Target 5 (20 page)

'Tied up.' Beaumont lifted the ice pick off the floor. 'Any
man who would threaten someone with this thing needs re
straining. Restrain him - and padlock the door.' Conway
opened his mouth to say
something as Rickard was lifting Sondeborg over his shoulder. 'I've got a reason,' Beaumont said firmly, 'so padlock the door.' He went over to a tall cupboard standing by the wall, reached up over the top and brought something down in his hand. Conway stared at the
object Beaumont put on the table.

'So that's where he kept it.'

'I'm taller than you are,' Beaumont pointed out, 'so I
saw it when I came in this time. And there are two more of
them up there.'

'Where the hell did he get this?' Conway picked up the bottle from the table and gazed at it as though he could hardly believe his eyes. He was holding a large bottle of Russian vodka. 'He couldn't have got it from Minsky, he's harmless - that's the man in charge at North Pole 17. But he has been here from time to time to see how we're getting on.'

'To get information,' Beaumont replied. 'The Russians
keep a detailed file on every American base in the Arctic -
that's common knowledge. Minsky got his information from
Sondeborg in exchange for the liquor you wouldn't let him have. Now maybe you'll agree to lock him up.'

* * *

'That signal worries me,' Dawes said. 'I think a crisis is
building up - so I'm sending a plane in to Target-5.'

'But it's still fogged in.' Adams protested. 'How can any
one land?'

'That signal said the radio hut had been burned down -
sabotage is the word they used. I'm sending in the transport we have standing by in case the fog clears - I'm sending in Ridgeway.'

'But how can it land?'

'I don't know,' Dawes admitted. 'But if anyone can land
it's Ridgeway. He's made five landings on Target-5 in
different parts of the Arctic and he's the finest civilian pilot
within a thousand miles. Give Fuller the order.'

'I don't like it,' Adams said as he picked up the phone to talk to the airfield controller.

'Ridgeway won't like it either,' Dawes replied.

'I sent the signal,' Langer informed Beaumont as he shut the door. He looked round the hut. 'Where is everyone?'

'Putting Sondeborg to bed - after I'd put him to sleep.'
He told Langer what had happened. 'I don't think anyone
spotted it, but I tempted Sondeborg into a fight. I'm clear
ing the decks.'

'You're worried the Russians will come?' Langer dropped
his parka on top of Beaumont's on the table. 'God, it's
cold out there - I'd better go and relieve Sam
in a few
minutes.'

'I'm not worried the Russians will come - I'm sure they're
coming,' Beaumont replied emphatically. 'The big ques
tion is whether they come before or after we've left. If it's before, I don't want a weak sister like Sondeborg available
for them to question.' He pointed at the vodka bottle. 'Especially when he's already given them information to
get drink. He told them about the radio hut.'

'They needed telling - with the mast sticking up above
it?'

Beaumont leaned across the table and poured coffee out
of the flask Conway had prepared for them. 'Get some of
this inside you. Yes, they needed telling - that no one slept
there. In some Arctic huts the operator has a bunk so he can
stay on the job. Here it isn't necessary - Rickard only
visited the hut when he was using the transmitter.' Beaumont poked at two foot-long metal tubes lying on the table.
'Recognize them?'

'Twenty-five thousand years of history inside one of these.'
Langer picked up a tube and examined it casually. 'Amaz
ing the way they send one of these down at the end of a drill,
drive it into the seabed ten thousand feet down, and come up with a core. And the hollow tube they drive in comes back with a sample out of the seabed. Over thousands of
years the geological layers at the bottom of the ocean are enormously compressed under the sea's weight, so we end up with this. Twenty-five thousand years and you can carry
it about in your coat pocket.'

'Gorov did. See any difference between them?'

Langer examined the two tubes. Both were corroded and
abraded by their long vertical journey through the sea, by the frictional drive of the drill forcing them into the far-
down seabed, and both were filled with core material.
'They're just cores,' Langer replied, 'like those over there.' He nodded towards a collection of tubes Conway had ar
ranged on top of a crate.

'This one is Gorov's.' Beaumont took the core and levered
at its extremity with the tip of his penknife. A solid piece of core about three inches long dropped into his hand when he
up-ended the tube. The piece of core at the other end re
mained in place as he shook the tube, and then something shiny and tightly rolled fell into his palm. He winked at
Langer as he held a section of the 35-mm film up to the light.
'And this, unless I'm very much mistaken, is a microfilm of
the Catherine charts.'

'My God . . .'

'Exactly. I'm holding in my hand a record of Russia's entire underwater system in the Arctic.' Beaumont re-oiled
the film, slipped it back inside the tube, replaced the piece
of core. 'So if we do lose Gorov we've still got this.'

