Ice Reich

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The U-4501 was one of a new class of U-boat that was years ahead of its time. Its displacement was more than twice that of the standard German U-boat and it was thirty feet longer, giving the necessary range and cargo area to reach Antarctica. A new "schnorkel" provided the breathing capability to stay underwater long enough to escape the coast of Europe. Even its appearance was futuristic, with a streamlined conning tower that reminded Hart of a fancy prewar DeSoto. The submarine boasted interior amenities that earlier U-boats lacked: a freezer, a single shower, and a hydraulic system for faster reloading of its torpedoes. It could dive to six hundred and fifty feet. Yet despite all this it remained a claustrophobic tube, noisy and damp.

The vessel was crammed. Counting himself and Greta, Owen, Schmidt, and the soldiers, Drexler had brought thirteen extra people on board— unlucky thirteen, some of the sailors muttered— to add to the normal crew of fifty-seven. Bunks had to be shared, one sailor crawling into the heat and smell of the prior occupant as watches changed. Additionally, making space for a crude laboratory and Antarctic supplies meant provisions were stuffed into every available space. The sailors walked on tins of food in the torpedo compartments and one head was temporarily occupied by smoked meats and sausages. The boat was so tightly packed that the sailors joked that they had to lose weight in order to squeeze through to fetch their food.

To Hart, who loved the expansiveness of sky and sea, the cylinder was grimly oppressive. From his assigned bunk in the aft torpedo compartment, he listened with disquiet to the rumble of pumps and gush of water as the U-boat dove after clearing Vigo's breakwater, imagining the ocean's dark squeeze as they began their long underwater run.

He was still lying there when Drexler suddenly appeared. It was the first time they'd been so close since Berlin. The German had exchanged his uniform coat for a navy sweater. He also wore an expression of distaste.

"Already seasick, Jürgen?" Hart needled.

"Simply sick of your proximity," said Drexler. "And I'll chain you up again if I have to. But I've refrained for now. I'd rather we put aside our personal differences and form the necessary professional partnership to complete our mission. The result may save many lives. Can I trust you to behave correctly?"

Hart pretended to consider this. "As much as I trust you."

"I saved you from the Gestapo: saved a man who planned to abscond with my wife. I did so on her promise that you'd be of use to us. Now I want your promise."

"You can't always have what you want."

"Ah, but I can, and now I do." He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out something golden, then let it dangle from his hand. "Remember?"

It was the penguin locket, and Hart started despite himself. He looked at the tiny bird swinging back and forth with growing anger. "That's Greta's, you son of a bitch. You stole that from Greta."

"Like you stole her from me."

Owen lifted himself onto his elbows in warning. "You know, Jürgen, I could become a dangerous man. If I were you I would get out the handcuffs. Who knows what I might do?"

"You're the least of my fears," Drexler said, sneering. "I'm only trying to smooth our voyage. But if you make trouble, you have reason to be afraid of me." With that, he turned and walked away.

The encounter left the pilot depressed, confirming his feeling of impotence. He felt as guilty for rushing to Berlin and endangering Greta as he knew she felt guilty for allowing them to be caught. Chains or no chains, he'd never felt so helpless.

He lay thinking for a long time, the German sailors glancing at him curiously as they passed: the enemy at last given a face. Then he suddenly swung out of his bunk. He couldn't allow paralysis. He had to be ready to act if opportunity came. He decided to explore and, if possible, talk to Greta.

At first no one addressed him as he moved through the hatchways. Still a ghost, thought Owen. But word of his movement went ahead of him and Captain Freiwald swung around the periscope to block him in the control room. His look was not unfriendly, only assessing.

"The American stirs," he said.

Hart swung his gaze around the control room. "Just admiring this latest example of German engineering. Too bad it's too late to affect the war."

"Colonel Drexler doesn't think so."

"Colonel Drexler is a danger to himself and to others."

Freiwald paused at that. "And what are we to make of you?"

"I'm a little uncertain of that myself, Captain." Owen glanced around at the half dozen crew members manning instruments. They regarded the American curiously. "I'm an American officer who left my unit without permission to try to rescue a German woman from this crazy war. I'm your enemy and yet I agreed to lend my spelunking expertise to this mission. But only after I was given a choice between this boat and a Gestapo basement, as was Frau Drexler." He paused a moment to let Freiwald digest this, noticing the German officer glancing toward a curtained cubicle where he assumed Greta had been assigned.

"There's a connection between you and our biologist?"

"We knew each other before the war."

"And yet she is married to Colonel Drexler, who forces you on this voyage?"

Hart nodded. "Life gets complicated."

"And what cave does the colonel wish you to explore?"

"Hasn't Jürgen told you where we're going yet?"

"No."

"Believe me, you're happier not knowing. I doubt we'll be coming back."

Freiwald frowned. "Is that a threat?"

"No, simply a prophecy. But there's a solution." He raised his voice slightly. "I'll accept your surrender now and we can sail for Norfolk. The war is over, Captain."

Freiwald laughed. "Unfortunately it isn't. Not for you or for me. And my loyalty remains with my country, so I think I'll decline your terms." He scrutinized the American, his curiosity not satisfied. "My crew informs me that, in talking to Colonel Drexler just a few minutes ago, you used the adjective 'dangerous' to describe yourself."

Hart shrugged. "Any man is dangerous when pushed into a corner. Yet I'm not as dangerous to you as Jürgen, I promise."

"Just don't threaten my boat, Hart. I have a fondness for the U-4501."

"I respect a man's fondness for the things he loves." Then he stepped around the captain and moved on.

"Greta?" He stopped outside her curtained cubicle.

"Owen?"

"Are you all right?"

One of the SS men suddenly filled the passageway. He was thickly muscled and his face was mapped with a relief of scar tissue. Wounds from the front, Hart guessed. The man's iron-gray hair was in a stubby crew cut: Bristle-Head, the pilot mentally dubbed him.

"You're not to talk to Frau Drexler."

"She may be ill. She gets seasick. I need to check on her."

"We're submerged. There is little roll."

"She may be sick anyway."

Bristle-Head leaned into his face. "You're not to talk with Frau Drexler. Stay away from her. Away from this part of the boat. You've no business with the colonel's wife."

"I like this part of the boat."

"If you try to stay I'll tie you up in the engine room."

Hart considered. Then the yellow-haired giant Hans came through a hatchway as well, towering over them both. The pilot studied their faces. "In America, this is called an ugly situation." He turned. "Greta," he called softly. "There's something I haven't told you about the island. Something that will give us a chance."

Then he looked defiantly at the SS men and retreated.

While the new submarine could cruise for days underwater, progress was still swiftest on the surface. As they came abreast of Africa the Germans elected to risk surfacing at night. With the swells came motion as the submarine's sausage shape rolled. Word filtered through the boat that the woman, who'd kept closely to her cabin, was queasy.

Drexler had been uncomfortable approaching her ever since she'd tried to escape with Hart. Now he used her seasickness as an excuse to look in on her. "Are you ill?"

"I'm all right. I have a bucket."

"I can have Schmidt look at you."

"God no. Please leave me alone."

He considered. "Perhaps it would help if you were more active."

"Jürgen…"

"Come with me." It was not a request. He pulled Greta out of her cabin and led her to ladders that descended two decks to the boat's lowest level.

She looked down sulkily. "What's there?"

"Our future."

The compartment at the bottom had a clearance of only six feet and was shaped like a trough, the bulkheads curving inward toward a narrow deck above the keel. "I had them set this storage compartment aside for you," he said encouragingly. "As your laboratory."

She glanced around. There were two metal cabinets and a number of wooden crates on the floor, but no sink or workbench. Pipes and cables snaked over the surfaces. It was cold this low in the boat. The light was clinical and harsh near the ladder, shadowy and inadequate in the recesses. They could feel the throb of the engines just astern in the soles of their feet.

"Cozy," she said without enthusiasm. Something moved in the dark and she peered closer. Caged animals, she realized with a start, recognizing their smell. She went to inspect. "You brought animals? Is this an ark?"

"To test your drug. I didn't think humans would readily volunteer."

"I had no idea they were on board."

"We've kept them out of the way so as not to make the sailors uneasy. One of the men, Jacob, looks after them. So. Will all this work?"

"For what? To win the war?"

"Greta, I'm trying to help you. Will this satisfy your needs?"

She bit her lip. "It's impossibly cramped and inadequate. But… perhaps, with modifications. We need a bench, a drain."

He nodded, encouraged. He went to a crate and lifted a lid. "Your old biology books. I had them brought along to help." He lifted the one on top. It was the text on whales he'd given her on the Schwabenland.

The memory startled her. It had been so long. She looked around again. "It's actually like a refuge down here," she acknowledged. "Less crowded."

"The roll is less too, near the keel."

She even laughed at that. "Convince my stomach."

"In an emergency you're to come here. This is your battle station. The hatch will be sealed and you'll be isolated, but out of the way and as safe as any of us."

She shrugged.

He reached out then to tentatively touch her shoulder but she pulled away. "Greta, I'm sorry things came to this. That everything's so awkward. But now, in the end, maybe we still have a chance to do some good. Together."

She was in no mood to reply to this and they stood, in separated silence. "When do we get to Antarctica?" she finally said, in order to say something.

"Two weeks, perhaps less."

"And when do we get back?"

"That depends on you, doesn't it?"

She summoned her courage. "Are you going to— " She couldn't bring herself to utter the word kill. "Are you going to leave us down there, Jürgen?"

Drexler was taken aback. He swallowed. "No." He shook his head. "At first I wanted to leave him. But what would be the point? You're about to help me achieve what I want. And eliminating him won't win you back. So if you cooperate I'll set him free. Possibly I'll put him in a life raft off some port of refuge. Port Stanley in the Falklands, perhaps, or Ushuaia in Argentina. Even Cape Town."

"And what about me?"

"That'll be your choice. I can't stop you from joining him."

She looked incredulous.

"I won't stop you from joining him— if that's still what you want."

He saw the look of new hope on her face and realized he may have been too soothing. "Of course, this promise is contingent on both of you doing your jobs properly."

"So you can play with disease."

"No! To combat it!" He grimaced, frustrated. "Listen, I know you hate me right now, but this trip isn't as awful as you think. When the time is right I'll explain my plan in full and you may see our mission— and me— in a different light. And then you can choose between us."

"Jürgen, I've chosen. Why can't you accept that?"

"I think I have, as much as could be expected. He is on this boat, after all."

"Then let me talk to him."

"No!"

"Look at this clutter. Let him help me down here."

"No. I trust you, but not him. If you wish to talk, talk to me. If you need some help, come to me."

"Sailors and soldiers of the Third Reich!" Drexler's voice crackled over the intercom. As many men as possible had crammed into the control room where he was speaking because it was easier to hear him in person than over the crude intercom system. Others cocked their heads toward the loudspeakers. All were curious about their fate.

"I bring you greetings from our Führer, Adolf Hitler. And from his designated successor, Reichsmarschall Göring. We have set out on a long voyage to a distant destination. All of you, of course, are wondering about our mission. And you men of the navy must wonder about so many new faces here on board. I apologize about the added crowding. These soldiers, I assure you, are vital to our success."

Hart was lying on his bunk, frowning at the Nazi squawking. Next to his bunk an engineer had his head tilted up, listening.

"Our destination is… Antarctica." Drexler paused for dramatic emphasis. There was a murmur of excited comment throughout the boat. The engineer frowned. "A cold place, but not as dreadful as you might think. Our northern winter is Antarctica's summer and we hope to find tolerable weather as we go south. With strength, endurance, and will, we should be able to accomplish our task rapidly and go home." Greta stood in the passageway by her cubicle, looking somberly at her husband.

"And what is that task? The chance to change history is given to few men. To us of the U-4501, that opportunity has been granted! We are setting out for the distant continent to retrieve a new drug, an underground organism significant enough to affect the tide of the war. Security prevents me from explaining fully the purpose of this compound, but clearly, Berlin and U-boat Command wouldn't risk one of Germany's best submarines on such a distant mission unless it was vitally important."

Heads nodded.

"This isn't a combat mission. With luck, we'll never encounter the enemy. We're like a silent cat, stealing stealthily across and under the sea. Yet if we do meet opposition we must battle to the last ounce of human will. Because what we're attempting to accomplish on this mission could truly save the lives of our loved ones in the Reich."

Drexler looked at Freiwald. "There are rumors of Allied superweapons. Clearly, Germany requires superweapons of its own to defend the Fatherland. This is our mission, to obtain the key to a superweapon, and you men are the agents of deliverance. We're journeying to an Antarctic island and should be back home early in the year, as heroes and saviors. For a while our purpose will remain a military secret. But when it's finally revealed the world will gasp at your achievement."

He nodded, confident. "I believe divine providence has made this voyage possible. I put my faith in his will, and the will of our Führer."

Drexler let his gaze sweep the control room, then lifted his arm. "Heil Hitler." And, rising like a phalanx of spears, the other arms in the room came up. "Heil Hitler!" came the roar through the boat. Hart pressed his hands over his ears.

Otto Kohl was tired, sore, and broke. His escape from Vigo had cost him all he had, buying him miserable truck, donkey, and cart rides across dusty mountains. His suit was filthy and torn, his feet blistered, his assurance and authority gone.

But the American Intelligence officer had come out of the embassy in Lisbon to meet him anyway. Now the German nervously licked his lips, considering for the thousandth time what he was about to do. Maybe he had been corrupted, as Drexler had claimed.

Or saved.

"Yes?" the attaché said, a bit impatiently.

"My name is Otto Kohl," he began. "Your records will show I escaped from American army custody in France. I've been to Germany. And I have the most extraordinary story to tell you…"

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

"Alarm! Alaaarm! Dive! Dive! Dive!"

The klaxon blasted through the boat, setting off a tumult of cursing, frantic, hurtling men. Water roared into the submarine's ballast tanks and the vessel began to nose downward. Hatches slammed and valves were cranked. Anything unsecured began to tip onto the floor.

"My laboratory!" Greta caught her coffee mug as it began sliding off the edge of the tiny mess table and plunged into the torrent of sailors hurrying to their battle stations, shoulders cuffing her side as she struggled to the midships ladder.

"Dive! Hurry, dammit! Dive, dive!" Captain Freiwald came sliding down the conning tower ladder and banged onto the control room deck with his binoculars swinging and his cap knocked sideways.

"What is it?" shouted Lieutenant Erich Kluge, the first officer.

"Airplanes. Carrier patrol, probably." Freiwald looked up toward the tower that the sea was now enveloping as if he could see the sky. "Damn! We're already south of the equator! How did they pick us up?"

Greta noticed Kluge's accusing look as she rushed past. The first officer had pointedly avoided her since she'd displaced him in his cabin and now clearly viewed her as bad luck. Resigned, she descended the ladder in a half fall and, once at the bottom, seized the lab's hatch and banged it down after herself as she'd been instructed, turning the wheel. Locked in. She dropped to the steel flooring. A box was sliding with the tilt of the deck and she put out her foot to stop it. The klaxon switched off.

"Battle stations report!" the intercom squawked. One by one the submarine's compartments complied.

"Laboratory secure!" she shouted at her turn, her voice breaking from the tension.

Then she sat on the box, heart pounding, one hand on the ladder to brace herself against the slope of the diving boat. She could hear the nervous rustling of the rabbits.

"Hi."

She jumped. He was sitting in the shadows at the rear of the compartment, half hidden by boxes.

"Owen! You're not supposed to be down here!" Her tone was delighted.

"By my reckoning I'm not supposed to be on this boat at all, yet I can't seem to get off it. The attack seemed a good opportunity to let people forget about me for a moment. So I decided to drop in."

She shoved off the ladder to grasp him. "Thank God!" They hugged fiercely. "I've been so lonely…" She buried her face in his chest.

"I know," he said, meaning it.

They kissed for the first time since the air raid in Berlin. For a blessed instant they could forget where they were.

The tilt of the boat continued to steepen. There was a thud from the first depth charge, and the hull lurched. "They're going to get closer," he warned. "Hold on!"

