Ice Station Wolfenstein

by Preston; Child

  He pulled up outside the station. Sam, who could not think of a satisfactory response to Steven's strange outburst, simply climbed out of the car and thanked him for the lift.

  "One more thing," Steven leaned out of the car window, the engine purring. "I'd advise you to stay away from Nina too. Both of you would be better off keeping your heads down. Best not let her drag you in too deep. Just a friendly warning."

  "Errr . . . right." Sam said, wondering just how much of a weirdo this man really was. "Thanks."

  Once Steven's car had disappeared around the corner, Sam remembered the phone call. He decided to find out whether his assumption that it had been Nina was correct.

  "Nina Gould." Her voice was cool, professional. Maybe she doesn't have caller ID either, Sam thought.

  "Nina," he greeted her. "Nice bunch of crazies you sent me to see."

  "Hello Sam," she said. "Well, if I'd told you that my ex was a weirdo, would you have believed me?"

  "Probably not. Did you call me earlier?"

  "Yes, and it wasn't good news. Sam, I'm so sorry . . . it's the notebooks. I was looking after them, I promise, but I was out this afternoon and when I got home, someone had broken into my flat. The police have been around and they think it was just bad luck. Someone who knew what they were doing saw me going out, forced the lock and went for my computer. It looks like it was very clean and efficient, like they just shoved everything on my desk into a bag. And that . . . that included the notebooks. I'm really sorry. I can't believe this happened, right after everything I said about how I'd look after them."

  Sam made shushing noises. "It's ok," he reassured her. "It's fine. Are you ok?"

  "Yes."

  "Then that's the important thing."

  "If it's any consolation, I got a lot of work done on them over the past couple of days. That first night, I barely even slept. All of that work is in my notebooks, not my laptop. They weren't on my desk, I've still got them. And I had scanned a few bits and pieces and emailed them to myself, so I can retrieve them. Look, I have to go just now—I'm expecting the police to call me back any time now. Can we meet up once you're back?"

  "No problem," Sam said. "I'll be home tomorrow. I'll give you a shout."

  Then, since the last train for London had already left and he was not sure that the emergency credit card would stretch to cover a hotel room, Sam slunk into the station's waiting room, found a bench and settled down for the night.

  Chapter 5

  "WE SHOULD PROBABLY just pack this in," Sam said, setting down a round of drinks. Nina accepted her rum and Coke gratefully.

  "You think?" she said.

  "Well, we seem to be drawing a blank. Dr. Lehmann clammed up when I mentioned the notebooks and the ice station, and now the notebooks are gone, so it seems to me that we don't really have much to go on." Sam took a sip of his whisky, letting the bitter, malty taste spread across his tongue. "Unless you found something useful before the notebooks got stolen."

  In the fifteen minutes since they had met in the pub, Nina had done nothing but apologize for failing to protect the notebooks. Now, for the first time, her remorseful expression was replaced by a slow smile spreading across her face. "You know, I think I might have," she said.

  "You remember those little number puzzles in the margins?" Nina asked, "the ones that showed up in the typed sheets too? Well, I figured out what they are. Some of the people working at Peenemünde used them as a way of referring to places that couldn't be mentioned by name. When Kruger jots these little puzzles in the margin, it's a reminder of where the events he's writing about took place. He takes the coordinates of the place and multiplies the number by the age he was when he began working for the Reich Air Ministry. So if you know what age he was, you have the key to working out the coordinates."

  Sam was impressed. He clinked his glass against Nina's in a brief salute. "How the hell did you figure that out?"

  "Kruger might have been a brilliant scientist—and he was, because you didn't get recruited straight out of university if you weren't—but literary subtlety wasn't his thing. I put the notebooks in chronological order and started at the beginning. The first entry in the first book consists of Kruger writing about how amazing it was to be chosen for the team at Peenemünde at the early age of 22, and how 22 would always be his lucky number. So I started playing around with the numbers in the margins. I must admit, I was expecting it to be a bit more complicated than this, but I suppose Kruger wasn't anticipating that anyone would read his notebooks. Or perhaps he wanted anyone who read them to be able to figure it out. I don't know.

