Assignment - Black Viking

by Edward S. Aarons

  Count Lemogne stood up and graciously asked for attention. His voice was quiet and cultivated, but under his composed mien there was a dark shadow, a sober and imperative concern that commanded silence.

  “Gentlemen, it was pure chance that we became aware of what has been happening. An attentive and curious clerk in the Brussels weather station chose to carry out an experimental analysis of recent weather phenomena that had attracted his attention. First, on the island of Tahataha, in the Pacific South Seas, it rained for forty days and forty nights.” The Count smiled deprecatingly. “The Melanesians there considered the downpour historic, unprecedented, and most fearful. It was not the season for rain. It ruined the copra crop, ended fishing, rotted clothing and houses, and corroded their souls. The water fell with a sullen and malignant monotony. Tahataha is not an important island, as world affairs go. No one paid attention to it except the Paris bankers who held notes on the copra plantations, some of which were ruined.

  “One week after that curious storm ended, a typhoon swept up out of the China Sea, skirted the Ryukyu Islands, sank seven fishing boats and two coastal freighters, and wiped out the Japanese village of Konitsu. The tempest had a furious and strange power. Forty-two men, women, and children were killed. The International Red Cross sent aid. The survivors said that the storm was impossible. You see, it was not the season for typhoons, gentlemen.

  “In India, shortly thereafter, there was a delay of three weeks before the seasonal rains ended, and the fields remained untillable. It was also much colder than usual. The crops failed and special American aid in wheat shipments had to be sent to stave off a calamitous famine.

  “Other incidents, gentlemen, involved the disappearance of the P & O liner Burma Queen off the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean; an invasion of gigantic waterspouts noted by a Russian trawler fleet; and extraordinary tornadoes along the Gulf Coast of the United States.

  “Somewhat more recently, some of you will recall the cataclysmic freezing spell in Rome and northern Italy.

  Three weeks ago, on the first of May, a caravan in the deep Sahara east of Marrakesh reported a six-inch snowfall where no man had ever seen snow before.

  “Now, then.” Count Lemogne paused. “Our man in the Brussels weather station idled away his time by constructing this chart you see, indicating the dates and types of unusual weather afflictions in different global localities. Its significance suddenly struck him, and I know all of you see it too.”

  “The track of a ship,” Durell said quietly to McFee. “On a round-the-world cruise.”

  “A submarine, Samuel,” McFee said. “Perhaps nuclear-powered.”

  “Soviet?”

  “We’ll have a private talk later.”

  “Not ours, I hope?”

  “No, not ours.”

  “Has anyone projected a future course?”

  “It’s been extrapolated for the Baltic or Arctic Ocean,” McFee said softly. “That’s where it is now.”

  “It’s a big area.”

  McFee said: “The winter hasn’t ended in northern Scandinavia. The cold has been escalating. From all projections, it doesn’t look as if it’s ever going to end.”

  “I haven’t read anything about that.”

  “It’s been kept quiet.”

  “But that could mean—”

  “Doomsday,” McFee said. “Come with me.”

  3

  THEY sat in a quiet little study in a wing overlooking the courtyard where the cars were parked. The conference continued, lost in speculation and argument and some attempts at denial. McFee seemed to be quite at home in Count Lemogne’s manor, and Durell revised his opinion as to how often the little general left his sanctuary at No. 20 Annapolis Street in Washington. He watched McFee twirl a huge globe that dated back to the seventeenth century. The study was lined with books and furnished with a polished kidney desk, a rich Sarouk carpet over Belgian blocks in the floor, and tall windows against which the rain beat with solemn intensity. Durell started to wonder about the sudden rain, and then reminded himself that the weather in Flanders, subject to North Sea winds, was notoriously changeable. It didn’t have to mean anything.

  “Sir,” he began.

  “Yes, Samuel?”

  “It’s a big operation, right?”

  “Bigger than any we’ve had before.”

