Ice Station Wolfenstein

Chapter 11

Sam had never really cared for Hogmanay. Seeing in the new year, bidding farewell to the old… it seemed so arbitrary to him. The first of January never felt all that different to the thirty-first of December, except that his hangovers were usually a little worse on the first. Patricia, in her endless optimism, had loved it. She said that the Scots knew how to celebrate properly. On the one New Year's Eve that they had spent together, two years earlier, she had insisted on honoring as many traditions as she knew. They had waited for the bells, toasted the new year with whisky, then she had made Sam open the living room window to let the old year out while she opened the door to welcome in the new. Sam had tried to persuade her to come to bed and spend the first hours of the year making love, but she had recently learned about first-footing and was determined that they must take coal and shortbread around to Paddy's to ensure a lucky, prosperous year for them all.

So much for that little bit of superstition, Sam thought, shaking his head to rid himself of the images of Patricia, glowing with happiness at the prospect of starting the year with him, lying dead on a mortician's slab with most of her beautiful face missing fewer than six months later. He forced himself to concentrate on what was happening in front of him. Alexandr was making his way around the tent, weaving through the piled backpacks and sleeping bags spread out on the groundsheet, a small flask in his hand.

"For you, for you, for you," he said as he poured tiny nips of clear liquid into each person's mug. "Yes, we are not supposed to be drinking alcohol out here in such cold places, but what is a celebration without a little vodka? And not just any vodka. This is such pure, such perfect vodka as you have never tasted, distilled by my cousin, Ivan Yevgeny Ivanovich, who anyone will tell you makes the best vodka in all Siberia — and in Siberia is the best vodka in all Russia. Tonight we celebrate the dawn of a new year, but also the beginning of an adventure!"

As the minutes ticked away, getting ever closer to midnight, Alexandr began to regale the group with tales from his native Siberia. "There is a tradition which is, as far as any man knows, unique to my family," he half-whispered, forcing his companions to be silent and lean in to catch his words. "For where I grew up, deep in the remotest parts of Siberia, the Ke'let is known to walk. When I was only a small boy, perhaps five years old, my father explained to me that as the New Year was being born, the Ke'let would make his rounds. He walks surrounded by his pack of dogs, built like wolves with sabre-sharp fangs, their eyes glowing green in the black night.

"To look on the face of the Ke'let is the end of a man's life, for he is death to all who cross him. On the night of the New Year he goes out to select those who will die in the year to come, scratching his mark into the wood of their house with his long fingernails. So my father taught me that when the Ke'let walks, we must defy him. We must seek him out, him and his dogs. We must run bare-chested in the snow until we see the green glow of his hounds' eyes, and when we find him we must call out 'I am here, Ke'let! I claim my life for another year!'

"And when he turns, we must stand and face him bravely. If he uncovers his face then we shall be granted a swift and honorable death, such as was accorded to my grandfather who faced the Ke'let and was taken. But if he does not, then we know that we shall not die this year, for the Ke'let has looked on our face and granted us another year. So when midnight tolls, I shall go in search of the Ke'let and see if he has followed me here." Alexandr grinned at the group, the light from the alcohol burner casting demonic shadows across his face as if he were a child playing at ghosts. "And any who wish to join me and claim their lives will be welcome to do so."

For one spellbound moment there was silence in the tent. Then Nina laughed. "That's the best spooky story I've heard in years, Alexandr!" she said. "Bravo! But I don't think I fancy joining you out there tonight." She glanced toward the window. Although there was no true darkness in the Antarctic at this time of year, the thick grey clouds had obscured the daylight and all she could see was an unsettling, furious whirl of snow.

"Have it your own way," Alexandr replied, his customary smirk playing around his lips. "I will maybe put in a good word for you with the Ke'let." He glanced at his watch. "But it is close to midnight, and I must prepare."

"You're not actually going to do it?" Professor Matlock demanded. "You can't go out into that, you'll be dead in seconds!"