  "He writes from time to time about how he loves mystery novels, so I could believe that leaving clues would appeal to his imagination. Anyway, the first set of coordinates was for Peenemünde. Then later, when Kruger took a couple of trips to Kummersdorf, its coordinates start showing up. There were a few other places—Berlin, La Coupole in northern France, Kohnstein. All the coordinates checked out. Except one."

  Nina pulled her own notebook from her bag and flipped it open to show Sam a page covered in scribbled numbers. Her writing grew less neat and more frustrated as it progressed down the page. Near the bottom, where her patience had run out, the strokes of the pen nearly tore through the paper. "I just couldn't figure this one out," she sighed. "It only shows up toward the end of the notebooks, from around 1943. So eventually I just divided by 22 and searched online." She took a folded sheet of paper from the back of the book and spread it open for Sam to see.

  "What am I looking at?" Sam was perplexed. "It's nearly all white."

  "Exactly," said Nina triumphantly. "It's Antarctica. Specifically, it's New Schwabenland. It's exactly the area that the Nazis were considering as a possible Antarctic base . . . and Kruger seems to be claiming that he'd been there. This is the most compelling evidence I've seen that there genuinely was an attempt to set up a base there. Look at this—it was one of Kruger's last entries."

  Sam squinted at the page she indicated, struggling to decipher Nina's spiky writing. He had expected Harald Kruger's writing to be dry, academic, and full of advanced theories that were impossible for nonscientists to understand. Instead, what he found was something whimsical, something that read more like fiction than the thoughts of an eminent intellectual.

  It shall be the greatest of adventures! Worthy of Holmes, of Nemo, of Doctor Moreau! Since it now seems inevitable that the journey must be undertaken, it behooves us to approach it with [zeal? unclear]. Hidden away in that most remote of places, we few may discover the means by which we shall snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. To be personally selected by F [Fuhrer?] and entrusted with the richest of our nation's treasures . . . It is my fondest wish. I feel the call of the vastness once again and can only hope that I shall be permitted to answer it. Wolfenstein, I am for you!

  Sam wrinkled his nose. "Wee bit purple, isn't it? What's he referring to?"

  "It certainly is," Nina replied with a roll of her eyes. "I think . . . and this sounds crazy, but bear with me . . . There's a little-known theory that several Nazi scientists and a whole lot of the Reich's treasures were sneaked out of Germany when it became clear that the Allies were going to win. Some people even think—"

  "That Hitler was spirited away as well, and that his death in the bunker was faked?" Sam chipped in. "Yeah, it's not as little-known as you think. I got that from a stroll around the Internet."

  Nina took a deep breath before replying. "Perhaps I should have phrased that differently. There might be plenty of people who are familiar with the theory, but there are very few reputable historians who take it seriously, so in academic circles it's barely considered. Without evidence that the ice station—Wolfenstein, as he seems to be calling it—in New Schwabenland even existed, there was no reason to believe that any attempt was made to secrete anything there."

  "Hasn't anyone ever, you know, gone out there to look for it?" Sam asked.

  "Sam, look at the map!" Nina said. "We're talking about so
mewhere incredibly remote, it's not like you can just drive by and check it out. You've got to know what you're doing to survive in that environment—or have the resources to hire someone who knows. Mounting that kind of expedition costs, I don't know, tens of thousands? Maybe hundreds? And that's before . . ." she trailed off, a thoughtful expression on her face.

  "What?"

  "I have an idea." Nina was suddenly alight with excitement. "I have a friend, another academic. She's a marine virologist, and she's part of an expedition to Queen Maud Land—better known to you as New Schwabenland—early next year. I wonder . . ."

  It took Sam a moment to catch up. "You're not trying to get yourself to the Antarctic? Nina, that's insane."

