Ice Station Wolfenstein

by Preston; Child

  "Hey now," Fatima chided. "Don't you talk like that! So you're finding that life isn't working out exactly the way you thought it would when you were young and naïve, so what? Mine isn't either. I was going to be Miss independent, remember? I was going to overwinter every winter because I could deal with the isolation and I didn't need other people in my life. Now look at me! All I want is to get to a point where I can settle down, stabilize my life, marry Evan, and live a happy, boring life. It's just what people do, Nina. There's nothing wrong with it." She glanced out of the window and caught sight of a familiar handful of buildings on the horizon. "Now lighten up—we're nearly at Novo, and if you're going to stay all whiny I'm going to switch places with Purdue. Ever had sex in a hovercraft?"

  "No!"

  "Me neither. It probably wouldn't be that great. My first boyfriend's car had a bigger back seat than this. But, you know, you and Purdue could find out what it's like. Totally out of academic interest, right? What was it again? A perfect combination of the erotic and the intellectual? You see? He didn't buy you into this trip just because he's hot for you—he's into your intelligence as well!"

  Nina pulled a face as they slowed down and the buzzing of the hovercraft diminished. "Well, that makes it all better," she said. "Thanks, F. You're a real help!"

  There are telephones in this building here—" Alexandr gestured at one of the handful of tiny prefabricated structures behind him—"and you may use them while we refuel if you wish. I believe Mr. Purdue has supplied a phone card in each of your packs, and this will be the last opportunity to telephone home before we reach Neumayer, where there is not yet a terrestrial phone connection. The satellite phone is not ideal for chit-chat calls, it is for emergencies only."

  Roughly half of the little group shuffled off toward the phones. Fatima disappeared to speak to some of the Novo team members whom she knew already, taking Nina along to introduce her. Purdue collared Alexandr and demanded to be shown the hovercrafts at once, as impatient as a schoolboy. Jefferson Daniels and Professor Matlock, who both had wives and children back home, took the opportunity to seek out the phones, as did the elderly gentleman. For want of anything else to do, Sam tagged along behind them. With every step he took in the thick, fleece-lined boots and unfamiliar cleats, he cursed his decision to join the expedition.

  When his turn on the phone arrived, he rang DCI Patrick Smith. There was no one else to call apart from his sister, and he had spoken to her on Christmas Day, just before leaving for the airport. She had been disappointed not to have her brother spend Christmas with her, but he could hear the relief in her voice when he told her that he was joining an expedition to research something he couldn't really talk about. That, she had said, sounded like the old Sam Cleave. A return to form. The first signs of Sam getting over what had happened that day in that warehouse.

  Sam was glad that she had taken some comfort in what she had heard rather than worrying about his safety in such hostile terrain, but he had nothing further to say to her at present and he lived in dread of her tendency to put the toddler on the phone. "Uncle Sam" had little to say that he thought would be a suitable topic of conversation for a two year old. He had little to say to Paddy either, but at least he could check how Bruichladdich was doing.

  "Aye, he's fine," Paddy's voice was distant over the crackly phone line. "Bruich's just fine. Thinks he's on his holidays. I come home after work and get a big ginger lump sat in my lap while I have my tea, and he gets a bit of whatever I'm having. It's a good system."

  "That's good," Sam said with a smile. He knew that Smith would spoil the cat rotten before his return. "Thanks for looking after him. I'll probably be out of contact until we get back to Novo, so don't worry if you don't hear from me—I'm not planning to die out here and stick you with the big ginger lummox indefinitely. Scratch him behind the ears from me. I'll be back when I'm back, and in the meantime, Happy New Year."

  "Happy New Year, Sam," said Paddy. "Hope you're having a good time out there. Stay safe."

  Sam stepped out of the rickety booth and braced himself for another crunchy, slippery trip across the ice to rejoin the group by the hovercrafts. As he took his first steps he noticed the old man in the next booth, with the phone pressed to his ear and a blank expression on his face. Sam paused for a moment. The man did not appear to be engaged in a conversation. He did not look as if he was listening to someone on the other end of the phone. He simply looked as if he was not present.