She nodded grimly, grasping a pipe, and watched his lips move as he counted the seconds. There was a second detonation, a throbbing boom this time, that jerked the submarine as if it had been rammed. She felt the shock punch her body and was thrown violently sideways, hitting the curved bulkhead hard enough to have the wind knocked out of her.

"Jesus…" Hart groaned. He too had been tossed. "They're right on top of us."

Another explosion rang the plunging submarine like a gong, rolling it sideways. A cabinet popped open and vomited a spray of supplies. The lights blinked and went out.

"Owen?" It was a pained gasp. The tilt of the deck was increasing.

"Greta, are you all right?"

"I think so, just stunned…"

The boat bucked again, shuddering, and then again. They could hear shouts from the sailors on the decks above. Yet these explosions were slightly less violent than before. Less close.

She found him in the dark and clutched at his clothing, crawling up his length so they could hold each other again.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," he whispered, more lightly than he felt.

They waited in the dark as time ticked by with agonizing slowness. They could hear a gush of water but didn't know what it meant. The hull creaked.

"We're going deep," she observed.

Two more blows, more distant now. The airplanes were depth-charging blind. The slope of the deck kept increasing and the ruins of Greta's laboratory cabinet slithered along the floor. The laboratory rabbits were scrabbling at their wire mesh. There seemed no end to the dive. "Owen, are we going down?"

He couldn't answer. The sailors above had fallen silent and the steel in the hull was groaning. There was a sharp report somewhere in the submarine, like the bang of a gun, and then another.

"What's that?"

"Something giving way, I think. Bolts, valves. How deep is the ocean here?" he asked worriedly.

She hugged him harder. "I don't know. Three kilometers?"

"Deep enough."

More explosions, but distant enough that they just echoed through the hull, making it quake. The submarine hull squealed.

"It sounds like a whale," she whispered.

Then the tilt began to lessen. It was as if Freiwald was hauling on the reins of a horse, bringing its head up. The leveling was agonizingly slow, but it was happening. The boat creaked like a complaining hinge. They were sweating, waiting for it.

Finally the keel was even.

"I think we've stopped sinking." He whispered as if a noise would point them down again. They sagged in relief.

"Now what?"

"We hide."

Suddenly blue emergency lighting came on. The glow was eerie. The chaos was not as bad as it had sounded while things broke in the dark, but the floor was littered with debris. They examined each other. "Your arm is cut," he said, pointing. She nodded numbly. He tore a scrap of clean rag and bound it and they began boxing what they could.

"It's stuffy. Can we open that hatch?"

He shook his head. "Not until we're safe. The air will get worse before it gets better." He used a folder to shovel up shattered laboratory glassware, then found a storage tarp to lay on the deck and protect them from remnants. The submarine, on battery power, was quiet now, the crew trying not to make a sound. The Germans were trying to creep away.

Having secured what they could, Owen and Greta sat companionably side by side. There was nothing to do but wait.

"Do you think they've given up?"

"No. They'll be orbiting overhead, waiting for us to surface. And calling for destroyers with sonar. They won't give up easily."

"How long?"

"Hours, I suspect. Hours and hours."

She leaned against him. "Good."

They were quiet for a while, slowly recovering their equanimity in the calm, then their conversation started up again, drifting lightly from topic to topic. They'd almost succeeded in blocking out the seriousness of their situation when, suddenly, they heard a ghostly far-off echo:

Ping.

"Uh-oh."

Ping.

"What's that?"

"My navy. We're still being hunted."

They listened, her head on his chest. She could hear the thud of his heart.

Ping… ping… ping.

"They're getting closer." He pushed her upright. "Grab the ladder again. Brace yourself."

She pulled away reluctantly. "If they hit us, will it be quick?"

"Yes." In truth, he didn't know.

Ping, ping, ping, ping … They could hear the screws of the destroyer.

The submarine trembled slightly. Freiwald was trying to accelerate and turn away.

Wham! A wrenching concussion as powerful as the first one, and then another, and then a third. The light went out again and Greta gave a short sob, involuntarily, as the U-boat heeled. Their bodies lurched sideways, feet kicking, hanging on with their arms.

"Owennn…" she moaned.

The deck began tilting again.

"God. He's trying to go deeper."

Ping, ping, ping, ping…

"Hang on!"

Twin thuds, shaking the submarine to its core. The power of the explosions throbbed through their bodies and Hart felt he was clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from rattling. There were more bangs and they could hear oaths on the deck above and a roaring hiss of water. The U-4501 was groaning, the depth squeezing it in on itself.

She crawled to him in the dark. "I'm going to hang on to you," she whispered.

Ping… ping… ping…

"We're pulling away from them, I think…"

Wham! The boat shook, not quite as hard this time.

"Maybe it would be best just to end it like this," she whispered. "In each other's arms. Easier."

"No. We're going to beat him." He did not mean the destroyer.

More explosions, farther away this time. Sluggishly, as if waterlogged, the deck once more leveled.

"I wonder how deep we are now." He could sense the sea pressing like a vise. Tons of dark water. It was oppressive.

Slowly the depth-charging receded. The gush of water and the cries slowed, then stopped. The boat was quiet again, a crypt.

He sank his face in her hair. She sighed, reaching up to stroke his head.

"Jürgen told me he's going to let us go."

"Oh really?"

"I asked him if he was going to leave us in Antarctica, abandon us. The question embarrassed him. He said if we do what he wants he'll put us off the submarine in a raft, near a foreign port."

"And you believe that?"

"I don't know what to believe. He seems unpredictable. I think he still loves me in a way. But I no longer know him."

"Greta, he can't let us go."

"Why not, if he gets what he wants?"

"Because he thinks he's going to win the war with a secret we know. Because we're sitting in Germany's newest submarine. Because he needs your expertise to manufacture what he's after. I'm an American Intelligence officer, Greta. Do you think he's going to collect this drug for a plague and then put us ashore to talk about it? The only way he'll put me in a raft is if I'm already dead."

They were silent for a while. "Is he evil, Owen? Is Germany evil?"

He smiled wryly. "I think we're supposed to call it moral confusion. Besides, you told me he's simply dedicated."

"No." She shook her head. "He wants to destroy what he can't possess. That's wrong."

They lay waiting, listening. The sonar had grown more distant. Like confused dogs, the destroyers and airplanes were circling.

Somewhat feebly, the blue emergency light flicked on again.

Hart let go of the ladder and slid down on the tarp, holding Greta. "He'll be angry I sneaked down here, you know."

"Don't worry," she said, kissing him. "He can't get too vindictive just yet. He needs us."

"Yes, but I wonder how much. Those soldiers of his would find the cave entrance eventually. And someone— Schmidt maybe— can find and collect the goo."

The image made Greta laugh. "Somehow I don't see Dr. Schmidt as a swashbuckling spelunker."

But her lightheartedness was cut short.

Ping.

"Damn."

They waited.

Ping… The interval was longer. The sonar had lost them again.

"I'm hot," she finally complained, suddenly restless. "Sweaty." Without ventilation, the temperature in the submarine was rising. "I feel like I'm buried. Like I'm dying, buried alive."

"Me too."

She sat up, shaking her head. "No, I can feel you. You're alive. You're hard. Down there." She pointed.

"Greta!"

"It's hot and we're in danger and I want to take my clothes off. Take them off before I die. Please take them off me, Owen. I want to make you harder."

He swallowed and glanced at the hatch. "If we surface…"

"That's what makes it exciting." She hauled off her sweater. "I'm tired of dying. I've been dying for six years." She unfastened her bra and tossed it aside. Then she bent, her breasts brushing him, and worked at his buttons. "I've been dying and losing my life and now I have this one moment and no longer care about the next one, or what anyone thinks. So hurry. Hurry! Before the destroyers come back. I'm very sweaty, and very wet."

"Jesus." He yanked at his clothing and then hers, frantic with desire and uncertain what to pull off first. It didn't seem to matter as they kissed and tugged. Soon she pushed him onto his back and was astride him, her eyes dilated, her mouth partly opened.

"I want you more than anything in the world," she whispered.

And then she enveloped him like liquid fire, arching her own back, his hands on her nipples, their bodies slick with sweat and heat, their breath short and gasping in the increasing closeness of the chamber as she rocked up and down. Before he could control himself he exploded inside her, Greta giving a stifled cry as he bucked.

Then she leaned over him to let him suck a breast, her whisper hot and urgent in his ear. "I hope the destroyer keeps hunting. Because we're not done, you know."

Ping.

They were spent.

The couple lay breathing shallowly, half unconscious and drifting in troubled dreams from the lack of oxygen. After their lovemaking the destroyers had come again, hammering on the boat with remorseless fury. They'd hung grimly to the ladder and to each other, jaws clenched as the explosions wrenched them again and again and again. The light died once more. Then a pipe had burst with a spray of water like cold needles and Owen had hauled himself up to grope in the dark for the shaken valve to shut it off.

"Leak secured!" Greta had gasped to the intercom in reply to Freiwald's anxious question. The hatch remained shut.

They slumped, their lungs starved, waiting for another pass from the warships above. It didn't come. Time crawled. The eerie blue light came on again, like the glow from an Antarctic ice cave.

She sighed. "Now would be a time to end it, after we've made love."

"No." He stirred. "Greta, listen. We do have one chance. It's a desperate one, probably a crazy one, but it's the one reason I agreed we should come along. Before I escaped from the island last time I found something I could use to try to escape. The chance is too slim for you to attempt it but if I'm gone again Jürgen will probably let you live. Go back with him on the submarine to Germany. If I make it, I'll find you there."

"No! I'm not leaving you again!"

He touched her cheek, the side of her face. "Listen. He's going to kill me—kill me— once I show him the way back into that volcano. Unless I can escape. This is my best chance. Your best chance is to stay put and try to keep Jürgen and the others from hunting me down."

She looked doubtful. "What is it?"

"When I crawled out of the cave I found a cove…"

He whispered to her for some time. She lay there, deep in thought. "But how will you get that chance?"

"I don't know."

She rested her head on his shoulder. "I suspect it will be up to me to make it."

He could say nothing to that. Eventually, they slept.

The roar and shudder of the boat woke them. Hart looked at his watch. Sixteen hours. The ballast tanks were finally being blown and the submarine slowly rising. It was like being lifted from molasses. They groped hurriedly for their clothes, hauling them on.

"You stay behind for a moment," Greta said. "Try to sneak back in the excitement. Perhaps no one will notice where you were."

"I want him to know where I was. Exactly where I was. So there's no confusion."

"No. You have to survive, Owen. Survive until your chance. Don't lose your head."

They could hear a rising excitement from the decks above and when the schnorkel broke the surface a cheer rang out. The diesel engines rumbled into life and a cool breath of air came from the vent like a spring in a desert.

"So it's not over after all." She sounded almost sad. "We must go on."

"For a while. Someday this is going to be over and we're going to be together. Someday we're going to have time."

"Yes. Someday. Just remember to stay away from Jürgen."

She hugged him and moved toward the hatch. The handle was turning. She hoped to go up before anyone spotted Owen.

But when the hatch clanged open she had to jerk her head back from the fall of a pair of boots. Drexler thumped to the deck, looking concerned. "Greta, are you all right? I was worried about you!" Then he froze.

It was the damned American.

Greta had backed to stand with Hart. Fresher air was pouring in through the hatch and the couple took deep, shuddering breaths, holding each other in support. Jürgen himself looked haggard, his face lined with sleeplessness and his shirt soaked with sweat. He stared at the pilot in disbelief.

"I told you to stay away from her!" he said hoarsely.

"Yes, you did."

"God damn you!" Drexler's movement was swift. He yanked Greta away, shoving her against the bulkhead, and then whirled at his rival.

The pilot's fist struck him square in the face and the Nazi flew backward, slamming into the ladder with a grunt. He toppled, stunned, onto the deck. Hart clutched his fist, wincing. "Get up, you son of a bitch."

"Owen, don't! They'll kill you!"

There was a riot of shouts above and more booted bodies fell from the hatchway, filling the crowded laboratory. It was the storm troopers, Drexler's goons. Hart hauled his fist back to strike again but Hans lashed out expertly with a leg and the pilot went down with a bang, the wind whooshing out of him. Greta screamed and sprang, scratching, and was cuffed aside. As Hart boosted himself off the deck a boot caught him in the midsection and he dropped like a bag of sand. Another struck his head. He blacked out.

Greta was sobbing. Bristle-Head loomed over her, waiting.

"Leave her alone." It was Drexler, the words slurred by a bleeding mouth. He stood up stiffly, humiliated. His body shook as he strove to contain his emotion.

He pointed to Hart. "I want him chained this time. Until we get to the island." The SS men nodded.

Then he pointed to Greta. "And her I want alone. Down here. With me."

They dragged the unconscious American up through the hatch and it clanged shut. She stood stiffly, trembling. Drexler turned his face a moment to spit some blood, then licked his lips as he stared at her. His chest rose and fell, his eyes wounded.

"You did it with him, didn't you?" The tone was of utter disbelief. "Did it with him right here on the goddamned boat. Right in front of seventy men. My God."

She closed her eyes, a tear sliding down. "Please don't hurt him. Hurt me, but not him."

"Hurt you?" His voice filled with wonder. "Hurt you? My God, what could I possibly do to you that would remotely approach what you've done to me? You've destroyed me. You've obliterated any scrap of pride I had left. You've buried me with shame. You've made me a laughingstock. Hurt you? What a joke!"

"I told you!" she shouted, her eyes bright and wet. "I told you and you wouldn't listen! I told you I loved him and not you! So you put the three of us together on this damned submarine like a crazy man, babbling about working together— what did you think was going to happen?"

He looked defeated. "A last measure of… civility."

Tears were running freely down both cheeks. "Don't you see? It's too late for that."

He nodded dully. "Indeed."

She waited but he made no move. "So what are you going to do, Jürgen?"

He turned back to the ladder. "Save Germany."

CHAPTER THIRTY

Hart woke slowly. He was woozy, his body sore. When he turned there was a rattle and he blearily opened his eyes. He had a manacle on his wrist, surprisingly heavy. A chain led to a stanchion supporting his bunk. The submarine was rolling, he dimly noted, its diesels drumming a steady rumble that pounded in his head. They were on the surface and moving fast.

"Well, hell." He tugged feebly on the chain, slowly remembering what had happened. It was a wonder Drexler hadn't killed him. Apparently, he really was needed.

"Wake up. You need to eat." The pilot opened his eyes again. It was a sailor who bunked near him. Jacob, his name was, holding a mug of soup. "You should stay away from women. They're bad luck."

Hart sat up painfully and sipped. The broth seemed like it was flowing directly into his veins. "My luck is due to change."

"Not on this mission, I suspect."

Hart sipped again. "We're past the destroyers? Running on the surface?"

Jacob nodded. "For now. But we had to release some fuel to make them think they scored a hit and we're rapidly burning what's left."

"I want to get out of this coffin."

"So does every man in the U-boat arm. Don't expect any sympathy from me."

Hart drained the cup.

"Good," Jacob said. "Now you go see the captain."

"I don't want to see the captain."

"That doesn't matter. He wants to see you."

The pilot lifted his manacled arm.

The sailor took out a key to unlock the chain. "The captain said to release you. If the colonel objects, he can take it up with Freiwald."

Groaning, Hart swung out of his bunk and followed Jacob to the control room. "Up there," the engineer pointed. Hart looked questioningly at the ladder. "The captain's on the conning tower. Here, take this coat and hat."

The tower well was shockingly cold after the long confinement in the submarine— cold enough to almost take his breath away. Then he inhaled deeply, sucking in clean air, and felt light-headed, almost intoxicated. It was glorious.

"Shut the damn hatch."

The pilot stood next to the captain. It was night. The U-boat was racing furiously through the swells, rocking with an easy gait as water foamed in a glittering rapid down the narrow foredeck. Hart hadn't realized how far south they'd come. The Germans were in a realm of lunar light so intense that icebergs glowed like the white mountains of the moon. The Milky Way was as palpable as a silk ribbon, stars and moon so reflective in the sea that there was an illusion they were sailing into the sky, or sailing upside down. They'd entered the Southern Ocean and he could pick out the Southern Cross. Antarctica lay somewhere ahead.

