Pandora's Curse

by Du Brul, Jack

  “It’s a garbage dump. Hilda saw bones in there and thought they were human. They’re not. They’re seal bones.”

  “Seal?”

  “To supplement the food the Germans brought here, the two survivors hunted seals that ventured into the cavern through the submarine tunnel.”

  “That’s how they survived for ten years down here,” Ira said, wiping grease from his hands. “The provisions couldn’t have lasted from the war until 1953.”

  “I bet they could,” Mercer countered. “With a thousand people working in here, they needed tons of stores. If the accident that killed everyone occurred right after a supply run there would have been more than enough canned goods to support two men for ten years. Especially if they killed an occasional seal.”

  “That explains why the man at Camp Decade had such rotten teeth,” Anika said as Hilda composed herself once again. “Even with fresh meat, ten years without fruits and vegetables would cause scurvy.”

  “But where is everybody?” Marty asked for the second time.

  “Since I haven’t found any radiation,” Mercer answered, “I think the corpses have been moved to another chamber and sealed inside to protect the two men who survived the accident.”

  “You think it was a radiation leak that killed them?”

  “What else could it have been?” Mercer said. “They all died at the same time. Otherwise, they would have escaped on the sub. The man we found at Camp Decade and the one at the entrance must have been on the surface when the cave was dosed with radiation. They could have waited up there for the radiation to dissipate to a safe level before returning underground. Then they could have moved the bodies to a side chamber and buried them.”

  “How is it they didn’t get killed by the residual radioactivity still in the bodies?” Anika asked. “The ones we found are still radioactive after sixty years.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Germans must have had protective clothing for themselves,” Erwin offered.

  “Why didn’t the Navy officer use it when he opened the box when the C-97 flew over?”

  No one had an answer to Ira’s question.

  “Let’s get closer to the Pandora boxes, where it’s warmer, and discuss our options,” Mercer suggested. “I have a surprise and an idea.”

  “I’ll meet you there in a second,” Ira said and went back to the repair shop.

  Once they were settled, Mercer pulled a nearly full brandy bottle from his pack. “Surprise.”

  “I couldn’t take my father’s videotapes and you brought booze?” Marty said angrily. “That’s not very fair.”

  “I said essentials only.” Mercer took a pull. “I consider alcohol an essential. If you don’t want any, feel free to give up your share.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Marty backpedaled. “So what’s your idea?”

  A low rumbling sound prevented Mercer from replying, and from the side of the chamber, a bright glow appeared in the machine shop before being suddenly doused. “Damn!” Ira cursed. A moment later the light returned and stayed on.

  “What did you do?” Mercer shouted as Ira appeared from the shop. Lasko’s grin went from ear to ear.

  “Played a hunch,” Ira said. “I noticed the uniform shoulder tabs on the body up the tunnel were the brass cog wheels of the Kreigsmarine engineer corps. The guy had been the sub’s chief engineer. As a mechanic myself, I guessed that he spent the last ten years of his life making sure everything in this place was in perfect running condition. It’s what I would have done.”

  “But in the fifty years since he died, wouldn’t everything rust? And wouldn’t the fuel go bad?” Erwin asked.

  “In normal conditions this place would resemble a scrap heap but the low temperature means there’s virtually no humidity. Nothing rusts. Hell, the brass buttons on the uniforms are barely tarnished. As to the fuel, the Germans used diesel with a low cloud point for Arctic conditions. All I had to do was drain the water at the bottom of a can as a result of phase separation, strain out the sediment, and preheat it over a can of Sterno to put the paraffin back in the solution. I had to crank the generator like a bastard to flush the kerosene our German friend used as a rust inhibitor, but it should smooth out in a minute or two as it lubricates itself.”

  “I just can’t believe it,” Erwin persisted. “My car won’t start after just one cold night.”

