The Star (17 page)

The story quoted really appeared in a Miami newspaper on the date given, and may even be accurate.

Some of the wealthier Arab states once looked into the possibility of towing icebergs from the Antarctic to irrigate their rather arid kingdoms. I’ve heard nothing of the idea for many years, and suspect that the engineering problems were insuperable.

A job for unemployed nuclear submarines?

One of the things that makes Harry Purvis’s tales so infernally convincing is their detailed verisimilitude. Consider, for instance, this example. I’ve checked the places and information as thoroughly as I can—I had to, in order to write up this account—and everything fits into place. How do you explain that unless—but judge for yourself…

‘I’ve often noticed,’ Harry began, ‘how tantalising little snippets of information appear in the Press and then, sometimes years later, one comes across their sequels. I’ve just had a beautiful example. In the spring of 1954—I’ve looked up the date—it was April 19—an iceberg was reported off the coast of Florida. I remember spotting this news item and thinking it highly peculiar. The Gulf Stream, you know, is born in the Straits of Florida, and I didn’t see
how
an iceberg could get that far south before it melted. But I forgot about the whole business almost immediately, thinking it was just another of those tall stories which the papers like to print when there isn’t any real news.

‘And then, about a week ago, I met a friend who’d been a commander in the US Navy, and he told me the whole astonishing tale. It’s such a remarkable story that I think it ought to be better known, though I’m sure that a lot of people simply won’t believe it.

‘Any of you who are familiar with domestic American affairs may know that Florida’s claim to be the Sunshine State is strongly disputed by some of the other forty-seven members of the Union. I don’t suppose New York or Maine or Connecticut are very serious contenders, but the State of California regards the Florida claim as an almost personal affront, and is always doing its best to refute it. The Floridians hit back by pointing to the famous Los Angeles smogs, then the Californians say, with careful anxiety, “Isn’t it about time you had another hurricane?” and the Floridians reply, “You can count on us when you want any earthquake relief.” So it goes on, and this is where my friend Commander Dawson came into the picture.

‘The Commander had been in submarines, but was now retired. He’d been working as technical adviser on a film about the exploits of the submarine service when he was approached one day with a very peculiar proposition. I won’t say that the California Chamber of Commerce was behind it, as that might be libel. You can make your own guesses…

‘Anyway, the idea was a typical Hollywood conception. So I thought at first, until I remembered that dear old Lord Dunsany had used a similar theme in one of his short stories. Maybe the Californian sponsor was a Jorkens fan, just as I am.

‘The scheme was delightful in its boldness and simplicity. Commander Dawson was offered a substantial sum of money to pilot an artificial iceberg to Florida, with a bonus if he could contrive to strand it on Miami Beach at the height of the season.

‘I need hardly say that the Commander accepted with alacrity: he came from Kansas himself, so could view the whole thing dispassionately as a purely commercial proposition. He got together some of his old crew, swore them to secrecy, and after much waiting in Washington corridors managed to obtain temporary loan of an obsolete submarine. Then he went to a big air-conditioning company, convinced them of his credit and his sanity, and got the ice-making plant installed in a big blister on the sub’s deck.

‘It would take an impossible amount of power to make a solid iceberg, even a small one, so a compromise was necessary. There would be an outer coating of ice a couple of feet thick, but Frigid Freda, as she was christened, was to be hollow. She would look quite impressive from the outside, but would be a typical Hollywood stage set when one got behind the scenes. However, nobody would see her inner secrets except the Commander and his men. She would be set adrift when the prevailing winds and currents were in the right direction, and would last long enough to cause the calculated alarm and despondency.

‘Of course, there were endless practical problems to be solved. It would take several days of steady freezing to create Freda, and she must be launched as near her objective as possible. That meant that the submarine—which we’ll call the
Marlin
—would have to use a base not too far from Miami.

‘The Florida Keys were considered but at once rejected. There was no privacy down there any more; the fishermen now outnumbered the mosquitoes and a submarine would be spotted almost instantly. Even if the
Marlin
pretended she was merely smuggling, she wouldn’t be able to get away with it. So that plan was out.

‘There was another problem that the Commander had to consider. The coastal waters round Florida are extremely shallow, and though Freda’s draft would only be a couple of feet, everybody knew that an honest-to-goodness iceberg was nearly all below the waterline. It wouldn’t be very realistic to have an impressive-looking berg sailing through two feet of water. That would give the show away at once.

‘I don’t know exactly how the Commander overcame these technical problems, but I gather that he carried out several tests in the Atlantic, far from any shipping routes. The iceberg reported in the news was one of his early productions. Incidentally, neither Freda nor her brethren would have been a danger to shipping—being hollow, they would have broken up on impact.

‘Finally, all the preparations were complete. The
Marlin
lay out in the Atlantic, some distance north of Miami, with her ice-manufacturing equipment going full blast. It was a beautiful clear night, with a crescent moon sinking in the west. The
Marlin
had no navigation lights, but Commander Dawson was keeping a very strict watch for other ships. On a night like this, he’d be able to avoid them without being spotted himself.

‘Freda was still in an embryonic stage. I gather that the technique used was to inflate a large plastic bag with supercooled air, and spray water over it until a crust of ice formed. The bag could be removed when the ice was thick enough to stand up under its own weight. Ice is not a very good structural material, but there was no need for Freda to be very big. Even a small iceberg would be as disconcerting to the Florida Chamber of Commerce as a small baby to an unmarried lady.

‘Commander Dawson was in the conning tower, watching his crew working with their sprays of ice-cold water and jets of freezing air. They were now quite skilled at this unusual occupation, and delighted in little artistic touches. However, the Commander had had to put a stop to attempts to reproduce Marilyn Monroe in ice—though he filed the idea for future reference.

