soviets had only a couple of dozen low-yield Hiroshima-grade nukes in their arsenal. Even with the first-strike advantage and augmented by biological and chemical warfare, it wouldn’t have been enough to deliver a finishing blow to NATO.

  “More critically, the West had the superior delivery systems. The Soviets only had their poor old B-29skis, while the United States Air Force had the big B-36 Peacemaker, with range enough to hit any target in the USSR. The first generation of NATO jet strike aircraft like the B-47 and the Canberra were also coming into service in considerable numbers.

  “Western Europe would have been made a thorough mess of,” Valentina concluded, “and the United States would have been badly hurt. But Russia and the Warsaw Pact states would have been A-bombed into a radioactive wasteland.”

  Smyslov scowled and sipped his tea. “As I said, a clique within the Politburo fully recognized this reality. They also recognized there is only one way to impeach a dictator of Stalin’s kind. I regret to tell you, Professor, that history will never know the name of the individual who held the pillow over Stalin’s face until he ceased to struggle. It was most carefully not documented.”

  “That’s all right, Gregori. It could only have been one of three men, and I can make an educated guess.”

  Smyslov shrugged. “The clique was not able to act and secure power until after the first-strike wave was actually airborne and en route to their targets. These were the America bombers with the greatest distance to fly over the Pole. The attack was successfully recalled before it was detected by the North American air defenses, and all of the aircraft returned safely to base. All except for one biological weapons platform, the Misha 124.”

  Smyslov emptied his cup. “The great konspiratsia of silence concerning the March Fifth Event began then and has continued to this day.”

  “Why did they have to hold it a secret?” Smith asked. “They’d just saved the world from a nuclear holocaust, and it wasn’t as if any sane individual would weep any crocodile tears over Joseph Stalin, not even in the Soviet Union.”

  Smyslov shook his head. “You do not understand the Russian mind, Colonel. Had Stalin’s killers been true liberators, this might have been the case, but they were merely tyrants killing another tyrant to save their own lives and to secure their own power base. Beyond that, the Soviet state still existed, and the mythology of the state demanded that Stalin be revered as a hero of the Revolution. Even after the Soviet Union fell, its fears and paranoias lingered.”

  His lips quirked ruefully, and he set his empty cup aside. “Besides that, we Russians have something of a social inferiority complex. We pride ourselves as being profoundly civilized, and murdering one’s national leader in his sickbed is simply not kulturny.”

  Smith snapped back into wakefulness, straightening out of his dozing slouch against the ice wall. Ignoring the stabbing barrage of protests from his collection of bruises, he listened, questing with all his senses.

  He wasn’t sure how long he had slept; it must have at least been a couple of hours, but there was still a patch of full blackness in the entrance air vent. The sun had yet to rise, but the wind had died. The only sound from the outside was the distant creak and crack of the shifting pack ice. Inside the little cavern he could hear the deep, weary breathing of his sleeping teammates.

  And a soft moan. “Sophie?”

  Smith scrambled to the rear of the cave. Snapping on the lantern, he flipped down the hood flap of the combined sleeping bags that held Randi and Valentina.

  In the lantern’s light Randi’s face was relaxed, and the color had returned to her skin, barring a single pale patch of frostnip on one brow and the shadows under her eyes. The dreadful gray flaccidity had passed. Her breathing was easy and uncongested, and when Smith lightly touched her throat, her heartbeat was even and strong and the flesh was warm.

  As he had hoped, Randi Russell was rebounding.

  At his touch, she grumbled softly and her eyes snapped open, blank at first, then questioning, then aware with the wonderment of still being alive. “Jon?”

  Relief flooded through him. It wouldn’t be today after all. “You made it, Randi. You’re with us and you’re going to be all right.”

  She looked at him almost in puzzlement, lifting her head. “Jon...I called.”

  “And I heard you.”

  The puzzlement lingered in her dark eyes for a moment more; then she smiled. “I guess you did.”