'When he wakes up he'll notice it's gone,' Langer warned.
'In his place it \would be the first thing I'd check the
moment I did wake up.'

'So we'll keep him happy - by putting this one back in his
parka.' Beaumont held up ^the second core tube, then
checked his watch, 1
am,
local time. 'You might do that for me when you relieve Sam. And now I'm going to get some
kip before I fall asleep in this chair.'

He had just taken his boots off and climbed into one of the
lower bunks when the door was thrown open and Langer
came back. 'I think the Russians are here - Sam heard their
engines ...'

The Siberian came across the ice from North Pole 17 by
helicopter which landed at the eastern edge of the fog bank.
Here he transferred to a waiting Sno-Cat, the curious
tracked vehicle used for short-distance journeys in the
Arctic. It has four caterpillar tracks - two at the front which
support the driver's cab, and two more at the rear which
carry the truck-like part of the vehicle.

'We should reach the American base at about one
o'clock,' Kramer said as he settled himself beside Papanin
who had elected to drive the Sno-Cat.

'Which is the approximate time we estimated Gorov might arrive - if he was very lucky.'

Despite the fog they had no trouble locating the ice
island. The security detachment which had
made its way to
Target-5 earlier had planted an electronic device at the
summit of the hill behind Conway's encampment, a device
which the box Kramer was holding locked on to, guiding
them straight to their objective. But it was a hideously cold
journey and Kramer was shivering when they arrived - as
were the ten armed men huddled close together in the com
partment behind the cab.

They avoided the snow ramp which would have allowed
them to drive up on to the island; instead they left the Sno-
Cat on the pack and went the rest of the way on foot. As in a
chess game played by a grandmaster, everything was foreseen. When they came to the cliffs they used climbing equipment to haul themselves up the twenty-foot-high ob
stacle. When they had scaled the cliffs Kramer used his little
box to guide them through the fog to the top of the boulder-
strewn hill. And from the summit an erratic compass bearing showed them which was north - the side where the
group of huts lay.

'Something's gone wrong,' Papanin whispered when they
had gone down the slope and found nothing.

Something had gone wrong; since the last aerial shot of Target-5 had been taken, since the fog had descended, the
island had turned a few degrees, so it was only by good luck
that the Siberian crashed into one of the empty huts before he knew it was there. A few minutes later, stumbling round like a blind man, he found the headquarters hut which now
had a light burning outside it. He hammered on the door
with his gloved fist, shouted in English, then opened the
door and walked inside.

The Siberian's command of English was fluent; trained
in a language laboratory at Kharkov in the Ukraine; per
fected during long conversations with Guy Burgess in Mos
cow - when the English defector was sober enough to
enunciate clearly - the Siberian had spent most of 1967 attached to one of the Soviet consulates in the south-western United States, consulates which have only one purpose to justify their expense: espionage.

Coming out of the fog the light dazzled Papanin. He
lifted his hand to cut down the glare and saw three men
inside the hut - the number Minsky had reported as still on Target-5 waiting to be evacuated. A very large man in his thirties was sitting on a bunk while he cleaned a rifle - and the muzzle was aimed at the doorway. A shorter man, fair-haired and also in his thirties, stood nearer the door with a
rifle crooked in his arm while he held an oily rag in the other
hand. The oldest man, in his fifties, was leaning against a table with his arms folded and a tense look.

'Come inside and shut the damned door,' the big man
snapped. The rifle elevated. 'No! Just you - the others can
stay outside.'

Behind Papanin more fur-clad figures, all of them at least
a foot shorter than the huge Siberian, stirred in the fog as he
stepped inside the hut and stared at the man on the bunk. 'I
am from North Pole
17...'

'I said shut the door,' the big man said very quietly.

'Dr Kramer should be present,' Papanin insisted stiffly,
'he has something important to warn you about.'

'All right, Kramer comes in, too - the rest of them stay
outside ...'

'It is very cold ...'

'No one invited you here.'

Papanin's expression was grim and he felt his temper rising
as Kramer pushed in behind him. The fair-haired man with the rifle slammed the door in the faces of the men outside,
bolted it with a savage, grating sound. Papanin glanced
quickly round the hut for any sign of Gorov's presence on
the
base. He saw drilling cores laid out on a crate, an ice pick beside them, more packed crates, a flask and cups on the table the oldest man was still leaning against. Papanin was
tall enough to have seen the two remaining bottles of vodka
on top of the cupboard - except that they had been re
moved. The Siberian took off his damp parka and dropped
it over the back of a chair.

'My name is Vassily,' he explained, his eyes still wander
ing round the hut. 'I am the administrative officer for
various Soviet research bases, including your neighbour, North Pole 17. Dr Kramer is the medical officer there. Is
everything all fight here?' he inquired.