Hart pulled up his hood. Freiwald was leaning forward on the conning tower bulkhead to watch for ice while a sailor kept watch from the antiaircraft gun mount behind, too far to hear what the pair said. Out here it seemed as if they were the only people on the planet.

"We've made good time, Captain."

"These boats are incredibly swift underwater. And incredibly strong. We've just broken a depth record: that's why you're alive right now. If we had enough of them we could control the Atlantic." He shook his head. "But we don't. We in the navy knew this war was madness in 1939. Dönitz told us to be prepared to fight for seven years. We'll be lucky if we last that long."

"Jacob said you fooled them with a release of an oil slick."

"Confused them at least. Our satisfaction may only be temporary. We no longer have enough fuel to get back and so I've had to radio for a milch cow— a supply submarine— to rendezvous on our homeward voyage. It was a risk to make the call. U-boat Command claims it's scientifically impossible to break our codes— and yet why are all my friends on the bottom? I prefer to stay off the radio."

"What are our chances then?"

"Perhaps you know better than I?" the captain said, searchingly.

The pilot laughed. "My chances are lousy. I make a hash of things in Antarctica even in peacetime."

"And now you're doing no better in war."

His irritated tone sobered the pilot. "Meaning?"

"I called you up here because it's time I learned what's going on between you and the Drexlers. I don't tolerate fighting on my boat. I don't like my thirteen new passengers. I don't like arrogant SS pricks pretending to command my submarine, I don't like women showing up where they don't belong, and I don't like my insubordinate American prisoner. I want to hear a reason why I shouldn't throw all three of you overboard before you cause more trouble."

"Well." Hart considered. "You can't toss me because I'm the only one who knows how to get into a mountain to fetch what Germany wants. You can't toss Greta because she's the only one who knows how to process the drug we're going to find. You could toss Jürgen. I can't see that he's any use at all."

Freiwald scowled. "Why did you go to the laboratory during the attack? You knew that wasn't your station."

"I didn't see how it mattered where I was. I have no combat duties on board."

"Dammit, answer my question! Why did you insist on seeing the woman after you were told not to?"

Hart hesitated only a second. "I'm in love with Greta, Captain. And she's in love with me. She's married to Jürgen Drexler in name only. We fell in love before the war on a prior expedition to the island we're going to. I was delayed returning to the ship, Drexler reported I was dead, and eventually he persuaded Greta to marry him. When I learned she was still alive I stole a plane, flew to Berlin, and convinced her to run away with me. As you can imagine, this has produced some tension among the three of us."

"God in heaven." Freiwald frowned. "Does the High Command know about this?"

"Of course not. If they knew the truth, Drexler would be in an asylum. But then so would half the High Command."

Freiwald threw him a sour glance but didn't dispute the point. "And you. Why do you go along with this mission? You feel no loyalty to your country, to its cause?"

"Quite the contrary," Hart said grimly. He paused, wondering how much he should say. Finally, he decided he had nothing to lose by being frank. "Captain, there's a famous proverb about a peasant who angers a great king, sufficient to have the king order his death. Just as he's about to lose his neck, the peasant yells out to the sovereign, 'Wait, if you give me an additional year to live, I'll teach your horse to talk.' The king thinks it over and, deciding he has nothing to lose, grants the temporary reprieve. Afterward, a friend of the peasant approaches him and asks why he's struck a bargain he obviously can't deliver on. The peasant replies: 'A lot can happen in a year. I could die. The king could die. Even better, the king's horse could teach himself to talk.' "

Freiwald smiled at the punch line. "You're amusing, Hart. Amusing and, I think, very much a wild card in this whole thing. You make me nervous."

"I guess I have to hone my relationship skills."

Freiwald shifted slightly to put his back to the wind. "This drug everyone keeps referring to— tell me about it."

"A drug to control a new plague. The worst disease you've ever seen. Jürgen Drexler wants to unleash it on the world. And he needs your help to do it."

"And you think this is wrong."

"I think it's evil."

"To obtain an antibiotic?"

"A cure is the only safe way to unleash the disease. Surely you've figured that out by now."

"Jürgen says there's more to his plan."

"Has he told you what it is?"

"No."

"Nor me. Captain, you mustn't help him with this."

Freiwald looked out at the icebergs drifting across the sea. "Have you ever been to Hamburg, Hart?"

"Yes. The earlier expedition left from Hamburg."

"Have you ever seen a firestorm? Its effect?"

He swallowed. "No."

"The British caused a firestorm in Hamburg. A city burning so hot that it sucks oxygen toward its center like a whirlpool. Winds so powerful they can sweep up little children. Did you know that in one night more people died in Hamburg than in your American battle of Gettysburg? Not soldiers! Women. Children. Old people."

"I saw the London Blitz, Captain. You're describing modern war."

"Exactly. And that's why Jürgen Drexler is no monster. He's simply a modern man. A modern warrior. Religion has been replaced with ideology. The centurions of morality are gone, the walls of order breached. We live in a barbaric age."

"Captain, if you follow Drexler to the bitter end I swear he'll kill you. His cause is disaster. Don't risk death for this man."

"I don't risk death for this man, whose mind and character I find dubious at best. I don't risk death even for our Führer. But I do risk death for the Fatherland. I do risk it to save Germany. And I don't fear death. Do you know why?"

"No. Why?"

"Because I've already died, and the man you see standing before you is a ghost. You see, my family was in Hamburg that night, and they were roasted in that firestorm, and all the good in me died with them." He nodded. "So you will help us, Hart, because in the modern world terror must be met with terror."

"Somewhere it has to end, Captain."

"And Jürgen Drexler promises he can end it. So. Now you'll go below so Jacob can lock you to your bunk again."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Atropos Island loomed on the horizon like a thunderous cloud, towering and shadowy. The white of its glaciers evaporated into mist that billowed to form fantastic canyons of creamy vapor, the confection topped by the darker syrup of a volcanic plume from the second peak. The increase in eruptive activity did not appear to be threatening enough to prevent their reentering the caldera anchorage, but the drift of ash added to the unease of the German soldiers and sailors on deck. As they approached the island the sea was a flat calm, the submarine threading slowly through dark water between rafts of pack ice. The temperature was below freezing and the conning tower was frosted. The sky overhead was a patchwork: an occasional squall would send a brief snow flurry across the boat, followed a few minutes later by pale polar sun. As they rounded the flank of the island some of the flakes were grayer and grittier. Volcanic ash, the sailors were told. They held up their mittens in wonder.

Even Hart was allowed to come up on deck. He watched the tail of volcanic smoke with disquiet, wondering what this change meant for descending underground. And yet when the U-4501 nosed through the caldera entrance the harbor seemed not to have changed at all in six years. There was still the same pinto pattern of pumice and snow, still the absence of any bird or animal life, still the lonely beaches that steamed in the cold. Even the crates of supplies left by the Schwabenland remained undisturbed. He shivered, but not from the temperature. The familiarity of it after so many years seemed chilling. The bodies of the mountaineers, he assumed, still lay where they fell, stained a coffee color and mummified by the dry freeze of time.

Freiwald anchored not far from the underwater wreck of the Bergen, and the U-boat men on deck began assembly of a prefabricated motor launch. Antarctic clothing was dragged out of storage and ropes, buckets, lanterns, lamps, and packs were readied. Despite the smoking volcano, there was an air of excitement aboard now that they'd survived the attack and reached Antarctica. Here would be a tale to tell one's grandchildren about.

Hart was issued a parka, boots, a backpack, lights, food, and climbing gear that included an ice ax. He joined five other SS men on the foredeck. Last to emerge were Jürgen and Greta. It was the first time the pilot had seen her since the depth charge attack and she granted him a brief, reassuring smile but didn't attempt to speak. She was solemn as she looked at the island. Owen was relieved that her face was unmarked.

Drexler seemed subdued but determined. "Here's where you earn your keep, Hart," he growled, keeping between the pilot and Greta. "I could blast and dig my way into the mountain the old way but it would take time and we have no timbers to shore up the ceiling. The alternative you found will prove more expedient, I hope."

"It might be a tight squeeze for some of your gorillas, Jürgen. Those boys afraid of the dark?"

The storm troopers looked scornfully at the pilot.

"My men aren't afraid of anything but failure. Which is the only thing you should fear as well. We'll get what we came for one way or another. But if you and my wife assist as promised, things will be easier for everyone."

Hart looked evenly at the soldiers. "Looking forward to their company. Especially Hans there, the one with the big boot."

The yellow-haired giant grinned at him.

They clambered into the launch, motored ashore, and the party shouldered their packs. The pilot led off, switchbacking up the slope of the crater. Soon they were sweating in the cold, the submarine shrinking in the lagoon below. As they neared the rim Hart noticed the launch had returned to the submarine and another party was boarding. The pilot thought he recognized among them the cadaverous, hunched figure of Schmidt. Where was he going?

They moved on up to the crest and out of sight of the submarine, Drexler bringing up the rear with Greta. It was clear he wasn't anxious for the American to talk to her, but the German maintained his own stiff distance from her as well. Whatever their exchange after the depth charge attack, it hadn't been a friendly one. Owen decided to be patient. Despite the situation his spirits had revived somewhat with his escape from the confines of the U-4501. Even the dour SS men brightened. The air was sharp and cold and exquisitely clean. The unaccustomed walking brought an almost welcome tightness to their muscles. Hart paused frequently. "Drink lots of water," he kept admonishing. "It's arid here, despite the snow."

They circuited the crest in a window of brilliant sunshine, Hart looking down the dry valley where he knew the husks of the dead Germans still lay scattered. Was that where Schmidt was aiming? To get the bodies or the spores? The pilot decided against pointing out the deadly vale to his group of Germans. Like it or not, they all needed each other to descend safely into the mountain. Panic wouldn't help.

Beyond the valley he could see the other volcano, exhausting unevenly. Sometimes the plume would be dark with ash and other times it would lighten with steam. The snow around its top had been stained charcoal. He wondered what Elmer would make of this. "The island doesn't want you to be here," the old Eskimo would have said. "I don't want to be here either," Hart would have replied.

When they'd hiked the rim to the seaward side of the crater Hart abruptly turned off the crest. Below was a panoramic view. To his left was the sea, the island skirted by a fractured maze of pack ice. Directly ahead was the snowy plateau where he'd landed the Boreas, bordered by the adjacent jagged ridge of rock that linked the two volcanoes. Behind, to his right, was the valley. Without a word he led them skittering downward on the snow of the volcano's outer flank. They stopped on the shelf of bare basalt that extruded from the mountain a third of the way down its slope.

Hart looked back up. "It's tough going back over the rim of the volcano," he told the soldiers. "You're going to get a workout packing our cargo to the submarine."

"We're not afraid to work," Hans said.

Hart nodded. "Of course we did have a tube leading right through the mountain, right out to the caldera, but Colonel Drexler demolished that one. Back in 1939. You can ask him about it on the way back up."

"It was an accidental collapse, Hart. And keep your tiresome history to yourself."

"Yes, my commander." He gave a mock salute and pointed with the tip of his ax. "The exit I found is right there."

Still looking like a sleepy eye, a dark slit of a hole looked out at the ocean and its mosaic of ice. "We're crawling in there?" Rudolf, the man Hart knew as Bristle-Head, asked doubtfully.

"It's bigger inside."

They paused to get out the ropes and lights, including miner's helmets with headlamps. As the others finished preparing to enter the cave, Hart looked intently down the volcano's flank at the small, relatively ice-free bay far below. His eye swept its shoreline as if searching for something. Then, while Drexler was bent over his pack, he moved quickly to Greta.

"It's still there," he whispered.

She looked down the slope quickly, not seeing what he'd spotted, and then glanced at the sea. "The ocean's so vast," she worried.

"But possible."

She stole a touch of his gloved hand.

"Hart, are you ready?" Drexler snapped. He was following their gaze with suspicion, obviously irritated at the whispering but not wanting to make a scene. The SS men looked at the trio with interest.

"I'm ready."

"Then do your job and lead."

The initial crawl led to the sandy room near the entrance. Then the tube became tight again as it led down into the mountain. Hart explained that he'd leave a colored flag every ten meters or so to mark the convoluted route. The cave would temporarily widen when they reached the long vertical chimney— the elevator shaft— that he and Fritz had descended so long ago. Then narrow once again before the grotto. They'd fix climbing ropes along the route.

The group worked slowly, bracing themselves against a sudden fall. Periodically a rock would break loose and roll down through the spelunkers, banging its way ahead of them into the pits below.

"Dammit! This is worse than that midget-designed submarine," Hans complained after sliding through a tight spot on his back, dragging his pack behind him.

"At least it's warmer in here than outside," Bristle-Head responded.

"It's warmer anywhere than outside."

Hart had to pause several times, occasionally backtracking. The lava tubes were a labyrinth; it'd been a miracle he'd found his way back out in the dark. Now he deliberately took a periodic wrong turn, trying to develop a mental picture of where all the alternate routes led. The rest of the party rested gratefully while he explored. "I nearly died in here once and I don't want to make a wrong turn again," he explained.

The chimney remained the most daunting. The lava tube descended to its roof with the dangerous pitch of a children's slide, then opened to a vertical well hundreds of feet deep. Owen cautiously let himself down on a rope to that junction and, letting his legs dangle in space, dropped a rock to emphasize the need for caution. It fell into the blackness without a sound for what seemed like an eternity of time, finally banging and bouncing somewhere far below. Its echoes drifted up to them.

"Jesus," one of the SS men said. "This dung hole is virtually bottomless. We're climbing down there?"

"Not only that," said Hart, "but you're going to have to climb back out. With a heavier pack than you have now."

"I hate this fucking war."

"Finally, we agree."

The pilot unreeled a rope into the darkness and started down, pausing periodically to drive climbing pitons to anchor the line. Gingerly, the others followed.

At the shelf where the tube from the old entrance joined the chimney, Hart paused until the group reassembled. Everyone was breathing hard. He glanced at Greta. She'd been compliant but silent, freezing the Nazis out, and the soldiers tended to keep a wary distance. Drexler stayed nearer, always between his wife and Hart, and yet avoided looking at her.

She was gazing down the chimney to where they'd descended before, lost in memory, when Hart jerked his head down the horizontal tube and said, "This way." Greta's mouth opened in surprise and then closed. They walked as if exiting the mountain from the tube that had collapsed.

"Jürgen!" Hart called. "Can you come up to the front? I want to show you something."

Drexler pushed ahead. The beam from his headlamp picked out a wall of cascading rock from the cave-in, and it was obvious that Hart had led them to another dead end. He was impatient with the frequent detours but had refrained from complaining: he still needed the American. "What is it?" he asked grumpily.

"The result of German purpose." Hart was searching with the beam from his own helmet. "There." He pointed.

Greta gasped. Bones. Lying broken in a heap of rubble was a body, decay far advanced in the relative warmth of the cave. The skull still had a few leathery scraps. A buckle, buttons, and a pocketknife were ensnarled on the web of tendrils clinging to the skeletal ribs. Rocks still obscured the mashed legs.

Drexler had gone rigid.

"Why it's Fritz, Jürgen!" Hart said. "Lying right where that cave-in you started crushed the life out of him."

There was a murmur of unease among the SS men. "This is bad luck," one muttered.

Drexler looked balefully at Hart. "What's this got to do with our mission?"

"Just underscores your deep concern for the men who serve under you."

"Spare me the finger pointing, Hart. Smart-mouthed communist or not, Eckermann was not someone I wished dead. He simply was in the wrong place at the right time."

"Well, we're going to bury him."

"We don't have time for this maudlin pity!"

Hart crossed his arms. "We're staying here until he's covered with rocks and a prayer said over his grave."

No one wanted to spend more time arguing in the depth of the cave. The little German was swiftly covered with stones and Hart led the others in the Lord's Prayer, a couple of the SS men stumbling over the words. Then he turned to the others. "This was one man. Before we go farther on this mission, I want you to imagine burying a million others: the victims of a new plague."

