by Paul Kenyon
The others looked at the autoclave, a hint of awe showing in their faces. The Baroness walked over to the window and looked outside. The Finnish landscape was bleak. The lodge was some 600 miles north of Helsinki, well above the Arctic Circle, bordering a frozen lake. It was remote even by Finnish standards, far above the winter sports center at Rovaniemi. Outside the window was a pale expanse of snow and washed-out sky, broken sparsely by the scraggly Arctic vegetation. Somewhere across that expanse was the Russian border, marked only by posts driven into the tundra.
She'd be crossing it soon. If only the damned Lapps would get here!
She paced impatiently in her stocking feet, her mind busy with the logistics of it. She tossed her head and whirled on Dan Wharton.
"What ordnance are we carrying?" she snapped.
Wharton spoke slowly and thoughtfully, refusing to be fazed by her impatience. He was used to her moods, including her high-strung eagerness just before a mission. And he was hopelessly in love with her. He had no realistic expectation of ever doing anything about it; he was chamberlain to her queen, and he knew it. Besides, you don't complicate your emotions when your lives depend on working as a close-knit team. But his worship of the Baroness remained deep inside his guts, a hard indigestible lump whose pain he cherished.
"We're using the Israeli Galil assault rifle," Wharton said. "Nine pounds. You can fire it with one hand. 650 rounds a minute. It also fires antitank rockets, two-inch mortars and signal flares. It works after being dunked in sand, snow, mud or water. Collapsible bipod and stock. The bipod converts to wire clippers. There's even a built-in bottle opener."
Skytop lifted his great head. "Bottle opener? Come on!"
Wharton grinned. "The Israeli soldiers had the same habit you do — opening beer bottles with ammunition magazines."
"What else have you got, Dan?" the Baroness said.
"Sleepy gas. Plastic explosive. And some cutting edges."
"Memory plastic?"
He nodded. "I had it made up into a few things that we could conceal in our gear. Belts, straps and so forth. Here's straps for all our wristwatches. Hold a match under one of 'em and you've got a four-inch knife with a sharp point and a serrated edge for cutting."
The watchbands looked like fine leather. But when heat was applied to them, the neo-methylmethacrylate co-polymer they were made of "remembered" that it had been cast in the rigid form of a knife. The edges flowed and became sharp; the blade straightened.
"That looks like a dog collar," the Baroness said, pointing to a longer strap.
"It is. No reason Igor and Stasya can't carry some of the ordnance."
He whistled the two borzois over to him. "Good boy," he said, patting them on their long, narrow primitive heads. He fastened the collars around their necks. Igor grinned, showing the wicked wolf-killing teeth.
"Man, like those animals don't need a knife!" Skytop said. Everybody laughed.
"What about our Arctic gear?" the Baroness said.
Wharton said, "Same stuff we've used before. Those skintight skivvies developed by the space agency. Wired, with a small battery pack for high winds and emergencies But we can conserve the batteries. That insulation was made for outer space. The Arctic shouldn't give it any trouble. And I've got us those insulated pup tents that fold to pocket size, with telescoping plastic rods. High-energy rations. The works."
The Baroness continued her restless prowling. "Then we're all set. Except for our traveling companions. What is taking them so long?" She glanced uneasily at her watch. "Key said he'd fixed it all up with the Ethnological Institute. They were supposed to be here by midday."
"Relax. Baroness," Eric said. "You can't hurry Lapps. It's calving time. Maybe they took time off to hunt a stray reindeer. They're crossing all the way over from Swedish Lapland."
Sumo was inserting an earplug, raising an antenna. "I'll see if I can raise Paul or Fiona in Helsinki. Maybe they've had word from Key."
He began fiddling with his dials. The Baroness sighed. She sat cross-legged on the big stone hearth and began cleaning her tiny gold-plated Bernardelli VB automatic for the third time that day. Wharton and Skytop went to work packing the gear.
Inga was over by the window, looking across the tundra, her blonde hair dazzling in the Arctic sunlight. She pressed her face against the glass.
"They're here!" she burst out. "Come quick, take a look!"