  Should I knock on the door? Sam wondered. See if there's anything I can do? He tried to watch surreptitiously, out of the corner of his eye, but it was difficult to be subtle in such an empty place. There was nothing he could pretend to read or be preoccupied by, no reason he could think of for continuing to stand there. Maybe that's just what he's like, Sam thought. Maybe he's talking to someone who just likes to ramble on and he's not really listening. Maybe that's the kind of relationship he's got with his wife, or his kids, or something. Or maybe he's just pretending to be using the phone so that people won't think he's lonely. Kind of like what I was doing, I suppose . . . except without Paddy as a convenient cover. He wouldn't thank me for pointing that out. I should probably leave him be. I've been here long enough that if he wasn't ok, if he needed any help, he'd have said by now.

  Sam turned away from the old man in the booth, left the ramshackle building, and picked his way across the ice toward the three waiting hovercrafts.

  "And then I told Ran that you can't let these little things get you down, you just have to go for it," Jefferson Daniels was in full flow as the hovercraft sped over the ice, sweeping away the kilometers beneath its thick cushions. "I mean, yeah, of course his family is going to worry about a man his age setting out on that sort of expedition, but they were worried the first time he climbed Kilimanjaro and he was fine. If we all let ourselves be held back by our families, nobody would ever achieve anything!"

  Sam leaned his head against the cold windowpane and stared out at the endless ice. He had expected there to be lots of snow in Antarctica, but all he had seen so far was ice—vast, dense sheets of it, all the way to the horizon where it met a slate-grey sky. A little way off he could see one of the other hovercraft buzzing along. He wished he was aboard it, rather than trapped in this confined space with Jefferson Daniels and Frank Matlock.

  "That's why I told Paige that we can't stand in Henley's way," Jefferson droned on. "She's sixteen now, and if she's ready to compete we have to let her."

  "Quite," Matlock chimed in. "Remind me though, what's her sport again? Skiing, was it?"

  "Snowboarding. She was real close to the halfpipe speed record last summer, but then she broke her collarbone and now Paige is worried and thinks we shouldn't let her train any more. But I said to her that the girl's a natural, and if we take that away from her we'll just be mean old mom and dad, and what will it do to her competitive spirit? She's a great kid, and she gets that you have to work hard and push yourself to get ahead. Undermining that right now would be the worst thing we could do."

  "Well, indeed. How is Paige, by the way? You must give her my love. I can hardly believe that it's been a year since I saw her last. The memory of her excellent New Year's Eve dinner lives on." Professor Matlock drew a deep sigh. "I think we can say with certainty that this year's celebration will not compare. What's happening here?"

  Sam turned his head to look out of the window on the other side of the hovercraft. Following Matlock's line of vision, he saw that one of the other vehicles, the one which had been farthest ahead, was rapidly slowing down. "Looks like they have a problem," Jefferson said, as their own transport began to decelerate.

  They came to a halt a short distance away. Partly curious and partly just bored of his companions, Sam wanted to climb out and find out what was going on, but the passenger door did not open. Only the pilot got out, returning some minutes later with Alexandr

  "We have what you might call a minor issue," Alexandr announced, pushing his ski goggles up onto his
forehead as he climbed into the cramped vehicle. "And we have what you might call a major one. The hovercraft in which Mr. Purdue is traveling is experiencing some slight difficulty with one of its air cushions. This is nothing that I cannot repair, but for that I would require time. This, unfortunately, we do not have. The Neumayer Station has alerted us that we are in the path of a storm, so we must make camp and wait it out before we continue our journey. Gentlemen, if you would be so good as to step outside, we shall erect the Space Station. With any luck, we shall be at Neumayer this time tomorrow." Abruptly, with no time for questions or responses, Alexandr ducked out of the passenger door and set off toward the remaining hovercraft.