Alexandr slipped his thermal sweater over his head and shrugged, the lean muscles of his wiry body clearly defined under his pale skin. "When one grows up in Siberia one learns to handle a little cold," he said. "And my father was never clear on the matter of what will happen if we face the Ke'let wrapped up warmly."

"I'm with you, Alexandr," Purdue, who had been sitting on his rolled-up sleeping bag, suddenly unfolded himself and stretched to his full, lanky height. "Let's face this Ke'let." Automatically Blomstein got to his feet, but Purdue waved a dismissive hand at him. "No need, Ziv, no need. I am not sure that your particular brand of thuggery would protect me against this mythical creature of Alexandr's, and I doubt anyone planning to kidnap or assassinate me will have followed us all the way out here. If they have, perhaps they deserve to hit their mark in reward for their dedication."

He unzipped his snowsuit down to the waist, letting the upper part fall around his legs, then stripped off the layers he was wearing beneath. Where Alexandr's body was wiry, Purdue's spoke of years spent behind computer screens and in libraries. Sam was relieved to see that he was not the only one who had failed to put on much weight ahead of their trip. Purdue stared intently at his watch, quietly counting down the last seconds of the year. "Midnight," he announced. "Happy New Year!" Then he and Alexandr crawled out of the tent and dashed into the storm, leaving the others to watch in disbelief.

"Well, Happy New Year," Sam said, clinking mugs with Fatima and Nina. "Looks like it'll be a short one, considering that our guide and our benefactor just ran off to sacrifice themselves to the gods of hypothermia." He knocked back the shot of vodka. It was certainly strong — he could feel it burning its way down his throat and leaving a slight sting at the back of his eyeballs. It had been a long time since any kind of alcohol had had that effect on Sam. Fatima choked slightly on hers.

It only took a few moments, less than a minute, for Purdue and Alexandr to return. They burst back into the tent, both tinged slightly blue from the cold, their faces flushed pink from the exhilaration of their mad dash. "I live for another year!" Alexandr cried, his fists clenched above his head, looking like a mad god. He seized his vodka flask and drained it, a crazed smile on his face.

Fatima leaned in to whisper to Nina and Sam. "Good to know we've got someone sane leading the expedition," she said sotto voce. "If he gets us all killed, I just want you to know that I had someone normal lined up to lead us. Happy New Year." With that, she turned away and burrowed into her sleeping bag, pulling it up over her head.

When the group awoke the next morning, the wind and snow were still howling outside the tent. So it continued the next day, and the next. Before anyone else was awake, Alexandr would step outside and get on the satellite phone to communicate with the Neumayer station, who would give them the same information each day — they were to stay put. The hovercraft had been repaired, but the pilots agreed that it would be suicide to try to get through the storm. As long as the expedition was well-supplied and no one was in any immediate medical danger, their best move was to make no move at all. Once the storm had cleared, they would send a truck to rescue the party. Its caterpillar tracks would have an easier time of negotiating the snow than the hovercrafts would. Until then, the group could only wait.

Fortunately, despite the incredibly low temperatures outside, the tent was trapping the group's collective body heat and keeping their living space warm. They had plenty of food, and the newly fallen snow just beyond the outer door kept them supplied with water. Provided they stayed within the sturdy tent, they were not in any immediate physical danger.

The danger to the group's morale was another matter entirely. Sam, who had lived alone for so long and was accustomed to plenty of time with no one but his cat for company, was finding it hard to be trapped with eight other people in a space measuring no more than thirty square meters. Communal living did not suit him well.

In fact, it did not seem to suit any of them particularly well. Alexandr seemed unperturbed, which Sam attributed to his not occupying the same reality as the rest of them. Fatima and Jefferson, who had obviously done this kind of thing before, were coping better than the rest, but even they were showing signs of strain. Fatima's calm self-possession had tipped over into withdrawing from the group and spending most of her time sitting on her own, scribbling and sketching in her notebook. Jefferson channeled his energies into regaling the group with tales of his previous expeditions and the well-known people he had traveled with. He seemed either unaware or unconcerned about the response of his captive audience. Professor Matlock had gone from joining in enthusiastically, matching each of Jefferson's stories with a name-dropping tale of his own, to listening politely without really responding, to not listening at all.