  Valentina yawned and stretched, coming up on her elbow. “Good morning, all. Apparently somebody’s back with us.”

  Startled, Randi twisted around in the sleeping bag, finding herself naked and not alone. “What in the hell!” she yelped.

  “It’s perfectly all right, darling,” Valentina replied, propping her head on one slim wrist. “Nobody waits until after they’re married anymore.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  The White House, Washington, DC

  President Castilla rose from the head of the long mahogany conference table. “Gentlemen, if you will excuse me for a moment, there’s a call I have to take.”

  Castilla strode from the conference room, following his sober-featured Marine aide. The liaison officers from the Central Intelligence, Defense Intelligence, and National Security Agencies; the FBI; and the Office of Homeland Security exchanged silent glances, wondering what might be critical enough to preempt the morning’s national intelligence briefing.

  In the Oval Office, Castilla lifted the internal phone from its cradle without bothering to seat himself behind the big mesquite-wood desk. “Castilla here.”

  “Mr. President, this is the Operations Room. Please be advised, the Wednesday Island relief mission has launched and is airborne at this time.”

  Castilla glanced at his desk clock. Twenty after. Major Saunders would have gotten his last weather update on the quarter hour, and true to his word, he’d been airborne within five minutes.

  “Has Director Klein been notified?”

  “Affirmative, Mr. President. He is monitoring the situation.”

  “Do we have an ETA over the objective?”

  “Roughly six hours, depending upon the weather conditions encountered en route.” The operations officer sounded faintly apologetic. “They’ve got over two thousand miles to fly, sir.”

  “I understand, Major. Wednesday Island is one of those places you can’t get to from here. Keep me advised as things develop.”

  “Will do, Mr. President. Please be advised, the Russian Special Liaison to the Wednesday Island Operation is still unavailable. Do you wish to inform the Russians of the relief operation?”

  Castilla scowled at the bars of morning sunlight cutting across the rich reds and blues of the Navaho rug on the office floor. “Negative, Major. It’s apparent they have nothing more to say
to us, and we have nothing more to say to them.”

  Chapter Forty-five

  The North Face, Wednesday Island

  Randi Russell wasn’t sure about the existence of a place called “heaven.” But if such an environment did exist, she was now certain of two things: it would be warm, and you wouldn’t be alone.

  “Okay, try that,” Jon Smith said, rocking back on his heels.

  Experimentally she flexed the fingers of her right hand. Jon had lightly bandaged them after applying a thin layer of antibiotic ointment. At her insistence he had done each digit separately so she could still have full use of the hand.

  “It’s not bad,” she replied. “They sort of itch and tingle a little but not too bad.”

  Smith nodded, looking pleased. “That’s good. I think you picked up a good touch of chilblain climbing that cliff, but I don’t think you’ve taken any permanent damage.”

  “Apparently you’ll still be able count to ten without taking your shoes off.” Valentina sat up in the doubled sleeping bag, working on the handcuff around Randi’s left wrist. Even clad in thermal underwear and with an unzipped parka draped over her shoulders, the professor still exuded a certain air of raffish elegance.

  Randi found she couldn’t be annoyed. In fact, there was almost a partylike atmosphere in the little ice cave. There was no logical reason for it. They were still on Wednesday Island, still hiding and surrounded by enemies, but the team was whole again.

  Valentina gave a final delicate twist of the lock probe, and the handcuff loop snicked open. “There you go, darling. You have your wrist back.”

  “Thank you,” Randi smiled. “It’s appreciated.”

  “Beyond your hands, how do you feel?” Smith went on, touching her cheek with the back of a bared hand, hunting for signs of a fever.

  “I’m fine,” Randi replied in a knee-jerk response.

  He continued to regard her with a disconcertingly level gaze, the very faintest of knowing smiles on his face.

  Randi sighed. “All right,” she replied. “I feel like an old dishrag that’s been wrung out too many times. It’s like I’m never going to be warm inside again and I’m never going to feel not tired again and all I want to do is sleep for another thousand years. Satisfied?”