Ice Station Wolfenstein

by Preston; Child

  The corridor opened out into a large, hangar-like room where their footsteps and voices echoed and the torch beams stretched out into the distance. A little exploration revealed a number of massive engines, presumably designed to power the whole station.

  "Let's find a way to get these running!" Purdue clapped his hands in delight. "Alexandr, what do you think? Between the two of us we should be able to find a way, should we not?"

  "Certainly," Alexandr smirked. "You can smell the diesel, yes? I have never yet found a diesel engine that I could not make run." He pointed his torch toward the base of one of the engines, sizing it up.

  "Purdue!" Jefferson Daniels' voice rang out, followed by the sound of a body slumping to the ground. The beams of light zoomed around in the direction of the voice, revealing Jefferson crouching beside the fallen Admiral Whitsun. Fatima was at his side in a second, scrutinizing the admiral's ashen face, wriggling her fingers into the neckline of his snowsuit to check his pulse.

  "He's ok," she pronounced. "His pulse is steady; I don't think he's in any danger. He's probably just exhausted, and it's a lot warmer in here than outside, so he might be overheating. We need to find somewhere for him to rest and we can keep an eye on him."

  "Very well," said Purdue. "The engines will wait, I suppose. Alexandr, can you take a few people and find us quarters of some kind? It's probably best if we don't drag the admiral along on the search."

  Alexandr nodded smartly and pointed to Nina, Sam, and Matlock. "With me," he said, then turned on his heel and set off toward the nearest door. The trio that he had selected fell into line at once. Nina caught up with Alexandr and began discussing the probable layout of the ice station.

  "If this is the main furnace room, there should be stairs to all the other levels nearby," she said. There was a tone in her voice that Sam had never heard before—a rushed, gabbling quality, slightly breathy, quite unlike Nina's usual controlled lecturer's tone. He could not tell whether it was simply excitement causing the change, or a touch of fear. "I wish I'd had a chance to copy more of those notes, because I'm completely working from memory here—but there was something in Kruger's notebooks about the main staircases, and one of them was right next to the engine room. So let's all keep a lookout—somewhere along here there's got to be a door."

  Nina was right, of course. Her memory and sense of direction were both good. They had gone a little way along the corridor when they found the stairway and followed it down to the level below. A forbidding metal door stood in front of them, marked Schlafsale. Because Nina nodded and reached for the handle, Sam assumed that they had found the dormitories and followed her into a long, narrow, pitch-black room.

  The walls were lined with slim bunks, stripped bare to reveal grey mattresses. Under normal circumstances Sam would have found them uninviting, but after a few nights in the tent and the long, choppy sea journey, he had to fight the impulse to hurl himself onto one and sleep for at least forty-eight hours. The beam from Alexandr's torch flashed back and forth as he made a quick inspection of the rest of the room. In the darkness there was the sound of a long-closed cupboard being yanked open.

  "Blankets!" Alexandr's voice rang out. "We are in luck, my friends! Here, take this and make up some beds. I shall go and fetch the others." In a flicker of footsteps and torch beams he was gone, leaving Sam and Nina alone in the dormitory with their arms full of sheets and blankets.

  Sam took his armload of bedding and dumped it on one of the bunks, then balanced his torch on the bunk opposite so that he could see what he was doing. The bedding had been neatly arranged in piles consisting of a white sheet, a pillowcase, and a grey blanket, though Sam's decision to toss them onto the mattress had sent this system into disarray. He unfolded item after item until he had a complete set, then began putting the sheet on the bed.

  "Aren't these amazing?" Nina was in heaven, though her progress with the bed-making was slow thanks to her need to examine the sheets in detail. At least it kept her distracted, keeping her claustrophobia at bay. "All these things have been here since the 1940s, completely undisturbed . . . No one else has touched these, not since the people who staffed this base! We're going to be sleeping in their actual beds, in this actual dormitory—I know it's morbid and horrible, but there's something so incredible about being the first people to see these things and getting to interact with the artifacts this way! We need to photograph everything, absolutely everything. Look, the sheets are tagged with the serial numbers of the people they'd been issued to! We should be able to find out exactly who each of these sets belonged to—it's incredible!"