‘Just after midnight he was startled by a flash of light in the northern sky, and turned in time to see a red glow die away on the horizon.

‘“There’s a plane down, Skipper!” shouted one of the lookouts. “I just saw it crash!” Without hesitation, the Commander shouted down to the engine room and set course to the north. He’d got an accurate fix on the glow, and judged that it couldn’t be more than a few miles away. The presence of Freda, covering most of the stern of his vessel, would not affect his speed appreciably, and in any case there was no way of getting rid of her quickly. He stopped the freezers to give more power to the main diesels, and shot ahead at full speed.

‘About thirty minutes later the lookout, using powerful night glasses, spotted something lying in the water. “It’s still afloat,” he said. “Some kind of airplane, all right—but I can’t see any sign of life. And I think the wings have come off.”

‘He had scarcely finished speaking when there was an urgent retort from another watcher.

‘“Look, Skipper—thirty degrees to starboard! What’s that?”

‘Commander Dawson swung around and whipped up his glasses. He saw, just visible above the water, a small oval object spinning rapidly on its axis.

‘“Uh-huh,” he said, “I’m afraid we’ve got company. That’s a radar scanner—there’s another sub here.” Then he brightened considerably. “Maybe we can keep out of this after all,” he remarked to his second-in-command. “We’ll watch to see that they start rescue operations, then sneak away.

‘“We may have to submerge and abandon Freda. Remember they’ll have spotted us by now on their radar. Better slacken speed and behave more like a real iceberg.”

‘Dawson nodded and gave the order. This was getting complicated, and anything might happen in the next few minutes. The other sub would have observed the
Marlin
merely as a blip on its radar screen, but as soon as it upped periscope its commander would start investigating. Then the fat would be in the fire…

‘Dawson analysed the tactical situation. The best move, he decided, was to employ his unusual camouflage to the full. He gave the order to swing the
Marlin
around so that her stern pointed towards the still submerged stranger. When the other sub surfaced, her commander would be most surprised to see an iceberg, but Dawson hoped he would be too busy with rescue operations to bother about Freda.

‘He pointed his glasses towards the crashed plane—and then had his second shock. It was a very peculiar type of aircraft indeed—and there was something wrong—

‘“Of course!” said Dawson to his Number One. “We should have thought of this—that thing isn’t an airplane at all. It’s a missile from the range over at Cocoa—look, you can see the flotation bags. They must have inflated on impact, and the sub was waiting out here to take it back.”

‘He’d remembered that there was a big missile launching range over on the east coast of Florida, at a place with the unlikely name of Cocoa on the still more improbable Banana River. Well, at least there was nobody in danger, and if the
Marlin
sat tight there was a sporting chance that they’d be none the worse for this diversion.

‘Their engines were just turning over, so that they had enough control to keep hiding behind their camouflage. Freda was quite large enough to conceal their conning tower, and from a distance, even in better light than this, the
Marlin
would be totally invisible. There was one horrid possibility, though. The other sub might start shelling them on general principles, as a menace to navigation. No: it would just report them by radio to the Coast Guard, which would be a nuisance but would not interfere with their plans.

‘“Here she comes!” said Number One. “What class is she?”

‘They both stared through their glasses as the submarine, water pouring from its sides, emerged from the faintly phosphorescent ocean. The moon had now almost set, and it was difficult to make out any details. The radar scanner, Dawson was glad to see, had stopped its rotation and was pointing at the crashed missile. There was something odd about the design of that conning tower, though…

‘Then Dawson swallowed hard, lifted the mike to his mouth, and whispered to his crew in the bowels of the
Marlin
! “Does anyone down there speak Russian…?”

‘There was a long silence, but presently the engineer officer climbed up into the conning tower.

‘“I know a bit, Skipper,” he said. “My grandparents came from the Ukraine. What’s the trouble?”

‘“Take a look at this,” said Dawson grimly. “There’s an interesting piece of poaching going on here. I think we ought to stop it…”’

Harry Purvis has a most annoying habit of breaking off just when a story reaches its climax, and ordering another beer—or, more usually, getting someone else to buy him one. I’ve watched him do this so often that now I can tell just when the climax is coming by the level in his glass. We had to wait, with what patience we could, while he refuelled.

‘When you think about it,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it was jolly hard luck on the commander of that Russian submarine. I imagine they shot him when he got back to Vladivostok, or wherever he came from. For what court of inquiry would have believed his story? If he was fool enough to tell the truth, he’d have said, “We were just off the Florida coast when an iceberg shouted at us in Russian, ‘Excuse me—I think that’s
our
property!’” Since there would be a couple of MVD men aboard the ship, the poor guy would have had to make up
some
kind of story, but whatever he said wouldn’t be very convincing…

‘As Dawson had calculated, the Russian sub simply ran for it as soon as it knew it had been spotted. And remembering that he was an officer in the Reserve, and that his duty to his country was more important than his contractual obligations to any single state, the Commander of the
Marlin
really had no choice in his subsequent actions. He picked up the missile, defrosted Freda, and set course for Cocoa—first sending a radio message that caused a great flurry in the Navy Department and started destroyers racing out into the Atlantic. Perhaps Inquisitive Ivan never got back to Vladivostok after all…

‘The subsequent explanations were a little embarrassing, but I gather that the rescued missile was so important that no one asked too many questions about the
Marlin
’s private war. The attack on Miami Beach had to be called off, however, at least until the next season. It’s satisfactory to relate that even the sponsors of the project, though they had sunk a lot of money into it, weren’t too disappointed. They each have a certificate signed by the Chief of Naval Operations, thanking them for valuable but unspecified services to their country. These cause such envy and mystification to all their Los Angeles friends that they wouldn’t part with them for anything…