"We're all tired of your moral pretensions, Hart," Drexler added. "There's a war on. And we're down here to save lives, not kill them: to get a cure, not a disease. I suggest the first life you should worry about is your own. So. Lead on."

Owen looked at them sadly. "Very well." He pointed. "We go back to the shaft." The men moved off, anxious to get away from the body. Drexler led this time.

The pilot caught up to Greta, looking at her with concern. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Yes. We only quarreled."

"It worries me to leave you alone with him."

"I'm not afraid of Jürgen."

"I am."

The American Intelligence officer sat on the embassy terrace in Lisbon, the contents of a folder spilled across the table. It was evening, the night cool but not unpleasant. The naval attaché had called them there.

"Maybe the kraut isn't a liar after all," he told them.

"Come on, Sam," the OSS man scoffed. "He doesn't have a shred of evidence for his wild story. And how do we know he didn't just murder Hart? The German is either a plant or a psychotic."

"I thought that too." The attaché pointed to the papers. "Except that his story is beginning to check out."

"What do you mean?"

"Six days ago an escort carrier task force transiting to the Indian Ocean put up a routine air patrol and encountered a German submarine in the South Atlantic, far away from any convoy route or the normal battlefields. A big boat, the pilots thought, and their guess was that it was heading for Japan on some kind of swap mission. They depth-charged and got a slick. They couldn't confirm the kill, however."

"So?"

"Two days later we intercepted a coded radio message from a sub even farther south. It said the pig-boat was short on fuel and needed resupply to get back to Germany. Asked for a future rendezvous with a milch cow, but not immediately: it was going somewhere first. The timing is odd. Not enough time to get to Japan, certainly. South America, possibly. Or… Antarctica."

The OSS man frowned.

"Think about it, Phil," the naval attaché reasoned. "This man Kohl shows up raving about a secret mission and then we independently find a submarine about where he predicted it would be. Besides, why would this Kohl come here when he's an escapee from France?"

"Because he wants us to divert resources way the hell down into Antarctica. It's a Nazi ploy."

"Maybe. But what if he's right? What if he's really changing sides? An opportunist like him, this late in the war…"

"Sam…"

"We've got a destroyer at Punta Arenas. We've got the biggest damn navy in the world, Hitler is on the ropes…"

"Tell that to the guys getting pasted in the Bulge!"

"… and we can afford to divert one ship. Dammit, Phil, what if he's right?"

"Or what if the krauts are building some kind of secret hideout down there?" the deputy ambassador interjected quietly. "To hole up after the war. I think Sam is right. I think we should ask the navy to check this out."

"I don't know if we can convince Washington."

"We can if we promise them a sub to bag," the attaché said.

"And we can put that damned oily Nazi on board," the deputy ambassador suggested. "To either help us find this sub or be left down there for causing us the trouble."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Greta felt violated. The grotto in the cave had been a secret place, a sweet memory she'd clung to during all the dark years of the war. Now Jürgen's SS ruffians occupied it like lords, their coarse laughter a despoiling sacrilege. It was as if fate was determined to ruin all she held dear. She loathed Jürgen for coming here. Even if he didn't know what had happened on the blankets then perhaps he could guess, and if he guessed it was like an invasion of her deepest privacy, her fondest moment. The memory had become stained.

Owen was wet and shivering: the Germans were using him as a slave. They'd rigged a rope down the chute of water that led to the underground lake and sent him down with small steel buckets, hoisting up his harvest of the mysterious drug organism. The lake was as warm as ever, Owen had reported, but the constant soaking and the exhausting climb left him weary and chilled. Now he'd been allowed a respite to throw his soaked clothes on the hot rocks and wrap himself in a blanket. He looked frustrated and helpless. Sometimes Greta caught him looking at her sadly and she had to look away, not wanting to reveal her own despair.

As she squatted on the banks of the underground river, the biologist's own muscles ached as she sieved the slime into a concentration that would be packed to the surface. Two of the SS men had already departed with a load. Now Jürgen came over and gazed downward at her. His gloom had metamorphosed into nervous excitement now that the work had begun.

"Is this what we want?" he asked. "Is this going to cure the disease?"

She put down her sieve and tiredly rocked back on her heels. "I don't know, Jürgen. Yes, this is what Owen and I found, but who knows if it can be grown in mass quantities? This is such an unusual place, a dark cavern, its water full of unknown microscopic life and chemicals. It may take a long time to duplicate in a laboratory."

"We don't have a long time. We barely have even a short time. That's why it's imperative to start experimenting now, in the submarine. I want to know what's necessary for success before we leave this island. If we have to pump some of this water to propagate this organism, we'll do it."

She wearily wiped her forehead with her arm. "So Germany can unleash your microbe?"

"No! So I can end this war."

She looked up skeptically. "Jürgen, can't you see how insane this is?"

"Why do you insist on seeing me as a monster?"

"Maybe because I'm a captive?" She stood stiffly, her hands at the small of her back. "Maybe because you named this island after the Greek Fate who ends life?"

He scowled.

"Yes, I looked it up."

"Listen, I don't want a captive," he said impatiently. "I want a partner. I wouldn't have had to confine you if you'd exhibited the loyalty and faith of a proper German wife."

"And when have you ever behaved like a proper German husband? When have you ever let love compete with ambition?"

He half raised his hand at that and the SS men looked their way with interest. Then his hand dropped. "For God's sake, let's stop this silly quarreling," he hissed. "Six years of marriage and still you don't know me, still you don't understand me."

"I understand that unless we move cautiously, nothing good can come of this."

He looked impatient. "And that's where you're wrong. Only speed can win success." He considered a moment. "You're right, our motives are more complex than what I revealed in Berlin. But not in the way you think. I told you I had more to reveal about my plans and now is the time, I think. Time to comprehend what we're doing here. Time you learned the true Jürgen Drexler." He turned to the American. "Hart! Come over here!" Then he turned back to Greta. "I'll tell you both, and then you'll understand why we've come back this long, hard way."

The trio moved out of earshot of the remaining three SS men and Drexler stood, thinking about what he was going to say. Their triangle looked bedraggled. Hart was wet, his eyes tired, and Greta and Jürgen were grimy. No one had slept properly in weeks.

"Listen," Drexler finally began. "Do you think I'd be down in this dank asshole of the earth, processing scum, if not for a great purpose? I mean, my God! This is hell, I think!" He waved at the grotto.

"Interesting that you claim to know, Jürgen," Hart said.

Drexler scowled. "Shut up for once, you uneducated buffoon. I'm tired of mockery from a man who has accomplished nothing with his life except the theft of my wife." He let that hang. "Has it penetrated your dim brain yet that I don't need you anymore now that you've led us back into the mountain? That you've become superfluous to our expedition? One more sneering comment and I'll shoot you myself!"

The pilot opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

Drexler took a deep breath. "All right. Good. Now. It's true that when we came to this island the first time, my initial interest was solely in the disease. A tool for German defense, I thought, or at least for research. But then my men got sick and died and it seemed over, at least until we could return."

"So why not leave it be?" she asked.

"I'm coming to that. Will you please listen?" He looked at her with frustration. "We reported what we'd found, of course, but Reich strategists pointed out such a disease was too dangerous for us to use unless our own troops were immune. And then the war began, our victories were stunning, Antarctica was far away, and the matter receded from my mind. But as the Reich's fortunes darkened my thoughts returned to this island. I remembered Greta's excitement after your exploration of this cave and wondered if I'd been too hasty. And then you appeared, Hart! A personal disaster, yes. But also a revelation. An inspiration! Because I realized that in our personal problems was a key to success. Not to destroy, but to end the destruction. To force an armistice to this war."

"Jürgen, the war's ending soon anyway," Hart objected. "Maybe by Christmas."

"That's where you're wrong. That's what you don't understand. Even as we speak Germany is launching a great new offensive in the West that will take the Allies totally by surprise. And this is only the beginning of what our Führer promises. This remarkable new submarine that saved your life is merely one of hundreds being built that will soon reverse the tide of the naval war. The Reich has developed a new kind of airplane with a revolutionary jet engine. And Germany is building rockets capable of reaching America. The war is not nearly finished, Hart. It could go on for years. Years and years. Unless we act. Unless we succeed."

And you wouldn't disclose all these secrets unless I'm about to be sacrificed, the pilot thought gloomily.

"And so the idea that came to me is to use this microbe not as an instrument of mass murder but of mass salvation. To put an end to this war once and for all. To bring the world to its senses. Because with your antibiotic, Greta, suddenly we're not threatening death. We're offering life."

"What?"

"Look. Even if we could unleash this plague and perfectly protect our own people, Germany's peril would not be over. The other side would still seek to retaliate. There are rumors the Americans are working on a superweapon of their own: some new kind of bomb. German scientists think such a bomb is years away, but who knows? What if we escalated the war and the United States replied in turn? Killing begets killing. That's been the lesson of this century. But what if we offered life? What if we offered the Allies the opportunity to cure a terrible plague, in return for agreeing to an armistice? What if we could achieve a cease-fire on our terms? Yes, peace! By an emergency effort of German doctors and nurses to end a pestilence in Washington or London or Moscow."

The couple looked confused. "But, Jürgen," Greta objected, "how would such a plague get started?"

"By rocket," he answered matter-of-factly. "Or plane or submarine or even truck. We'd have to deliver the spores. The swiftest would be a V-2 air burst at night. Whole cities could be held hostage to the germ, the clock ticking. But no one would have to die if the Allies agreed quickly enough to German help in return for peace. And then the war could end."

"You'd infect a whole city?"

"Yes. And then save it. To end the war, you see. To balance terror with mercy, and thus bring peace. In the final accounting we'll be heroes." He looked at them expectantly.

"But women? Children?" Greta objected. "People will flee, the problems with distributing an antibiotic— "

"Those are details. It will work. It will work! If we make it work. And it begins here, in this cave. So you see, I'm not a monster, Greta. I'm a man of vision. The one man who can clearly see how to end this war on German terms."

She looked at him with dismay.

Hart spoke up. "Well, I quit."

Drexler sighed. "Hart, you can't quit— until I say so." The threat was clear.

"Jürgen," Greta said despairingly, "just let the war end by itself— "

"No! I refuse to be a victim of events when I have the opportunity to direct them. What we have here is a dazzling opportunity, far more dazzling than what we hoped for when we first came to Antarctica. This is what I've been waiting to tell you. This is what I've been waiting to share with you. Will you help?"

Greta studied her husband for a long time. Then, slowly, sadly, she nodded. "I'll do what I have to do, Jürgen."

"Are the charges ready?" Schmidt asked mildly, hunching in the cold wind of the dry valley. His voice was muffled behind the visor of his gas mask.

"Yes, Doctor. It should be quite a show." The SS man was splicing the wires to the detonator.

Schmidt looked sourly at the smoking volcano above them, the vista blurred by the scratched eyepieces of his mask. The plume of ash had made him nervous the whole time they were collecting spores at the upper end of the frozen lake and he wanted to get back to the submarine before the damned woman did: she might become irrational if she knew he was collecting more than a few spores to test the antidote— if she realized they'd come to stockpile the disease as well as the cure. That was not the only reason for his impatience: he hated the outdoors and couldn't wait to get back to the controlled environment of the U-boat. He also hated the clammy rubber of the mask but knew it was all that was keeping him alive until Greta returned with the antidote. The mummified bodies they'd passed in the valley had been warning enough. He dared not breathe a spore.

It was obvious the bacteria were carried to the surface in hot springs, spores drying on the surface and then carried by wind across the island. It might be impossible to permanently shut off the source but it seemed feasible to hide it at least until the end of the war, lest the Allies come here. The Reich had enough spores now to begin mass propagation in laboratories. At the rapid rate of bacterial growth there'd be plenty of plague within weeks. Their flowering would coincide with the readying of the rockets.

Schmidt thought Drexler's elaborate scheme to hold Allied capitals hostage to peace was absurd. Too complicated. Better to kill as many of the enemy as possible while waiting for additional German superweapons to reach the field. War was about killing, not psychology. But Drexler was most energetic when allowed his naive dreams, so the doctor let him prattle. And the question was moot until both disease and cure were in hand. Schmidt was content to leave the final strategy to others: as a man of science he preferred the purity of research.

He longed for a cigarette and wished he could tear off the mask to light one. Well. At least the first step was done. Time to start back home.

"Detonation," he ordered calmly. The soldier twisted the crank.

A boom thundered on the glacier that hung over the end of the valley and a geyser of snow and dirty till erupted into the air, cracks racing away on the ice. Then another and another and another, on and on, some explosions quite high on the frozen snout. Their crack was counterpointed by a deeper rumble of avalanche. A slurry of snow, chunks of ice, and glacial rock debris started down, pushing a billowing white cloud before it.

"Splendid!" The mask made Schmidt look like a gigantic insect. Behind it his eyes glowed as he watched the mantle of the mountain slide down. The SS squad faced away as a shock wave of air hit and staggered them, a momentary blizzard of snow and dust blowing by. Then the avalanche clattered to a stop and it was quiet again, the hot springs covered with a rubble of rocks, dirt, and chunks of ice. Wisps of steam curled upward.

The SS men cheered, the sound muffled behind their masks. The doctor studied their handiwork. There'd be some melt but the terrain was covered enough to discourage others from collecting. The secret was sealed.

"Gentlemen, the Reich now holds a monopoly on the trump card of history," he told them. "Let's take our prize back to the boat."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Greta was exhausted, slumped on a crate in the submarine's makeshift laboratory after almost thirty hours of nonstop work. She was alone. Schmidt, having succeeded in multiplying the microbe so they could test the antidote, had finally pleaded the weariness of age and staggered off. Now she sat breathing through a gauze mask, her hands rubbered, staring at the cages with a sense of ashen victory. Four of the rabbits were dead, their bodies elongated as if tormented on a rack. She could see the small white teeth of their final grimace. It was clear that the cave organism didn't immunize against the disease: giving it to the animals before they were injected with plague had done no good at all. The rest of the animals had survived, however, after being infected first by the microbe and then treated with antibiotic. They'd sickened briefly, some writhing in their cage, and then recovered. As a cure, the stuff worked.

She hated killing the laboratory animals. But maybe she had a bizarre tool now to save human lives and stop a greater madness, as Jürgen suggested. Had she done the right thing? Or was she making the unleashing of the microbe even more likely by combating it? In her weariness she felt she'd lost her moral compass and suddenly envied the certainty of the nuns she'd grown up with. But then what dilemmas did they ever face, the sheltered sisters? She wished she had Owen to talk to.

The biologist stretched, desperately tired and yet too tense to sleep. Conditions were so crude. A single water pipe and a crude drain. An alcohol stove. Planks had been set to make a workbench for Schmidt's microbial cultures, the originating spores harvested from the dry valley. The doctor hadn't wanted to draw on Germany's safely guarded microbe supply, he said, because of the risk involved in taking the cultures aboard ship sans antidote. Better, he explained to her, to wait until they arrived at Atropos to bring spore samples aboard. The cultures were lined under lamps now, petri platters of disease. Next to them were other cultures of more mild diseases, which they had felt safe bringing along. So far, the antibiotic seemed equally effective against them.

Greta intended to recommend destroying all the disease cultures before the U-boat sailed. Their usefulness had pretty much ended, and what was the point of taking chances?

The experiments suggested the expedition would be a success. Early tests in a vat showed promise that the drug organism could be grown and multiplied in Germany. Greta's experiment at reducing the scum to a more stable, storable, and usable dry powder with heat and evaporation had also succeeded: rabbits injected with it had recovered as rapidly as those given the compound raw. So the antibiotic worked, at least on animals or when swabbed or dripped into a lab dish. Admittedly, drugs were so mysterious and variable that the organism's true value couldn't be determined before clinical human tests at home. Still, they had the drug and that meant Jürgen must keep his promise: Owen would be released from the cave and would come to her again here in the submarine. Wouldn't he?

