“I’m not about to try it,” Banks replied. “We’ve got plenty of comforts and we’ve seen out storms in much worse places than this.”
“Stay warm,” the skipper replied. “We’ve got a run to make to one of our rigs overnight. We’ll swing by in the morning and I’ll give you a call back then.”
“Willco,” Banks replied and closed the call just as the door opened at his back and Wiggins turned to smile.
“Be right back, Cap,” he said. “Just going to get my round in.”
Before Banks could stop him, the corporal stepped out into the storm.
Fortunately, Wiggins wasn’t gone long enough for Banks to start to worry. He arrived back a few minutes later carrying a bottle in each hand—one half-full of vodka, the other almost full of a popular Scottish blended whisky.
“I thought we might as well get comfortable if we’re staying the night,” Wiggins said with a grin. Hynd cuffed him around the ear but in truth, Banks thought they might all be glad of the liquor in the long hours of the night to come.
*
They found two oil lamps in the debris that were still functional, broke out the ration packs from their kit, and had a meal with their coffee. Banks’ was some kind of chicken curry that tasted too sharply of pepper but it did its job in putting some heat in his belly. After coffee, the other four members of the squad settled around the fire with a smoke and a pack of cards, drinking liquor in their coffee cups. Banks added a generous splash of Scotch to his own coffee then went to sit below one of the lamps. He took the journal they’d found from inside his jacket and started looking for the cause of the carnage they’d seen at that last hut.
Although the light was dim, the writing was in a good-quality black ink and was perfectly legible.
The first entry appeared to be for the first days of the site.
*
September 23rd 1949
The weather held up for our trip in and we arrived only a day later than planned. The Norwegians have been as good as their word and the jetty, if not pretty, is perfectly functional and we were able to unload our cargo in double-quick time. I write this in a tent while work continues apace around me and hope that by tonight we might all be able to bed down in shelter and comfort.
The huts are going up fast around us and we are all looking forward to getting some warmth back into our bones. I for one will be glad of it, for my bad knee is giving me gip constantly in this damp cold and has me hobbling around the site like an old man.
The Norwegians are proving most accommodating and generous hosts and have kept us all supplied with plenty of food and drink. I cannot take to the herring but the vodka is most welcome. The only dark spot so far has been the glowers and black looks from the crew of the boat that brought us here. I am led to believe that this stretch of coast has long been shunned by the locals but as to why that should be and why they are so against our presence here, I have yet to uncover.
It is not a new feeling to me on this outing for I have been in the dark ever since leaving Edinburgh. When I opened my orders this morning, I was glad of finally getting some clue as to why I’d been sent away from my warm desk to these frozen northern climes.
I must say it sounds like something out of an H. G. Wells book or one of those awful Yank movies with its talk of chimeras and its hopes of creating a modern weapon from ancient samples. But orders are orders. I do what I’m told and Jensen our lead scientist assures me that it is not some wild goose chase and that the material is indeed there in the hills waiting to be gathered.
If I am to believe what I have been told, the map we have came from a sixteenth-century Scottish fishing captain who undertook an investigation in this area and got more, far more, than he bargained for. His supposed encounter read to me like a prolonged attempt at an excuse by a man who had tarried too long at sea for the liking of his wife in Aberdeen but the brass appear to put at least some credence by it. As for myself, I cannot put any faith in the specifics of the old tale as it was told, full as it is of superstitious claptrap about bogles and bloody carnage. But I am assured that the cave itself most certainly exists and its position has been confirmed in several aerial flyovers. My superiors seem to agree with the Norwegian scientists that there is something there worth investigating, something that might prove valuable in our efforts to keep the Russians from gaining too much influence in these northern climes now that the Jerries have been sent packing.
I will send Jensen and a small team into the mountains and to the cave as soon as all of the huts are up, the laboratories prepared, and all the equipment unpacked, which at the current rate of progress should be by this coming Saturday.
*
The next page of the journal was given over to a rudimentary map showing a route from the shoreline of the fjord, taking the same path he’d seen at the rear of the demolished hut, up the cliffs, and across a high plateau to a mountain valley. A group of a dozen buildings was depicted at the head of a river and above that a round black hole that was marked simply, CAVE. Banks’ heart sank.
I have a feeling I’m not going to like this.
The temptation was to skip ahead in the narrative but he needed every scrap of information available to him; as soon as the colonel saw this journal, he’d have questions.
And I need to have answers.
*
Oct 5th 1949
Jensen has returned from the cave some 24 hours late and just as I was about to lead a second team to check nothing untoward had occurred. I am glad of his return for this dashed gammy knee of mine would have made clambering about in the hills a tricky business indeed.
The delay was due, so Jensen has told me, to the fact that the specimens proved to be difficult to extract from the rock, as if they had become fused there over time and necessitating a degree of brute force in their removal. There has also been some trouble with the small group of villagers, shepherds of the caribou herds that roam those high plateaus in some numbers. Apparently, there was a skirmish that led to shots being fired by our men.
