Under the Freeze

by George Bartram

  “You know where he’s from?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s a hard country.”

  “Wherever I have been, it’s a hard country.”

  He picked up the two cups of coffee, looked at her. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  At midmorning he heard the helicopter come in from the southeast and pass near the farmyard to land at the other house. Ten minutes later a Citroen sedan came swaying up the rutted road with one of the French security men at the wheel; behind it came a new Renault with several American Secret Service men. Tarp breathed deeply of the air, which was warmer and earthier than the air of Moscow; he took several steps forward and met them as they got out of the car.

  “I brought the wine,” Laforet said, and he started to instruct the guard about the handling of the cases. He turned back to Tarp. “You don’t mind?”

  “Not at all. You two are getting along, are you?”

  “Just great, just great.” “Mr. Smith” clapped Tarp on the arm. “He plays a mean game of tennis. Beat the pants off me. I’ve got a return match at golf if we ever get on a course.” He went back and spoke to the Secret Service men, and their car backed down the road fifty yards and then they fanned out to surround the house.

  Laforet came to Tarp and said in a low voice, “It looks all right. I think both sides will cooperate.”

  “Good. The ship?”

  “I think it’s arranged. He thinks it is.”

  They settled in the central room of the tumbledown house — Laforet, the former president, Tarp, Repin, and Juana. Therese was sent to the other house and the guards waited outside, French and Americans ringing the house, each group with its own communications, distrustful.

  Laforet said, with the authority that comes from chairing hundreds of committees, “Who will start?”

  “I will,” Tarp said. The former president seemed to make no objection. “What language?” Tarp said.

  They settled on Spanish.

  “Does everybody know everybody?”

  “I believe I know Mr. Smith from somewhere,” Repin said wickedly.

  “Maybe we know some of the same people,” the former president said. He was not much amused.

  “Professional acquaintances, no doubt,” Repin said.

  Tarp cut them off. Without prologue, he told them what had happened in Moscow.

  “Beranyi is still missing,” he said when he was done. “He hasn’t turned up in any reports reaching the intelligence services. Therefore, we still don’t know for sure who Maxudov is and we still don’t have the stolen plutonium. However, we do have some other things. All that Moscow cares about now is a clean case. But some other things have come up. They center on a man named Pope-Ginna. He’s English, resident in Argentina. He commanded a British ship in World War Two, and he’s connected with the Argentine purchase of a submarine from the Soviet Union, with Juaquin Schneider in Buenos Aires, and with the KGB as a go-between during the Falklands war.”

  Repin interrupted. “What is the connection with Maxudov, please?”

  “Maxudov stole plutonium in the Soviet Union and sent it out by submarine. He sent it somewhere for a reason. I don’t think we paid enough attention to the reason. It wasn’t a oneway arrangement, I believe; it was an exchange. A barter, a sale.”

  “For money?” Repin said.

  “No, not money. Something else.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know yet. But Pope-Ginna, I think, was the means of payment. What we call a ‘bag man’ in American politics.”

  “You think he took something into the Soviet Union every time he went there?”

  “I’m not sure that it was every time. But there were four trips that came very soon after the first four thefts, and I think those were payoffs, yes.” He glanced at Laforet. “Jules is checking to see if he went to London on the same trips. We think there’s a London connection.”

  “To do what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Repin pushed his lips forward, wrinkled his nose, cocked his head. “It sounds very fishy to me, my friend.” He watched Tarp with his head tilted like a sharp-eyed bird’s. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that we’ve been going after Maxudov from the wrong end of the stick. Now I’m going after what he was buying, not what he was selling.”

  Repin narrowed his eyes. He looked at Juana, than at “Mr. Smith.” He sat back and nodded once, as if to say that he was a reasonable man who was willing to listen to the whole tale.