Unexpectedly, the idea depressed her. Owen's return would mean he would then attempt his escape, and even if he succeeded— which he admitted was unlikely— they'd be separated again at least until the end of the war. With Owen gone, the submarine would be sealed again for its long voyage home and she'd once more be imprisoned in a microcosm of the Reich she'd come to despise. Locked together again with Jürgen Drexler. She longed to run away with Owen but knew that if she did the alarm might be raised more quickly and their chances cut to zero. Aboard, she might delay or confuse any pursuit. To save him, she had to give him up. That was their plan.

The necessity was terrible.

With a sense of grim purpose, she reached into a drawer for the backpack she'd pilfered and set out for the ship's galley, where she hoped to steal enough food to keep a man alive on the open sea for— dare she think it? — several weeks.

Hart groaned. Hans was awakening him again by jabbing him with the tip of a boot. It was "morning," or what passed for morning in the sunless dungeon of the grotto. The pilot was still sore from his tantrum the evening before. The Nazi's arrogance had finally prompted Hart to take a tired, wild swing at the yellow-haired bastard and Owen had found himself expertly flipped onto his back, the Nazi's knees on his chest.

"You're too easy, Hart. I like to fight but you don't even make it fun." Hans had slapped him, almost casually, but enough to cut his lip. "You should learn to fight. It's part of being a man."

Hart spat at him and was cuffed so hard that his head rang. Then he lay still, defeated.

"He's a pussy," Hans said to Rudolf.

Hart was also tired from the increasingly long swims into the lake to gather the diaphanous organism. The SS men wouldn't help him, sitting instead at the top of the waterfall to haul up his harvest and playing cards in the lantern light. He knew they were trying to sap his energy as carefully as he was trying to conserve his strength. He was a slave and when the gathering was done his life would be over as well. No opportunity for escape had yet presented itself. As if to remind him of that, there was a clanking as he shifted his leg to get up. Each night Hans shackled him with a manacle to a cluster of cooking pots that served as a crude alarm.

"Like the bell of a goat," the storm trooper had said.

Now a new SS man named Oscar had descended for breakfast, unshouldering his heavy pack with a relieved grunt. The pans were unlocked from Hart's leg, rinsed quickly, and a small camp stove was turned on to heat water. Hart limped over to accept some bread. They didn't give him enough to eat for the work he was doing. When he'd complained, Bristle-Head had kicked his soup into the sand.

"You're in luck, American," the Nazi now growled. "We've got nearly as much as we can carry out of this hole. One more day! You're tired of swimming, no?"

"I'm tired of swimming."

"Yes, and you should learn to be tired of women." He waggled a spoon at the pilot. "They bring nothing but trouble. Look at you." The SS men laughed.

"Look at me." Hart chewed morosely then, thinking. "Oscar," he finally ventured, "that's a big pack you brought in if all we're doing is climbing out."

"Heavy, yes. But I get to leave it here."

"Leave it?"

The men looked at each other. Hans shrugged.

"Explosives," Bristle-Head explained. "To finish what the colonel started back in 1939. Seal this place up so that only Germany has this drug. Ka-boom!" He spread his hands, smiling. Then he squinted in mock suspicion. "You don't have other exits up your sleeve, do you?"

"Do you think I'd tell you?"

He sneered. "You'd tell me anything if I wanted you to."

"Well, the answer is no, but I think this place is going to blow anyway. Have you felt those tremors? That other volcano? Like the cave-in before."

Hans and Oscar looked uneasy but Bristle-Head nodded. "Good. We'll give Mother Nature a hand." He brought his hands together with a crash. "Now. Enough dawdling. Time to go swimming, Hart."

The pilot wearily stood and shed his boots and outer garments, stuffing them under a rock near his blanket. Then he trudged to the lip of the water chute and grasped the fixed rope, wincing as he stepped into the cold of the underground river. If he was going to escape he'd have to give those thick-headed bastards the slip on the climb out of the cave. First the shadowy lake, however. "I could use more help," he called.

"We have to pack out your damn scum," said Oscar. "That's help enough."

The morning watch had begun and Schmidt had risen with the sailors, unshaven and with his gray hair matted and tangled. Up on deck he took a drag on a cigarette and stared thoughtfully across the lagoon, reflecting on how splendidly the mission seemed to be coming together. He'd already cached a plentiful supply of the spores in a sealed container, and the last of the antidote organism was due to be gathered today. Assuming Frau Drexler's testing still showed it was effective, they were home free. The next step was to process the remaining cave sludge before more came aboard. He descended to the laboratory.

Greta was already there, peering uneasily at his microbial cultures on the lab bench. "Ah, I see your appetite for the work has you up early too," Schmidt said.

She glanced up. "I'm not used to such enthusiasm so early in the morning, Doctor. Why the good cheer?"

"Why not?" Reflexively, his hands went for another cigarette but then he remembered the injunction against smoking belowdecks. "We're about to set sail for the Reich, where the High Command is bound to be delighted at the gifts we'll be bearing. I assume your data still suggests one hundred percent efficiency when the drug is reduced to a powder?"

"There are no guarantees until we administer it to human subjects. I just hope the antibiotic is effective against a broad array of bacteria. If, as I suspect, this substance is many times more effective than penicillin, there are many sick people we'll be able to help."

"Yes, of course." He gazed at her with wonder. Did she really think they were here to cure a flu?

Greta noticed his look. "Not that you care. I know you and Jürgen have a different goal."

"Do you now?" Schmidt looked amused.

She leaned back wearily. "I can halfway understand Jürgen's point of view. He's a soldier. He wants to win. But you're a doctor, Schmidt. You swore an oath— "

"The only vow I took was a personal one. To follow knowledge's path wherever it led me. These organisms you and I have harvested these past few days— our respective contributions to the Reich— they are a higher form of efficiency, a purer biology. Only the ignorant walk away from knowledge— especially knowledge that can be used in defense of the homeland."

Greta looked at him sadly. "You lied to me, didn't you? You never had the microbe in Germany. You collected the spores not just for these tests but to take back home."

"If you figured that out, Frau Drexler, you're the last one on the boat to do so. The collection is necessary only because you threw your indignant fit in 1939 and destroyed your cultures, betraying science."

"So if I hadn't agreed to come back here this time to save Owen, there wouldn't be a threat of plague." Her tone was hollow.

"Don't exaggerate your importance. I would have come for the bacteria anyway. Still, I'll concede you've been useful. Now you have your drug and I have my microbe. We've gathered more than enough spore material for our purposes. And if the enemy retraces our steps, they'll find nothing."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you think we're reckless enough to let other nations follow our example? We set explosives to bury the springs where the spores emerge. Let the Allies poke where they will, if they come. They'll find rubble. And by March the Reich will have cultured enough to wipe out all our enemies."

Greta looked at him in dismay. Yet her heart began to beat faster, a flicker of excitement pushing aside her weariness. "Then what we have on this submarine are now the only microbes and spores?" she clarified.

"More precious than gold," Schmidt enthused. He gave Greta a wary look. "And I suppose you're about to volunteer to help me safeguard our stash: protect them as you did on the Schwabenland. Well, you needn't bother. The microbe has become a matter of state security and I've found a spot aboard for the remaining spores that I alone know about."

She looked at him with disquiet. "That's dangerous, Max. What if a sailor stumbles on them? What if Freiwald finds out what you've tucked around his U-boat?"

"Safer than putting them in your custody. Safer than leaving them in this lab."

She had no comeback for that.

Schmidt turned to go. "The spores are mine, the drug is yours. My advice: keep your mind on the drug. Since your purification process appears to work, I suggest you concentrate some more of this cave slime to make room. An additional load will be coming on board from the cave soon."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The gloom of the underground lake abruptly deepened.

Hart stopped, treading water. It wasn't completely dark because there was still a faint blue glow from the ice roof, but the reflected light that came from the lantern at the upper end of the cave waterfall had gone out. He waited a minute for the storm troopers to restore it but nothing happened. The pilot shouted. There was no answer. He could just make out the pale glimmer of the falls and he began breast-stroking toward it. The light didn't come back on.

He reached the rock shelf at the base of the waterfall, rested a moment, and then boosted himself up. With growing apprehension he side-stepped along the ledge to the waterfall and groped in its spray for the climbing line. The rope had disappeared.

"Hans!" he yelled. "Rudolf!"

Silence.

They'd abandoned him.

So much for Drexler's promise. Greta must have succeeded with the drug and the couple's usefulness was at an end. Worriedly, he wondered if Drexler would harm her.

Hart had expected them to wait until the last of the lake growth had been delivered to the sub. His escape plan— it was more a desperate hope than a plan— had always called for Greta's assistance. She'd organize a distraction of some sort, make sure he had at least some supplies— enough to attempt the unthinkable.

By simply leaving him in this dark hole, though, Drexler seemed to have foreclosed that possibility. He tried to think. They must be satisfied he couldn't follow even though he'd mentioned his climb out in the dark before. How could they be so sure? What were they counting on?

Of course. Rudolf had said it. They were going to blow up the cave.

"My God."

He shivered. Don't panic! If you panic you'll never get back to Greta.

He realized he had one chance. They must have allowed time for themselves to get clear of the grotto: Fritz's skeleton had forcibly demonstrated how unstable the tubes were during a nearby explosion. The lantern hadn't been extinguished that long. It was plain: he'd have to catch them before the timer went off.

He clenched the cliff. He would catch them.

He'd climbed this waterfall and chimney so frequently along the rope, learning hand- and footholds, that he should be able to do it blind without one. Now that would be tested. Reaching up in the cold water he groped for a familiar handhold, found it, and pulled, placing his foot next. Yes. Just as he remembered. Think! Go slow enough to think.

When would the explosion go off?

He pushed himself up as the water beat on him in the dark, leaning out to gasp for breath. Damn them! But anger spoiled concentration. So. Carefully. Three points on the rock at all times. Reach only with one hand or one foot. Up…

It was disorienting in the dark, but he climbed until echoes told him he'd reached the point where the water fell out of its pipelike chute toward the lake. He reached in back of himself and his palm slapped rock. Yes! He pushed off, his back slamming against the other side of the chimney to wedge himself. Now he could ascend with more confidence.

How many minutes had passed? How long would the timer be set for?

Progress was painful: at one point the chute widened so much that he had to brace with his arms instead of his back, trembling from the strain. Then he was past it and sound and touch told him he was finally near the chute's upper lip. Bending and bracing, he brought himself around to a point where he could lunge face-first into the rushing river above the edge of the falls, frantically grabbing for slimy handholds to prevent himself from being swept back down into the lake. Then he kicked and pulled furiously until he was up, kneeling in the level stream, chest heaving, one hand around a vine for support.

A vine?

He dropped it as if shocked. It had to be the wire of the demolition charge.

"Jesus Christ." He stood, swaying as he caught his breath. It was pitch black. He carefully shuffled forward against the current until his shin brushed the wire and elaborately stepped over it. A thought occurred to him. If the Germans had bothered to set explosives on the downstream end of the grotto, where the river would eventually cut a new path anyway, they'd certainly wire the upstream end as well. He'd have to watch for explosives there too.

How much time?

He counted his steps upstream, trying to visualize the grotto. One chance, one chance, he kept telling himself.

By his calculation he was near his sleeping spot. There wasn't even a spark of illumination. It was blacker than night, as black as a tomb. But if they'd been hasty… He crawled out of the river and groped in the sand, the mineral smell of the hot spring giving him a crude compass. Yes! The wool of his blanket! He scrambled across it, banged painfully into a rock, felt its underside… Thank God. They'd left what he'd stored there: his parka, boots, and helmet. The miner's helmet. The bastards had been too arrogant or too lazy to pack his gear out. Too stupid. He sobbed a prayer of relief.

He found the battery and flicked on the light, its modest glow seeming brilliant. Hastily he hauled on clothes and boots and sprang up with the helmet on his head, the beam stabbing wildly around the lip of the falls. He spotted a drooping wire connecting two charges on either side of the water. A box, a clock. He inspected. The timer hand had stalled at the zero point! Had the demolition failed? He bent closer, peering, and realized there was an audible ticking. The timer hand was simply close. Very close. Two minutes to go?

He didn't have a clue what would happen if he tried to disconnect the wire.

He began running upstream, water spraying and the beam of his helmet bouncing madly. Ahead was the dark hole of the tunnel that led out of the grotto. He jumped, wedging his arms into the tunnel, and kicked upward. Another wire caught on his coat. Damnation! Gently he lifted the parka free and humped over it like a worm, losing the thread of seconds he'd been counting in his brain. His boot snagged and he tensed for an explosion that didn't come. Then he was past the wire and crawling furiously through the narrow tunnel, his sphincter tightening at the thought of the charge about to go off at his back. He came to the tight squeeze he and Greta had found and wriggled through it like a madman, his clothes a smear of dirt. Then on and on, each yard a measure of safety…

Something kicked him hard from behind and a roar clapped his ears. The explosion actually lifted and shoved him forward, hot as hell, the roar blasting his helmet off and sending it sailing ahead of him until the battery wire yanked taut. Then he came down with an oof and a gout of heat and smoke and gritty debris rattled past him, choking his throat with dust. Somewhere he could hear the crash of immensely heavy rock falling.

Crawl, dammit! Crawl!

He was clawing now, the helmet jammed back on his head, wriggling forward until he could rise to his hands and knees, then to a crouch, staggering as fast as he could with his bent back scraping rock. Air kept pummeling him as the ceiling gave way behind, each collapse triggering another in a chain reaction. He managed a stooped run just as the roof of the low tunnel gave way with a roar. Something heavy clipped him like the swipe of a claw… and then he was beyond the cave-in, coughing painfully in a swirling cloud of dust and smoke, his head ringing and the miraculously shining beam of his headlamp knocked awry.

For the moment, at least, he was alive.

He stood a minute, dazed. Then he dimly remembered he didn't have time to rest: the storm troopers were well ahead of him, no doubt readying another explosion at the outer entrance. He stumbled on, finding the haze beginning to clear as he climbed up the slope of broken basalt boulders. Ahead was the vertical chimney that led out of the mountain. He climbed to the plug that choked the chimney's base.

Anxiety plagued him. Had they blown the outer entrance? No, not yet. Of course not yet: the Germans hadn't had time to climb out themselves. Get a grip! Panting, he worked around the jam of rock to where he could see up the immense chimney, flicking off his headlamp.

Far, far above was the bob of lamps like his own, as remote as stars, as elusive as fairy lights. It was them. The storm troopers. They were still hoisting themselves and their packs of lake organism out of the cave, slowly inching up the chimney toward the tunnel that led to his alternate exit. The lights were like a taunting beacon.

Somehow he'd have to outrun them. He groped along the wall. Yes! They were packing out so much cargo they'd failed to carry out all the ropes. And why bother? With the initial explosion the American was certainly already dead, the cave useless. So they'd left in place the climbing line that followed the first pitch up the vertical shaft. He grasped it and pulled as hard as he could with grim satisfaction. Should have cut it, Bristle-Head. Should have stopped to make sure. Too cocky. Too lazy. He put up a foot to climb.

The cave quivered then and he put out a hand to brace himself. Another explosion? No, a tremor from the sister volcano. A sympathetic echo to the manmade bomb. He heard cries of alarm from the Germans far above, and behind him there was a growl of settling rock. Shards rattled down the chimney and he crouched, listening to them whine and shatter. Christ, what a hellhole he'd found!

Then the cave quieted again. The shouts echoed away. Both Hart and the Germans resumed climbing, the pilot going as hard as he could while watching the lights above. At least he wasn't burdened with a damn pack. He was gaining.

Twenty feet. Fifty. Seventy. All by feel up the rope. The cave so dark it was as if he was climbing in space. It became a kind of rhythm, his trance broken only by another falling rock, this time dislodged by someone above. He hugged the chimney wall as it sizzled past with terrifying energy, its fragments clicking like angry insects when they ricocheted back up the shaft around him. The rock had to be an accident, he told himself. There was no way the Germans could be throwing at him. No way they could see unlit Owen Hart, the stalking ghost.

He reached the tunnel shelf where he and Greta had first entered the cave and risked a quick blink of light. Another climbing line was still in place. He grasped it.

"What was that?" The voice came from far above.

"What?"