  “Rallying all the forces from all our Centrals in Europe means a complicated web of teams on the job, right?” “You will work on this alone. Or almost alone.” McFee fixed him with a gray stare. “I know you place little reliance on teamwork, Samuel. Or perhaps it’s because you are too sensitive to the loss of members of such teams. You need have no fears. You can only kill yourself on this one.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “No need for irony. It’s quite serious.”

  “Where am I going, sir?”

  “Scandinavia.”

  “That’s big enough.”

  “You’ll have a specific target. I’ve spoken to Baron Uccelatti. He’ll take you there, on the Vesper. Ostensibly, a pleasure and yachting cruise to northern waters in the Baltic Sea.”

  “Some of that is restricted area. The KGB won’t like it.” McFee tapped his walking stick on the dark red Belgian tiles. “You’ll be working with them, Samuel.”

  Durell stood up. “The Russians? Are you making me a pigeon, sir?”

  “They asked for you, Samuel.”

  “I’ll bet. They’d like to have me. Since when—?” “You can understand,” McFee said quietly, “the gravity of the world situation when I tell you that K Section and the Soviet intelligence organs have had two conferences in Geneva on joint operations to track down this vessel I mentioned.”

  “But if it’s not ours and not theirs—”

  “We don’t know whose it is.”

  “No one else in the world could work this weather control.”

  “We don’t know,” McFee said again. “It’s up to you to find out.”

  “With a KGB man?”

  “You may have to go into Soviet territory.”

  “And wind up frozen with the mammoths in Siberia?”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “Sir, I respectfully suggest—”

  “You arc not permitted to decline this assignment.” Durell sat down again. He wished for a cigarette, but McFee refused permission to smoke in his presence. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. You always had a choice. You were a paid employee, and under certain circumstances, you had the option to quit. No one ever had, but it was there in the fine print of the annual contracts he signed. He felt a quick resentment of McFee’s implication, and quashed it, aware of a fine tremor along all his nerves. McFee had to be under enormous pressure to make such a statement, to give him no alternative.

  Not that he seriously considered refusal. He waited quietly in the elaborate room, surrounded by Count Lemogne’s books, with the view of the hop fields turning dull gray in the rain beyond the tall, elegant windows.

  He said finally: “What exactly am I supposed to do?” McFee tapped the huge globe that stood next to the desk. His walking stick made Durell even more nervous. “We have to find that weather modification ship. We’re sure it’s a sub. Aerial reconnaissance can’t turn it up. It’s somewhere up there, perhaps in the Arctic, perhaps in the Baltic, just off the coasts of Norway and Finland.”

  “What’s the matter with our nuclear sub fleet?”

  McFee looked grim. “They are conducting a search, Samuel. They’ll help you. You’ll get a special-frequency radio to call them by, if needed.”

  “And do I get a dog team and learn to yell at them in Lappish, or whatever they speak up there?”

  “This is not a time for levity, Samuel.”

  “Sorry, sir. But I just don’t think—”

  “If you would exercise a little more patience, and control that Cajun temperament of yours, you will have enough to think about. As I said, the weather up there has begun to act mos
t unnaturally. Every extrapolation from our computers indicates the presence of an artificial disturbing factor up there. It must be the submarine. It is affecting RSFSR territory as well as the rest of northern Scandinavia. Hence the request, however extraordinary, for cooperation from your opposite numbers at Dzerzhinsky Square.”

  “How and where do we get together?”

  “It will be arranged in Stockholm, when Baron Uccelatti puts you ashore there. The Vesper will continue to be at your disposal afterward as a cover. The Swedish Intelligence units from their Desk Five will also be at your disposal. One of their people is due here now, at any moment.” McFee looked at his gold watch and turned to contemplate the big world globe. “There are some leads. Some time ago—eight months, to be exact—one of the world’s foremost meteorological experts, and an advanced experimenter in weather modification control, vanished. A man named Professor Peter Gustaffson. An old and aristocratic family, Samuel. His disappearance did not create too much stir, I must confess. We were at fault there.”

  “Any data on it?”

  McFee sighed. “He was traveling in the Far East at the time. It was believed that he was the victim of petty thugs.”

  Durell was sober. “Where did it happen?”