  “You’re hearing and seeing the proof. The generator works like a charm. With proper care, you can leave an engine for decades and all you need to start it is a good battery. That’s what prevents your car from turning over. Cold temperature saps their power. Since the portable generator starts off a flywheel, all it required was about fifty pulls on the cord. It’s the lightbulbs that have lost their seals over time. The first one blew as soon as the electrical current hit it.”

  “Well this changes a few things,” Mercer said as his original idea evolved. “I had a feeling we’d find a sub down here when Erwin first mentioned that’s how this base was supplied. The Germans would have kept one here at all times so they could transport the fragments as soon as they were ready, which means its crew would have died with everyone else. I’d thought that we could hide from Rath in it by submerging in the lagoon.”

  “Without power how would we have surfaced again?”

  “By opening a hatch and swimming out,” Mercer answered. “Can’t be that deep in here. Now I wonder if we need to hang around at all.”

  Ira guessed at Mercer’s intention. “Just because I got a one-cylinder generator running doesn’t mean the sub’ll still work.”

  “If the engineer took that much time on the generator, it stands to reason his U-boat is in excellent condition too.”

  Ira weighed Mercer’s logic for a second and nodded. “Possibly.”

  “You’re proposing we sail it out of here?”

  “Without Ira I never would have considered it, but he used to teach submarine operations at the Navy’s sub school in Groton, Connecticut. If he can train teenagers to run a nuclear vessel, he can teach the six of us how to maneuver this antique. Correct me if I’m wrong, Ira, but the principles haven’t changed much in fifty years.”

  “Haven’t changed much in a hundred years really,” Lasko agreed. “Nuke boats have a lot more automated controls. That fish over there is bare bones, uses muscles to open and close valves.”

  “If nothing more, we can use the U-boat to hide ourselves. But if we can get her running, I think our best bet is to get the hell out of here.” Mercer looked each of them in the eye as he spoke. “Without Marty’s satellite phone we’re still stranded when Rath and his goons leave here. It’ll take weeks to walk the six hundred miles to Ammassalik. Considering we barely survived the past couple of days, I doubt we’d make it a quarter of that distance.”

  “Why the hell did you bring us up here instead of having the pilot land us closer to Ammassalik?” Marty asked angrily. “None of this needed to happen. Radioactive bodies. Golden boxes filled with Christ knows what. Maybe Ingrid would have—”

  “Marty, calm down!” Ira shouted right back. “Mercer had a good goddamned reason. The plane would have crashed a hundred miles from the town. We’d have died closer to it—that’s all. Ingrid would have been just as dead. I’m sorry. At least now we have a chance.”

  “But my sat-phone?”

  “Probably wouldn’t have gotten a signal until long after we froze,” Ira stated. “Mercer’s been buying us time every step of the way, so cut him some slack. All right?”

  Marty fell silent.

  Capping the brandy bottle, Mercer looked around the circle of expectant faces, proud of them all for handling the past days so well. “Here’s my plan. I would like Anika and Erwin, since you read German, to search the administrative offices thoroughly for evidence. I’ve noticed Kohl’s name is stenciled on a lot of the equipment lying around, and now I’m pretty sure Rath’s job is to destroy it and erase any link his company has to this place. We need paperw
ork and documents that implicate Kohl for when this nightmare is over. Just make sure you don’t leave any indications that we were here. Marty and Hilda can give Ira a hand with anything he needs.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to work with Ira.” He looked at Anika. “As soon as your search is done, join us. We don’t have much time.”

  “Okay, boys and girl, let’s get busy,” Ira said with the mock cheer of a drill instructor.

  “What’s first?”

  “I’m going into the boat to check it out. I want you three to start on the fuel. You need to drain the bottom few inches of water from each drum without stirring up the sediment. There’s a chain fall in the machine shop you can bring out to lift the barrels. Later, we’ll devise a filtering system. I should be able to jury-rig a preheater aboard the boat so we don’t need to cook each drum when we’re ready to load.”

  “How much fuel do you think we need?” Marty asked, eyeing the hundred or more barrels stacked next to the U-boat. It would be an exhausting job.

