Ice Reich (25 page)

The crater lagoon was empty, even of the
Bergen
. So was the sea.

He swung his head in anxious search until his neck ached and saw nothing. He flew over an ocean so lifeless that perhaps he
had
died, and now was in a cold heaven or endless hell.

He was so damned tired. His head was nodding. His body ached. His heart was a stone of sorrow. How could life be so briefly sweet, and then turn so quickly and frustratingly wrong again? Why had he left her at all?

God, he hated Antarctica.

And then from the corner of his eye he spotted a dark point amid the shards of icy white. As he flew closer he realized it was extruding a tendril of smoke.

He glanced down. The gas gauge was past empty.

And here was a ship.

Realization slowly penetrated. A ship! It was Greta! He'd made it!

Elmer's angel.

He wept as he put
Boreas
in a long, flat, gliding dive to stretch his fuel, leaning forward, pushing the Dornier by sheer will.

And then as he landed the plane on the sea a final time, clipping the wave tops, he finally saw the name on the hull he was chasing.

It was the Norwegian whaler, the
Aurora Australis
. Turning slowly toward him.

Pain subsides, but memory just roots deeper. Greta was burned into Hart's brain like the after-dazzle of flash powder: her face framed by fur as she watched icebergs the color of her eyes, her body bathed by lantern light in the womb-like grotto of the cave, her fingers touching his sleeve as she asked him not to leave the ship— not to leave
her
. And that bright remembrance was shadowed by the darker tumor of Jürgen Drexler. Other mental images were etched by acid and sun fire: the bite of polar wind, the disease-contorted bodies, the tantalizing crack of light that made him crawl for the surface when muscle and will seemed utterly expended, the ominous disappearance of
Schwabenland
and the
Bergen
. Antarctica was a song so exquisite and so vile that he could not get it— could not get
her
— out of his head. And because of that he couldn't forget her, nor replace her, nor move past her. He'd lost her and yet somehow it wasn't over, he knew. It couldn't be over until they met again.

Initially he simply gave way to despair as he lay on a musty cotton mattress in a storeroom of the
Aurora Australis
, confined by the distrust of Sigvald Jansen. Lit by a caged bulb, the steel chamber mercifully prevented much contact with the Norwegian sailors, still furious about their confrontation with the Germans. "Murderer," one muttered at the pilot as he slid food through the doorway. One of the whalers had been killed in the gun battle and two wounded, Hart learned.

For a while the whalers waited grimly for him to exhibit symptoms of the dread new disease he talked wildly about, waited in both anticipation and fear. But no symptoms appeared. So he existed for a while outside of normal time, in a debilitating fog of grief and longing and regret. The sudden loss of Greta and Fritz was torment so great that at first he didn't think he could live, that he would ever again want to live. And yet he did live: numbly, automatically. And slowly— it was as if he was on a rack that was being ratcheted down day by agonizing day— the loss became more bearable. His choices became inevitabilities, never to be reversed, and his defeats a bitter peace. The alternative was madness. And as days turned to weeks— while the whaler finished its interminable season and then slowly steamed home— the hole in his heart began to scab over. The future began to replace the past and determination eclipsed despair. Even if the expedition had become a tragic fiasco— even if he'd been given up for dead— couldn't he get back into Greta's life? That must be his goal.

The Norwegians, who'd been so thirsty for revenge that they gleefully rammed the
Boreas
and sent the empty flying boat to the ocean's bottom, were puzzled. Was Hart a German spy, deserter, or the refugee he claimed? Nothing he said could be verified. The American claimed to have escaped from a new plague but had no sign of it. He claimed to have found the
Bergen
but had no proof: in fact, he claimed there
was
no proof, that the missing ship had mysteriously disappeared from the caldera of a mysterious island, its lagoon empty the last time he flew over. So in the end Jansen simply locked the American away and brooded about the strange clash with the Nazis, keeping Hart confined all the way to Norway. The pilot promised Jansen that a woman, some German biologist, could confirm his strange story, and he even confided to Sigvald his fantasies about reunion and rehabilitation. He would describe to authorities the forbidding island, he said. Then Norwegian scientists could return next year, armed and cautious.

