Ice Station Wolfenstein

by Preston; Child

  After several long, silent minutes, the door swung open and Major Alfsson appeared, along with Admiral Whitsun. The young soldier helped the old man into a seat, then sat down himself. It was Admiral Whitsun who spoke first.

  "I fear I must apologize for keeping you all waiting so long," he said. "I realize that this is an alarming situation, and I am sorry to have been the cause of any delay—but I had another turn while Major Alfsson and I were talking, and he was kind enough to summon his company's medic and ensure that I was well. Unfortunately this detained him from communicating with his superior officers."

  "I have now spoken to them," Alfsson said. "Our primary concern, of course, is to ensure your safety until we can establish contact with Neumayer Station and arrange your transport. But while you are here, my instructions are to ask you to share whatever information you have regarding this place. There are areas that we are still attempting to access and it seems possible that you might be able to help us. We had been working on the door that you opened for some time."

  "Might we ask how long you've been here?" Purdue spoke up. "If we are to share information with you, it would be a gesture of good faith if you were to share yours with us."

  "I'm sorry, sir," said Alfsson, "but I am not at liberty to disclose that information. All I can tell you is that we had been here long enough to get frustrated by some of the doors—but then, I am not a patient man."

  "Then we've got that much in common," Purdue muttered to himself, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms sulkily.

  "I have told Major Alfsson the basic details of our mission." Admiral Whitsun's breathing was becoming a little labored, though he remained sitting bolt upright and looking alert. "After a certain amount of negotiation, his superiors were willing to permit us not only to stay until our transport is arranged, but also to allow us to continue our explorations—provided we agree to remain under escort at all times. I trust we are all agreed?"

  A ripple of nods ran around the table, punctuated by some relieved sighs as the less optimistic members of the group realized that they were not on the point of being shot after all.

  "Great," said Major Alfsson. "Let's make a start."

  Chapter 19

  THE SECTION OF the ice station that was occupied by the PMCs was uniformly brighter and a little more modern-looking than the area occupied by Sam and the others. As they marched through the corridors Sam saw a couple of rooms that were clearly dormitories, but apart from the meeting room there was no sign of anything more interesting than living quarters.

  Two stories up and along another passageway, they came to the door that had been causing the PMCs so much trouble. It was very similar to the one that they had opened earlier in the day.

  "We've been working on this for some time," said Major Alfsson, patting the heavy metal of the door. "It seems to be resistant to more or less everything. We haven't been able to figure out the combination, and it seems to be impossible to wrench the thing open. Our next step is to try explosives, but I would prefer that you take a look at it first rather than risk destabilizing the tunnels."

  Purdue stepped forward and examined the dial. He laid his long fingers on it and gently, very gently began to spin it. His face was less than an inch from the steel, his eyes shut, his expression one of rapt concentration. Silently, Sam raised his camera and stole a picture. He had never seen Purdue looking peaceful before. As the first tumbler clicked into place, Purdue smiled in simple joy. It took him less time than the previous door. Sam wondered whether the combination was the same, but he never had a chance to ask. The moment Purdue cracked the lock, a cheer went up from some of the PMCs that drowned out Sam's attempt to speak.

  "You next, Nina!" The look of manic excitement was back in Purdue's eyes. "Look at the lock; does it look the same to you as the last one?"

  Nina looked back over her shoulder at Sam as Purdue grabbed her by the hand and pulled her forward. "That wasn't really my discovery," she said. "It was Sam who spotted the shape."

  "No matter, no matter. Did you bring the key with you, or is it still in the other door?"

  "It's here," Nina reached into her pocket and pulled out the ring with its strange, bulbous protrusions. She slotted it into the door and sure enough, the handle sprang forward. "You open this one," she said to Major Alfsson. "We got enough of a surprise with the last one we opened."

