Ice Reich (3 page)

Alatak produced a small hatchet and began slashing at the willows. "I'll make a sling for my sister while you practice your German." Popper bent to help but Hart, mystified by the stranger, made no move. He was too numb.

When it became apparent he wasn't going to speak, the German did— this time in English. "My name is Otto Kohl. I'm a German-American trade representative. I've come halfway around the world to speak with you. When Anaktuvuk radioed that your plane was missing I feared I'd wasted my time on a dead man. Mr. Popper, though, convinced me to hire his plane and have a look for you. Lucky for you that I did."

"I would've been all right."

"Perhaps." Kohl looked away down valley. "Could you show me your plane? I'd like to make a complete report."

Hart was taken aback. "A
report?
You from the government?"

"Not exactly. Is your plane near here?"

Hart looked at Alatak. "Go on," the Eskimo grumbled, knowing it wasn't far. "We'll finish here."

Wordlessly, Hart led the way back through the brush to the bank. The river was rising swiftly and the bar was almost gone. A channel had opened under the fuselage and the crippled Stinson was rocking in the flow. As they watched, it slid a few feet downstream. "I'm going to lose my whole damn cargo."

"Yes," Kohl observed. "Fortune is curious, isn't it?"

The pilot turned to study his companion more closely. He looked near fifty, with a trim mustache, pale, soft skin, and an irritating self-assurance for such wild surroundings. Well, it wasn't
his
plane that had been lost.

They stood there a moment in silence, rain drumming on their heads.

"Who the hell
are
you?"

Kohl smiled. "I'm based in Washington but represent the German government." He pointed to the plane, beginning to tilt. "I could report to the Reich that you incautiously flew into bad weather and landed poorly, exhibiting neither courage nor wisdom." He waited for Hart to react, but the pilot said nothing. "Or I could report you have a knack for survival in polar weather conditions, even saving a passenger from a grizzly bear, albeit a dead passenger."

"Why should I care what you report?"

"Let me be blunt," the German replied. "Your misfortune may prove to be our opportunity because it may predispose you to accept what I'm about to offer. You're well aware that my government is controversial. You may be aware it has limited experience in Antarctic exploration: Germany has yet to make any lengthy presence there, unlike the British or Norwegians or you Americans with Admiral Byrd. You're certainly aware that under National Socialism, my country is moving quickly to claim her rightful place as an equal in the rank of nations. You, on the other hand, are in financial difficulty, I suspect. You've just lost your primary possession. You lost some of your reputation as a flier in 1934 and this incident will hardly restore it. Yet I'm here to offer you another chance. To be part of history."

Hart stood watching his plane. As if drawn by a giant unseen hand, it sank toward the center of the channel.

"Why me?"

"Simple. You're an expert at Antarctic flying. You're what we need."

"I was fired in the Antarctic. My boss said I chickened."

"And did you?"

There was a silence.

"I've done some checking," said Kohl. "You were fired for
caution.
We Germans can be determined, even headstrong, but we know prudence is a virtue as well. In any event you know about Antarctic oils, fuels, clothing, and navigation."

"Wait a minute," Hart said, still absorbing what the German was saying. "I fly my plane into the ground and you
still
want to hire me?"

Kohl shrugged. "You strike me as a man who accepts the options he has and chooses well. And, frankly, for us your situation is ideal. We want to make clear to the world that our mission is one of peaceful exploration. As an American, a foreigner, your presence will reinforce that." The German eyed him intently. "In your present situation, may I assume politics are a nonissue?"

"I don't follow politics." Hart tried to think. He hadn't made up his mind about the Nazis. Hitler was a dictator, certainly, but he'd put Germany to work. Lindbergh had visited and come away impressed. But Hart knew why Kohl had come all the way to Alaska. Not everyone wanted to work for the Reich. Not everyone had forgotten the Great War. "I'll think about it."

"Certainly. Think all you want, as we hike back to Anaktuvuk. Think tonight as you eat, and then sleep. Think, and ask me any question you care to. And then you must decide because Mr. Popper and I are returning to Fairbanks in the morning. We have room for an employee."