  “Let’s see. The typical type VII has two six-cylinder supercharged G.W. diesels that could push them along at about sixteen knots on the surface and double-commutator electric motors that produce about five hundred horsepower for a top submerged speed of approximately seven knots.” Ira looked upward as if doing mental arithmetic and then grinned sadistically. “That means we need all the fuel we can get into her.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  By the light from the portable lamps wired to the generator, Mercer and the others got to work while Ira disappeared into the U-boat. After establishing a system and a rhythm, they had managed to prepare fifty of the drums when the slender submariner reemerged from the vessel. His parka and snow pants were streaked with grime, and his face was tiger-striped by smudge marks.

  “How’s she look?” Mercer called to Ira, who stood atop the conning tower surveying their progress.

  “That engineer knew what the hell he was doing.” He laughed. “I’ve seen new cars fresh off the assembly line in worse condition than this old girl.”

  “You think this is going to work?”

  “I honestly think it will. I was worried about the rubber gaskets and hoses, but they’ve been treated with something. While they’re stiff as hell, they should hold okay once they warm up. Just in case, I’m only going to run one engine and have the hoses from the other ready as spares.”

  “What about the batteries? We’ll need to charge them if we’re going to get out of here.”

  “He drained the hydrochloric acid from them and stored it in big glass bottles, so none of the batteries have been eaten away. I’ve just started refilling the sixty-three cells in the aft battery room. That should be enough juice to clear the tunnel and reach the surface.”

  “Our priority is to make sure we can submerge her once Rath shows up. We’ll worry about getting out of here later.”

  “In that case, we’ll start loading the diesel into her main tanks as soon as I check them for water seepage. This way we can use her Junkers compressor to fill the air tanks for when we want to surface again.”

  Mercer checked his watch. He was stunned to see it was past midnight. Without the sun to guide his circadian cycle, he hadn’t realized that they’d been on the move for twenty straight hours. “We’ll start that after we grab a few hours’ sleep.”

  Hilda sagged when she recognized the English word sleep. “Danke.”

  “Where the hell are Anika and Erwin?” Marty asked, dropping to the stone floor and propping his back against a barrel.

  “Obviously they found something of interest.” Ira climbed down the conning tower and crossed the gangway to the dock.

  Hilda took over cooking duties from Mercer when he started gathering provisions from the packs, freeing him to find Anika. He found her slumped over the desk in the administration building’s largest office. Erwin Puhl was asleep on a threadbare couch. Mercer touched Anika’s shoulder and she came awake with a guilty start.

  “Oh, God. I am so sorry.” She saw that Erwin had also succumbed to exhaustion. “We were reading and took a quick break”—she looked at her watch—“three hours ago.”

  “That’s okay.” Mercer smiled. “We’ve just knocked off outside. Have you found anything?”

  “Everything,” Anika replied, fire replacing the sleep in her eyes. “Names, dates, orders, procedures, the works. If we get out of here, Kohl AG is finished.”

  “What about the two men who survived the accident that killed everyone else. Did they leave any kind of a journal?”

  “That’s what Erwin was reading.”

  The scientist came awake when he heard his name. He slipped on his glasses. “You were right about a great many of your conjectures, Mercer. One of them was a Jewish slave laborer named Isidore Schild. The other was the submarine’s chief engineer, Wolfgang Rossler. They were on the glacier when one of the Pandora boxes dropped from a crane and spilled its contents. The radiation blast killed everyone in the chamber an hour after they got the fragments safely into another box. Schild and Rossler remained outside for two weeks, freezing and starving until they felt it was safe to enter again. The protective suits the Germans brought couldn’t take a direct blast of radiation, but it did shield them when they moved the contaminated bodies into the excavation and backfilled it by blowing up what they called the hanging wall.”

  “That’s a mining term for the ceiling of a tunnel,” Mercer explained. “They must be talking about the shaft leading to where the meteorite fragments came to a rest after melting down to bedrock.”