  Sam fumbled with the stiff mattress, shoving the corner of the sheet beneath it. "So you're telling me that Nazis managed to build this station, but they couldn't manage fitted sheets? Do you know how to do corners?"

  "Nope. Just tuck them in and hope for the best."

  They continued making the beds inexpertly until they had prepared enough bunks for everyone. By that time the rest of the party had arrived, and Admiral Whitsun was very nearly back on his feet, being helped along by Jefferson and Professor Matlock. They eased him into the nearest bunk, then the group bedded down for the night, their torches blinking out one by one.

  Sam flung his arm across his face as bright light flooded the room. In his semiconscious state he heard yells and groans from the others as they protested at the sudden glare. He tried to force his eyes open, but all he could see was painful whiteness. As he rubbed them and waited for the flashing behind his eyelids to stop, there was a rattle of footsteps dashing down the metal staircase outside. The door flew open and Nina and Alexandr tumbled in, giggling like schoolchildren.

  "And God saw the light," Alexandr declaimed, flinging his arms wide, "and it was good, and he divided the light from the darkness! I told you that I had never yet seen the diesel engine that I could not make work! Not even after so many years of sitting idle!"

  Sam hauled himself up onto one elbow and squinted at the Russian. "You got the lights working?"

  Alexandr grinned and hoisted his flask in a salute. "Nastrovje," he smirked. "Miss Nina here could not wait to go exploring, so I had to provide her with light to see by. She was kind enough to translate a few things as we went along."

  "It wasn't quite like that," Nina confessed, speaking low enough that only Sam could hear. "I'm excited, yes, but the darkness and the confined space were really getting to me. Alexandr was awake and overheard me trying to talk myself down from a claustrophobic freak-out, so he suggested that we go and see if we could make the lights work."

  "Feels like you got the heat working as well," Sam observed. Nina shook her head.

  "No. We can't take credit for that, I'm afraid. I don't think it's actually any warmer than it was last night, but we were all too tired and shivery to notice. There are radiators at intervals along the corridors, and all the pipes are warm. There's even a bathroom complete with hot water along the corridor. Just hot, though—no cold. There must be hot springs feeding the water supply, keeping the place warm naturally."

  "Hot springs? In Antarctica?"

  "You would be surprised," said Alexandr "There are several. Many are below the glaciers, but some are accessible—on Deception Island there are beaches where the springs run so close to the surface that you can dig your own hot tub. It's not allowed any more, no one can legally disturb the ground . . . but it's still possible." Sam watched the devilish smile spread across Alexandr's face as he spoke. He got the impression that a little thing like the law would never stop Alexandr from doing precisely what he wanted.

  "Come on!" Nina dragged Sam's blankets off, snatched up his pile of clothes from the end of the bunk and threw them at him. "Get up! We've got exploring to do and you need to bring your camera. There's something I really need you to get pictures of. It's kind of gruesome, though."

  "What is it?"

  "There's a furnace up in the engine room," Nina grimaced, "and it looks like someone had an accident up there. Alexandr was taking
a look at it and he found a few buttons—someone had obviously burned some clothes, but the fire wasn't hot enough to melt the buttons."

  "Wow. Buttons. Scary." Sam rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and pulled on his sweater.

  "Shut it," said Nina. "I haven't got to the creepy bit yet. We found bones in the furnace. Well, bone fragments. It's got a pretty big door. Some poor sod must have tripped and fallen into it."

  "Or he got pushed," Sam suggested. "Maybe that's what happened to the Nazis here. Some big Agatha Christie–style murder mystery, but no one solved it so they all got killed. Maybe we'll find the rest of them while we're here, one by one, in all sorts of weird places."

  "Grim way to go, however it happened. Now, are you ready? We've got lots to see."

  "What about breakfast?" Still too sleepy for anything other than obedience, Sam began hauling his trousers over his thermal underwear.