  "Wow . . ." Before anyone could stop her, Nina charged into the new corridor. All the way along it were long, narrow windows looking into huge laboratories lined with sinks, gas taps, and burners, microscopes, and pieces of equipment that most of the group did not recognize. "I need a closer look at this." Nina moved toward the door, but Major Alfsson barred her way.

  "With respect, Dr. Gould," he said, "we can't let you in there until our men have been in to make sure it's safe. Let's continue."

  Nina looked disappointed, but chose not to argue. She rejoined the group members, but as they continued to march she could not resist staring longingly into each window that they passed. "We'd better bring a fresh SD card when we get permission to look around these," she whispered to Sam. "We're going to want to get a record of everything." Sam nodded. Despite his reservations about their safety, he was feeling those old pangs of satisfaction at being the first to see and record things. He remembered the excitement he had once felt when he knew that his camera contained the only evidence of whatever he had been investigating.

  Back then, ambition had been a part of his life. He had planned to capitalize on his scoops and his success and become rich enough that he and Trish would be able to do whatever they liked. He had not imagined that he would ever experience even a flicker of that feeling again, but somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach he could sense that little thrill that came from having secret, potentially dangerous information.

  At the end of the corridor they came to a set of double doors, which Major Alfsson wrenched open. Beyond the doors lay a vast cylindrical hangar, several stories high, reaching all the way up to what must have been the surface of the ice. Every level consisted of a narrow walkway all the way around the walls, all centered around the massive missile that stood partly constructed, awaiting completion.

  There was complete silence in the room. No one had been expecting this, and very few of them had ever seen such a sight before. The missile was breathtaking in its sheer scale and terrifying power, even in its incomplete state. The skeleton of it was fully built, but its covering was not and its mechanisms were exposed in many places. On instinct, Sam lifted his camera and prepared the shot.

  "Sir, you need to put the camera down!" Major Alfsson's voice was urgent. "You need to put the camera down now. Everybody turn around and return to the corridor. This room is unsafe for civilian occupation and is off limits until further notice."

  As he spoke, his fellow soldiers began rapidly shepherding the expedition party out of the missile hangar. Purdue was extremely reluctant to leave. Only when Major Alfsson stood in front of him and adjusted his gun with unsubtle menace did he finally drag himself away from the railing that separated the walkway from the missile.

  Once they were back in the corridor, Major Alfsson ordered two of his men to stand guard at the double doors. "You are welcome to look around the rest of the facility," he said, addressing the expedition party, "provided you do so under escort." He signaled to a couple of soldiers who separated themselves from their platoon and joined Sam and the others. "We will ensure that you are safe at all times. Thank you for your assistance with the locks. Now, I will go and find out whether we've established contact with Neumayer yet."

  Purdue stepped out from the group and attempted to take the major aside for a quiet word, but Major Alfsson did not respond well to Purdue's light touch on his arm. He stopped in his tracks and stood at ease, refusing to be drawn aside, forcing Purdue to state his business in front of the company.

  "Major Alfsson," Purdue said quietly, "I realize the dangers of having a large group of people in that
room, but I specialize in nanotechnology and have experience with ballistics, so having another look in there is of particular professional interest to me. I wonder if I might persuade you . . ."

  "The hangar is out of bounds, sir. You are welcome to explore the rest of the facility. Under escort."

  Purdue pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Yes, I understand that. However, I am quite capable of taking responsibility for my own safety. Just five minutes, that's all I ask—no photography, no disturbance, just the briefest of looks—"

  Major Alfsson raised a hand to halt Purdue's speech. Sam, who was pressed up against Ziv Blomstein in the crowded corridor, felt the bodyguard instinctively reach for the place where his gun had been. "Sir. The hangar is out of bounds. You are welcome to explore—"

  "Damn it, man, I want to see what's in there!" Purdue exploded, his face flushing a sudden pink. "Do you have any idea what you're obstructing here? Let me in or I promise you, you won't—"

  "Escort this man back to his quarters immediately." The major's tone was curt, dismissive. Instantly a pair of soldiers marched forward and stood on either side of Purdue, who gave an irritated snort but did not push his luck any longer. He beckoned Blomstein to accompany him and allowed himself to be led away. Moments later Major Alfsson and the rest of his company disappeared back toward the control room, leaving only the expedition party, their guards, and the soldiers blocking the entrance to the hangar.

