White Death

by Nick Carter

  Carter picked up the button. It had only two holes.

  "Mind if I keep it a while."

  "It's the least I can do." Colonel ffolkes smiled wryly.

  Eleven

  The nuclear submarine skimmed just beneath the surface of the Pacific. Wind-blown and chilled from his ride in the open trawler, Carter watched the crewmen work and listened to the hollow sound of conversation, the bleeping sonar, and the quiet clicking of computerized equipment as he followed the lieutenant through the smoothly efficient work area and down a narrow corridor.

  "Can you swim?" the pale lieutenant asked Carter cheerfully as they walked.

  "Some."

  "Don't ask for a submarine assignment then," the lieutenant advised. "It's a wasted skill. We go down, doesn't matter whether you're wearing pajamas or a wetsuit, you won't have a chance to swim for it. Not a damned thing you can do."

  "Except make sure it doesn't happen in the first place."

  "That's it," the lieutenant said and beamed. He liked the challenge of his job.

  "Career Navy?" Carter asked.

  "Is there any other way?"

  David Hawk, chief of AXE, was waiting in a cloud of cigar smoke in small private sleeping quarters. Air conditioning sucked futilely at the gray haze.

  "It's about time, Nick," Hawk growled. "Come in. You'll have to sit on the bunk. Good God, you've grown a beard!"

  The AXE director nodded a silent dismissal at the young lieutenant. The lieutenant saluted smartly and closed the door.

  "Good officer," Hawk said, then turned his attention to Carter "You'll be glad for that beard where you're going. We've got a fine mess on our hands with this Silver Dose business."

  David Hawk had the kind of nondcscript wide face and stocky body that lent itself well to disguise and adaptation. He was of medium height, the still-strong muscles not obvious under his three-piece Washington suit. Only the muscles in his forceful jaw showed as he worked on his cigar. His only outstanding feature was a shock of white hair.

  With padding, he could be disguised as a well-to-do European businessman. With the right kind of loose clothes, he could be a down-and-out vagrant. With makeup, tinted lenses, and dyed hair, he could blend into almost any culture. He could do those things even today. Instantly.

  He had teen a chameleon as a field agent. And now, in his sixties, as he smoked his cigar in the small submarine cubicle, Nick Carter had the feeling that the AXE director wanted that again.

  For the moment, Hawk once more wanted to be the premier Killmaster. The best agent, not the best agency head. He didn't want to be the mastermind sending Carter or someone else out to do the job. He wanted to do the job himself. He wanted to take on Blenkochev, and settle once and for all his superiority in the war of wits and nerve.

  There's a communications flurry from Soviet embassies all over the world to the Kremlin," Hawk said grimly.

  He sat at the small desk, his face stem and impassive. He exuded power like a woman docs perfume. The power came from deep within him, honed by experience and intellect It was so much a part of him that he was unaware of it. But anyone nearby felt it like a cold wind.

  "What are they saying?" Carter asked.

  "We haven't broken the code yet. They're using top emergency communications. Reserved only for worst-case situations… such as war."

  "Silver Dove?" Carter said from the bunk, and lit a cigarette.

  "There's nothing else unusual going on. It's got to be Silver Dove they're talking about. Right now we're assuming the Dove group is one of the KGB's 'unofficial' terrorist organizations. I have people in Moscow checking it out."

  "What does Silver Dove have to do with Rocky Diamond and the dead embassy attaché in Wellington?"

  Hawk allowed himself a brief smile.

  "That's your assignment, Nick," Hawk said. "Find out what Silver Dove is doing. And that means the Antarctic. By backchecking, we've discovered that the 'business' trip the Soviet attaché was on included Paris, Rome, Moscow, Hong Kong, Sydney, and somewhere in Antarctica before he returned to the embassy. Antarctica wasn't scheduled. We think that whatever's going on down there is influencing the Soviet uproar."

  "I see."