Jensen assures me that no one was badly hurt although relations with the people of the high valley will henceforth be strained should we need to retrieve anything more from the cave site. But it was worth it, for Jensen succeeded in his quest for samples that will allow our work to proceed from this point onward.
The specimens, while still straining my credulity somewhat given that on initial sighting they look merely like chunks of rock, are most impressive when under close inspection. They certainly give me pause for thought about my earlier skepticism regarding the tales told of the cave and the Scot’s fisherman’s adventures therein. Jensen assures me that he has more than enough material and that even if that were not the case, more of the same remains are embedded in the rock in the cave and can be retrieved should it be required. And while I am loath to cause any harm to come to the caribou herdsmen in the mountains, I will have no qualms in sending another team into the hills if necessary.
The huts on the shoreline are all up and functional, the laboratory gear is unpacked, and the test subjects will arrive by supply boat on the morrow. So begins the part of this show that I might have moral disagreement with should I give myself enough time to think on the matter, for I fear what the poor men will have in store for them.
But they have been told, as loudly and as often as I have been told myself, that it is for the common good. Having seen the samples collected in the cave, I cannot in all conscience deny that I am as eager as Jensen to see the experiment get underway. The sooner we get things moving, the sooner I can see my way back to the warmth of my office back home in Edinburgh and a decent cup of tea.
*
“Coffee and a dram, Cap?” Wiggins said, breaking Banks’ concentration. He closed the journal with a sigh and took it with him over to the fireplace. The temptation was to toss it into the flames and pretend he’d never read it. But duty was stronger than that and he knew the colonel was adept at spotting any lies. No, he’d read i
t now and what had been seen couldn’t be unseen.
Now that he knew that part of the work here had involved the cave in the hills, he only had one option left to him. He let the men enjoy their coffee, smokes, and liquor here in the warmth. For in the morning, weather permitting, he knew they’d be moving out, not back to the supply boat but into the hills, up to the high valley in search of a cave and something that remained.
- 4 -
The wind continued to howl outside and wet snow spattered on the windows and rattled the old frames. They all sat up till eleven o’clock playing cards, smoking, drinking coffee and booze, and listening, mainly to Wiggins regaling Davies and Wilkins, the newest recruits to the squad, with details of their adventures and misadventures in previous missions.
“And then there was the time,” he was saying, “when our captain here was bollock naked climbing the walls of a temple in the Amazon in the middle of the night, three hundred feet up with his arse hanging in the wind.”
Banks laughed.
“Aye and if I hadn’t, you’d still be there yet rotting in a cell and wondering when a big fucker of a snake was going to have you for breakfast. And just for reminding me of that, Wiggo, you get first watch. Wake the sarge at one, I’ll take three to five and the younger lads can see us through ‘til breakfast. Let’s get our heads down, lads. We’ve got work to do in the morning.”
He hadn’t told them what he’d found in the journal—the morning would be soon enough for that. He had the book on the floor beside his sleeping bag, intending to read more when his turn for watch came around, but he already knew more than enough to know that this mission wasn’t going to be quite as simple as the colonel had intimated back at the start.
*
Hynd woke him with a mug of coffee at three o’ clock.
“Nowt to report, Cap,” the sergeant said. “Although I think it’s stopped snowing and the wind’s dropped a tad.”
He waited until Hynd was settled and snoring in his sleeping bag before taking his coffee, the journal, and a smoke over to sit under the oil lamp again. He took up the narrative immediately where he’d left off.
*
October 12th 1949
I had a long chat with the privates, McCallum and Boyd, today, two chaps from Leuchars who answered the call. They have assured me that they have indeed volunteered for these procedures in return for their families being well looked after should things go bad for them. Why a man would subject himself to such unknown medical terrors is beyond my comprehension even given that they have been told it is for King and Country. I saw enough in France in ‘44 to know that King and Country don’t give two hoots about the men they put in harm’s way. I have resolved to do all that I can to ensure that these two chaps are treated with all the respect and dignity that their bravery deserves—it is the least I can do for them.
We cannot, however, start immediately. Jensen tells me that the process of taking shavings from the specimens collected in the cave will be the most laborious part of the process and may on its own take several months given the density of the material and the need for delicate extraction. At least it will give our volunteers a period of grace before the impregnation begins; indeed, they may well find this waiting time to be a cushy number given that the rest of their regiment is even now on the way to Malaya to quell the insurgency there. To further ease their wait, I have placed an order with Whitehall for several crates of liquor. If we are all to spend the winter here, we may as well get some enjoyment out of it.
As for the specimens themselves, I find myself strangely drawn to the laboratory where they lie on the long reinforced trestles and I have spent many an hour merely standing there looking at them. And I am not the only one so afflicted; several of the men can be found alongside me at any given point, all of us lost in wonder. The very idea that such things ever existed to walk these frozen lands boggles the mind and it is easy to see how the legends grew, for even having been encased in rock for God knows how long, they still hold this terrible fascination and, yes, terror.
