Target 5 (21 page)

'Shouldn't it be?' Beaumont asked.

'I smelled something when we came through the fog,
something burning .. .'

'Our wireless hut burned down,' Conway burst out. 'It
was burned down deliberately. Is that the sort of trouble
you had in mind?'

Beaumont inwardly congratulated Conway; the American had reacted exactly as he had suggested, which gave him his opening to throw the Siberian off-balance. 'It's a
pretty serious business this, Vassily - we've sent a signal to
Greenland reporting the sabotage and someone's going to have to answer a lot of awkward questions.'

'You sent a signal about the fire?' There was a mocking tone of disbelief in Papanin's voice. These people must be wood from the neck upwards. 'Can you tell me how it is possible to use a transmitter when it was destroyed in the fire?'

'Spare transmitter,' Beaumont informed him laconically. 'We always keep a spare - do they only let you have one on Russian bases? I suppose we'll have to put it down to the extravagances of the capitalist system. Incidentally,' he went on, 'your monitoring unit at North Pole 17 will tell you about the signal when you get back.'

Beaumont waited, wondering whether his insurance
policy was going to pay a dividend. The Siberian clearly
hadn't yet been told about the signal, but it was vital: so
long as he grasped the fact that a signal had been sent, that
it had already been reported to Greenland that something
very strange was going on at Target-5, he would hesitate to take extreme action. And this was all that Beaumont hoped for - hesitation, delay to give them time to get Gorov away
from the ice island.

'Monitoring unit?' Papanin asked blankly.

'Oh, come off it!' Beaumont stood up. and the two men
seemed to fill the hut as they faced each other. 'Monitoring unit! Everyone knows you've got monitoring units all over
the Arctic checking up on our signals. It's normal procedure,
Vassily, so why make a big secret of it?'

Conway quietly put both hands inside his trouser pockets
to hide the fact that he was sweating profusely. Beaumont
was walking a high wire he could so easily fall off; there
were armed men, a lot of them, just outside the hut, and no
one might ever know what had really happened on Target-5
inside the fog. He was still doubtful whether the English
man could out-manoeuvre the Russian, still horribly con
scious of the fact that Gorov was hidden only yards away
from where he stood.

'This is not what I came here to talk about,' Papanin snapped. 'I am afraid that one of our people may be re
sponsible for burning down your hut,' he went on in a tone which was hardly apologetic.

'So there'll be a big inquiry,' Beaumont said bluntly. 'By
now Washington will have heard about it - you can imagine
how they're going to react to the word sabotage!'

'If you will let me continue ...'

'It could be hitting the world's headlines tomorrow -
Russians attack US base ...'

'That's ridiculous . . .'

'Buy tomorrow's paper and see.'

For the first time in many years Papanin was rattled. In case a signal had been sent he was going to have to tread
carefully here. 'No international incident...' He could hear Comrade Brezhnev's instructions repeating in his brain as
he tried to regain command of the situation.

'I am talking about Nikolai Marov, a junior oceanographer,' he explained. 'He has gone mad and murdered another man called Gorov. Then he escaped in this direction with a sled team. Marov has taken his victim's papers and may try to pass himself off as Michael Gorov ...'

'Why should he do that?' Beaumont demanded.

'Because he left his own papers in his hut,' Papanin said
smoothly. 'He would know that you might ask to see proof of
his identity ...'

'What makes you think he's mad?' Beaumont interjected.

Papanin glared at him, his patience wearing thin with the
constant interruptions. He tried a new tactic, raising his
voice. 'For God's sake, he burned down your hut! He com
mitted a brutal crime! It was not a pleasant murder ...'

He took a step closer to Beaumont, trying to break him down by the force of his personality. 'He killed poor Gorov with an ice pick and then hacked him about the face! Don't you understand? He has spent three years in the Arctic and his mind has gone - he is like a wild animal roaming round somewhere out there on the ice .. .'

"Then you'd better stop wasting time and get out there
and find him.'

Papanin calmed down suddenly, gestured towards Kramer. 'This thing is a great worry to us. When you have heard what it is all about you may wish us to stay. I think Dr Kramer had better explain - then you will understand how serious it is. I may sit down?' He pulled out a chair and sat down before anyone could agree, smiling amiably round the hut. 'Get on with it, Kramer.'

'Marov is a psychopath ...' Kramer began in careful
English.

'We don't want his medical history,' Beaumont said unpleasantly, determined to get the Siberian on his feet again.
'We've got quite enough on our plate without you people
settling in for the night.'

Papanin stood up slowly, flexing his fingers to release some of the tension building up inside him. He had to be very careful; somehow the whole thing had turned round -
instead of frightening these Americans Papanin himself felt
dangerously off balance. 'We came here to warn you,' he
began as he collected his parka off the table, 'to ask for your
cooperation . . .'

'We've been warned, we cooperated, we listened. Thank
you. And now we've got a lot of work to do,' Beaumont
broke in crisply.