  "There's a sign on the stairwell that says the refectory's downstairs. Alexandr's going to head down and see if there's anything there that works, but we've got time for a quick look around while he gets things going. We won't go too far. Just up and down the stairs. We'll get a rough idea of what's on each level, then we'll head back right in time for a cup of tea and some delicious rehydrated mush. Come on!"

  They clanked their way down the metal stairs, stopping on each landing to look down the long corridors. Next to the refectory were more dormitories, and on the level below were individual bedrooms. "Officers' quarters," said Nina, putting her head around a door. "There are plenty to go around. We should move down here and have rooms to ourselves."

  Another flight of stairs took them to a corridor that appeared to be almost empty, apart from a single, unmarked door halfway along. Sam forced the stiff handle to turn, and they stepped into a vast, echoing room lit with eerie green light. Unlike the rooms above, its walls were not corrugated metal or wooden planks, but simply smooth rock. It looked as if the walls had been smoothed by prolonged exposure to water, but at some point that water had been drained or dammed leaving only this cave-like room . . . a perfect dry dock, designed to hold three U-boats. Two of the pens were flooded with icy water that lapped gently against the sides of the enclosures, but in the third, at the far end of the room, sat a majestic and menacing German submarine.

  "Wow," Nina sighed, then strode along the narrow walkway that led from one pen to another. She reached the U-boat and laid both hands on the metal. "They actually did it, Sam. An Antarctic base. It's insane."

  Sam searched his brain for a witty or insightful response, but in truth he was overwhelmed. It was one thing to agree to come to the Antarctic in search of this place, expecting it either to be a fairytale or to be nothing but ruins. It was quite another to find himself standing in a subterranean U-boat dock with incontrovertible evidence of the place's existence. He let Nina continue to chatter excitedly about the make and model of the submarine and speculate on what the implications of this ice station were for the rest of Nazi history, while Sam made himself useful and began taking as many photographs as he could.

  Chapter 17

  "YOU'RE KIDDING?" Jefferson Daniels' eyes were wide and incredulous. "An actual U-boat? No way. That's impossible."

  A peal of laughter rang out, echoing around the metal-lined room. It came from Purdue, who was leaning against the wall in an attitude of careful casualness. "Forgive me, Mr. Daniels," he said as all eyes turned toward him. "But surely you see the absurdity? No? You—all of you—have just spent the night in an ice station that you thought to be mythical. We are here in a place that you didn't believe existed, and now you can't believe that it could possibly have a U-boat in the dock?" He chuckled again and sipped delicately at his coffee. Jefferson scowled and shoveled another forkful of scrambled egg into his mouth. "Oh, don't sulk," Purdue chided. "I'm only teasing. Besides, you'll want to look your best when we head down to look at this fabled U-boat—or weren't you planning to be photographed with it?"

  Sure enough, after breakfast the group made its way down to the subterranean dock and Jefferson was first in line to have his picture taken with the metal leviathan. Sam unfolded his tripod and resigned himself to a morning spent playing photographer. One by one his companions posed beside the U-boat while Sam snapped away. Nina's pictures were endearingly enthusiastic. She could not tear her gaze away from the submarine long enough to glance at the camera, and her excitement was contagious.

  At the opposite end of the spectrum was Admiral Whitsun, now recovering from the previous day's exertions and back on his feet. He simply laid a hand on the U-boat and stood in silent contemplation. Sam snapped away as unobtrusively as he could, eager not to disturb the admiral's reverie. At last, the old man straightened up and nodded, then stepped smartly away from the submarine. "Thank you, Mr. Cleave," he said softly.

  "No problem," said Sam. "Do you mind if I ask, though . . . what were you thinking about? You don't have to tell me, it's just—it made for some really powerful images."

  "No, no," Admiral Whitsun replied. His eyes were slightly distant and a small smile played around his lips. "It's all right. I'll tell you. I was thinking of my father. I was wondering whether this might be the very vehicle that brought him here. Assuming, of course, that this is where he ended up—and that he never left. I don't think I've felt so closely connected to him since I was a boy."