  "I thought you might." Hawk puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. "Silver Dove appears to be a large organization. And old and well established enough to have at least one sleeper agent who waited for his assignment a good fifteen years. It wouldn't be unusual for an embassy to not know about one of the KGB's undergroups. When their attaché died, they acted innocently to save him. And then Blenkochev arrived, and he hasn't gone home. Something is happening with Silver Dove that he has to direct or keep on top of."

  "Something that has other Soviet embassies interested," Carter said. "Or worried."

  "That's right," Hawk said, the cigar in his mouth. The noxious gray cloud increased.

  "And what will you do, sir?"

  Hawk glared at Carter. The AXE chief stood, walked three paces across the room, turned, and retraced his steps. His teeth clamped the cigar. His hands knotted behind his back. He walked back and forth like a caged tiger. A powerful caged tiger.

  Wait. Watch," the AXE director said. "This isn't the only operation I've got. I have people on assignment in the Middle East, Berlin, Beirut, Central and South America, South Africa, you name it. Anything could blow up. Right now the Antarctic business is the most active, the most crucial. And with Blenkochev here… well, you know about that. But meanwhile, I've got a brigade of people out there trying to cap volcanoes of potential violence. What else can I do?"

  "You could go into the field with me."

  Hawk skipped pacing. He looked at Carter. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth, studied it, and jammed it back in.

  "It's what I want, of course," he said quietly.

  "There'd be two of us. A better chance at success."

  Hawk was silent, his steels eyes suddenly taking on a wistful glow. He looked around the small white room.

  The sleeping quarter, where Carter and Hawk met belonged to an officer with a wife and two young daughters. The family picture sat on a low shell above the desk. The blond officer in dress whites, the wife in a summer dress that showed good shoulders and a sunny disposition, and the daughters in starched pinafores over frilly dresses. It was a smiling, happy family, holding hands, the girls each on a parent's lap. The best of us. What freedom was all about.

  Hawk's chin jutted with determination.

  "You have your job," he said gruffly, "I have mine."

  "And Blenkochev?"

  "Blenkochev's a damned fool. Always was. Conniving and shrewd, but given to extremes. My guess is that he's working that man in the Mazda, using him as his direct assistant. Just because Blenkochev is out in the field neglecting everything else is no reason for me to. But then he's got a bureaucracy sixteen layers deep that will keep his operation going."

  "What tempts you is that you know him better than any of us."

  Hawk allowed himself a smile of acknowledgment. Carter understood.

  "A conceit on my part, I suppose," the powerful AXE chief admitted. "The greatest adversary I ever had. Wily as a fox. Totally amoral. What's he up to? It's enough to tempt me into stupidity. You've the only agent I trust to take him on, Nick. Blenkochev was never too proud to get help even from despicable sources. Silver Dove isn't my idea of a group with a good cause. They're bigots. They draw members from Russians who constantly push the Communist ideology against religions of all kinds — particularly Jews. Speaking out against religious practice isn't enough for them. They bomb churches, cathedrals, and synagogues. They kill religious leaders. Those in positions of power won't let Jews emigrate. Instead they throw them into prisons and 'hospitals' where they are tortured. It's one thing to be an atheist. It's something else entirely to hate people who have a god just because they have a god. And then you add their poisonous attitudes toward different races — blacks, Orientals, whatever — and women… and you have a really swell group of supp
orters."

  "Or employees."

  "Yes. Employees."

  Hawk sat again in the chair by the desk. He waved a hand absently through the cigar smoke and laid the foul-smelling cigar butt in an ashtray to die a natural death.

  The ventilation system worked doggedly on the close atmosphere. The small living quarters with the bright white walls was gloomy not only with smoke, but with the two men's thoughts.

  "We can't make the world better until people's inner lives are ruled by love and compassion, not fear and hate," Carter observed.

  "People can't make themselves better until countries encourage understanding and appreciation among one another. They've got to realize that national fears and hatreds lead ultimately only to destruction. And if governments are designed as well to guarantee a man or woman's basic needs, then individuals can develop themselves and their potential to the highest level."

  Carter ground out his cigarette. The men stood. The submarine would surface soon.

  "I suppose the answer," Carter said, "is that both have to happen simultaneously. Individuals and nations striving for the best together."

