The Black Knight (10 page)

‘The initial expedition went as planned, reaching the arena in late 1946 and launching reconnaissance missions. It was about then that things started to go wrong. A PBM Mariner aircraft assigned to the recon’ missions crashed with the loss of three crew members, along with the loss of another life on the Ross Ice Shelf in an accident. I suspect that you all are aware of the superstitious nature of seamen throughout the centuries, and already the station was gaining a reputation for ill luck, but by early 1947 the base Little America IV had a serviceable runway on the glaciers. At that point, according to the official reports the expedition was terminated due to the approach of winter.’

‘But it wasn’t?’ Ethan guessed.

‘The problem I and many others have with the official story is that the mission was considered a low-priority exploratory survey mission. Yet it was comprised of an aircraft carrier, twelve warships, a submarine, over twenty airplanes as well as a crew of four thousand men. Even Byrd himself suggested that the mission was high level and military in nature, despite the official announcements.’

Forrester gripped the
Polar Star’s
wheel more tightly as he spoke.

‘The region of the Antarctic to which we’re heading has seen more vessels lost than the Bermuda Triangle,’ he replied. ‘The list of vessels and aircraft that have vanished or been destroyed is almost endless: the
San Telmo
, lost in the Drake Passage in 1819 with the loss of over six hundred men; the
Pisagua
in 1913, run aground and wrecked; an Air New Zealand flight in 1979 that collided with Mount Erebus with the loss of over two hundred fifty lives;
Explorer
, holed and sunk;
Insung 1
, sunk with twenty one lives lost;
Berserk
, lost without trace;
Jeong Woo 2
, lost without trace and a DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft in 2013 that crashed into a mountain range with the loss of all lives on board. Those are just the cases I can remember off the top of my head but there are many, many others.’

Ethan frowned.

‘So you think the American expedition pulled out for fear of their lives?’

‘The leader of the expedition, Admiral Byrd, discussed the lessons learned from the expedition with International News Service aboard USS Mount Olympus, and warned of the danger of future wars resulting in foreign nations mounting aerial assaults via polar regions. Byrd said that the most important result of his observations and discoveries was the potential effect that they have in relation to the security of the United States. The fantastic speed with which the world was shrinking was one of the most important lessons learned.’

‘Sounds reasonable enough,’ Hannah pointed out.

‘But then, having established that point, neither the Soviet Union or the United States ever established a permanent military presence in Antarctica,’ Forrester went on. ‘Not only that, but a single documented event in 1946 seemed to precede the following flying saucer events of 1947. The expedition had captured some seventy thousand photographs and had been scheduled for five months’ duration, well through the Antarctic winter, but then it was abruptly and without public acknowledgement cancelled after just two months in what seemed to be a panic. No further announcements regarding the expedition were made by the Navy, and no further expeditions were conducted in the region.’

Ethan thought for a moment.

‘They found something,’ he said with clairvoyant certainty.

‘They found what the Germans had done,’ Forrester explained. ‘In August 1945, a year and a half before Byrd’s expedition, German U-boats U-530 and U-977 surrendered in the Argentinean harbor of
Mar del Plata
. The U-boats were from the so-called
Führer convoy
, an extremely secret formation whose exact mission remains unknown to this day. The crews of the submarines refused to talk, so we were able to learn very few details, although the captain of U-530 did supposedly speak of an operation by the name of
Walküre 2.
In line with this operation, his ship set sail from Kiel in Northern Germany for Antarctica two weeks before the end of the war; thanks to the Walther snorkel, it only had to surface once during the entire voyage across the Atlantic.’

Forrester guided the
Polar Star
to the right of a gigantic chunk of polar ice trapped in the frigid waters.