But the pilot's hopes came to nothing.

The American was a diplomatic and legal conundrum and so was confined in Oslo while the Norwegians considered what to do. Hart had not a shred of evidence. And Norway was reluctant to challenge Nazi Germany over such a baffling and, in the context of recent developments,
trivial
incident. Greta Heinz? Not only did Hart have no address, there was no mention in the German press of her. Nor of the expedition, for that matter, or of the return of the
Schwabenland
. Had the crippled ship gone down? It was very odd.

Hart pondered. "It's the disease," he suggested. "They want to keep their microbe secret. Their very silence proves what I've been saying."

Of course
. And did Hart have papers or passport?

All left on the ship, he explained.

Of course
.

As the weeks and months passed, the Germans made no announcement of discovery of a new island and no complaint of a Norwegian whaler interfering with Reich biological sampling. The Norwegians, in turn, saw no reason to reveal to the Germans the survival of the
Aurora Australis
, the rescue and confinement of Owen Hart, or his report on the fate of the
Bergen
. The Nazis would learn all that when they returned to the island one day to find a Norwegian flag fluttering in the harbor ahead of them— assuming it even existed.

The pilot was freed in September by the turn of events. Poland had been invaded by Germany, and France and England had declared war. Brought to a hearing room, Hart was informed he was no longer wanted in Norway but had limited options. If he tried to make his claims public, the government would be forced to respond to rumors of a tragic Antarctic confrontation and the logical action would be to try Hart— the only member of the
Schwabenland
in custody— for the murder of the Norwegian whaler who'd died. Promised silence, however, would enable his release.

"Then let me go back to Germany," Hart pleaded. "I need to learn what happened. I need to find Greta Heinz."

"I'm afraid it's too late for that," a minister said. "The Reich has closed its borders. We've arranged with the American embassy to issue new papers and a ticket out of Norway if you'll sign these forms absolving all parties of liability and agreeing to confidentiality about regrettable incidents in polar waters. We prefer not to complicate our relations with Germany at this time."

Hart asked to be sent to England. He'd look for Greta from there. London absorbed him readily enough in its mammoth anonymity, but contacting expedition members proved impossible. If they were alive they'd been swallowed by the Reich, as remote as if on another planet. The vacuum of information was maddening: it was as if Hart had dreamed the entire voyage. He realized how little he knew about Greta. The sound and smell and touch of her was as vivid as his remembrance of what she looked like, but her past was opaque. He wrote letters, unsigned and with only a London post box as a return address (he assumed the letters would be steamed open and read by the German police), to the Reich Interior, Air Force, Forest, and Hunt ministries. Anything remotely connected to Göring.

Dear Greta. If you can read this, thank God you're alive. So am I, in London. Can you join me?

They were cryptic, he knew. He wasn't a writer and besides, he had no idea if she was alive or dead, married or alone. Had she returned? Did she think him dead? What was her situation? What was her mood? There was no reply. At times he thought the uncertainty would kill him. But of course it didn't kill him, and day simply followed day.

Nothing was getting in and out of Germany that the Nazis didn't wish. Like a hornet's nest being wrapped in ever-deeper layers of paper, the Third Reich was being sealed up. The political exodus of Jews and intellectuals from Germany was increasing and Hart held unrealistic hopes that Greta would materialize in the locomotive steam of a London train station, expelled and ready to make a new life. Aimlessly, gripped in depression, he went to the platforms a few times and threaded through the crowds, looking for her face in an exercise he knew was patently ridiculous. Other avenues proved a dead end. The German embassy had closed. The Red Cross had no record on its refugee lists. His vigil was hopeless, he was told. And yet he had no interest in returning to America and being an ocean away from Germany. No interest in other women. No interest in the larger world.