The Aberdonian fisherman’s talk of bogles in that expedition to the cave so long ago no longer seems so farfetched and unbelievable. Not content with taking hold of my attention by day, they have begun to haunt my dreams.
*
Dec 25th 1949
A Merry Christmas to my family back in Blighty who I am missing sorely on this bleak, cold, miserable day, my only solace being a bottle of scotch I managed to purloin from the mess. I intend to sit here in the office, wallow in self-pity and drink myself senseless in an attempt to forget the last few days. I doubt it will be that simple.
The experiments are not off to an auspicious start. Jensen announced that he had collected enough material from the specimens to begin. Private Boyd volunteered to go first. Having become steadfast friends with both he and McCallum these past weeks, I stood by his side for support as the first injection was made, the dark fluid seeming almost to have a life of its own, eager to be inside a warm body as Jensen pushed the plunger.
We did not have to wait long for results. The poor bugger’s veins went black, spreading in thick branches from the pinpoint needle mark, the inky darkness roaring like wildfire the length of his arm within minutes. And whatever else it was doing to him, Boyd was in agony as if it was indeed fire that burned through his veins. I ordered Jensen to provide the man with relief but the scientist was loath to prescribe sedatives for fear that they might adversely influence results. But as poor Boyd’s screams echoed around our small camp, I had to pull rank, override the scientist, and give the order, for the frightful wails were apt to spread their own terror to everyone here.
Even after enough sedative to floor a horse, Boyd still writhed and moaned as the blackness took him. Jensen seemed immune to the man’s suffering, taking blood samples every hour on the hour as Boyd slowly succumbed to the thing we’d put inside him. His skin took on a gray sheen and thickened, hardening in rough ridges run through with moist, pink cracks where what was left of his own tissue showed through.
Jensen tried to get me to leave, seeing my distress, but I had made my vow to these men, had befriended them and found good companions, and I was determined to stay with Boyd through his crisis, although his eyes had long since ceased to acknowledge my presence. By the time the roughness and hardening spread to his neck then his face, he had lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.
He never woke again. When he finally gave up the ghost two terrible days later, his whole body was a single mass of rough, thickened flesh as hard as stone and as alike to the specimens from the cave that they could not be told apart.
It took eight of us to lift him off the chair and when we buried him, it was like burying a box of rocks.
*
Jan 5th 1950
After the terrible failure with Boyd, Jensen has been quiet for a time and throws himself into a frenzy of work in the lab, sweating over bubbling retorts and causing the release of all manner of noxious vapors. The rest of us keep our distance and content ourselves with making inroads into the liquor supply. I have made a request to Whitehall to wind up the operation and am waiting for a reply.
But this morning the scientist unexpectedly arrived in my office, a wide grin on his face and led, almost dragged, me back to the laboratory, muttering some gobbledygook about solution strength and natural inhibition factors that I neither understood nor cared to understand.
At first, I was not sure what he was showing me when he led me to a small cage on a trestle. It looked like a lump of rock lying on the straw floor but then he poked it with a ruler and the thing moved fast, scurrying quickly away and throwing its body violently against the cage walls, which bent but held.
I had to bend closer to see that although it did indeed look like stone, the outline was definitely mouse-like and I understood that this was one of the white mice kept for experimental purposes, a mouse now transformed, a mouse that was most definitely still alive and seemingly thriving. It was almost twice
the size it should be and continued to throw itself viciously at the walls of its cage as if desperate for an escape, but there was no doubt of the fact that it was most definitely alive.
I still have misgivings but Jensen wishes to push ahead, taking things very slowly with a series of weaker injections that will take a period of months to administer and Private McCallum, although given pause by what happened to poor Boyd, is still willing to do his part. As for me, I have my original orders and while I may not like them, that has never been accepted as an excuse for disobedience.
I have given Jensen permission to begin. May God have mercy on me.
*
May 12th 1950
Will we ever be free from this place?
Jensen’s experiment continues apace. McCallum survived the early injections despite twice almost succumbing to Boyd’s fate. His skin has taken on the now familiar gray, ridged look, and he is so strong that we have to restrain him during procedures for fear he might lash out in his pain and hurt someone unduly. There has been a noticeable increase in his size both in height and girth and he sleeps in the last hut to the north in an iron-barred cell that we were forced to ship in at no inconsiderable cost to my budget. It is necessary though, for in the nights he is often mightily disturbed, bellowing curses and threats that only become defused after his breakfast. He only takes red meat now and we lace it with heavy sedatives. As of now, they are enough to keep him calm, but Jensen tells me he still has more than half a dozen courses of injections to administer.
What manner of thing will we have brought into being by the time we are done here?
*
Banks was asking himself the same question as he closed the journal and went to fetch another coffee and light up a fresh smoke. The wind had fallen and there was no patter of snow on the window so he took his coffee outside, pulled the hood of his jacket up against the cold, and stared over at the ruined hut at the end of the row.
Operation Norway (S-Squad Book 7) Page 2