  "And meanwhile," Hawk added, "we have work to do."

  Carter nodded, then held the door for the older man.

  "Blenkochev and Silver Dove," Carter said.

  * * *

  Flat-topped icebergs glowed eerily blue in the choppy South Pacific. They drifted past the submarine like fat elegant matrons on the way to the bank.

  It was summer in Antarctica, January, a time of around the-clock sunlight and the pulsing activity of an international array of scientists studying winds, rock formations, tectonic movement, sea life, ocean currents, glaciation, and human nature.

  McMurdo Station was not far ahead, just beyond Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound. The U.S.-operated station would be Carter's jumping off point. It was also the major Antarctic port for U.S. and New Zealand scientific activity.

  He stood with Hawk, bundled in khaki-colored easy movement fiberfilled clothes, pined by the captain and lookout on the submarine's bridge as they approached the world's southernmost land. Antarctica itself came from the Greek word antarktikos, which meant "opposite the bear," the northern constellation.

  The wind was brisk and sharp. Broad-winged skuas circled and dove for fish. Emperor penguins in their tuxedo disguises swam and played.

  "A good day to arrive," Hawk observed, his eyes in binoculars scanning the white and gray land ahead.

  "Hope it stays that way," the captain agreed as he, too, studied the Antarctic coast through binoculars. "Weather's changeable as hell."

  Within an hour, the iceberg-clogged waters could alter from deep blue to silver to gray to black, and the sky from sapphire blue to a tempestuous white and charcoal life-threatening blizzard.

  To the submarine's left loomed the vast Ross Ice Shelf, almost six hundred miles wide. It was bracketed on the far end by Little America and on this end by McMurdo Station, both operated by the United States.

  To the right of McMurdo rose the rough, austere Queen Maud Mountains, as raw a range of rocky peaks as any on the globe. Carter would have to fly across them to reach the South Pole.

  The submarine passed Cape Adare and a groaning glacial iceberg factory that casually calved chunks of ice the size of breadboxes and warehouses into the churning sea. They passed Ross Island where Mount Erebus stood in grandeur, one of the few continuously active volcanoes in Antarctica. And then, stars and stripes waving smartly overhead, the submarine came to port in McMurdo.

  * * *

  In the ice hut, Hawk spent the rest of the day overseeing Carter's outfitting. He selected the best and most recent equipment. Clothing, snow survival gear, processed food, and — most important — a small nuclear helicopter, large enough for only a pilot and passenger. With luck, the passenger would be a retrieved Rocky Diamond.

  The two men packed the gear themselves, aware that a mistake — something lost, misplaced, or forgotten — could mean Carter's death. The AXE agent had not only Silver Dove and Blenkochev to contend with, but also the most relentlessly savage weather in the world.

  Hawk posted a guard on the helicopter and gear it contained, then the two men ate dinner and found empty beds. They would arise in precisely eight hours.

  During their time at the base, they'd found no one who'd seen or heard of Rocky Diamond.

  * * *

  Farther north, well above the Antarctic Circle, it was dawn. But at McMurdo Station in Antarctica where Carter and Hawk walked out toward the helicopter, it was just another ordinary hour in the continuous summer day. For two-thirds of the year, the continent at the bottom of the world was shut down and inaccessible completely frozen in. The wasteland was so trapped in brutal snowstorms and endless night that even the native plant and sea life couldn't reproduce.

  Carter considered this at around him in bright sunshine trucks rolled away from the station on ice roads, carrying wind machines in back. Scientists and construction workers in colorful snowsuits labored and shouted Penguins, seals, and birds waddled and dived into the hay. In a wasteland, life flourished when it could. Nothing natural could stop life. Only the artificial, the man-made forces of holocaustal destruction could completely end life.

  "All set?" Hawk asked.

  He pulled the cigar from his mouth and stared south as if he could see the South Pole. Carter's only scheduled stop.

  "Looks like it."

  Carter got into the little nuclear helicopter. Ski marks in the packed snow behind it showed where it'd just been pushed from the storage shed. The man Hawk had entrusted to guard it moved quietly and tiredly away.