  "Well, I don't know about you guys," said Fatima, as the sound of marching footsteps died away in the distance, "but I really want to see these labs. Come on."

  The air in the laboratory was musty and still, apparently undisturbed for decades. For several long moments the group was completely silent, each lost in thought. Nina and Matlock briefly set their differences aside, united by the presence of their specialist subject all around them. They gravitated toward the neat stack of notebooks that sat at the end of the nearest workbench, but their hands hovered above the books, neither prepared to disturb them yet.

  It was Admiral Whitsun who picked up the first book. He lifted it lovingly, holding it to his nose and inhaling the scent of old paper. "This may be the very laboratory in which my father worked," he whispered, half to himself. He opened the notebook. It was filled with labeled sketches of what looked like cells, accompanied by densely written paragraphs in tiny, neat writing. "It is one of my great regrets that I never learned the language of my ancestral country," the admiral mused, tracing his finger along a line of handwriting. "Professor Matlock, Dr. Gould—would you be so kind as to tell me what we have here?"

  The two historians huddled around the book in the admiral's hands. "It seems to be the results of an experiment concerning a particular chemical compound," said Professor Matlock. "There's a hypothesis here concerning the use of sodium and . . . I'm not entirely sure of this, it's quite technical vocabulary . . . a couple of other elements. It's speculating about using this compound as an antidote to something. Then there's a description of how the experiment was carried out—lamenting the lack of suitable test subjects, I notice—and a note suggesting that it was inconclusive. Have you anything to add, Nina?"

  "I don't think so," said Nina. "As you say, the vocabulary is quite technical and there are some abbreviations that aren't helping. I would need to spend a bit of time with these. But Fatima, you might be able to help."

  "I'll try," Fatima said, approaching and leaning in to look at the books. "I don't speak much German, though. All I know is the really, really basic stuff."

  "You might know what the drawings are, though," Nina suggested, handing the book over. For a few long minutes Fatima studied the meticulous little sketches.

  "They look like diagrams," Fatima said. "This one here is a virus—Filoviridae. Maybe that's what they were trying to find a cure for, although this seems like a really weird place to do it."

  "Why is that?" Nina asked.

  "Filovirus—it's stuff like Ebola, viruses that you find in places such as Africa. Countries near the equator, you know? I wouldn't have thought it would be that big of a problem here."

  "I suppose if you're planning world domination, anything's fair game," Sam said. "I mean, you wouldn't want to get close to conquering the whole world only to have your army decimated by a virus, would you?"

  Fatima looked skeptical. She was still flicking through the pages of the notebook, and with every drawing she looked at she seemed a little more concerned. "I'd love to think that it was as straightforward as that, Sam," she said. "But think about it—what's in the room next to these labs?"

  "That rocket thing. A missile, was it?"

  "Yes, a missile. An intercontinental ballistic missile, I think. So I'm guessing . . ." She trailed off and rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead as if to soothe her brain. "Look, I'm sorry if this is going to sound alarmist, but . . . I think what we're seeing here is an early attempt at biological warfare. It looks like they were trying to find some way to engineer a virus that works something like Ebola, but more communicable and with a lower incubation time."

  "And that means?"

  "Well, it would mean that if that missile hit a populated area, in addition to the damage caused by the missile strike itself there would be an outbreak of a really virulent hemorrhagic fever. We're talking pain, nausea, diarrhea, respiratory tract hell, bleeding from places you really don't want to bleed from . . . not to mention probably hallucinations and delirium. It would not be pretty. And there would be no cure, so the mortality rate would probably be something like 70–80 percent."