  “Professor Gustaffson vanished in Hong Kong.”

  “And now you think the Chicoms—?”

  “We don’t think anything—yet. Naturally, we have no means of learning what Peiping thinks. But if the Soviets deny all this, to the point of being willing to join forces with us, then it leaves the Chinese as our best possibility, Samuel.”

  “It’s hard to believe, sir. They don’t have the techniques—”

  McFee said sharply: “We continually underestimate the dragon, Samuel. Simply because in the major portion of our lifetime, China has been asleep, a huge and weakened giant. Today it is awake. You know Chinese history. Expansionist, powerful, enormous, swallowing everything. The cycle has been resumed since Mao Tse-tung took power. Chinese inventiveness and technology were often far ahead of the Western world. It is not too much to believe that, given incentive and resources—such as the brains of Professor Gustaffson—they have evolved this new technique to disrupt the climates of the world.” “And I’m to find Gustaffson. The trail is cold. It’s had eight months to cool off.”

  “It is a starting point. Don’t belittle it. You will be given more details later.” Again McFee looked at his watch. “Your Swedish co-agent will be here any moment. You will be more fully briefed then.”

  “I’d rather work alone.”

  “I told you, you have no choice.” McFee’s smile was thin, gray, and fleeting. “Judging from your past performances, Samuel, you will have no objection to her.”

  “Her?”

  There was a knock on the door. “Here she is now.” McFee turned. “Come in, please.”

  The door opened and Sigrid Bjornson entered. She smiled warmly at Durell.

  “Hello, surprised man.”

  4

  IT WAS still raining, but there was blue sky to the west, beyond the flat fields and canals that stretched to the North Sea. Durell dismissed the gray Mercedes in the Marktgasse of Bruges and walked with Sigrid to one

  of the awning-protected cafes that faced the carillon, which promptly began to chime the noon hour with all of its forty-seven bells. The place seemed safe enough, with its swarming tourists and parked tour buses in the big square. Belgian provincial flags flapped or drooped colorfully in the center of the square.

  “Time for lunch,” he explained.

  “Hungry man, you seem angry with me,” Sigrid murmured.

  “You could have told me who you are.”

  “But I had to make sure of your identity.”

  “And did you, by searching my cabin?”

  “Not exactly. But you fitted our dossier we have on you, at Desk Five.”

  “I think I’ll join the Swedish Intelligence,” he said. “I didn’t know they had people like you working in it.”

  “Then you do like me?”

  “I’m still quivering from the cabin episode.”

  “You lie so nicely.” She gave him a gamin smile. “Now let us eat and I will explain just what we are to do.” Sigrid was easily the most gorgeous creature Durell had seen in a long time. She wore a gray suit of soft light wool that clung lovingly to her body, hugging every provocative curve. Her high heels brought her proud blonde head almost to the level of Durell’s. She had done her long hair into a braided coronet that gave her a regal look and made every man who passed by turn for a second glance and an envious look at Durell. She carried a large leather shoulder bag that made him wonder just what unpleasant surprises might be in it, however.

  He ordered ham and mushroom omelettes and beer for both of them, and she ate in ravenous silence, using up several minutes while he scanned the passersby. Nothing seemed suspicious. The drizzle ended and the sun came out to shine gloriously on the medieval baroque gilt of the Cloth Hall.

  “We start, of course,” she began abruptly, “with Professor Peter Gustaffson. Uncle Eric and Uncle Peter—”

  “Hold it. Uncle Peter?”

  “Yes. ‘Bjornson’ is my code name. My real name is Gustaffson. That is why I am assigned to work on this with you. Uncle Eric and Uncle Peter are my father’s brothers. Neither ever married. Peter is the scientist interested in weather, Eric is a doctor who works up in Lapland and is interested in archaeology.” She paused and grimaced. “Eric is a bit strange.”

  “How, strange?”

  “He is interested in only old things. In Scandinavian myths, legends, and history. Too much, they say. He would like to turn the clock back and pretend he is a Viking of a thousand years ago. But he is quite harmless, if a little terrifying at times.”

  “And where are these uncles of yours?”