"I thought I saw a light!"

He waited. The headlamps above had paused.

"I don't see anything."

"You're spooked," someone growled. "Come on, let's get out of this pit." It was Hans, the pilot guessed. "I'd feel safer on the Russian Front." The lights began moving again, Hart following as he heard them shouting instructions to each other to belay their heavy packs.

Finally the lamps began to wink out: the Germans had reached the steep tunnel at the top of the chimney that would take them to the outside and were slowly climbing into it. He waited a moment until the last one disappeared and then gratefully flicked his own headlamp on, momentarily half blinded. One more rope to go! He still had a chance! The damn Nazis would have to pause at the top exit to set further charges. He'd catch them there.

With his light on he could move faster. He'd never worked so hard in his life, lungs aching, muscle fiber screaming. Up, up, up. The dread of being trapped in the mountain electrified him. Somehow, he would get to Greta, take the food, say goodbye…

"Goddamn!"

The oath made Hart jerk in alarm. There was a bang and a bullet whined off the face of the shaft, the pilot instinctively ducking his head. Then another, closer this time. He switched off his lamp.

"What is it?"

"The American! He's following us up the rope!" Another shot.

"What! Impossible! Cut the line, cut the line!"

"No, wait! I think I can hit him…"

Another bullet slammed inches above the pilot's head. Owen planted his boots on a ledge and hugged the cliff face, trying to melt into it. More shots, wilder this time in the dark. Then a headlamp beam was dancing as it tried to find him.

"There he is!"

Hart froze in the illumination.

"I've got him…"

The rope went slack.

"No!"

Hart clutched the cliff.

"Jesussss…!" The cry above dissolved into a scream and the headlamp beam began revolving. One of the Germans had cut the line while the shooter was still hanging on it. The rope slithered down past Hart, its end slapping him in the face, and the gunman hurtled by at the same time, his body cleaving the air, his wild screams echoing and reechoing as his light tumbled down into the pit. There was a sickening thud, far below, and the lamp went out.

"God in heaven! What happened?"

"It was Oscar! He went back down the rope, you fucking idiot!"

A moment of silence. Then, "Where's Hart?"

"How the hell do I know?"

"If you'd just shot him at the bottom like I told you— "

"Shut up. I'm going back down to look for him."

"No! There's no rope!" A pause. "He can't follow us."

"Maybe. Come here." The voices grew quieter. Were they climbing again?

Hart was trembling, afraid his fear would shiver him right off the cliff. There was nothing to do for it but struggle upward. He risked his light, tensing for a gunshot, and then, when no bullet came, picked out handholds he'd used before. Amazing what the brain remembered! So he climbed like a man possessed, his gaze fixed on the tunnel hole at the ceiling. His lamp was growing faint, his muscles trembling, his mind screaming at itself not to think about the hundreds of feet of yawning blackness below. And then at last he was at the tunnel too, jamming his exhausted arms and kicking his way upward, his breath coming in gasps, sweat stinging his eyes. He switched off his lamp to disguise his success and crawled hard up the lava tunnel. Time. Time! Soon they'd be setting the last charges. As he crawled upward, sometimes banging painfully into unyielding rock, he tried to listen for sounds of the Germans ahead. Silence. Were they simply out-running him?

Suddenly light blazed and he was squinting into the glare of a headlamp. Hans was filling the tunnel ahead with his giant's body, his head uphill, grinning at Hart over the cocked readiness of his upraised knees. "Now we fight one last time, yes?" the German greeted. Then he lashed out with his boots.

Hart reared back, the leather missing his nose by the width of a sole. The pilot skidded downward into safer shadows, braced, and yelled. "Too slow, you Nazi gorilla!"

"Come here, Hart! Fight like a man, you coward!"

Owen reviewed his mental map of where they were. Switching on his lamp for an instant he spied a side tunnel. He turned the light off and writhed into it.

"You kick like a girl, Hans! You fight like your mother!"

Cursing, the German fired. A pistol bullet whined off the rocks. Then more shots, an angry fusillade more to vent anger than hit anything. He heard the click of a fresh clip being slipped into the gun. "Hart!" The pilot was silent. Hans worked down the tunnel after him. Owen waited.

"Hart?"

There was silence.

"Hart, where are you?"

Cautious now, his gun out, the German slid past the side tunnel, dropping toward the junction of tube and chimney.

"Hart? Did I get you, yellow man?"

The pilot pushed off into the main tube and dropped toward the German. Hans twisted with a curse, trying to bring his gun around in the restricting tube, but before he could get his arm free Owen struck with his own boot, catching the storm trooper on the nose. The man howled and slipped toward the abyss, his vision blurred by his own blood. The gun skittered out from under him.

"Boots hurt, don't they?" the American growled.

Hans had jammed himself into the tube at the lip of the chimney, his legs kicking in empty air as he arrested his fall. "You bastard!" he roared. "I'm going to choke the life out of you! I'm going to squeeze until you beg!"

"Fuck you, Hans." Owen braced himself uphill from the German and pulled on a loose rock, yanking it free and shoving it downward as hard as he could. The exertion cost him his own grip and he slid after the small boulder as it banged down toward the storm trooper. Hans instinctively put out his arms to protect his face, a fatal error. He lost his grip on the tunnel.

"Shit!"

There was a thud as the boulder hit, a howl of outrage, and a rattle of loosened rocks. Then Hans's light disappeared. He was gone.

Hart thrust out his own arms and legs to brake himself at the edge of the chimney and skidded to a stop, listening in horrified fascination to the long, trailing scream. Then it stopped abruptly, the sound dying in its own echoes.

Two down, one to go. Panting, the pilot began climbing again, yanking away the route-marking ribbons he'd left on their initial descent.

When he neared the surface he switched off his light and crept ahead cautiously. Had the remaining Nazi simply set the charges and fled? Hart almost hoped so. He was too exhausted for a fight. He debated, sweating.

Then he risked a shout. "Rudolf!" The yell echoed through the cave.

"Hart?" The voice was wary.

Owen tightened his voice as if he was in pain. "It's Hans. Hart hurt me, but I got him! Help!"

"Hans?"

"Help me, dammit! I can't climb out! I lost my light!"

There was an uneasy silence. Then a scraping as the German began to slowly descend. "I'm coming!" He added a cautious warning. "I have a gun!"

"For God's sake don't shoot!" Hart slipped down into a side tunnel he'd explored earlier. "Help me! I'm bleeding!"

"Try to climb up, Hans! We have to hurry! The timers are set!"

"Please! It hurts!"

"Fuck." The German scrabbled lower. His light began to glow on the tube walls.

Hart retreated into the side tunnel. "In here!"

There was a splash of light. Bristle-Head followed, swearing. "It's too tight! What are you doing in here?"

"I'm lost!" Hart groaned. "Hurry!"

Then he dropped quickly and silently to the main tube and began to double back toward the surface.

"Hans! Where are you? Hans?"

Quickly now, very quickly.

"Christ! The markers are all gone! Hans?" Silence. "Where the hell are you?"

Time. How much time?

Realization dawned. "Hart! Hart, you son of a bitch!" Bristle-Head began to climb back. "A dead end! Where are the damn markers? Hart, you sneaking bastard…"

Owen switched his lamp on to hurry. Bristle-Head must have seen its receding glow because another shot rang out far below him, its energy consumed by ricochet.

"Hart…!"

The pilot staggered into the small, sandy-floored room at the cave mouth. His battery was nearly exhausted, its light duller than a candle. In the feeble gleam and the pale light from the nearby entrance he saw explosives wired as before. Behind and below he could hear the German swearing furiously as he tried to find his way up the cave. The pilot looked at the timers. Eleven minutes. Too long. Taking a breath, he shoved the minute hand on the dial to one, praying he hadn't disrupted its mechanism. "Time's up, Rudolf," he whispered.

He hurtled forward on hands and knees toward the low slit of the cave opening, clawing for its brightness. His head popped out into the shock of Antarctic cold and he rolled out onto the shelf and over its lip to the snow below, landing with a thud and digging in with fingers and toes to arrest his slide. Then he pressed his face into the slush and waited.

The flank of the mountain heaved.

There was a roar and a fountain of rock debris made an arcing plume from the cave entrance. The fragments sailed over the pilot's head and spattered onto the cone far below Hart's position. He could hear the grinding collapse of rock inside the mountain.

Was it over?

Then there was an ominous rumble, outside this time. He lifted his head. Beyond the haze of smoke and dust at the collapsed tube's mouth, farther upslope, a slice of snow had sheared away and was avalanching downward like an advancing wave. Hart staggered upward to the basalt outcrop and threw himself at its toe. Thundering snow blasted over his head and crashed onto the slope where he'd lain moments before, churning like a threshing machine, eating space. He pressed himself into the outcrop. Then the avalanche guttered out on the slopes below and the mountain's quivering stopped. Sound growled away.

Numb, he stood up. The cave was gone, erased by a smear of rock. He was alone and the world was still.

Turning, he looked out over the immensity of Antarctica. A clean sharp wind snapped at his filthy clothes. The cove far below still beckoned.

He took a deep breath. It was time to get back to Greta.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The U-4501 was quiet again, most of its crew asleep. It was dark outside and the submarine rocked slightly in a rising wind, waves splashing against the side of the boat. Greta sat on her bunk, impatient and angry. Owen should be back by now with the men from the cave. Had Jürgen betrayed them? She felt with her heels under her bed. Instead of one crammed pack there were now two, filled with food she'd quietly stolen from the Antarctic stores, as well as some rope and twine.

She'd made a decision. If God granted her wish and she saw Owen again, she was going to go with him. She'd begun seeing her situation with unusual clarity since that morning's conversation with Schmidt. She now knew— if, indeed, she'd ever doubted it— that she lived in a dark world of betrayal. If she remained in the sub, sailed home with Jürgen, the darkness would only deepen. Jürgen would continue his power over her, keep her around as a witness to his bizarre schemes. So hopeless. So crazy. The unspeakable misery they'd cause.

Contemplating her future, the only light she saw was Owen. She was enough of a realist to realize the light would be brief, that two people couldn't survive the small-boat ocean crossing he hoped to attempt. But at the moment of her death, there would be a certain satisfaction. She would know that, even if she hadn't lived her life well, she'd ended it well, with the man she loved.

To hide her preparation she'd been snarling at anyone who so much as bumped her cubicle curtain, claiming a right of privacy as a female. It had the desired effect, the sailors giving her a wide berth. Now she could only wait. Where was he? Restless, she got up to confront her husband.

Schmidt met her in the corridor before she could reach a ladder, carrying a sturdy metal tank the size of a large sausage.

"Another safe for your microbes, Max?" she asked caustically.

"For your antibiotic, actually. The drug powder should fit in this gas cylinder, the toughest container I could find. In case we're attacked again on the way home."

"Ah. Well, in that case the lab cultures you made from the spores need to be boxed or destroyed too. We can't risk them breaking."

"Yes, but I'm experimenting with growth variables. One colony is really exploding! I should be able to use these findings to accelerate production when we reach Germany. I want to give them as much time as I can. Don't worry. I'll see to the cultures before departure."

She looked at him doubtfully. "You've already hidden your spores from me. Don't take foolish risks with the ones you've hatched and grown."

"No risk, Frau Drexler. We doctors respect disease."

She bit her lip at that and gestured down the corridor. "Is Jürgen in his quarters?"

"No, on deck, preparing to go ashore. The last soldiers haven't returned from the cave. He's leading a search party."

She started, looking dismayed. "Did something go wrong?"

"Who knows?" Schmidt smiled at her weakness for the pilot. "That's what he's checking."

Greta put on her parka and climbed to the deck. It was very dark and the strength of the wind caught her by surprise. She had so little sense of the elements inside the submarine. The sky was like a tattered sail, streamers of cloud blowing past the stars. A storm was building and the realization dismayed her. Would nothing favor them?

The motor launch was alongside, bumping against the hull as Jürgen's search party of storm troopers boarded by the illumination of flashlights. She walked along the wet deck, whipped by spray.

"Going for more microbe spores?"

He jumped at her bitter voice. "What are you doing up here?"

"What are you doing? Hunting for fresh diseases like the good doctor?"

He squinted at her sourly, irritated at her complaint of betrayal. "Safeguarding our mission."

"You lied to me again."

He shrugged. "Does it matter anymore?"

The indifference hurt. "No. Not anymore." She looked at the boatload of men. "So. Where are you going?"

He considered his reply. "If you must know, I'm looking for your damned pilot."

"Why isn't he back yet?"

Drexler looked out at the walls of the crater. "That's what we're going to find out. Hans and Rudolf and Oscar haven't returned either. It's a dreadful night and I don't want them getting lost in a storm."

"You won't leave without him this time?"

He looked at her resentfully. "Not if he's alive."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing! For God's sake, can you stop mooning for one moment over Owen Hart? Go below and get some sleep. You need it."

She stood, frustrated. Part of her wanted him to assure her, to promise Owen's safety. But what were Jürgen's promises worth anymore? Nothing. This time she'd have to trust in God.

Saying a prayer to herself, she turned and went below.

Hart watched the lights of the launch pull away from the submarine with quiet satisfaction. Finally! He felt savagely energized despite his cold and hunger. He was alive and his tormentors, some of them at least, vanquished. He felt a powerful freedom he hadn't enjoyed since his capture in Berlin.

After the explosion he'd slid down to the snug little cove visible from the lava outcrop and checked again on his discovery from six years before, satisfying himself that his desperate plan was not entirely impossible. Then he'd wearily climbed back to the volcano rim and sat, catching his breath and looking down at the submarine in the caldera like a raptor eyeing prey. When dusk fell he'd descended into the crater and sheltered at the mouth of the lava tube he and Fritz had found so long before. Enough of an overhang remained after the cave-in to shield him from the wind. For hours the U-boat remained stubbornly impregnable, anchored in its cold lagoon with the motor launch tied alongside. Yet he knew that the disappearance of the SS men would sooner or later raise questions. Now the Nazis were coming to answer them, giving him a chance to get to Greta.

The last stars were gone and a few snowflakes were beginning to fall. Perfect: the storm would obscure his tracks. Confident that the dark hid him from view, he left the cave and loped down the slope to the crater beach, then hiked along the shoreline toward the point the running lights appeared aimed at. The grumble of the launch engine faded and the lights went out, suggesting the boat had reached shore. After a few minutes new lights switched on and he watched them swing as the storm troopers began moving up the crater slope. Lanterns for the search.

Then there was a bang and a red star went wavering up into the night. Flare! Hart fell flat. The illumination was poor in the growing snow and he knew the light was more to attract the lost SS men than to actually spot them. Still, it revealed to him that one man had stayed with the boat. A sentry. When the wavering red glow flickered out, the pilot sat up, removed a boot, and methodically filled one sock with beach gravel. The thought of what he was about to do didn't give him pause at all. Then he put his boot back on and walked ahead.

He dropped as a second flare arched skyward. Ten-minute intervals, he guessed. When the night darkened again he hurried forward, then sank to a crouch and crept the last several yards.

The sentry was hunched over with his back to the wind, a glow showing that he was drawing on a cigarette. Hart's feet crunched on gravel. The sentry turned, fumbling with a submachine gun caught under his parka. "Who's there?"

"Oscar," Hart replied.

"Thank God! We feared you'd— "

The pilot swung and the sock exploded on the storm trooper's temple, gravel spraying. The man sprawled and Hart was on top of him in an instant. He'd salvaged a sharp steel climbing piton from the cave, hard enough to be hammered into cracks of rock. Now he felt under the dazed man's parka hood with it, thrust, and cut. The squirt of blood splattered Owen despite his instinctive lurch back. Grimly, he let the sentry's head flop down.

There was another bang, and a lurid glow of red. Hart stood quickly to become the sentry to anyone watching from the submarine or above. The snow was thickening. As the flare died he watched the chain of bobbing lights climb up and over the crater rim. No alarm had been raised.