Chapter 6
There was a fantastic sight outside the window. It was a convention of northern elves, small wiry men with triangular faces, wearing bright elaborately embroidered tunics and tight leggings. They were grinning at Inga through the glass, gesturing with mittened hands, their breath making frost patterns on the windowpanes.
More of them were swarming toward the lodge, trotting beside crude wooden sledges pulled by reindeer. More reindeer, hundreds of them, were streaming over the tundra, herded by little boys muffled in scarves and peaked embroidered caps.
They wouldn't come in. The Baroness and the others crowded outside in the zero cold and immediately were surrounded by the Lapps.
"Burist!" came a chorus of voices. "Buore baive!"
"Boure halve yourself," Skytop thundered. The little men came barely to his chest. He smiled encouragingly at them, a rock protruding from a sea of vivid embroidery and bobbing red pompons.
Penelope greeted them one by one, using up her few words of Lapp dialect and switching to Finnish. They seemed delighted with her efforts. They smiled and nodded at her, none of them coming above her chin.
"Onko taalla ketaan, joka puhuu Englantia?" Penelope said. "Is there anyone here who speaks English?"
The Lapps looked at one another. "Vana," someone said. The cry was taken up. "Vana, Vana!"
A lean, intense man pushed his way through the crowd. He was tall for a Lapp — almost as tall as Penelope herself. She couldn't think of him as a small man. He projected an instant aura of force and masculinity.
"I am Vana," he said in a grave, controlled voice. "Welcome to our sita."
Penelope looked him over. The triangular face, with its sharp cheekbones and pointed chin, didn't look at all elfin on him. He looked rather handsome and devilish. His eyes were blue, not brown — evidence of Scandinavian blood in his nomad veins. Like most of the other men, he carried a long wooden staff and wore a knife at his belt. His costume was banded with the same colorful embroidery. But slung over it was a wolfskin pelt.
She looked at his leggings. More wolfskin. Not reindeer fur. like the others were wearing.
"We thank you for allowing us to join your tribe," she said, flashing him her warmest smile.
He looked uncomfortable. "We have had people travel with us before. Studying our ways, studying the distribution of the reindeer herds. We are honored to offer our hospitality."
"You speak excellent English, Vana," the Baroness said.
"I went to school in Kautokeino." he said.
Another Lapp had elbowed his way into the group. "Vana also speaks German and Norwegian," he said.
"This is Aslak, my brother," Vana said.
Aslak was tall, too. Not as tall as Vana, but he had a good six inches on most of the other Lapps. He gave Penelope a crinkly faced smile. His eyes were blue, too.
Penelope introduced the others. The Lapps were openly in awe of Skytop. "He is like the Grandfather of the Hill," one of the nomads said, craning his neck to look up into Skytop's face.
"He means the Chief looks like a bear," Eric said. "That's what the Lapps call them."
"The bear is sacred to us," Vana said. He closed his mouth immediately, as if he had said too much.
Wharton and Sumo had been busy dragging gear out into the snow. It didn't look like too much equipment for six people. The collapsible snowmobiles amounted to an extra knapsack apiece, and the guns and explosives and the specialized Arctic gear could have passed for bedrolls and duffle bags. Everything was wrapped in reindeer skins, like the Lapps' own possessions.
There was
only one package that seemed heavy. The flat bundle containing the laser autoclave. Sumo stayed close to it, never letting it out of arm's reach.
Vana and his people helped load the fur-wrapped bundles on sledges. The sledges were made of wood and leather, with wooden runners curving upward toward a bowed front. Vana and Aslak helped them hitch up the reindeer, big antlered bucks who waited patiently while the leather harnesses were attached. Penelope wondered where the legend of Santa and his elves had come from; the bundles stacked against the backboards of the sleighs looked no different from the reindeer skin packages the Lapps themselves were transporting.
The Lapps looked puzzled when Penelope and the others came out of the lodge again after changing to colorful embroidered tunics and hats. Most of the Swedish and Norwegian and Finnish government people they'd encountered wore nondescript winter gear. Penelope looked critically at her team. It would probably do; a Russian peering through binoculars from a distance wouldn't be able to tell much about scale, as long as Skytop and Wharton and Eric stayed a reasonable distance from the smaller Lapps while on the move.