  As Sam listened to the wistful old man, he felt a familiar prickle of guilt creeping down his spine. He still did not know whether Admiral Whitsun recognized him, or whether he would feel that Sam was responsible for the death of his son. Watching him seeking an answer to his father's fate, Sam could only assume that family was important to him, that he had probably taken the loss of his only child hard. Despite the fact that he had done nothing but bring an arms dealer to justice, Sam wanted to apologize. He longed to explain to the admiral that he had only wanted to make things better, that he himself had suffered a major loss, and that if he could go back and prevent himself from getting involved, he would. The two of them stood silently, each lost in their reverie.

  "Nina!" Alexandr called out, making Sam jump. He looked around to see where their guide's voice was coming from, but he could not see him.

  "Yes?" Nina yelled back. "What is it? Where are you?"

  "Here!" Suddenly Alexandr's head appeared through a small hatch in the floor, barely visible in a dingy corner where the hole almost blended in to the rocks. "I found another room. Now I need you to translate something for me."

  From the corner where he and Jefferson Daniels had been chatting in low voices, Professor Matlock immediately piped up. "Excuse me, Mr. Arichenkov—you may not be aware of this, but I am Dr. Gould's superior within the department. Should you require linguistic or historical expertise, your first port of call should really be me. I outrank her."

  Alexandr looked Professor Matlock up and down. The expression on his face was impossible to read. For a split-second he looked as if he might explode at Matlock, then that look crystallized into something darker and harder, which was then replaced by a burst of laughter and a twinkling, mirthful look that was completely at odds with his expression of a moment before. "You can come too," he shrugged. "I like Nina. I trust her. She is the one I choose to help me, but I suppose two heads are better than one, are they not? This way."

  He disappeared into the dark hole, followed first by Nina, then by Matlock. There was quiet for a few moments, just the sound of muffled voices coming from the new room, then the sound of Nina swearing and walking back toward the ladder.

  "You ok?" Fatima asked, as Nina climbed back into the dock room.

  "Yes, I'm fine," Nina rolled her eyes. "Just exasperated. We found a switch in there and Alexandr and Professor Matlock are both in favor of just flipping it to see what happens. I said I don't think we should, but they're determined. So I said we need to put it to a vote."

  "It's clearly nothing harmful." Professor Matlock was next to appear. "Nina here is just being hysterical. Being
surrounded by all of this is evidently a little too much for you, Dr. Gould—but then, I keep forgetting how few sites like this you've been on. It can be somewhat overwhelming until experience breeds level-headedness."

  Nina gritted her teeth. "At risk of destroying my already tattered career prospects," she said with as much composure as she could muster, "Don't talk to me like that. It's not hysteria, it's common sense. We're in a building we don't know much about, we find a switch marked "power supply" even though we've already found and activated the power source, and you want to just flip this switch? Frankly, Professor Matlock, that's insane."

  "Watch your tongue, Dr. Gould!" Matlock snapped. "I know a great deal more about this kind of setup than you, and our Antarctic expert agrees with me—don't you, Mr. Arichenkov?"

  "Yes, Professor Matlock, I do," Alexander said, stepping off the ladder. "But not for the reasons you think. I believe that we should throw the switch precisely because we don't know what it does. It is the simplest way to find out. We know that it controls the power supply to something—let us find out what!"

  "Yes, that's a great idea!" Nina threw up her hands in rage. "Let's all pile into the tiny, cramped underground room where we have no way of summoning help because we can't get a signal on the satellite phone, then we'll start pushing buttons! Am I really the only one who thinks that might go even slightly wrong?" She shook her head and grappled her temper back under control.

  "Look, Alexandr, I take your point about it being the quickest way. But I'm really concerned that it might control the flood gate for one of these pens, or even some kind of emergency mechanism to flood the whole level. It's too much of a risk. Look, even if you're completely hell-bent on the idea, can't we put it to a vote? Please? At least give everyone a chance to have their say before they—"