  Laforet cleared his throat. “I have been checking into certain new facts that have been brought to my attention in the last two days,” he said rather formally. “These do not fall nicely into the kind of coherence that one would like for them to have. Nevertheless, they are provocative in their outline, and, subject to further investigation — which is going forward even while we talk, let me say — I think they justify a certain course of action that we shall discuss shortly.” He looked at each of them. He rather enjoyed the spotlight and certainly was used to it. And dressed for it.

  “One must go back to World War Two for some of this. In the last year of the war, a German ship was sunk near the Antarctic by the cruiser under this Pope-Ginna’s command. On board the German ship were millions in gold that have never been recovered — never, one would have said, until this investigation began. It has always been thought that the gold was simply part of the German hoard intended as a fallback in case of a German defeat. However, also on board that ship were certain German civilians — again, until very recently, believed to be a lucky few sent ahead to set up the machinery for a Nazi enclave. The destination was believed to be — and still is — Argentina.

  “For our purposes, the only person of note on board that ship was a biochemist named Gustav Fahner. He is of interest to us because we now believe that some of Fahner’s work has shown up in the enormously profitable enterprises of this Juaquin Schneider — a generation later, in Argentina. What is the connection?” Laforet shrugged. “One could say coincidence. One could say knowledge of some sort — there were survivors of the German sinking, although they were few and none of them, so far as we know, was Fahner. Or one could say that Schneider had gained access to Fahner’s research, which, one would believe, was on board the Prinz von Homburg when Pope-Ginna sank it.”

  “Divers?” Repin said. He looked at Tarp. “Is that possible?”

  “I’m having somebody look into it. Go ahead, Jules.”

  Laforet smiled. “I have been made the expositor of a great deal of work that is not my own; most of this comes from Tarp, of course. Where was I? Ah, the possibility of research records on the ship. Yes. So, one postulates a connection between Schneider and the Prinz von Homburg. There are other correspondences — the emergence of Schneider himself from obscurity as a newly rich man in the nineteen fifties; his rather sudden appearance as an entrepreneur in biochemicals. His marriage. Yes, his marriage.” Laforet again glanced at each of them, and, taking a paper from a case at his feet, he turned a little sideways so as to catch the light from a window.

  “All sources available to us have Schneider marrying a woman named Nazdia Becker in July, 1949. The bride was a Jewess, born in Hungary in 1927, a refugee from the Nazis who had made her way to England and then to Argentina.” He turned back to them. “The only difficulty with this, as Tarp discovered in Moscow and as we have subsequently confirmed in Germany, is that the only Nazdia Becker who matches the birth date and Hungarian background even remotely died in Buchenwald in 1943.”

  “Somebody used the identity,” the former president said.

  “Precisely.”

  “Who?” Juana asked.

  “Who, indeed?” Laforet paused for effect. “Gustav Fahner had a daughter,” he said softly. He consulted his sheet of paper again. “Ilse Fahner, born Leipzig, 1925. Date and place of death unknown. May have accompanied her father on the ill-fated voyage of the Prinz von Homburg.”

  “Schneider
married Fahner’s daughter?” Repin said.

  “Possibly.”

  Tarp leaned forward. “Fahner’s daughter would have known what was on the Homburg. She may also have known her father’s research; the woman Schneider married became a very gifted biochemist. Jules is trying to find out now if Ilse Fahner was already a scientist before the Homburg sinking. But if she survived the sinking, then she would have had access to information and possibly to money — to Argentine accounts already set up. We’re trying to check that now.”

  “How would she have gotten the Jewish girl’s identity?” Juana said.

  “She would have brought it with her. That would have been a fairly simple precaution. So, let’s say she survived — she’s pulled from the water by a British crew; she’s carrying the papers of a Hungarian girl; she’s returned to England —”

  “Pope-Ginna,” Repin said. “Of course. Pope-Ginna!”

  Tarp nodded. “That’s what I think.”

  “He is the arranger! How does he know who she really is? We do not know; no matter. What does he want? The money, probably — yes? Hundreds of millions in gold, not so bad. And he is an admiral, a naval hero — he can help the girl with her identity, make a place for her, fend off questions.” He frowned. “But that is not enough, surely.”