Owen could still hear the sentry's dying gurgle. He felt nothing except relief. That was four of the bastards! He yanked the submachine gun out from under the dead man, wiped it on the soldier's parka, and threw it into the boat. Pockets yielded a flashlight, dagger, an extra clip, and some papers. Hart took an envelope, emptied it, crouched, and slipped a pebble inside. Then he dragged the dead Nazi into the cold water, looping a mooring line around his torso. The pilot shoved the boat off the beach, jumped aboard, and pressed the button to start the engine, remembering the procedure the Germans had used. Backing out, he turned and headed toward the U-boat. At the halfway point he slowed and cut the mooring line. The towed body sank from sight.

When he banged inexpertly against the submarine a sailor on watch caught the boat. "Where are the others?" the seaman asked.

"Still searching." Hart prayed the man wouldn't recognize his voice. "The colonel sent a message for the woman." He handed over the envelope. "She's assembling additional supplies. She's to come up and confer with me." Hart dared not venture into the submarine with his recognizable face and his parka spattered with blood. The man hesitated. "I'll stand watch. Hurry, dammit! It's fucking cold!" The sailor disappeared down the hatch.

Hart hauled the submachine gun onto his lap and studied it. He'd never fired one before. He found the apparent safety but dared not squeeze the trigger to confirm his discovery, simply setting it aside where it would be ready. Then he bent to the emergency sailing rigging stored in the bottom of the launch and began taking it apart, fumbling in the snow and cold. The sail and its lines he set aside.

He looked restlessly about, hoping to see Greta, dreading their imminent goodbye. The necessity for her to ride home with the Germans, her only realistic chance, twisted his stomach. He wanted her. Needed her. Yet it was madness to go with him…

The hatch banged open and a pack emerged, falling over on the deck. Then a second. The sailor came out and then bent to offer his hand to Greta. And there she was, a slim silhouette, dragging the packs down the ash-and snow-crusted deck and heaving them into the motor launch. Hart started the engine, not knowing what to expect.

She jumped aboard. "Thank God you're here."

"Should I report anything to the captain?" the sailor asked from the deck.

"Only that you should have been quicker," Hart growled. "Get back on watch." He hoped he'd mustered the right tone of SS arrogance. The sailor hesitated a moment, resentful, then spat into the water and backed to the conning tower.

"Did something happen in the cave?" Greta whispered. "When that sailor told me the motor launch had returned I feared it was Jürgen to tell me of your death. And then when I opened that envelope I almost screamed for joy!"

Hart smiled. The pebble had scored again. "The soldiers tried to leave me in the lake and wired the cave with explosives. I got out just before the detonation. They didn't."

"So Jürgen lied about letting you go." She stiffened with resolve. "Owen, I've decided to come with you. We can just take this boat and flee. Jürgen's on shore. We'll maroon him there."

Touched, the pilot shook his head. "Greta, you can't. I'm going to try to cross the stormiest ocean in the world. It's impossible."

"Even more impossible to try alone."

"No. It's foolish for us both to die. Besides, they'd raise the alarm too soon if we took this launch. I'm going over the volcano, as we planned, and you stay on the submarine."

She shook her head. "Owen, I can't watch you leave me again. I won't. Whatever our fate is, please, let's face it together."

"No." He didn't want to kill her and had to dissuade her. "If you flee, they'll come after us."

"It's a big ocean, Owen, and, if Jürgen thinks I'm sulking and huddled in my cabin, there's a possibility I won't be missed for hours."

He looked at Greta's face. The certainty of staying together— even if it risked death— trumped the possibility of permanent separation. She wasn't going to take no for an answer.

"All right," he said finally, swallowing. His eyes were moist. "It's crazy, but all right. If we die, I'll still have you."

She nodded.

"We still have to leave this boat on the beach so they won't hunt for it with the submarine," he pointed out. "We still have to hike to the cove."

"I understand. So hurry, let's… wait." She sat straighter. "Wait, wait. You told me the cave was blown up. What happened to the last batch of lake organism?"

"Sealed with the Nazis, I suppose."

"My God." She seized his parka. "We can stop them!"

"What?"

"Don't you see? The only lake organism left is on the submarine and Schmidt hasn't locked that away yet; he's still expecting more from underground when Jürgen returns. If we destroy it they can't reproduce any in Germany! They'll have the disease but no cure, and unless they're totally insane they won't dare unleash it! We can beat them, Owen! If we hurry!"

"Go back inside? They'll recognize me, Greta. They'll ask too many questions."

"I know. I'll do it. It's late, people are asleep. I'll hurry."

"What if someone notices what you're doing?"

"I'll do it quickly, quietly."

"No, it's too risky…"

"Trust me, Owen." And then before he could grab her she was springing back on deck and trotting to the hatch. She yanked it open and disappeared inside.

The sailor came clambering down from the conning tower. The pilot's hand drifted to the submachine gun and he waited, tensely.

"I thought she was going with you?" The question was troubled, suspicious, the sailor's features invisible in the dark.

Hart shrugged. "She is. But she forgot something." He spat. "You know. Women."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Greta climbed down to the main deck and listened. The submarine hummed with the ceaseless, oil-scented drone of a warship, but was otherwise still. The desultory sailor on watch in the control room barely nodded as she slipped down the midships ladder to her laboratory, her pulse hammering. She opened the hatch cautiously. Empty. She closed it after her.

Despite her abortive efforts at straightening the lab, clutter remained. Schmidt's tank of drug was in plain view on a crate used as a makeshift table, the drug storage tubes he'd emptied into it scattered around. Remaining canisters of the organic sludge sat on the deck along one bulkhead. The workbench with its bacterial cultures of disease was on the other. Beakers and flasks and pots remained crusted with paste. The surviving rabbits skittered in their cages at her entrance, no doubt afraid of another needle. She'd thought she was done with this claustrophobic warren and yet here she was again.

She moved decisively. A sampling of the drug sludge went into a bottle slipped into her pocket. Then she lifted the heavy canister it came from and began pouring the remainder into their drain pipe. The unprocessed organism would go into the U-boat's waste system and overboard. It glugged with glacial slowness but at last emptied. She let the canister drop to the deck and picked up another. She was sweating in her heavy outdoor gear.

There was a click and a bump as the hatch opened again. She started, but kept pouring. Probably Jacob, the animal tender, and she could outbluff any sailor. It would be enough to point to the disease. Get out, go away! It's dangerous down here!

Boots thumped onto the deck. She prepared to turn suddenly in irritation.

"What do you think you're doing?"

She jumped. It was Schmidt! She looked at him in guilty surprise as he watched her pour. He seemed confused and haggard.

"Max! I thought you were asleep."

"Having coffee." His expression began to narrow. "Sleep has tended to elude me of late, and a chance mention by the watch of your being down here got me curious." His look became grim. "I shudder to think what might have happened had I not decided to investigate. Put that damn container down. Now."

Reluctantly, she did so. "I only— "

"Only what? Only wanted to destroy everything we worked for. Back away from that drain pipe, Frau Biologist. Thank God more is coming from the cave." He paused, considering her clothes, her midnight appearance. "Or is it? Are you finally ahead of us, Greta? Do you finally know something I don't?"

"That would be difficult, Max, given that you know everything." Her expression was one of intense hatred. Also, of triumph.

"Bitch!" His hand cracked across her face and she went flying against the remaining algal containers, knocking several over. The cap snapped off one and its contents began sloshing across the metal deck grating, draining into the bilge. She shook her head dumbly. The blow was so hard she was dazed, her vision blurred.

"Violence seems to be your forte, Max," she said, glancing sideways at the still-full algal containers. Suddenly, she turned and grabbed for the bottles, getting a cap off one before Schmidt was on top of her.

"Get your hands off that!" He seized her by the hair and hauled her backward, trying to strike her with the other fist. His clumsy blows were blocked by the arm she lifted to ward off his attack. He was taller but old and not particularly strong. She twisted and kicked, making him wince. Then they grappled, Greta punching and biting and scratching for her life. He managed to get behind her with an arm around her windpipe and began choking. They stumbled, locked in a pained dance, her voice cut off and Schmidt wheezing as he desperately tried to master a woman thirty years younger than himself. She realized she was beginning to black out and groped wildly with a free hand, looking for a weapon. Her fingers skittered on a glass cylinder, rejected it, then seized it again. Yes! One of his damned hypodermics!

She stabbed. The needle went into Schmidt's shoulder near his neck and the doctor squealed, letting go to claw at the agonizing sting. As he did so she shoved as hard as she could. He lurched sideways and there was a splintering crash. The crude workbench broke from its supports and the beakers, flasks and glass petri dishes with their agar films of plague culture shattered, bits skittering across the laboratory. Like a reproducing fungus, a puff of spores from a broken test tube blossomed into the air.

Schmidt, ensnared in the wreckage, looked goggle-eyed in horror. The hypodermic needle jutted from his shoulder as if sucking at the droplet of bright blood that appeared there. Bits of glass and microbial culture littered his skin. He lifted himself on his elbows. "You've infected me!" he gasped in disbelief. Reaching, he jerked the hypodermic out of his shoulder, groaning. "He was so weak to bring you…"

She brought the cylinder of algal drug powder down on the doctor's head. There was a solid thud and he fell back, unconscious.

"Shut up, you old ghoul." The words were a croak from her sore throat.

She listened, but all she heard was the hum of the ship. Schmidt would have closed the hatch when he came down. So. Think. Consider the variables. She took a shuddering breath. God what a mess!

Numbly, almost automatically, she tipped the remaining containers of the cave organism toward the oily bilge. It was the best she could do with her shaking tremble. Schmidt remained still. She had no idea if he was alive or dead and was too frightened to inspect him. Too much in shock to care. Think! She hefted the cylinder of the drug. The germs were loose, thrown everywhere by the fight: she probably carried some on her clothes. She needed to treat herself. And Owen. And… The hum of the ship. My God. She looked at the ventilator opening, exchanging air, sucking in spores. But if she took the remaining drug with her…

If she took it and the submarine turned into a Bergen, all these men would die.

The realization made her ashen.

And if she left it? If they lived they could still return to Germany with the disease and enough of the cure organism to begin culture and reproduction. If they lived, they could still hunt Owen and herself down.

Schmidt groaned, stirring. Unless she wanted to kill him right now, she didn't have much time.

What would her nuns say?

What would Owen say?

Schmidt moaned again. Damn him! She brought the cylinder down on his head and he slumped a second time, lying still. She taped his mouth, hands, and ankles. Why hadn't he stayed away? Then, grimly tucking the drug tank under one arm, she climbed out of the U-boat and hurried back to the motor launch, jumping aboard.

"It's done," she whispered.

Owen said she'd done the right thing. The only thing.

"They're murderers, Greta. They tried to kill me." The couple were driving hard for the beach, fearful that Schmidt might somehow stagger out of the laboratory and sound the alarm. Every yard of cold water gave them an added feeling of safety.

"It was the SS that tried to kill you, Owen. Not the sailors." She shivered, her eyes moist.

"Nonsense. Those bastards gave the Nazi salute when

Jürgen laid out his plans. They're part of it."

She leaned on him. "I know, I know. But to condemn sixty men, fellow Germans, to— "

"They condemned themselves."

"Do you think that will keep them from my dreams?"

"Dreams! What about our waking nightmare! God willing, you've saved millions of people. Millions! The only person you haven't saved yet is yourself."

A white shelf appeared out of the dark: the beach. They crunched against it and Hart cut the motor. "From here we walk." He'd thought about their situation while waiting by the sub for Greta to return. "If we take the launch they'll hunt us by sea but if we leave it they'll comb the island first. That should buy some time."

Her face drained. "If we leave it, Jürgen will reach the submarine."

Owen nodded, looking at her hard. "I want him to, Greta."

She said nothing.

"I want him to catch the plague."

She looked out at the night in horror.

"Listen, Greta, I can't make this choice for you. I can't and expect you not to doubt me the rest of our days. So you can take the cylinder back right now, save those men, and sail for Germany. You'll be a savior to those sailors, and far more likely to survive than if you come with me. You can be loyal to the Reich. You can save your husband. Or you can throw it all away— every bit of it— and come with me on this one wild crazy scheme to get away from this island. A chance that will probably kill us both."

She actually smiled at that. "You're so persuasive. So why would I ever come with you?"

"Because I love you."

She nodded. "You make a good argument," she said finally. "It's exactly the one I would make." For an instant she looked up at the stars, seeming to search for something. Then she said: "I go with you."

He smiled. "Then let's hurry, before dawn comes. We'll share the antibiotic when we get out of sight of the sub."

Drexler led his men down off the crater rim at dawn, cold and exhausted. The storm was blowing itself out but it had been an abominable night of grim slogging and futile shouts and fired flares. The three SS men had simply disappeared. What a foul island!

Jürgen was frustrated. The mouth of the cave had been blown up as he'd ordered. Had the idiots somehow killed themselves? There was no sign. Or gotten lost in the storm? Again no sign. Something tickled in the back of his mind; some part of their search that remained uncompleted. Yet he couldn't think what it was. Now everyone was half frozen and uneasy. They needed some food and warmth and rest in the submarine.

The launch was where they'd left it, grounded on the beach. But the sentry was missing. Jürgen scowled in disgust.

"Where's Johann?"

The SS sergeant frowned. "He was supposed to stay with the boat. He should be right here."

"I know he should be right here! Where is he?"

"Perhaps he went back to the U-boat in the storm?"

"How could he get back to the U-boat without this launch, idiot?"

The sergeant stiffened. "Yes, sir."

Drexler fumed. The elimination of Hart hadn't left him feeling triumphant this time. He dreaded having to face Greta and tell her the American was missing again, lost in the cave or the storm. He doubted she'd believe him. It would be a relief to finally be done with her, he told himself. Yes. A relief.

"This damn island is swallowing my men! I don't like it! I want to get out of here!" He looked at the others. There was no disagreement. "Well. Into the launch."

They motored to the U-boat. "Have you seen Johann Prien?" Drexler called to the sailors as they climbed wearily aboard.

"Came alongside last night," one replied tiredly. "As you requested."

Drexler frowned. "What?"

"To get the woman. The packs."

"Greta? My wife?"

"Yes. He said you sent a message and then she went with him." He peered curiously at the group, noticing the missing SS men were not there.

"I sent no message." The man looked surprised and a glimmer of dread began to shine on Drexler's brain. "You actually saw Johann?"

"Yes, of course. In the boat."

"I mean, you saw his face? You recognized him?"

The sailor began to comprehend. "No… It was dark. No one could recognize anyone last night."

Drexler's men were already dropping down the hatch into the submarine. The colonel's disquiet was growing. "Could this man have been the American?"

"I thought the American was with you."

"Jesus Christ. And Greta went with this man?"

"Yes." The sailor looked at Drexler with a cringe of sympathy.

"Fuck." It was a snarl. "Fuck! Where's Dr. Schmidt?"

"Below, I suppose. I haven't seen him."

Drexler dropped down to the main deck and yanked off his parka, stomping aft in his boots. "Max?" he roared. He found Freiwald. "Where's our damn doctor?"

The captain looked at Drexler with dislike. "I don't keep track of your party, Colonel. How would I know? Try your laboratory."

Drexler peered down. The hatch was closed but that was normal. He climbed down and opened it. "Max?" No answer. There were shards of glass on the deck. The chamber stank. He dropped into it with a premonition of dread. "Great God."

It looked like a bomb had hit. The planks of the workbench had splintered and the deck was littered with shards of petri dishes and their microbial goo. There was a stench reminiscent of the underground lake. All the containers so laboriously carried from the cave were empty. Schmidt lay writhing, trussed in tape. His head was bloody.

The U-boat captain descended the ladder after Drexler and then stopped in fearful shock. "Get out of here," the SS colonel ordered. "Close the hatch."

Jürgen began cutting Schmidt free. As the tape was yanked painfully off his mouth the doctor howled. He gasped for breath.

"Was it Hart, Max? Did that pilot do this?"

Schmidt spat, clutching his head. "Frau Greta Drexler" — Schmidt pronounced the name with acid— "did this. She caught me by surprise and shoved me into the lab bench. She contaminated the ship."

Now Drexler was ashen, remembering the horror of the Bergen. "She's a serpent," he muttered. "I married a Medusa."