‘On board the U-Boats were passengers whose faces were allegedly masked, as well as important documents from the Third Reich. The captain of U-977, Heinz Schaeffer, confirmed to his captors that he sailed the same route with his boat shortly thereafter and in conducting their own research, we realized that numerous German U-boats travelled in the direction of Antarctica during the war and in its immediate aftermath.’ Forrester looked at Ethan. ‘Operation Highjump was a fully militarized operation to hunt down the last of the German Navy, believed to have been hiding beneath the Antarctic ice in a purpose-built base. So, one has to ask: what did Byrd’s fleet encounter down there and why has nobody ever returned to the site?’

A silence pervaded the bridge for a long moment before Hannah shrugged off the chilly atmosphere the captain had created.

‘Let’s stick with what we
do
know for now,’ she suggested. ‘Do we have precise coordinates for this German base you’re speaking of?’

‘Not precise coordinates,’ Forrester replied. ‘The base is likely to have been designed to ride the glacier it’s encased within otherwise it would have been torn apart by now. We’ve made a few calculations based on its likely position, seventy years after its construction. Your team will be deployed there from the shore as soon as we arrive.’

‘Which will be when?’ Ethan asked.

‘Four hours,’ the captain replied as he glanced up at a GPS display mounted to the ceiling of the bridge. ‘We’ll make the mouth of the glacier by dawn, at which point you’ll be on your own.’

Ethan turned away from the bridge and looked at the commander of the SEAL team. Lieutenant Riggs was leaning against a bulwark and had watched the entire exchange in silence.

‘We’d better get what rest we can,’ he suggested. ‘It’s going to be a long day.’

***

XII

George Washington University Hospital,

Washington DC

The man stood across the street from the hospital and watched in silence as patients and loved ones filed in and out of the building. One of the busiest hospitals in the district, it would not be easy to get inside unobserved, find the target and eliminate them while leaving no trace. But he knew that the price paid for the taking of the life of Nicola Lopez would be well worth it, and that there would be nothing that she could do to prevent her murder.

He stepped off the sidewalk and strolled casually across the street, the bright winter sunshine enabling him to wear sunglasses which aided in shielding his identity from the myriad cameras dotted around the city’s streets.

He kept his head down as he walked through the hospital’s entrance and into the crowded lobby, the characteristic clinical scent of the wards filling the air as he weaved through the queues of visitors and patients and headed for the private wards.

At the first opportunity he made his way toward a public rest room and pushed through the doorway. The stalls inside were busy as he moved through and found an empty one, closed the door, and then slid out of his jacket and pants to reveal a doctor’s uniform. From his pocket he slipped an identity badge and pinned it on his shirt lapel, and then a small pager to his belt as he rolled up his jacket, cap and pants and slid them behind the latrine cistern.

He walked out of the stall and turned for the exit, pushed through the doorway into the corridor and turned immediate right. A quick glance across the busy lobby revealed that nobody had noticed anything untoward, the staff far too busy to take any notice of another doctor hurrying to and fro.

He knew from his research that Nicola Lopez was no longer under armed guard in her room. The terrorists who had shot her had themselves been neutralized within a couple of hours of the incident, and the conspiracy that they had formed to murder senior politicians in the administration had failed. Thus, there was nobody any longer gunning for Lopez and no need for round the clock protection. Or so they thought.

He moved toward an elevator and then thought better of it, taking the stairs up to the third floor of the hospital where a series of private wards were located. Doctors and nurses milled this way and that as he walked toward a ward tucked away on the south west corner of the building.

His nearest escape route was the stairwell at the far end of the ward, with a secondary route to the elevator should he require it. He knew that he would only have a few moments to enter the room, complete his mission and escape without detection. He knew well the consequences of being identified–
Majestic Twelve
would spare no expense in removing him from the equation and preventing any connection between them and the murder of Nicola Lopez.

The corridor was deathly quiet as he moved through it and identified the room in which Nicola Lopez lay. Her name was emblazoned upon a chart resting in a plastic holder on the door, and he could see through a window into the room. Even the briefest of glances told him that she was alone, the nurses having already completed their rounds and moved on.