Purdue seemed to have abandoned his pursuit of Nina for the present — Sam guessed that this had something to do with the lack of both showers and privacy — and was spending much of his time chatting in low voices with the old man. I really should get to know his name, Sam thought. But how do I ask after all this time without making myself sound like a complete muppet?

Nina rolled onto her stomach and slapped a deck of cards down in front of Sam. "Right," she said. "Texas Hold'em. You're playing. Shuffle."

"Again?" Sam moaned. "But you cheat!" Still, he did as he was told and began to shuffle the deck.

"No I don't," Nina took the cards back from him and began to deal. "I'm just better at it than you. But look, I'm magnanimous enough to give you a chance to win your cigs back."

As Nina deliberated over her cards, Sam wondered how she was really feeling about their situation. On the outside she appeared calm and graceful. He had even seen her have a couple of conversations with Frank Matlock without rising to a single one of his barbs. She had asked him politely how he had found the journey and commented on how fortunate he was to have a good friend like Jefferson Daniels, and she had made no mention of the fact that he had suddenly decided a trip to the Antarctic was in order after her meeting with him.

Sam knew from the torrent of fury she unleashed in whispers every time they huddled in the doorway to the tent for a smoke that she was still angry about it. He knew that she resented her superior's ability to use his rich, well-connected friends to get what he wanted, and she could see his attempt to steal her discovery for himself. But this was not the place to settle that score, and they all knew it. So Nina continued to feign serenity, letting off steam only when she was alone — or as close as they could get to "alone" — with either Fatima or Sam.

Even though Nina and Sam strung their game out for as long as they could, it still took less than half an hour for Nina to win the rest of Sam's cigarettes from him. "I'm not heartless enough to leave you with nothing to smoke," she said, pushing half of her winnings back toward him. "I'll keep a tally and you can pay off the balance when we're back in Edinburgh. Assuming we ever get back. Now come on. It's been nearly twenty-four hours since my last cigarette and I'm just about ready to strangle someone."

Bundled up in their warmest gear, they crawled out into the outer layer of the tent and unzipped the door to the outside world. Nina stuck her head out for a moment, then led the way toward the side of the tent that offered the most shelter from the wind. They fashioned gaps in their hoods and scarves to allow just enough space for their cigarettes to reach their mouths, then Sam flipped open his Zippo lighter. They each took a deep puff as the cigarettes lit, then paced themselves after that.

"Looks like it's letting up a bit," Sam bellowed optimistically, raising his voice to be heard over the whistling gale. "Maybe we'll get on our way soon."

"Hopefully," Nina yelled back. "I'm beginning to wish I'd never come. If I'd known it was going to be this uncomfortable I'd have left Matlock to get on with it."

"I was wondering," Sam said, "Do you know the old guy's name? I never caught it and now I can't ask him or he'll think I'm an idiot."

"You are an idiot. That's the most British thing I've ever heard. Like the joke about the two men on a desert island who could never talk to each other because they hadn't been introduced."

"Hilarious. Now what's his name?"

Nina shrugged. "I don't know; I never caught it either." Even though hardly any of her face was visible, Sam could see her grin. "You'll just have to ask him yourself."

"I will, then," Sam said. "So have you and Fatima figured out how you're going to check out the ice station, then?"

"She's got friends at Neumayer," Nina nodded. "She reckons that once she's collected her samples and got everything set up in the lab, we'll be able to borrow some transport while her cultures develop. Then we can check out the coordinates and see if there's any sign of a structure having been there, and if there is we can photograph it. All I need is proof that the thing existed, or that the Nazis tried to make it exist, and I should be able to recruit some archaeologists and get together a proper, legitimate expedition — something with academic discovery at its heart rather than Dave Purdue's thrill-seeking."

"You'd do this again?" Sam was incredulous. "You're insane."

"If it got me what I wanted," Nina said.

"And what's that?"

Nina hesitated, the remains of her cigarette poised between her gloved fingers. "I don't know," she said at last. "Perhaps if I found it, I would."