'I was going to suggest we searched your huts - one of you
could accompany us - in case Marov is hiding here.'

'Not necessary - we searched them ourselves when we saw
that someone had fired the hut . . .'

Conway intervened, made a magnificent job of his inter
vention as his voice shook with genuine fury. 'This is an
outrage! You come here and suggest searching the place?
This is United States territory, Mr Vassily.' He stood away
from the table as he faced Papanin. 'I hope I don't have
to remind you that the American flag flies over this ice island?'

Papanin paused, stooped over, half inside his parka as he looked at Conway. He was going to
shake these people before he left. 'I saw the flag when we came in - hanging limp like a piece of frozen cod.' He stood upright, fastening his coat. 'It might be safer if none of you leave this ice island until your plane arrives.'

'Safer from what?' Beaumont asked.

'If we see something moving on the pack my men may assume it is Marov and shoot,' Papanin said grimly. 'I have
told them he must be taken unharmed - if possible. But
Gorov had many friends and some of them are outside this
hut - and all of them are armed.' He pulled the fur hood
over his shaven head. 'Kramer, we did ask for these people's
cooperation. Since we are no longer welcome we will go.' He
glanced round the hut. 'A pleasant trip back to the United
States, gentlemen. Here you are living on borrowed time.'

When they had gone Beaumont sent Grayson out to make
sure they had really gone, then he looked at Conway who
was drying his moist palms with a handkerchief. 'It's going to be extremely tricky from now on,' he warned. 'The man who called himself Vassily is Col Igor Papanin, head of
Special Security in Leningrad - I was shown his photo
graph before I left Washington.' Beaumont checked his
watch. 1.45
am.
'I'm going to take Gorov out by sled at
eight o'clock this morning - in six hours' time. That will
give us the best chance of avoiding the Russians.'

'Why eight o'clock?'

'Because by then they'll have been up all night somewhere
out on the pack - waiting to see what happens. They'll have
had six hours of it - listening hard, shivering, straining to
see any sign of movement. By eight o'clock they'll be bad-tempered, bone-tired and not very alert. But it would help if
I had a diversion when we move off.'

'I'll drive the Sno-Cat around,' Conway suggested
quickly. 'I can take it across the island, down the ramp and
move round on the pack a bit.'

'Which was what I was going to suggest - up to a point anyway.' Beaumont stood up, his eyes heavy, his limbs
sluggish. He started walking around to keep himself awake.
'They found their way here in Sno-Cats - God knows how -
and they may be carrying some kind of mobile radar. If you
take the Sno-Cat out they'll concentrate on it - while we
slip off the western end of the island.'

'It should fox them ...'

'Listen, Matt.' Beaumont spoke with deliberation to stress the risk Conway would be running. 'There's a bunch of armed Russians within a mile of this hut, so you're not to take any unnecessary chances. I think I knocked Papanin off his perch when I said a signal had been sent...'

'He'll find out when he checks with his monitoring unit.'

For a moment Beaumont wondered whether to tell Con-way about his own transmitter, then he decided against it. It was an even chance that Papanin would be back again, and next time he might ask questions rather more forcefully. 'That won't be until he gets back to North Pole 17,' he said. 'You can drive your Sno-Cat safely round the eastern part of the island - in this fog?'

'I've lived on this island for three years - in all weathers,'
Conway assured him. 'I can put on the airstrip landing
lights to guide me, I've got an angled beam on the Cat
which shows me the way down the ramp . . .'

'Not down the ramp!' Beaumont said sharply. 'The island has your flag flying over it - once you go down on to the
pack it's no-man's land. If you're going to help at all you
just drive around slowly on the island for an hour or so.
On the island,' he repeated.

They had a great deal to do during the next half hour. They called Langer out of the hut where he had stayed with the dogs to keep them quiet during Papanin's visit. They released Rickard from the
hut next door where he had been locked in with the unconscious Sondeborg - ostensibly to keep an eye on the unstable gravity specialist, but also to prevent his hearing about the presence of Gorov on the island. Beaumont was determined that Conway would be the only man left behind on Target-5 who would know about Michael Gorov.

They left Conway and Rickard in the headquarters hut, and then Beaumont took the others with him to 'get Gorov
out of the refrigerator', as he put it. Mercifully the Russian
oceanographer was still asleep, still under the influence of the
sedative when they lifted the trap-door in the research hut and hauled up his cocooned body. Had he woken up inside the deep tomb alone his reaction was something the imagi
nation preferred not to dwell on - until he discovered the
scribbled note Beaumont had left beside the lamp they had
lowered with the heater.

Wrapped in many blankets, Gorov was surprisingly warm
when they lifted him into the single bunk Conway had in
stalled inside the research hut. He woke up as Conway slipped inside and closed the door. 'I wanted to see if he
was OK,' the American explained. 'It gave me the horrors
to think of him lying down there.'