  “Yes, that’s right. They couldn’t operate the submarine with only the two of them, so they were marooned. Necessity ended any animosity between the two men. They lived off the food supplies and killed the few seals that came into the cavern. For the first few years they tried to signal Allied aircraft that ventured nearby on their flights to and from England, but it was rare any planes came this far north. They assumed after several years that when no more planes approached the war had ended.”

  “Jesus.” Mercer shuddered at the idea of being isolated for so long.

  “Schild’s journal is filled with anecdotes about their time here. He was a remarkably generous man toward Rossler, considering the circumstances. I’ll tell you the details later if you’d like. They decided that the only way to attract attention was if they could shoot down one of the passing planes. Since they had only small arms from the submarine, the only weapon capable of crashing an aircraft was the radiation from one of the boxes. They dragged the smallest one to the surface and took turns every day waiting for a plane to fly low enough and close enough for a direct dose of Pandora radiation to kill its crew. For eight long years they waited until the C-97 flew over. Rossler was at the entrance, so Schild doesn’t know the exact details. He guessed that maybe the plane had engine trouble. Anyway, Rossler opened the box, sacrificing his own life for Schild’s, and downed the plane.

  “As soon as the radiation dissipated enough for his suit to protect him, Schild went in search of the plane but couldn’t find it. After two weeks he returned to the cavern. Despondent, he finally gave up a short while later and left, packing up enough provisions to sustain him for a week. The seals had long stopped coming, so he was dying of scurvy anyway. He wrote a beautiful suicide note at the end of his journal, which leads me to believe he knew nothing of Camp Decade.”

  “Want to know the sickest part of this?” Mercer said when Erwin fell silent. “Had he stayed in the vicinity of the cave entrance after the plane crash, he probably would have seen Stefansson Rosmunder as he searched for the wrecked Stratofreighter. He passed near enough to this place to give himself a fatal dose of radiation from Rossler’s body.”

  The tales of Japanese soldiers surviving on remote islands long after the war were tame compared to the hardships Rossler and Schild endured only to die so close to rescue.

  “There are other parts of Schild’s journal,” Anika s
aid, “that are much, much worse.” She held out her hand to Erwin for the journal. She thumbed through to the passage she wanted, pausing to build the strength to reread it. “This takes place at the height of the mining operation.” Her translation came fluidly, as though she’d already memorized the passage.

  August 11, 1944

  Can the Nazis leave any beauty uncorrupted? We learned again today that they cannot. We fooled ourselves into thinking the guards didn’t know about Sara’s pregnancy. Yes, her belly was hidden under loose clothing, but there were more obvious signs of the life within her. She was happy. An unknown aberration from this living hell. That she’d been raped by guards who planted this seed no longer vexed her as her time approached. She’d been beautiful and the guards’ favorite. We didn’t understand why they had left her alone these past months. Now we realize they were under orders not to touch her. She gave birth this morning, straining as much to free the child as to maintain her silence. Many of the older women who knew midwifery helped her. And as if they knew the due date, Herman Kohl, nephew of the industrialist Volker Kohl and here on an inspection tour, appeared moments later with Sturmbannführer Kress. They took the child to the dock. The wailing infant was forever silenced by the still waters. I write now to the sounds of the old women crying and the snuffling of the guards once again raping Sara. I pray for the strength to hide from the suicidal thoughts plaguing me since my first day here so that mother and child will never be forgotten.

  The heavy silence in the room served to amplify Anika’s sobs. Mercer too felt the salty sting of tears in his eyes. A handful of the abstract six million had names and faces for him now. He made a silent vow to stop at nothing until Kohl paid for what they had done. For him there was no ambiguity about responsibility. “Kohl AG is going down.” He was unaware he spoke aloud.

  Anika looked at him and was a bit frightened by what she saw. His rage was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It shimmered off him like heat waves. For the first time she realized Mercer’s capacity for revenge.