  Sam gave a long, low whistle as the thought of an attack on that scale sank in. Like any adult, he had always been aware of biological warfare—but only as a remote possibility, an abstract concept, a thought experiment played out in the conversations that followed zombie movies. He knew about the occasional training exercises that the emergency services carried out, but even those seemed more like games than serious preparation for a real attack. Even now, the idea of 80 percent of a place's population being swiftly wiped out by a disease seemed crazy—but standing in the laboratory, knowing that there was a partly-built ICBM in the next room, it suddenly felt like a more realistic and far more chilling prospect.

  "That's sick," Jefferson said. His suspiciously golden tan had faded by a couple of shades. "Who were these people?"

  "It's nothing that isn't going on now," Sam pointed out. "Your government's done it. Our government's done it. They're probably still doing it. There are certainly plenty of dodgy organizations experimenting with biological weapons. These guys were just ahead of their time."

  "Are you making excuses for the Nazis?" Jefferson demanded, looking outraged.

  "He's saying that war tends to involve unpalatable things, no matter who's doing them," Nina butted in. "But I wonder whether they really were ahead of their time, or whether this place was in use for longer than we originally thought. Look—there's a note here referring to the daughter of the scientist who owned this notebook. It refers to her as 'sie' instead of 'es,' but that German pronoun didn't change until sometime in the 1960s. Either people were using that form earlier than I thought, or someone was still working here after the change was made."

  Fatima pointed toward a dispensing device poised above an Erlenmeyer flask. "And that's a digital titrator," she said. "It's pretty old, but they definitely didn't have those in the 1940s."

  "They sure didn't," Jefferson agreed, stepping closer and examining the equipment. "I haven't seen one of these since I was at Yale! We had a whole bunch of them in the lab and my professors kept telling us they were state-of-the-art."

  "And when was that?" Fatima asked.

  "1977. My first year of pre-med." For a moment he stood in silent communion with the titrator, lost in memories of his early college years when the gloss of youth had been his by rights, not something he sought to recreate by means of surgical procedures and spray tans. "So what are you saying, Nina? This place was working all the way into the
Cold War?"

  "Possibly," said Nina. "I don't know. I don't have a working hypothesis yet. All I know is that what we're finding isn't what I expected. This place is more complicated than I ever imagined, and there's an incredible amount to document. Sam, does your camera take video footage? It might be quicker to film what we're seeing here than to shoot stills, and once we've got a record of everything as we found it we can get on with finding out what's in that pile of notebooks."

  "And we can look for some safety equipment," Fatima suggested. "We don't know what's in this place, and I'd prefer it if we didn't take any unnecessary risks. We don't know how much of a scrub-down they did before they abandoned this place. It wouldn't hurt to take a few basic precautions."

  "Good point," said Nina. "Everyone keep an eye out for goggles and masks and the like. Now let's get moving. We don't know how much time we'll have before Neumayer sends transport for us."

  The group got to work. Sam took as many images as he could of the equipment and the books, while Fatima, Nina, and Professor Matlock followed behind him, eager to get their hands on the artifacts once he was done with them. Jefferson and Alexandr tagged along behind them, but Admiral Whitsun wandered off alone. He trailed his fingers through the air an inch above the work surfaces, clearly longing to touch them. The youngest PMC hesitated, uncertain whether he should ask the admiral to rejoin the group. He shot a sidelong glance at his companion, who was evidently his senior.

  "It's fine," the older man muttered. "Just keep an eye on him."

  The young PMC strode across to the far side of the room and took up a position near the admiral, close enough to prevent him from going too far but distant enough to be respectful.

  "This one is talking about Harald Kruger!" Nina jabbed at the page in front of her with her finger. "This note, here, look—whoever wrote this seems to have been dealing with Kruger for some sort of test. For a . . . a missile of some kind. Aggregat 13?"