  “Well, Peter disappeared, as you know. Eric and he lived on the Baltic coast up north. A dismal and not very interesting land in winter. But Eric insists he can best recreate the world of the first millennium there.” “Charming,” Durell said.

  “We will go there, to Skelleftsvik, after Stockholm, to learn more about Uncle Peter’s disappearance. They say we must hurry—the weather up north is disastrous, just now. When we get there, you must not be surprised at anything Eric does. He has reconstructed an old Viking home, where he lives, and even has a Viking ship and swords and shields—oh, it is harmless enough, but sometimes a little—barbaric.”

  “Does Eric know we’re coming?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think Peter Gustaffson is still alive?”

  Her blue eyes grew sober. “Well, that is the whole thing. No one heard anything from him for months. Then Uncle Eric got a letter from him. It was not postmarked; it was delivered by hand. A man from the far North came down to deliver it, a trapper and fur hunter in Lapland. It was in Peter’s handwriting, and it simply told him— Eric—not to worry about him, that he was safe and well and—busy.”

  “ ‘Busy.’ ” Durell met her serious eyes. “Did Peter say with what?”

  “No.”

  “And how did this trapper get the message?”

  “He said he met some men on the ice—they were lost, he thought, and he wanted to help them, but they drove him off. But one of them came after him—it was snowing, and the one who came after him was not seen by the others—and gave him the letter.”

  “Was there anything in it besides simple good wishes and ‘I’m-well, wish-you-were-here?’ sort of thing?”

  Sigrid said: “It ended with ‘God forgive me.’ ”

  Durell was silent.

  Then he asked: “Did this trapper say anything more about the others in the party on the ice?”

  “Yes.” Sigrid drank her coffee, paused a moment, then looked up at Durell. “He said they were all Chinese.”

  They walked back to the Black Swan Inn along the banks of the Minnewater, under the copper beeches reflected in the still surface of the Lake of Love. It was peacefu
l and sunny now, the air a sudden soft caress perfumed by springtime flowers growing in their beds near the Baguinage. The Minnewater was a calm and reflective ornament for Bruges, a place for swans and willows and the ornate facades of Flemish houses in the distance. Cathedral bells rang softly as the sun sent warm shafts of light through the newly budded leaves of the beech trees.

  “My superiors at Desk Five,” Sigrid said suddenly, “are most disturbed. We have our traditional neutrality to maintain, and the balance of our relations with the Soviet Union is always subject to sudden and unpredictable pressures. It was with great reluctance that they assigned me to work with you on this strange matter. . . . Do you believe that?”

  “That, and about the weather?”

  “Yes. All this sense of impending catastrophe, this brooding feeling that was so contagious among those men at the conference—intelligent, rational men whose judgment is respected everywhere. It seems so—-so unreal.” “The phenomena need to be explained. Was your Uncle Peter so advanced in his research that his brain could be picked to achieve such a thing?”

  “He is a genius,” Sigrid replied simply. “And I wonder why you speak of him as if he were dead.”

  “Do you think he is, Sigrid? After all, there is the letter you say was received. It could be phony.”

  “I don’t know. I cannot think of it as possible—that Peter is dead. We Swedes tend to be too morbid, you know. It would be just too terrible to contemplate, if such a disaster came about.”

  He took her arm as they turned toward his inn along the bank of the canal. “Maybe we can uncover something between us to cheer us up,” he grinned.

  She nodded abstractedly. “Do we go back to the Vesper now?”

  “As soon as I check some things at the inn. McFee ordered some special equipment put there for me—a radio, to be exact. I’ll pick it up, and then we’ll go.”

  The narrow street bordering the canal was quiet and empty. The Flemish houses cast placid reflections in the still waters. The lobby with its, hand-carved desk and paneled walls was empty. A smell of cigar smoke lingered briefly in the air, and Durell wondered about it with one part of his mind as he followed Sigrid’s magnificent figure up the dark, heavy staircase to his room. He thought he heard footsteps moving softly somewhere in the back of the rambling, complicated old house, but he wasn’t sure.