  Nina shrugged. "Is it? It's not a huge amount of evidence, I know. But that's how discoveries are made, isn't it? If I wait for someone else to get out there and prove there's an ice station to be discovered, it won't be me making the discovery. And I'm just spinning my wheels here. I'm teaching stuff I could recite in my sleep, I'm writing papers I don't give a toss about just to keep my publication record up to date. Frankly, if there's a chance to do something exciting at this point in my life, I'm damn well going to take it." She drained her glass and slammed it down on the table. "What did Dr. Lehmann say about the ice station?"

  "Not much," said Sam. "Just that it existed—he called it by name, so he's clearly heard of it—and that we shouldn't look for it. Then he got caught up thinking about you and his son and I couldn't get any more out of him."

  "Ugh, his son," Nina shuddered. "How is dear Steven?"

  "Jealous, I think," Sam said. "He didn't seem to like me very much. Seemed to think you and I had something going on."

  "Sounds like him." Nina's rosebud mouth gathered into a scowl. "Never mind the fact that he's got a wife and baby and that I finished things over a year ago. Sorry if he made things awkward for you. People skills aren't really his thing, as I'm sure his wife could attest."

  "Sounds like there's a story there."

  "I don't want to bore you."

  After all the puzzles and confusion of the past week, Sam was more than ready for a tale of a simple relationship drama. Besides, Nina looked like she needed to unload. He listened as she poured out the story of how she had met Steven Lehmann when she was visiting his father. She had mistaken his coldness for mystery, his desperate need for fulfillment for love. Up to her eyes in stress during the final year of her doctorate, eager for excitement and purpose, Nina had persuaded herself that she was in love with Steven.

  For two years they had met up in hotels, spent weekends abroad together, he had visited her at her flat. All the while, Dr. Lehmann had warned Nina to be careful of his son. Gradually she had come to realize that Steven was a strange, cold man whose pleasure was derived from control. When she had finally learned of the existence of his wife, she had only been half-surprised.

  Since their relationship had ended, Nina had learned that Steven had no intention of letting her go easily. "I think he thinks he's some kind of mafia boss," she snarled, draining her third rum and Coke. "You know—sending messages and all that nonsense. For a while I kept finding shredded violets on my doorstep. He knew they were my favorite flower, so he'd have them ripped up and sent to me. Once he texted me and said he'd heard that I was seeing someone, and that I'd better not be or he'd do something about it.

  "It would be funny if it weren't for the fact that he genuinely has some scary contacts. Not underworld, or anything like that—he's far too posh. But he's friends with some worryingly powerful people. You remember that arms dealer who got arrested, the politician's son? Charles Whitsun, I think? He was one of Steven's friends. They'd been at school together. Apparently they used to get drunk and—Sam, are you ok?"

  Sam was not ok. He had finally realized where he and Steven Lehmann recognized each other from. Charles Whitsun was a name that no one had said in Sam's presence since the investigation into Patricia's death had ended. Charles Whitsun and his arms-dealing cronies were the reason she was dead, and Sam Cleave's testimony was the reason why Charles Whitsun had been sentenced to thirty-eight years in prison. Not that he served them. He had blown his own brains out rather than face jail. No wonder he wasn't happy at the idea of me and Nina getting together, Sam thought.

  "Sam?" Nina's voice called him back to the moment. She looked worried. While Sam had been having his moment of unpleasant realization, it seemed she had been having one of her own. "Sam . . . I don't suppose Steven knew what you were discussing with his father, did he?"

  Automatically, Sam shook his head. Yet as he did so, he remembered Steven Lehmann hovering outside the study, fooling around with a plug and socket. He remembered that something had caught his eye as he left the room, though he had been too tired to recognize the lumped shape of the device plugged into the wall just a few feet away from where they had been sitting. Of course Steven had heard their conversation. That device was a baby monitor.

  Chapter 6

  NINA,

  You've already had your house burgled. Was that not enough of a warning? Tell me you're not still planning to go looking for this fucking magical imaginary ice station? Even if it did exist once, it's probably just a few shards of rusty metal sticking out of the ice now. Wouldn't someone have flown over and seen it, if it was really still there? Honestly. Just leave it.