But the Lapps forgot their puzzlement when Inga came out leading the two enormous white borzois. They crowded around like children, pure delight showing in their elvish features.
"Wolfhounds," Aslak said approvingly. "We have seen them work. This is good."
The Lapps' own dogs resembled spitz: smaller animals that yapped at the two borzois and circled them at a wary distance.
Vana said, "The wolves have been bad this year. Worse than usual. They are wild with hunger. They have grown bold beyond belief. They are carrying off the calves. It will be worse when we cross into Russia. Perhaps you will let your dogs hunt the wolf with us."
Penelope could see the savage excitement in his eyes. She felt an answering excitement. This man was a hunter. The hunter in herself recognized the predator in him, that fierce, pitiless force that was her own mainspring. And he was feeling it in her, she could tell. A spark passed between them. She showed Vana her strong white teeth in a primitive grin.
"Yes, Vana," she told him. "We'll hunt the wolf with you."
* * *
Gorev finished transcribing the code groups and took off his earphones. He switched off the short wave receiver and closed the desk drawer on it. He yawned, stretched and crossed the office to the wall safe, scowling as usual at the simple, cleanly functional furniture. He preferred the comfortable clutter of the Moscow offices: the Finnish headquarters always seemed bare to him.
Gorev was a small dark untidy man with a potbelly the size of a Georgian melon. Six years of being stationed in Helsinki and stuffing himself with smorgasbord and piirakka and Karelian hotpot had put it there.
The safe was behind a cheap framed lithograph of Sibelius. Gorev belched, and twisted the dial. The code pad, a one-time "gamma," was stuffed carelessly in the barrel of the Czech Omnipol automatic he kept hidden there.
He fished the gamma out with his fingernails. It was no larger than a postage stamp, its tissue-thin pages rolled up into an eraser-size tube. He brought it back to his desk. With a sigh, he got out a magnifying glass and set to work.
He glanced at the first five numbers of the transcribed message — the indicator group — and used them to locate the right page of the pad. He tore out the flimsy scrap of paper and smoothed it under his fingers.
He wrinkled his forehead, recalling the key phrase that was known only to him and his agent above the Arctic Circle. Ignorant savage, he thought contemptuously. But he'd been useful;
A cheap Balkan cigarette dangling from his lip, Gorev added the numbers derived from the phrase to the five-digit groups on the code pad. He traced the coordinates swiftly with a pencil, writing down the resulting letters one by one.
He scowled when he was finished. More problems. It would all come to nothing, as usual, he was sure, but whatever happened, he was sure to miss his dinner at the Holvi that evening.
He touched the end of his cigarette to the code page. The nitrated cellulose paper disappeared in an instantaneous flash. He put the rest of the pad back in the gun barrel and closed the safe on it.
Karp was sitting at his desk in the inner office, reading a chess manual. He slipped it under a pile of folders when Gorev came in and picked up a report. He looked up. "Yes, Comrade," he said sternly.
Gorev passed him the message. "Six people are crossing over to the Kola Peninsula with the Lapps," he said. "They're supposed to be Swedes. But they're talking mostly English."
Karp studied the paper, his thin lips compressed. He was spare and lean and functional, like the Finnish furniture that Gorev detested. He had a long, close-cropped skull with little ears plastered close to it, and a thin straight nose. His jacket was off, but the white starched shirt and necktie looked just as uncomfortable. Karp kept himself and his office very neat. It drove Gorev crazy, working for him.
"Most educated Swedes speak English," Karp said infuriatingly. "Some of them prefer it."
"Yes, Comrade," Gorev said. "But in view of the latest alert from Moscow, asking that we be on the lookout for any activities that might bear on the biological warfare laboratory on Cape Kanin, perhaps we should bring it to their attention."
Karp pursed his lips. "The Kola Peninsula is a big place. Moscow is not concerned about the wanderings of a primitive tribe. And it is separated from the Kanin Peninsula by forty miles of open water, scanned by radar."
