Assignment - Black Viking

by Edward S. Aarons

  piping turned and stared at Durell as he shoved by the first man and covered them with his rifle. Behind him, Gino helped his exhausted uncle over the threshold, then added his weapon to the force Durell exhibited. Elgiva stepped in last and shut the door.

  The howl of the gale was abruptly cut off. Everything was silent, except for the distant murmur of a generator.

  “Dr. Lin Pi Tsung?” Durell asked harshly. The warm air in the room struck his lungs and made him cough.

  “I am he. We were expecting you. Have you brought the surgeon, Dr. Gustaffson, with you? It is very urgent.” The Chinese spoke with a faint California accent. Durell did not doubt that when and if he ever got back to Washington and checked dossiers, he would find that Lin Tsung had probably studied at Berkeley or UCLA. The man said: “Professor Peter is very ill. The agreement was for his brother to operate at once.”

  “There is no agreement now,” Durell said sharply. “Move back, please. Tell your two stooges to be very, very careful.”

  Tsung blinked. “But—who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Where is Professor Peter?”

  “Are you Swedish agents? No, you must be the American I heard about. Olaf spoke of you. You’re Durell?” He nodded. “Is Olaf here?”

  There was a second’s hesitation. “No. We have not seen him since he went to the Gustaffson house to fetch the doctor. But he should be back soon. I thought you were he, when I saw you coming up the path. In the storm, it is difficult to tell—”

  The man was talking too much. Durell silenced him with a gesture and signed to Mario and Gino to disarm the two Chinese naval officers. The men in black uniforms seemed peculiarly stunned, as if worn to the limit of utter exhaustion. Their eyes had the faraway look of men who saw their doom inevitably, had lived with it for days, and had lost the power to initiate action against it. Durell wondered how many more of the submarine crew were here. He turned to Elgiva. She had pushed back her fur-lined hood and was shaking her light brown hair loose. The goggles had left rim marks on her cheeks, and she, too, looked as if she had been pushed to the end of her endurance.

  “You know this place well, Elgiva?”

  “Of course. I’ve spent many happy hours here.” “Where is the laboratory?”

  “Down below. There is a big cellar system, hewn from the rock. The missile silos are just beyond, through some concrete bunkers.”

  Durell turned to Lin Tsung. “Where is Professor Peter?”

  The man’s eyes began to glitter. “He is in the laboratory. But what do you hope to do against—”

  “How many of your men are here with you?”

  Again there was a brief hesitation, a shifting of shadows in the dark, intelligent eyes. “Only a few. But what can you do? It is imperative that Professor Peter be saved. I thought you were his brother, really. That is why I let you in. Only a doctor can save us all.”

  “It’s as bad as that?”

  “Everything is out of control.”

  Durell felt only a small gratification that his guesses were proved correct. He gestured with his rifle and urged the Chinese meteorologist and the two Navy men ahead, down a crude concrete corridor. He knew it was only a matter of time before the military men recovered and realized that they faced an enemy who might be better able to cope with the storm they had created. He must give them no time to think or seize the initiative.

  The corridor formed a ramp that led up into living quarters. Durell saw that the entire structure had once been a military blockhouse, with a heavy poured-concrete rounded dome above and barracks-like dormitories in two wings spread east and west. The heavy structure, designed to resist bombs, did not yield to the storm. It was warm and comfortable inside, and the howling wind and ice and frantic seas simply did not seem to exist here.

  Part of the main blockhouse area, a circle some fifty feet in diameter, was equipped with modern spotlights in the domed ceiling, and had been furnished with living-room chairs and sofas and carpets, with a modem free-form fireplace crackling cheerfully against one wall. The platforms where anti-aircraft rifles had once been emplaced were now used for couches, reading nooks, a hi-fi stereo set. Durell urged the three Chinese in ahead of him. No one else was in sight, and this troubled him. He wanted to know who and how many others were here.

  Then Elgiva touched his arm and pointed to the tiled floor. A few spatters of blood still glistened in the electric light.

  “Sigrid?” she whispered. “She was hit, I know, before she went out of Eric’s house after Olaf.”