  Sam

  Nina read the email while she drank her coffee. The time stamp read 04:07. Just a few hours earlier, Sam had been worrying about her. She felt a little bit guilty. It had not been her intention to worry him when she told him that she had applied for emergency funding for the Antarctic expedition. It was just that she had no one else she could tell. Her relationship with her fellow academics was not close, and the relationship with Steven had cost her the couple of good friends she'd had. Sam Cleave might be a new acquaintance, but he was currently the closest thing to a friend that she had. A damaged, heavy-drinking friend. A match made in . . . somewhere, she thought.

  A little time online had revealed a lot about Sam Cleave. Nina had tried to resist the temptation to pry, but what had begun with looking for his Braxfield Tower story had ended with her reading all about his days as a prize-winning investigative journalist. She had not seen him during the past ten days, since their conversation in the pub, but she had been steadily working her way through every article she could find regarding his role in smashing that international arms ring.

  Sam had really been through the mill, it seemed. His work on the arms ring story might have netted him a Pulitzer, but it had almost cost him his life when he got caught in the crossfire between the arms dealers and Interpol. A fellow journalist had been shot right in front of him. Nina could only imagine what that would have done to him. It certainly explained the drinking and his sudden cold feet about continuing to investigate Harald Kruger's evidence.

  For the past ten days, Sam had contacted her on a daily basis to ask her to withdraw her application for emergency funding. He was convinced that the notebooks had been stolen on the orders of Steven Lehmann and that digging any deeper would bring her into danger. Nina was equally convinced that he was wrong. She could believe that Steven would threaten and bully and throw his weight about, and she could easily imagine that it was concern about this that had stopped Dr. Lehmann from talking. However, Steven had never gone further than that. For all his powerful contacts, Steven was held in check by his own sense of limitations. Nina knew him better than anyone. She was sure she was right.

  The alarm on her phone beeped. She silenced it. Ten minutes until she needed to leave the house. Just enough time to send Sam a quick reply.

  Sam,

  I should find out about funding today. If I get it, I'm going. Stop worrying. I'll let you know how it goes.

  Nina

  She hit Send, drained her coffee cup, pulled on her coat, scarf, and gloves and headed off to meet her department head.

  "Dr. Gould." Professor Frank Matlock leaned forward, his elbows on
his desk and his fingers steepled. Nina bit the inside of her cheek, refusing to be intimidated. She remembered this tactic all too well from the early days of her doctoral research, before she had been reassigned to a different supervisor.

  "Allow me to make sure that I have got this straight," Matlock sighed gently. "You wish the department to grant you emergency funding so that you can join an Antarctic expedition. This expedition may or may not be going to a place where you believe there to be the remains of a secret Nazi ice station. Wolfenstein, I believe you said? How melodramatic. And this ice station is so very secret that there is, in fact, no definite proof that it exists—apart from a collection of notebooks which you alone have seen, but are unable to present.

  "The theory of the lost ice station is one to which no reputable scholar gives credence, but one which is beloved of Internet conspiracy theorists. Yet you believe that in a matter of a few days, you have been able to establish its exact location, and you are willing to stake a great deal of money—the department's money—on your accuracy. This," he brandished the printed map on which Nina had marked the station's location, along with a note of its coordinates, "is the only surety you offer."

  Nina folded her hands in her lap. She had been in Professor Matlock's office many times, but it never ceased to intimidate her. There were books on his walls that were worth her entire salary. His desk featured prominently displayed photographs of him with various famous historians and literary figures. The latest addition, hung proudly above his leather armchair, showed Matlock at the summit of Piz Roseg, the culmination of a summer holiday spent with his dear friend Jefferson Daniels—who just happened to be a famous explorer. Even Matlock's holiday snaps were status symbols. The entire room seemed to be designed to make her feel small, insecure, insignificant, and unlikely to amount to anything academically.