Comatose. That was the detail he had received from his discreet enquiries: that Nicola Lopez had been in an induced coma while her body recuperated, and was now on strong medications designed to maintain her in a sort of stasis, unconscious but not in a coma, to give her body the best possible chance of recovery from her ordeal. He had never before encountered Lopez in such a vulnerable state and now it would serve his purpose well.

He opened the door and walked in. The room was well ventilated, flowers arranged on a table near the bed where Lopez lay amid a tangle of intravenous lines. Her sheets were pure white, her long black hair neatly tied in a pony-tail and snaking like black oil beside her head. Her features were drawn, somewhat pale, her breathing soft and a gentle rhythmic beeping from the heart monitor informing him that she was still alive.

He pushed the door closed behind him and moved toward her bed, one hand slipping into the pocket of his pants to produce a slim syringe filled with a clear fluid. He reached up to the intravenous line plugged into Lopez’s left arm, and carefully slipped the tip of the syringe into the line and squeezed.

In absolute silence the clear fluid emptied from the syringe and flowed into the line, and from there into Nicola Lopez’s helpless body.

*

‘I’m here to see Nicola Lopez?’

The woman leaned casually on the counter and smiled at the receptionist, a young African American nurse who began tapping on her keyboard as she scrutinized her files.

‘Miss Lopez is on a private ward, level three. Do you have an appointment?’

‘I do,’ the woman said, flicking her long blonde hair out of her way as she reached into her handbag and produced a card and an appointment form. ‘I’m Angela Raymond from Clearwater Insurance. We’re acting for Miss Lopez’s family in regard to the shooting that injured her. We’d like to visit her to assure ourselves of her condition so that we can make arrangements on behalf of her family.’

‘And her family are where?’ the nurse asked.

‘Mexico,’ Angela replied, ‘Guanajuato, to be precise. They’re hoping to travel here soon but we’re working for them until they can reach the States and start proceedings. I’ll only need a quick visit and a word with her physician to clarify her injuries.’

The nurse nodded and glanced at her screen.

‘Level Three, Doctor Hazeem Reyen is the duty physician. He’ll inform you of everything you need to know.’

Angela flashed the nurse a bright smile of gratitude and made her way to the elevators. Within moments she was travelling up to the third floor, the elevator humming as she held her card in one hand and waited patiently for the elevator to reach its destination.

The doors opened onto the third floor and Angela followed the signs to the private wards as she sought out some sign of Doctor Reyen. She spotted a Middle Eastern looking man near the reception desk and hurried over.

‘Doctor Reyen?’ she asked.

Hazeem Reyen turned to the attractive blonde in the smart suit and shook her hand, responding to Angela as men always did, surprised and delighted at her attention. Angela smiled back as the doctor introduced himself and she informed him of what she required.

‘Of course,’ Reyen replied, ‘Miss Lopez is in room five. I’ll show you there now.’

Doctor Reyen led the way to the ward and as he reached room five he glanced back at Angela.

‘I didn’t realize that there was any valid insurance claim for Miss Lopez’s family? She survived the shooting and should make a full recovery, given time.’

‘They’re looking into legal action against the government,’ Angela explained. ‘Miss Lopez was unsupported when she tackled two terrorists in the Capitol, and they feel that her safety was neglected by the police.’

Doctor Reyen opened the door to room five and gestured for Angela to enter. She walked into the room and turned to look at Nicola Lopez, who was laying in silence before her, the heart monitor beeping softly.

‘I’ll just be a moment,’ Angela said to the doctor.

Doctor Reyen smiled.

‘That’s fine, but I cannot leave you alone with the patient I’m afraid. I’ll have to wait until you’re done here before I can leave.’

Angela smiled gently. ‘I understand. Could you close the door for me?’

Doctor Reyen turned and pushed the door closed.

The blade was slim and easy to conceal as Angela let it fall from the inside sleeve of her jacket and swung it overarm toward Doctor Nazeem’s back, aiming for a spot directly between his shoulder blades where the spinal column travelled up toward the brain stem. The blade flickered in the light as it rushed down upon the doctor, but then something slammed into Angela’s shoulder with tremendous force and hurled her aside.