While World War II walled off Germany, it also proved a psychological salvation for Hart. Suddenly he was not alone in his inability to control events; millions were being swept along a great dark river. And he found refuge in work. The American became a flight instructor for the Royal Air Force, throwing himself into the task with grim purpose. The pilots were so young! Many confided they hoped a glamorous skill might keep them out of the trenches of this new war. Their escape became his own. He lost himself in the air.

The training field's RAF flight captain slowly befriended the quiet, remote American, once expressing curiosity at Hart's reluctance to take advantage of wartime opportunities with women. The pilot confided his despair over Greta. "In love with a Jerry!" the man marveled. "Best to keep a lid on that little secret, old chap. And better to give her up and get on with your life. If she's alive, she's entombed in a bloody madhouse."

"She's the only reason I
want
a life," Owen responded. "She's the one who let me come back to life."

"Don't let her rob you of it now."

Yugoslavia, Greece, North Africa, Russia. A drumbeat of defeat. If Greta was still alive she was caught in a web of monstrous dimension, a new empire that stretched from Normandy to the Caucasus and from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara. Then came Pearl Harbor. With America's entry into the war, Hart joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in England and was tapped for reconnaissance and intelligence because of his fluency in German. Hart's superiors did not appreciate his opinion that the Germans were no more likely to crack under strategic bombing than the British had, but they acknowledged his skill at interrogating captured enemy pilots.

On a few occasions Hart volunteered for reconnaissance flights over Europe. His planes were pounded by flak and hounded by fighter planes and yet he found the experience oddly dispassionate. His emotional shell— his spore coat, he thought wryly— had grown so necessarily thick that it was like watching his own peril from a distance. Even if he could still fear the long agonizing minutes it would take to plunge from twenty thousand feet, death itself promised a certain peace. His emotions were further confused by the realization that in an indirect way he could be helping to kill Greta; he sometimes looked at the great fires raging below and imagined her trapped within them. And yet when he was honest with himself he did not think she was dead, or likely to die. He felt he would know instantly if that happened— that the whole fabric of the universe would seem to come undone— and moreover, that destiny had more in store for them.

For Owen Hart, then, most of World War II was a period of endless waiting, waiting so prolonged and dreadful that time itself seemed to have been repealed. Yet finally it was the fall of 1944, the Allied forces had liberated most of France, and the pilot experienced one of those encounters that suggest fate rules life: a meeting that replaced five years of despair with a thread of hope, enough hope to fuel desperation. A prisoner was asking for Owen Hart and his name was Otto Kohl.

* * *

American military policemen saluted smartly as Major Hart strode down the gloomy corridor of a former mental hospital, his boots echoing on hardwood floors that neglect had robbed of any sheen. The pilot's face was a mask, struggling to hide rising excitement. Kohl! Owen had occasionally searched the ballooning lists of German prisoners for some connection to the past but had known it was as futile as elbowing the crowds of London train stations. And yet here was Otto, popping up out of nowhere, asking for him! One of countless Germans who'd been swept up after the fall of Paris, his fleeing Mercedes reportedly found overheated and sprung out from the weight of wine cases, gilt picture frames, a hoard of jewelry, and a Gallic mistress thirty years his junior. The French woman had been seized by nearby villagers and shaved bald. The German, however, was whisked away for an interrogation in which he boasted of high-ranking connections. The self-importance had won him temporary confinement in a political prison established at the abandoned mental institution. During the Occupation its regular inmates had mysteriously disappeared.

The war had left its dreary mark. The steel bars were past-due for painting. The elevator cage was grounded, heavy with dust. The green of the walls had darkened from restful to sick. A gurney had been abandoned in one corner, its gray sheet stained with gray blood. The small office used for interrogation was barren except for a table and two chairs. Late-autumn sun made a geometric pattern on the walls from the wire mesh on the windows; the temperature was cold. And there at the table was Otto Kohl, dressed in prison fatigues with his ankles manacled. The German blinked and tentatively smiled as Hart came in, looking almost shy. He stood awkwardly.