  Tarp nodded. “Correct. Pope-Ginna knew something nobody else did. He knew where the Homburg was.”

  He told them about the polynya and the confusion over the ships’ positions when the Homburg was sunk. “Pope-Ginna knew that there was open water in the ice, and he knew what the real position was. It’s my guess that it all happened without his control, and he simply put it together and saw where things could lead. I’d think that the catalyst was discovering who the girl really was — suddenly understanding that a colossal piece of luck had come his way. It doesn’t really matter when he saw it. After the Homburg went down and before he filed the final report in London. Plenty of time, I think. Plenty of time.”

  They were all silent, not looking at each other. “And Schneider?” Laforet said after they had sat that way for a time. “What of Schneider?”

  “I don’t know,” Tarp said softly. “But I’m going to find out.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to go look at the Prinz von Homburg.”

  Juana’s voice was very controlled, very professional. “Under the ice?”

  “It isn’t under the ice now. The polynya is open. Mr. Smith?”

  The former president produced several photographs. “These are satellite photos. The only one we’ve got that goes over the area. It’s fall down there, so it’s getting colder, not warmer, so it looks like the hole is closing. Still, you can see it.” He handed the photographs around. From the altitude of the satellite, the polynya looked small — an uneven black mark in a white surface. In the last photo, taken only five days before, it was smaller than in the other two.

  “The ship is under that spot?” she said.

  “Not quite,” Tarp said quickly. “Just off the left-hand edge, I think. I’m estimating from what a man in England told me. He was in the polynya in 1944, at a time of year when it would have been at its biggest. Jules is having somebody look through the admiralty records to see if any of the other ships’ logs from Pope-Ginna’s force show a different position, even one that was later corrected. The officially accepted position is two hundred miles from here, which is much too far.”

  Laforet had put the tips of his slender fingers together as he sat cross-legged in the hard chair. “The Argentinians began to show an interest in undersea research in the middle nineteen fifties — about the time Pope-Ginna emigrated to Argentina and Schneider first began to make a splash as an industrialist. France has always been a world leader in the field, of course; it was hardly an accident that they came to us for a submersible. Not a submarine, but a two-man deep-diver. It was purely a private undertaking on both sides — an Argentine consortium buying from Recherches Maritimes of Marseilles. I’ve had people looking into this for two weeks now. They bought a used submersible with a very limited range and a depth capacity of two hundred meters. It could not have been used by itself to reach the Homburg; however, carried on a submarine that surfaced in the polynya, it could probably have explored the wreckage. Actually bringing materials out of the wreckage would have taken divers.”

  “In that cold?” the former president said. “Poor guys!”

  “The polynya is there because the water’s warmer than the ice. Something’s causing it to form every few years in the warm season. I don’t think cold would have been much more a problem than if they were working at that depth anywhere.”

  “Still,” the former president said wonderingly, “that’s a remarkable damned operation!”

  “It’s an involved operation. Especially in the fifties. But the goal made it worthwhile. It would have taken cooperation from the navy, or at least from the sub commander and his crew. A plane, probably, to check on the polynya before going in. Hired divers. But it was a lot of money. You can subvert a lot of people with that much money.”

  Repin was scowling. “But what has this to do with the price of cabbages in Moscow? This is all history. I am interested in Soviet plutonium, not in Argentine gold.”

  Tarp spoke very carefully. “Pope-Ginna was the adviser on a the purchase of a refitted Soviet submarine in the midseventies. That could have been when the contact with Maxudov was made. It may have been his idea, not Maxudov’s, to deliver the plutonium by submarine. I believe that the delivery was made underwater down toward the Antarctic drift ice.” He met Repin’s skeptical eyes. “And picked up by submarine, I suspect. And taken to a very safe storage.”