  "You have four days," Hawk continued. "That's all. Your main supplies will last that long. Your emergencies should last two weeks more. I expect to hear from you every day. But I'll give you four, just in case. Then I send someone after you."

  "I understand."

  "No one's to know exactly what you're doing, so watch your radio transmissions."

  Carter smiled. He'd never seen the great Hawk so worried.

  "How'd you get out of that Ethiopian desert that Blenkochev left you in?" Carter asked as his eyes and fingers ran over the helicopter gauges. He glanced at Hawk.

  Hawk was studying him, his eyes narrowed.

  "How'd you hear about that? No, no. Never mind," he said and jammed the cigar back in his mouth. "A Bedouin found me. His wives took care of my wounds, and he gave me a lift on his camel to the Mediterranean."

  "You make it sound easy. You were near death. How'd you get lucky enough to have a Bedouin find you? That desert's a thousand square uninhabited miles."

  Hawk glared. He worked the cigar across his mouth.

  "I took my watch apart," he said reluctantly, "crawled up the tallest dune I could find, and used the crystal to reflect light. I just kept shining it around until the Bedouin found me. I Figured I was going to die anyway, might as well go with heat prostration. The chest wound would kill me soon anyway."

  "Good thinking for a man near death."

  Hawk shrugged. He allowed a smile to play on his lips.

  "There are no Bedouins in the Antarctic," he warned. "Be careful." He stepped back. "And happy hunting!"

  Carter closed the helicopter's plastic door and turned on the motor. He let it warm as Hawk stomped his feet and gusted cigar smoke into the pristine air. Hawk looked almost happy, as if he were sending a part of himself off with Carter, the best part, the part that longed for his own adventures again. Only once did Carter see him frown, and then the AXE head quickly covered it, a true professional.

  The helicopter rose straight up, its rotors beating healthily. Skuas, Wilson's storm petrels, and snow petrels scattered away, their wings flapping into the brilliant sky.

  Carter hovered the craft at about thirty feet. Abruptly Hawk raised a hand and waved. As Carter gave him a thumbs-up signal, Hawk nodded, clasped his hands behind his back, and stalked away. He had his own work to do.

  In the helicopter, C
arter moved across the Ross Ice Shelf, part of the ice sheet that covered the polar continent with as much as three vertical miles of ice. He watched for signs of a downed aircraft. The ice shelf was so vast that it contained more than seventy percent of the earth's supply of fresh water.

  The cloudless day provided a clear view for about three hundred miles in all directions. Here and there sprouted remote scientific stations and temporary settlements of Antarctic Treaty member nations. The outposts were little cardboard boxes on the glistening snow and ice. But there were no wrecked planes. The treaty, due to be reviewed in 1991, made Antarctica an international haven for peaceful study, and the happy results of that were all Carter saw.

  Carter thought about this as the small helicopter flew on toward Beardmore Glacier where he would fly over the jagged Queen Maud Mountains. Apparently it took the most undesirable piece of real estate in the world to be the spawning place for international peace.

  In a few hours, as the day lengthened into afternoon, Carter at last reached Beardmore Glacier. Still no sign of Diamond's having passed there.

  Ominous gray clouds billowed on the horizon. Antarctica's wildlife had disappeared. Seldom did even the thickly feathered petrels venture this far inland.

  Beardmore Glacier extended ahead and up in shining blue-white glory. Here Edgar Evans, a member of Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated polar party, died in 1912 as the group of five men fought their way back toward base that would eventually lead them to expedition headquarters at McMurdo Sound.

  Carter pulled back on the throttle, and the helicopter rose, following the awesome glacier up between the sharp mountain peaks. Wide cracks marred the glacier, created by fissures below. He kept glancing at the weather gathering on the horizon and then down at the empty expanse of glacier.

  He watched the sky. The clouds on the horizon were gathering force, splaying like knives across the heavens. He flew on, his attention divided between the land and the atmosphere. Only three hundred miles to his destination at the Pole.