Kohl smiled, but there was little warmth in it.

They went back to where the Eskimo had slung Ramona between willow branches. The German and Hart took one end, Popper and the Eskimo the other. The dog led off. As always the tundra was miserable walking, spongy and ankle-twisting, but the trudge was warming.

"This expedition, will it be reported?" Hart asked Kohl in German.

"Reported?"

"In the newspapers. If it succeeds, will the world know about it?"

"The men who make it will be as famous as they wish," the German replied. "As successful as they dare."

They reached Anaktuvuk after midnight, the tethered huskies of the village barking excitedly at Ivan's approach. Despite the late hour half the village came out to meet them, taking Ramona's battered body away for cleaning and wrapping and final rest. Her condition caused some looks at the pilot but no one spoke. Word of the bear had spread.

Hart took Popper aside. "This guy is offering me a job in Germany," he said. "What do you think of him?"

Popper shrugged and spat. "He paid me in cash."

Later, at the mission house, the two bush pilots ate some soup and bread and warmed themselves in front of the stove. Hart thought about what Kohl had said. The German's arrival seemed so well timed. He wondered if Elmer's angel was real after all.

"Sorry about your plane, Hart," Popper said.

"It's simpler in Antarctica," Hart said drowsily. He was trying to resummon that world.

"What do you mean?"

"No one lives there. No one stays there. It has no memory."

"No memory? Bah! Every place has history."

"No," Hart said. "Here there's history, because people are here to remember, but not there. It has no past. Only a great, yawning now."

"Sounds
too
simple to me."

Owen smiled. "Maybe you're right." He sighed. "But when everything is now, you can always start over."

Berlin was a brown city set ablaze with the red of Nazi banners, their fabric caressing hard stone. To Hart, arriving in the fall of 1938, it seemed a richly conservative metropolis crackling with the excitement of the dangerously new, a resurgently smug place with a sense of watchful unease. A place on stage, a grand opera that was dramatically unfolding. Boots and high heels, black uniforms and silver furs.

"Welcome to the future," Otto Kohl greeted him.

The two had parted company at Fairbanks. Kohl had gone ahead to Washington and Germany while Hart remained in Alaska to check out of his rooming house, store his meager belongings, and wrap up his simple affairs. Being single and bankrupt gave life a certain simplicity, he reflected. And now he felt infused with new purpose.
Antarctica.
He'd thought he would never go near the place again. Yet suddenly it promised both adventure and redemption. And with a bunch of krauts, no less!

He'd felt a curious German mix of arrogance and apprehension even on arrival in Hamburg. There'd been a sense of entering something captive being hurtled toward a great unknown. The energy of Germany was palpable. There was the drumbeat of reawakening industry, made visible by the shroud of steam and greasy smoke above the port city's factories. There was the officious, pompous bustle of uniformed bureaucrats, stamping this, peering at that, smelling of sausage and beer. There was the shriek of ferry and steamer whistles, the clang of trolleys and the excitement of crowds admiring an example of the beetle-shaped "people's car" that Hitler had invented. Yet the Germans were quieter than he'd imagined: not diffident, even a bit boastful about their astonishing transformation since the Nazis came to power, but cautiously restrained all the same. As if there was an unspoken lid on laughter and enthusiasms. There simply were a lot of uniforms.

Adding to the surreal quality were the many Berlin shop fronts still boarded up from the anti-Jewish terror of Crystal Night less than two weeks before. Hart had heard reports that some Jews were fleeing the country and rumors that others were simply disappearing into a vast new Nazi prison system. The pilot knew no Jews— at least he didn't
know
of knowing any— but the stories were unsettling. As hopeless as his situation had seemed in Alaska, he couldn't help wondering if accepting employment from these people was wise. He decided that he admired their resurgence but questioned their judgment. His task was to separate the application of polar expertise from politics, to remain focused on exploration and science.