  Sam, Jefferson, and Matlock glanced at one another. "Best do as he says," Jefferson said. "Last thing we need is to get caught in a storm with no shelter. Antarctic weather gets pretty vicious." For want of a better idea, Sam obediently followed the other two out onto the ice, where Jefferson made a beeline for an orange duffel bag lying on the ground nearby. Sam wondered what was so important about it, but it quickly became clear as Jefferson tugged it open and began to take out canvas and an assortment of poles.

  "That's the Space Station?" Sam was incredulous. "How is that going to keep us safe from a snow storm?" He lifted the canvas and rubbed it between his gloved fingers. "I've been to a T in the Park festival in sturdier tents than this."

  "I doubt it," Matlock scowled. "Didn't you do any research before coming on this trip, Mr. Cleave? Ah, forgive me, that's a silly question to ask of a journalist."

  Jefferson handed Sam a pole. "Here. Link this up with the other ones of the same color. You're looking at the last word in expedition technology, son. These tubes are reinforced scandium. You could drop an avalanche on this sucker and we'd all be safe inside. It's coated with titanium oxide, too, so you're safe from radiation down here where the ozone layer's at its thinnest. Trust me, if we're not going to make it to Neumayer today, there's nowhere I'd rather be than in a Space Station."

  Not even the pub? Sam thought. All he needs to do is grin into the camera and let the light flash off his teeth and he'd be the perfect commercial for whoever makes these tents. With clumsy hands he fitted the poles together while Jefferson and Matlock laid out the canvas and prepared the guy ropes. Within a few minutes they had been joined by Alexandr, Nina, and Fatima, and between the six of them they made short work of getting the tent up.

  Sam had to concede that it looked a lot more impressive once it was up. The strange apricot color was a little incongruous with the white surroundings, but it was comforting to see something so obviously built by humans in the vast expanse of nothingness. As the wind began to pick up around them, the little group filed gratefully into the tent. It was spacious inside, with more than enough room in the semi-sphere to accommodate everyone's sleeping bags, and although Sam did not relish the prospect of sharing a communal sleeping space with so many near-strangers, he was glad of their body heat as the air temperature inside began to creep upward.

  Alexandr had just set up the little Jetboil stove and began to heat some water when Purdue, Blomstein, and the old man arrived. It made sense to Sam that the old man had waited in the hovercraft while the tent was erected, but he thought it was a bit rich that both Purdue and his bodyguard had not come over and helped. Still, any animosity was quickly dispelled by the prospect of food—he was beginning to realize how quickly he was burning off calories in the Antarctic, and it felt like a long time since the PowerBar he had snacked on at the start of the hovercraft journey. He never would have imagined that rehydrated macaroni and cheese could smell so appealing, but as soon as the boiling water hit the sachet of dried food, his mouth began to water and he gripped his spork tightly in anticipation. Alexandr passed the sachets around, followed by steaming metal mugs of tea, and for a while the tent was silent apart from the sounds of titanium cutlery scraping silicon dishes.

  "Well, that might not be the fanciest New Year's Eve dinner I've ever had," Nina commented as she drained the last of her tea, "but it was certainly the most welcome."

  "You get used to the high-fat, freeze-dried stuff pretty quickly," said Fatima. "It's when you get home and have to go back to a normal diet that the trouble begins. The first time I came here I prepared by drinking pints of extra thick cream to get my weight up, then when I got back to British Columbia, I didn't have an excuse to down four thousand calories a day anymore."

  Sam thought back to the diet he had been on for the past few weeks, prior to their departure. He had received a delivery the day after he had agreed to join the expedition—Purdue's doing, of course—full of high-fat, high-calorie foods, a diet sheet and a note reminding him that the harsh conditions they would face would require him to bulk up. Although he was a wretched cook and disinclined to eat anything other than cereal at home, Sam had a policy of never turning down free food. He had devoured everything Purdue sent with a will, but his metabolism was still swift and he had not managed to gain more than few pounds by the time they set off.