  “If she is here, then Olaf is here, too,” Durell said.

  “Please be careful, Sam.”

  “I intend to be.” He turned back to Tsung, who stood watching them with a strange calm through his big, dark-rimmed glasses. “Take us to the laboratory at once, please.”

  “Of course, but—Mr. Durell, you must first listen to me. We need Dr. Eric here to help his brother. It is absolutely imperative.” The Chinese looked at the narrow embrasures of the windows, where snow seemed to flame against the thick panes. “Is there no way you could have brought Dr. Eric here?”

  “Not now,” Durell said.

  “Then Peter will die. He is an old friend, and I am stricken with grief. More than that, he is the only mar who can reverse the process going on in the atmosphere.’ The Chinese pointed to the domed ceiling of the bunker His hand shook slightly. “It is almost beyond the point o reversal now. But unless it can be reversed, everything will come to an end.”

  “What kind of process is it? Surely it’s not silver iodidi crystals—”

  “Nothing so simple. Professor Peter went far beyonc those crude methods. It is a matter of sound vibrations at first set off by rockets that released thousands of tin; catalytic mechanisms. But once the process begins, it i like a geometric progression. One movement breeds two others, so to speak. Our cruise originally was one c simple experiment—secret, of course—since Peking needs basic agricultural processes aided by favorable climatic conditions to support the population. We do not have the technological developments of your nations in the West. Believe me, it was not intended as a form of warfare.” “Are you really convinced of that?” Durell asked grimly- “Maybe you’ve been as deluded as Peter was.” “Peter is my friend. His weather control system was designed for peace, for the benefit of all men. Perhaps certain rulers in Peking had other designs in the back of their minds—a form of blackmail. But that would have been all right, too. Eventually, the whole world would have benefited.”

  “Under Red Chinese hegemony,” Durell said. “We could do without such blessings.”

  Tsung looked distressed. “I do not like to think of political matters. They are not within my province. I am a scientist, nothing else. Professor Peter and I were only concerned with perfecting the process he devised.”

  “But it got away from you?”

  “Yes,” Tsung admitted. He was sweating now. “We have less than an hour left to correct it. And only Peter knows how to do it. And Peter is unconscious.”

  “You could destroy the machinery,” Durell suggested. “Wouldn’t that help to stop the process?”

  “We do not know. It may be self-generating by now.” “But it’s worth the risk, isn’t it?”

  Tsung said shakily: “I have not the courage to try that.”

  Durell kept his eye on a doorway in the opposite wall of the domed room. “You came up here into this bottleneck to get certain machine parts from Professor Peter’s laboratory, didn’t you? Have you found those parts?” Tsung shook his head. “We need Peter’s help. And he is dying.”

  “Then the only choice is to destroy it all.”

  “It would be a great risk.”

  “Better a risk than the certainty of a new Ice Age for the world, isn’t it?”

  Tsung rubbed a shaking hand over his mouth. “I cannot make that decision.”

  “You can’t—or won’t? Has it been made for you? Does someone prevent you?”

  Tsung s
aid: “Olaf Jannsen is in command. He has armed men on guard, and they obey him. He prevents it.”

  26

  THEY stood in a long concrete corridor that sloped sharply downward into the rocky bowels of the island. Only a few dim lights glowed at intervals along the way. Ice formed where water dripped through a crack in the old fortifications, glittering weirdly in long crystalline daggers from the ceiling. Durell wished now he had taken more of Uccelatti’s crew with him. Mario guarded the rear, and Gino walked beside Elgiva. He kept Dr. Lin Tsung covered with the rifle as they proceeded silently down the long ramp. The two Chinese naval men walked sullenly ahead. Durell had to get rid of them. A small storeroom offered a way. He urged them inside the damp, cold cubicle, then barred the steel door.

  Tsung watched, and spoke in a whisper. “Please, you must not destroy anything. It is too valuable. If it were properly adjusted and maintained, it could change the whole world.”

  “I don’t think people anywhere want the world changed like this,” Durell said.