"But…"
Karp went on. "If I wire Moscow, they will alert Penkin. Penkin is a madman. He will go wild. He will disrupt the activities of the laboratory, instituting unnecessary security measures. The last time he received a false alert, he put two scientists and a scientific administrator under arrest. He went so far as to abuse them. There were complaints. And we were blamed."
Gorev began to relax. He had done his duty. Nobody could say he hadn't. He had pointed out the importance of the message. But Karp, k'shastyu, was cautious. It was the one good trait that went with his finicky nature. It looked as if he'd be able to keep his date at the Holvi after all.
"No," Karp said with finality. "We will not wire Moscow tonight."
Gorev beamed. He could already taste the marvelous lihapullia and the kiiseli they served at the Holvi. And afterward… that goddesslike red-haired girl he'd met that afternoon at the Havis Amanda Fountain.
"We will look into it ourselves," Karp said. "If it is nothing, our report will say so. And if they are American spies, then we will warn Penkin. Or kill them ourselves."
"But how…" Gorev wrenched his mind from the fantasy he was having about the red-haired girl. Fiona, her name was. She was British — Scotch or something. She was in Helsinki for a holiday. Dying to pick up a man. She thought Russians were exotic. He'd had his hand under her blooska, and she hadn't said anything. She'd smiled, in fact. And she'd said yes immediately when he'd invited her to the Holvi.
Karp consulted his watch. "There's a flight to Ivalo in an hour. We can be there in four hours. We can rent snowmobiles and cold weather gear at the airport."
Gorev's face fell. Even if Fiona were still in Helsinki when he got back, she'd be sure to have picked up someone else. A hot devooshka like that didn't stay lonely for very long.
"Relax, Gorev," Karp said with a sadistic smile. "You're going to have a winter holiday. At the State's expense."
* * *
Penelope moved at an easy trot beside the sledge, her hand resting on the side rail. Ahead of her, in a loose triangular formation, were the reindeer, hundreds and hundreds of them, flowing across the dazzling landscape in eerie silence, their hoofbeats muffled by the snow. Only the children, the old, the ill and the pregnant were riding in the sledges; the Lapps were sparing the draft reindeer for now, reserving their strength for the hauling of goods, not people. It had been a long, hard winter. The animals' ribs were showing.
At the point of the triangle was the most important reindeer of the herd, the one they called Follower. Vana had explained it to
her. "He follows a man leading a haltered reindeer of his own free will. This sets an example for the other reindeer."
But there were stragglers. The Lapp herdsmen were continually rounding up strays and driving them back to the main body with their long staffs, aided by the yelping dogs. Joe Skytop was helping. Looking like some huge overstuffed rag doll in his gay skirted tunic and red leg wrappings, with his tall embroidered cap bobbing, the big Cherokee lumbered after strays with surprising agility, flapping his arms and yelping like a cowpuncher at a rodeo.
She could see the others, passable enough at a distance in their Lapp costumes, scattered throughout the migrating horde. Sumo was small enough to look authentic, but even Wharton and Eric, with their size and light hair, might have gotten by as Lapps with an admixture of Scandinavian blood.
But Skytop was definitely a problem. She had just about made up her mind to tell him to stop being helpful and make himself less conspicuous in the middle of the formation, when she became aware of someone loping along besides her.
It was Vana's brother, Aslak.
"You look like a true Lapp in your kojte and skallers," he grinned at her. "Only too tall."
"Thank you," she said. "You speak good English, Aslak."
"I went to school in Kautokeino, also." he said.
"And did you study German as well?"
He grimaced. "No. I had other interests. Vana is the scholar."
"Vana is a very accomplished man. Is he the leader of this sita?"
Unexpectedly, he laughed. "Vana? No, Vana wouldn't be interested. He is not… steady… enough. He would rather kill the bear and hunt the wolf."
"Well, that seems like a useful occupation. Protecting the herd."
"Oh, our people are grateful," he said in an odd tone. "Vana is famous all through Lapland. Vana the wolf hunter. They tell stories about him in four languages and the djavul knows how many dialects."
"He must be an exceptional shot." Penelope said. She remembered the gleaming Tikka rifles she'd seen among the sledges, lovingly polished and kept ready to hand by their owners.