The Germans lived up to their reputation for efficiency. Kohl was brisk at the Berlin train station: snapping orders to a porter to collect the pilot's bag, leading him at a near-trot to the taxi stand, issuing crisp instructions about the hotel, and giving him a clip of new Reichsmarks for meals and expenses. A courier would arrive at the hotel the next morning at nine o'clock with suitable clothes, Kohl explained. Hart would then be free until four when the German would pick him up to meet Reich Minister Hermann Göring. They would journey to Göring's estate of Karinhall at the outskirts of Berlin and dine that evening with the officers of the Antarctic expedition, preparatory to sailing late in the year for the southern continent. The expedition was timed to take advantage of Antarctica's brief "summer" of good weather, the opposite of seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. It was very much Göring's expedition, Kohl explained, and the powerful minister was giving it his personal attention. He had a curiosity about the world.

Hart was welcome to tour Berlin but was not to take notes or pictures, speak to anyone more than necessary, or discuss the expedition. "Circumspection is a key to our success," Kohl had said, pushing Hart into a taxi. The pilot found himself at the swank Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden, not far from the Foreign and Propaganda ministries.

An Interior Ministry courier arrived promptly the next morning as promised, greeting Hart at his hotel room door with a stiff-armed salute and a "Heil Hitler!"

Hart looked at him with bemusement. "For God's sake, put your arm down." The messenger looked miffed, as if a compliment had been batted away, unacknowledged. He delivered a written invitation to the Reich Minister's Karinhall and a box with a suit, shirt, and tie. A handwritten note from Kohl told Hart to be wearing them at four.

To kill time the pilot wandered outside. The traffic and bustle of a huge city intimidated him so he crossed to the Tiergarten Park, barren and empty in November. He walked briskly, enjoying the empty cold. Then he returned to his room, gave himself a full hour to struggle into the new suit, descended to the lobby fifteen minutes early, and waited uncomfortably. He felt the concierge sneaking glances at him.

* * *

As if driven by a clock, a black Mercedes limousine arrived outside the hotel doors promptly at four and the chauffeur opened the rear door with a click of booted heels. The rearmost seat was filled but the facing one was empty, so Hart climbed in to find himself sitting backward, knee to knee with Kohl and a beautiful young blonde in an evening dress and fur wrap. The door clicked shut and the car purred forward.

"This is Leni Stauffenberg, the film actress," said Kohl, who looked as assured in his business suit as Hart felt uncomfortable.

The woman flashed a stunning but distant smile, sufficient to serve notice that there was an insurmountable wall between them. She had no interest in mere pilots.

"The Reich Minister enjoys the company of lovely women from the film industry," Kohl explained. "After being widowed he married the actress Emmy Sonnemann, you may know. It was the most stunning ceremony of the new regime."

"I preferred the '36 Opera Ball," Leni said. "I was told he spent a million marks on that one."

"Miss Stauffenberg later caught his eye in perhaps her finest work,
Conquest of the Crest.
Remarkable climbing picture. Have you heard of it?"

"We don't get German movies in Alaska."

"Of course." Kohl smiled thinly.

"I almost froze making that picture," Leni said. "That bastard Reinhardt insisted on shooting everything outdoors. I got caught in an avalanche! I nearly died!"

Hart studied her. He couldn't imagine this woman on a mountain, let alone in an avalanche. He wondered what her intention was in attending this dinner. She gave no sign of being attached to Kohl, and Göring, while famous, was not only married, he was fat. Maybe the Reich Minister had something to do with the German movie business.

Noting his curious scrutiny of the actress, Kohl felt compelled to issue a caution. "I should mention, it's best not to be too inquisitive about the Reich Minister's social life when we're at Karinhall. The presence of his female guests is decorative, you understand. Suppose nothing else."

Leni poked her companion. "I'm not a
decoration,"
the actress objected. "Hermann is simply a wonderful man," she said smugly to Hart. "Funny, enthusiastic. A child, really. You must let him show you his trains."

The pilot looked quizzical at this.

"Model railroad," Kohl said. "The biggest I've ever seen. But he's no child. He was an ace in the Great War."

"Well, Hermann makes me laugh."

"Leni, he shot down more than twenty men."

She laughed herself. "As I said, boyish charm. Have you looked at the pictures at Karinhall? He was really quite handsome back then. Still is, in a way."