  “But the blessings of rain in the desert—”

  “Maybe. That’s not enough to pay for all the damage done elsewhere.”

  “To destroy the machinery may not work,” Tsung insisted. “We risk everything. I told you, the process may not reverse itself.”

  “Is the machinery in the sub?”

  “No. Peter removed it to this laboratory so he could work on it. And then he fell ill.”

  “AH right. Be quiet now.”

  Lin Tsung had described the layout, and it seemed impregnable. There was only one approach from inside to the laboratory and the rocket emplacements that were in the embrasures, like concrete blisters in the sides of the bunker. Tsung guessed that Olaf had withdrawn about six seamen from the stolen submarine, to act as guards. In his madness, Olaf would sooner destroy the world than lose his private game of playing god to change the face of the earth. Perhaps, Durell thought, he should have killed Olaf when he had the chance, long ago. Ingrid had warned him, calling him the Black Viking, that awesome figure out of a misty past. Sigrid and Elgiva seemed to believe in such an entity. Could it be true? Durell shook his head. He was tired, and his brain was subject to phantoms and mirages. He drew a deep breath to steady himself. He would have to play it by ear. But that wasn’t good enough. Too much was at stake to risk defeat by gambling. Yet he couldn’t see any other way to proceed. He had to go on. There could be no parley, no compromise with the Black Viking. It was all or nothing. There was no retreat.

  They came to a wide area in the corridor, where a flight of ice-coated iron stairs circled up to a railed platform and a door above.

  “Where does that go?” Durell asked Tsung.

  Elgiva answered for him. “There is a small observation dome up there, used to watch where and how the rockets lift off. But there is no other way down from there.”

  “No way out at all?”

  She hesitated. “Windows, yes.”

  “And straight ahead?”

  “The laboratory. Around that comer.”

  Durell nodded and turned. “Gino?”

  The boy nodded. “Anything you say, dad.”

  “Come with me. Can you handle that rifle?”

  “I used to belong to a rifle club in Chicago. I’m okay with it.”

  “All right. Elgiva? Stay here with Tsung. You and Mario both keep an eye on him. Don’t let him leave under any pretext, and don’t let anyone go by in either direction. If you hear shooting, come into the lab fast.”

  “Yes, Sam,” she said.

  “Good. Let’s go, Gino.”

  He started up the circular ladder to the observation post above. Once through the doorway, with the boy at his heels, he could no longer see the others. He stepped into a gloomy, frigid darkness. The dome obviously had not been equipped with the heating system that served other parts of the structure. It was growing lighter again as the short sub-Arctic night began to wane. Up here, the sound of the wind was like the groaning of a tormented monster, held in check by the thinnest of reins. Faint rectangles of snow-covered glass loomed here and there around the ice-crusted dome. A narrow gallery ran around the top above window level.

  “Up you go, Gino. Put on your face mask.”

  Gino was doubtful. “We’re going outside again?”

  “And back in through the rocket silo. The rear door, so to speak.”

  “You do this for a living all the time, Mr. Durell?”

  “Not always.”

  “But you like it, hey?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Listen, maybe some day you’d take me to your boss in Washington and ask him for me—”

  “Maybe. Let’s see how this works out.”

  He had difficulty getting one of the windows open. Now and then he paused to listen for a sound of alarm from below; but nothing happened. Gino added his slim weight to the ice-sealed glass, and all at once it yielded and a gust of freezing wind, carrying stinging ice, drove in their faces. Durell put on his own face mask and goggles. He had to pound on the frozen frame for another moment before he got the port open wide enough to squeeze through and tumble outside.

  A scene of desolation and gloom greeted him. The storm was worse, the snow had gotten deeper and heavier in the brief quarter hour they had been inside. It seemed to him that the temperature had dropped several more degrees, too. Through the gray of early dawn, he saw cyclonic clouds swirling in heavy, laborious movement above Skelleftsvik. The wind shrieked wildly and tore the window casing from his grip and slammed it shut behind him. Gino instinctively tried to tug it open again, but it would not move.

  Durell signaled to go ahead. It was impossible to talk above the roaring gale.