  He had also been instructed to lay off the whisky, but that was never going to happen. A period of few weeks was nowhere near enough for Sam Cleave to quit smoking or drinking. He had made the decision that he would just have to take his chances. Of course, when he had done that he had imagined the Antarctic to be more or less like Scotland but with more snow. Here in this frozen wilderness, where the snow did not lie in fluffy drifts but whistled like bullets around the outside of the tent, he began to wish that he had had more time and inclination to prepare. Looking around the group, he wondered whether any of them—with the exception of the seasoned Antarctic explorers—were anywhere near tough enough to be making this crazy trip.

  Chapter 11

  SAM HAD NEVER really cared for Hogmanay. Seeing in the new year, bidding farewell to the old . . . it seemed so arbitrary to him. The first of January never felt all that different to the thirty-first of December, except that his hangovers were usually a little worse on the first. Patricia, in her endless optimism, had loved it. She said that the Scots knew how to celebrate properly. On the one New Year's Eve that they had spent together, two years earlier, she had insisted on honoring as many traditions as she knew. They had waited for the bells, toasted the new year with whisky, then she had made Sam open the living room window to let the old year out while she opened the door to welcome in the new. Sam had tried to persuade her to come to bed and spend the first hours of the year making love, but she had recently learned about first-footing and was determined that they must take coal and shortbread around to Paddy's to ensure a lucky, prosperous year for them all.

  So much for that little bit of superstition, Sam thought, shaking his head to rid himself of the images of Patricia, glowing with happiness at the prospect of starting the year with him, lying dead on a mortician's slab with most of her beautiful face missing fewer than six months later. He forced himself to concentrate on what was happening in front of him. Alexandr was making his way around the tent, weaving through the piled backpacks and sleeping bags spread out on the groundsheet, a small flask in his hand.

  "For you, for you, for you," he said as he poured tiny nips of clear liquid into each person's mug. "Yes, we are not supposed to be drinking alcohol out here in such cold places, but what is a celebration without a little vodka? And not just any vodka. This is such pure, such perfect vodka as you have never tasted, distilled by my cousin, Ivan Yevgeny Ivanovich, who anyone will tell you makes the best vodka in all Siberia—and in Siberia is the best vodka in all Russia. Tonight we celebrate the dawn of a new year, but also the beginning of an adventure!"

  As the minutes ticked away, getting ever closer to midnight, Alexandr began to regale the group with tales from his native Siberia. "There is a tradition which is, as far as any man knows, unique to my family," he half-whispered, forcing his companions to be silent and lean in to catch his words. "For where I grew up, deep in the remotest parts of Siberia, the Ke'let is known to walk. When I was only a small boy, perh
aps five years old, my father explained to me that as the New Year was being born, the Ke'let would make his rounds. He walks surrounded by his pack of dogs, built like wolves with sabre-sharp fangs, their eyes glowing green in the black night.

  "To look on the face of the Ke'let is the end of a man's life, for he is death to all who cross him. On the night of the New Year he goes out to select those who will die in the year to come, scratching his mark into the wood of their house with his long fingernails. So my father taught me that when the Ke'let walks, we must defy him. We must seek him out, him and his dogs. We must run bare-chested in the snow until we see the green glow of his hounds' eyes, and when we find him we must call out 'I am here, Ke'let! I claim my life for another year!'

  "And when he turns, we must stand and face him bravely. If he uncovers his face then we shall be granted a swift and honorable death, such as was accorded to my grandfather who faced the Ke'let and was taken. But if he does not, then we know that we shall not die this year, for the Ke'let has looked on our face and granted us another year. So when midnight tolls, I shall go in search of the Ke'let and see if he has followed me here." Alexandr grinned at the group, the light from the alcohol burner casting demonic shadows across his face as if he were a child playing at ghosts. "And any who wish to join me and claim their lives will be welcome to do so."

  For one spellbound moment there was silence in the tent. Then Nina laughed. "That's the best spooky story I've heard in years, Alexandr!" she said. "Bravo! But I don't think I fancy joining you out there tonight." She glanced toward the window. Although there was no true darkness in the Antarctic at this time of year, the thick grey clouds had obscured the daylight and all she could see was an unsettling, furious whirl of snow.