  Laforet linked hrs fingers over one knee. “In 1978, the same Argentinian consortium took delivery of a French-made deep-sea habitat. They have been developed out of the technology used in ocean drilling platforms and are intended for research where divers spend rather long periods of time actually living at depth. We don’t know what the Argentinians did with the habitat.” He uncrossed his legs and smiled around the group. “Is anyone hungry? I think it is time for something to eat.”

  *

  Tarp watched them as they ate. There was the bread that Therese had made, crusty, golden on its outside; Danish butter; and two cheeses. Laforet had brought wines that would have suited a diplomatic dinner and that had the effect of suiting Repin as well. They had not come together as a group, and Tarp purposely held back from taking any of them aside. Laforet and “Mr. Smith” were already compatible and tended to gravitate together; Juana headed for Tarp; and Repin looked as if his suspicion of the American president and his resentment of his French captor would keep him isolated. It took a question from Laforet about the wine, however, to make him a third with the two older men. They remained suspicious of each other, but they used the wine as a medium through which to reach and test each other.

  “Are you really going there?” Juana murmured to him. “Under the ice?”

  “Yes. It’s actually safer than some other diving I’ve done.”

  “It makes me sick in my stomach to think about it.”

  “That’s because you’re thinking about the ice. Don’t think of the ice. Anyway, I’ll have the best equipment going.”

  “How? From where?”

  Tarp nodded toward the three older men, who, at Laforet’s insistence, were opening a different wine so they might compare it. “Them.”

  She looked down at the floor. Her crest of black hair nodded in front of him like a plume. “What of me?” she said.

  “You have a more dangerous job. If you’ll do it.”

  “More dangerous!” She almost laughed. “Where am I to go — the North Pole?”

  “Buenos Aires.”

  He took her hand and moved toward the others. With a far greater concentration than they had shown to the matter of the Homburg and its passengers, they were, all three, standing with half-full wineglasses just under their noses, inhaling. They might have bee
n practicing some obscure religion, so intense and so odd were they. Tarp stopped and squeezed Juana’s hand, and they stood there and listened to the deeply serious, strange things that men say about wines. Shaking his head, Tarp led her to the kitchen, where they made coffee and she uncovered a tray of sweet pastries that Therese had somehow concocted.

  “Repin will do very well with her,” Juana said. “She is a good, good woman for him.”

  Tarp thought of the Lubyanka, of Moscow’s cold, of the girl he had seen on the corner as he was being driven out of the city. “Maybe,” he said. When they went back in, “Mr. Smith” was asking Repin if he ever played golf, and Repin was saying that he did not, but he admired American poker.

  “Gentlemen,” Tarp said. Repin and the former president had been speaking English; Tarp stayed in that language. “Can we return to business now?”

  “Revenons à nos moutons,” Laforet murmured.

  “To the matter,” Repin said in Spanish. They all sat in the same chairs they had sat in before, as people invariably do; Tarp and Juana put the pastries and the coffee on the floor in the middle of the group. When a silence had fallen, Laforet, a small cup and saucer held in his hands like a votive lamp, said, “The French undersea vessel Vairon was in the Red Sea day before yesterday. It is a deep-diving submersible with a range of forty miles and a maximum safe depth of three hundred meters and will carry three people. Two nights ago, it was brought ashore and trucked to the military airfield at Tokar. Yesterday, an American C-one thirty aircraft picked it up and flew it to Cape Town, South Africa. Mr. Smith?”

  The former president hurried to finish a tart, and, brushing his fingers free of crumbs, he said, “One of America’s more cooperative oil companies has a high-speed tanker called the Global Clipper that was supposed to start around the Cape for Lagos several days ago. For reasons I won’t go into, the chairman of the board persuaded the captain to turn around and head for Cape Town. Estimated time of arrival is after midnight, tonight.”

  Laforet stirred his coffee and then cleared his throat. “Tonight, two superheavy Hirondelle XP-seventeen helicopters will fly from their base in Cameroon to Cape Town and one will go aboard the Global Clipper as soon as possible. The ship, with the research vessel and one helicopter, will sail at once for the Antarctic.” He looked at Tarp.