  The dome fortunately had a broad lip around it, a ledge wide enough to support them. A roof-line showed dimly through the distorting snow shapes all about, and led them forward. Heads down, shuddering with the cold that lanced through their clothing and hoods, Durell and the boy edged perilously across the roof. At times, they had to pause and crouch to prevent the wind from blowing them helplessly across the icy surface and down over the edge, where ice-flecked surf thundered on the island beach. An ice-crusted railing helped them to proceed. Then Durell saw a hump of snow that projected above the roof platform, and a dim glow of light seeped through the ice crystals. Carefully he knelt and brushed the snow aside, then broke off a lip of ice beneath the snow to look through the heavy glass into the room below.

  He was above the laboratory.

  There were bright surgical lights hanging from the ceiling on which he lay, making a brilliant scene below. Snow settled swiftly on the skylight, and he moved his gloved hand cautiously to brush it aside and keep his vision clear. He saw a control console, a bank of computer equipment, steel swivel chairs and files, and a table on which a beared man lay, covered with a white blanket. That would be Professor Gustaffson. Durell could not see the lined and aged face clearly, but the mouth was open and the patient’s breathing lifted the blanket in a quick rhythm. He did not look as if he would last long.

  Durell wiped snow from the glass again, careful to move slowly so as not to attract attention from the men working in the room under him. The wind cut viciously through his coat, and he shivered; he could hear Gino’s teeth chatter as the boy lay beside him. Half a dozen men were absorbed in their tasks down there. Some wore white jackets, others had on black seamen’s uniforms.

  They ignored the sick man on the table. Then he heard a rumbling, and the roof vibrated under him. Through a wide double door at the far end of the room he saw more sailors moving a small rocket, smaller than the outmoded Nikes at home, on a railed trolley. Their destination was beyond his line of vision. The men seemed to be working with a slow but desperate speed.

  “There’s a lot of them,” Gino gasped through his chattering teeth.

  Durell nodded. He searched for one outstanding figure in the scene. Olaf had to be down there. Olaf—murderer, traitor, renegade. The Black Viking, har
binger of doom, sword of Odin and Thor.

  And where was Sigrid? he wondered.

  He felt an uneasy responsibility toward her. Tom between love and duty, she had given him a lot of trouble until now; and yet he felt as if he owed her something. Without Sigrid, he could not have gotten up here, would not have known about her father and her uncle Eric. She was somewhere down there, wounded, perhaps as desperately near death as her father who lay gasping out his life on the table below.

  Gino clutched his arm. “There he is.”

  Olaf strode into the room from the corridor where the men had trolleyed the gleaming rocket out of sight. He wore a heavy parka, with the hood thrown back to reveal his black hair and proud, handsome face. His mouth looked cruel. He pushed Sigrid ahead of him, and the girl stumbled and almost fell. She turned angrily to say something, and then rushed to her father’s side. Olaf watched her for a moment, biting his lip, then went to the technicians working at the computers.

  “I’m freezing, man,” Gino muttered.

  Durell nodded. It was time. He reversed his rifle and smashed hard at the glass window with the heavy walnut stock. The glass seemed to shatter without a sound as the wind shrieked bitterly around them. Durell was up, crouching at the window frame instantly. It was a long drop down to the floor below. He kept his rifle close to his body.

  He counted on surprise, for he knew how swift and deadly Olaf's reactions could be. Even so, it did not work out as he hoped. A girder which he hadn’t seen from the roof caught at his arm and knocked the rifle from his grip. It went spinning aside as he landed with a jolt that winded him. He rolled loosely, and the gun clattered several feet away. At the same time, the technicians at the console ducked and shouted as the broken glass showered on them.

  Sigrid screamed. Durell came up in time to get a boot in the side of his head that knocked him halfway across the room. He came up against the surgical table. He glimpsed a complicated array of shining machines, complete with tanks, from one of which a fine white crystal had spilled. His head rang with the shock of Olaf’s kick. His rifle had landed near Sigrid, out of reach. The thought flickered through his mind that maybe Elgiva was right— the ancient gods had taken a hand in the game, snatching his rifle from his grip.