"Is she insane?"

"She is when the American is around."

"I thought he was supposed to be dead."

Jürgen ignored this. "Do we still have the weapon? Do we still have the cure?"

Schmidt sat up, holding his head, and looked around with a wince. "I secreted the spores away because I remembered her emotional fit the last time. But not the drug. It looks like she dumped what we had and took the concentrate with her. Did you bring more from the cave?"

Drexler felt a tiresome buzzing in his head as he contemplated the wreckage of all his plans, all his hopes. "No. My men never emerged."

"Well, we can get more, yes?"

"No, Max. The cave is demolished. My men may never have gotten out."

"But you just said Hart was out!"

"That's my suspicion." He said it in a small voice. "Greta would never do this alone." He looked at the splinters of petri dish. "This means we're dead men, Max, unless we catch her. If she has the drug she's our only hope." He swallowed and glanced at the ladder. "I closed the hatch. Maybe it won't spread."

"You must be joking." Schmidt pointed at the vents. "We're talking about escaping germs, not escaping rabbits. It's been sucked all over the ship by now. Everyone is infected. It will be like the Bergen. Why on earth did you trust her?"

Drexler looked hollow. "I didn't trust her. I thought I could control her." Then he glared at Schmidt. "Thought you could control her! My God, trussed up by a woman?"

"By a sneaking, conniving— "

Drexler held up his hand, suddenly weary. "All right. Enough. Enough recrimination. How much time do we have before the symptoms appear?"

Schmidt shook his head. "Hours. Maybe a day."

"And where did she go? Where on the island did they hide? Another cave?"

"Good point," said Schmidt. "They can't have gone far on an island. Maybe we can find them and get the drug back." He thought a moment. "And they can't operate a submarine, not alone. They can't leave Antarctica without us. If we die, they die, no?"

"I don't think they plan to die. They're too infatuated with each other for self-sacrifice."

"Then they have an alternate plan," Schmidt reasoned. "A radio. A rescue. An airplane…"

Mention of the plane jogged Drexler's memory. The lonely Dornier he'd spied on the snowy plateau the last trip, the seaplane that had allowed the American's escape. So there had to be a vehicle this time as well, yes? But where? Ah, of course. Now he remembered! Now he realized what they'd missed on last night's search! The couple's furtive discussion at the cave mouth! The tiny bay they'd surveyed together. That was their escape hatch! There was something there. Something to get them out. That was where they'd run.

He hauled up Schmidt. "I know where they're going, I think. A bay on the other side of the volcano below the new cave. We can intercept them there. Not over the rim: that takes too long. Around by sea. If we do that, we live."

Schmidt looked at the SS colonel with hope. They banged open the hatch and climbed out. "Freiwald!"

The captain was in the control room looking worried. "Aren't you letting out the— "

"It's already out," Drexler said brusquely. "It's all over the ship. You're breathing it now." The submariner looked aghast. "Never mind that. How soon can we get underway?"

"Our plan was not to go for a day or two."

"Our plans have obviously changed."

The captain frowned. "I had the engineers strip the diesels. We're doing some routine maintenance. It will take several hours to put them back together."

"What?"

"We can't sail before noon."

Schmidt looked dumbly at his watch. "Good God."

"We can't wait that long," Jürgen said. "I'll take the motor launch and my men to catch them. You follow in the submarine. Captain, if you don't get this boat moving soon, all of you are going to die. Do you understand? Owen Hart and my wife have escaped with the antibiotic and they're our only hope."

Freiwald nodded fearfully and opened his mouth to say something.

Instead, he sneezed.

"God bless you," said Schmidt.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The slender reed that supported the couple's hope of escape looked to Greta's weary mind like a cradle in the snow, a refuge into which she wanted to curl and sleep until they were far, far away. It wouldn't be that easy, of course. The lifeboat's very presence was a grim reminder of how difficult it might prove to get away from the Antarctic island. The two surviving Norwegians from the Bergen had tried and failed.

When Hart first crawled out of the cave six years ago it was utter exhaustion that had allowed him to spot the craft. He'd collapsed on the lava ledge too tired to even lift his head and as his eyes adjusted to the stark polar light he found them idly tracing the fractal geometry of the shoreline far below. It was the leaf-shaped regularity of the abandoned boat's gunwale that caught his eye. He'd risked the time for inspection and found that the artifact was the Norwegian lifeboat, perfectly preserved by the Antarctic dry freeze. The memory had stuck in his mind ever since.

The overturned craft now remained impervious to time. Its wood was bleached gray but it seemed as sound as when it had first left the Bergen. The craft's fittings were only lightly rusted. A few cans of food, a blanket, and a seaman's wool watch cap were frozen onto its bottom floorboards in defiance of gravity. Even the lines were still there, stiff with cold but little decayed. The mast had been unstepped and hastily lashed to the thwarts and its fringe of tattered canvas told what must have happened. The Norwegians' sail had blown out in a storm and they'd been driven back to the island. Either a wave had tossed the boat high on shore or the whalers themselves had dragged the boat away from the reach of the sea. Then the men had disappeared. The pilot supposed they were somewhere nearby, entombed in snow.

"It's not the best of boats to change our luck in," he admitted to Greta.

"I think it's beautiful because it's ours," she replied. "The first part of our new life."

They used ice axes to chop the boat free from its frozen fusion and then rolled it onto its keel. Hart stepped the mast, fastened the boom, and tied on the sail he'd liberated from the motor launch, using as rigging both the lines in the boat and additional ones Greta had stuffed in their packs. The fit was inexact but would serve. Then they put their shoulders to the stern and pushed.

"Heave!" Hart shouted. "Heave with all your might!"

She leaned and let out a Valkyrie cry. The lifeboat broke free and tobogganed into the water, Owen snaring the stern line to keep it from drifting away.

She glanced back up the volcanic slope above the cove. No sign of Jürgen. "They haven't found us yet. We might just make it."

"If we hurry. We're a long ways from the open sea and we'll have to row quite a distance to weave out of this pack ice."

"Do you still have strength for rowing?"

"I'll row to New York to get away from here."

The floating pack ice was a problem for the German launch as well. After motoring out of the caldera entrance Drexler and his SS detachment of five surviving men had to swing wide around the flank of the island to avoid its encircling rind. Being outside the protective crater and on the open sea made Drexler nervous. He really didn't like Antarctica's expansive emptiness, he admitted to himself. The excitement he'd felt about the continent when the Schwabenland had first cast off from Germany had long since disappeared. What made it such a dreadful place, he thought, was that it was beyond human control. Not a house nor a light nor a refuge nor a path. To his mind, there was nothing liberating about such wilderness: he felt like he had to squeeze himself to prevent being pulled apart by Antarctica's vacuum, pieces of him sailing off in all directions like an explosion in space. Accordingly, he'd been looking forward to the cubbyhole embrace of the steel submarine on the long voyage home, his victory ensured in ranks of neatly labeled bottles of a revolutionary biology. Now he was driving through water so cold it was like dark syrup, a sea so chill that the snow which fell on it didn't melt but instead undulated on its top like gray skin. A monstrous place!

He was struggling to fight off gloom. The antibiotic was gone, the cave destroyed, and the U-boat contaminated. The other volcano was smoking more than ever and a full-scale eruption might make a return impossible. Which meant his dreams had been utterly imperiled by the woman he'd loved. Almost destroyed! Lord, how he hated her.

There was a rattle and he looked down to see bits of ice rasp along the side of the launch. He shivered. He still couldn't swim and he wondered how deep the ocean was here. It seemed bottomless.

"Seals." One of the storm troopers pointed.

There was a group of them on an ice floe, as indolent as ever. Drexler remembered that Greta had claimed some of them were fierce predators, huge and swift. The thought was absurd! The sluggish beasts barely moved except to yawn and defecate. They stank and whelped and did nothing more. Worst of all, they were indifferent to the Germans, caring nothing for what they were up against. It was a kind of arrogance that annoyed him. It was like the indifference of God.

"Give me your gun."

"My gun?"

"Give it to me!"

The lazy animals had no fear of man. That must change. He pulled back the lever on the submachine gun to arm it and fired a burst, the rattle surprisingly clamorous in the hushed whiteness. One of the seals recoiled, barking in surprise and pain, and suddenly the snow was bright with blood. In a flash the animals slithered off the ice and into the water.

"Damned slugs." Drexler threw the gun back at the soldier.

The storm troopers looked at one another uneasily. Bad luck.

"What was that?" Greta's head had come up.

Hart looked around uneasily. "Maybe just a glacier calving. Or a breakup of ice." He frowned. It had sounded like a burst of gunshots.

They'd been rowing slowly and carefully, picking their way through the ice toward the open sea. Now the pilot clambered forward to where the mast was stepped, pulling himself up its short length and clinging with his legs.

"Careful!" Greta warned. The boat rocked dangerously.

Hart squinted across the ice. He didn't see the German boat so much as spy movement: motion in a place that otherwise was calm and still. He slid down, heartsick.

"It's them. In the motor launch. Somehow they saw us, or realized what we're doing. They're trying to cut us off by sea. How did they figure it out?"

She looked pained, then determined. "Jürgen always figures it out. But I'm not going back with them."

"We're not to that point yet. I'm going to raise the sail. Maybe we can outrun them in this ice."

There was just breeze enough to fill the canvas. He hoisted the sail and it caught, the lifeboat heeling slightly. They'd lashed the rudder amidships and now he untied it and began to steer, meanwhile grasping the boom line. "Stay on the upward side of the boat to help balance."

She nodded. "I've sailed. I can help tack when you give the word."

They began coasting, dark water gurgling up from the stern. How many thousands of miles to go? Hart looked in the direction of the Germans.

"And Greta? You'd better unlash the submachine gun."

She nodded. "They may be surprised that we have it."

"Colonel! A sail!"

The SS men were pointing and Drexler lifted his binoculars. It was them, trying to ghost away as if they were making a pleasure sail on the Havel outside Berlin. He could imagine them laughing together, thinking they'd infected all the tiresome Germans and joking about the fool they'd made of the cuckold Jürgen Drexler. Except that Jürgen Drexler wasn't ill, not yet. And even if he already was— even if he felt perhaps the murmur of fever in his brain— it was still just a whisper. He had plenty of time to catch them and punish them and swallow the cure.

"Full power! Full speed!" The engine roared as the helmsman gunned it. "Watch for ice! But go, go, go!"

The added breeze from their acceleration was colder. While the helmsman steered, the other SS men checked their weapons and then crouched low behind the gunwales for shelter, a peeking pride of lions.

"Speed, dammit!" A small floe banged against the hull and Drexler was forcibly reminded of the Schwabenland's mishap. "But be careful!"

He spotted a wide patch of open water to port and pointed. "Go there!" They were faster than the sailboat and could afford to loop around the unpowered craft, blocking the fugitives from the ocean. With that pathetic mast sticking upward like a pointing flag the adulterous lovers couldn't hope to hide. He had them! Oh, he had them.

The Germans charged across the open water, spray arcing off their prow, a tendril of greasy engine smoke drifting behind. Each swell that lifted gave a better view of the fleeing sail, tacking first this way and then that. Predator and prey, strong and weak. The way of the world! Now the storm troopers were between the lifeboat and the open sea. Owen and Greta were caught against the island.

"Now, that way! Into that lead there! We'll pin them!"

The motor launch wake churned the flat water of the ice lead, its wake heaving the floes up and down. The sail was getting tantalizingly close, flapping aimlessly now as the couple hunted for fickle wind. He could imagine their panic. He could feel their dread. It was sweet revenge, imagining what they must feel like as the soldiers inexorably gained on them. Would she weep at the end? If she did, it would no longer move him. He was sure of it.

They churned through a tiny connecting channel and then they were in the same polynya of open water as the sailboat. Where had they gotten the craft? Drexler suddenly looked around as if the American might have allies ready to attempt a rescue. But no, the horizons were empty. Still, it was as if Hart was some kind of magician, able to conjure improbable escapes and sudden resources at the last moment. It baffled him: the pilot had been a plague since that first night at Karinhall. Well, the showdown had finally come. No more tricks.

The sail abruptly dropped and the pair unshipped their oars; they were going to try to reach the edge of the ice and escape on foot. Drexler calculated. The Nazis would catch them a few feet short of their goal. "Faster!"

Suddenly there was a burp of gunfire in Drexler's ear. Spouts of seawater flew up near the fleeing lifeboat. One of the SS men had opened fire.

Drexler cuffed him. "Not yet, you fool! Not until we've recovered the drug!" Morons. Was he the only person on this voyage capable of thought?

Then Hart bent, sat up, and there was a flicker of muzzle flash in return. "He's got a gun!" the helmsman cried as water and wood splinters filled the air and one of the SS men cried out. The motor launch veered abruptly away, lurching toward the ice on the opposite side of the watery channel. They hit with a glancing blow and Drexler and the other men landed in a tangle on the bottom.

"Get off me, dammit!" He struggled upward. The pair were rowing again, taking advantage of the Nazi confusion. The couple hit the other side of the ice and scrambled out, dragging their packs behind them.

"Damn! Make for them!" But Hart had already staked their boat to a line and the two were jogging away like a pair of taunting foxes.

"Fuck! Now we'll have to catch them on foot." There was a groan, and Drexler looked down in irritation. It was Walther, one of his SS men. He was hit in the stomach and spewing blood all over the damn boat. Well, he'd be envied if they didn't recover the drug. And if they did it would be too late to save him anyway. The groaning would stop soon enough.

"We're leaking!" one of the men cried, watching water stream into the motor launch from a bullet hole.

"No matter," Drexler said. "We'll have their boat."

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

It occurred to Greta that perhaps she was trapped in a dream. The chase had the hallucinatory, slow-motion quality of an unending nightmare. The world was a monochrome of black and white. The ice under her feet cracked and sighed as they painfully trotted across its powdery coverlet of snow. Her head was dizzy from the constant gasping of brittle air. For mere minutes, it seemed, they'd been free. Then Jürgen had materialized again as if he read every thought in her head, knew every plan she laid. She longed to wake up— to have it be over with.

The Germans were following them like a pack of wolves, five in all. Owen said he thought he'd counted six at first, so perhaps he'd hit one. Not that it mattered. How could they fight so many?

"Owen, I can't go on much longer."

She was panting, her pack as heavy as the Cross. They'd be run down in minutes.

He nodded. "Me neither. We have to leave the packs and lose the soldiers, then circle back. Maybe I can slow them down first."

They stopped at a fissure where the pressure of the shifting ice had heaved several blocks into the air. The barrier briefly shielded them from view.

"We'll put the packs here," Hart said. "Take the cylinder with the antidote and go ahead, aiming for that trapped iceberg. I'm going to give them something to think about." He threw down his pack and untangled the machine gun. "Are you all right?"

She nodded, tense. "Try not to be late."

There was an eruption of shots behind Greta and she could hear shouts and screams from the pursuing Germans. The soldiers let loose with a fusillade of their own, the bullets kicking up a small blizzard at the top of the ice blocks. Then Owen was away and running low after her, faster now without his pack and gun.

"I got one of the bastards and the others went flat," he reported. "The gun is empty and so is my stock of ideas."

"We still have a chance," she said hopefully. "They should have the disease. If we can just keep away long enough it should begin to slow them down."

"I hope that bacteria hurries. They look pretty damn healthy to me."

The iceberg was a gnarled hill of ice that had drifted in the sea until ensnared in the flat pack ice. The vise that held it was made of two large islands of ice separated by a dark lead of water that stretched hundreds of yards in either direction. The iceberg was the only bridge across this channel. Hart hesitated, glancing back. The Germans had paused to fall on the couple's packs like ravenous dogs, looking for the drug. Not finding it, they were loping after them again more warily, their guns ready. They didn't know Hart had hidden his empty submachine gun in the snow.

"Owen, come on! Why are we stopping?"

He glanced ahead. "Icebergs can sometimes be unstable. They slowly melt and as they change shape their center of gravity shifts and they roll. Sometimes the weight of a person or a seal or even a penguin can make the final difference. If we climb onto it and go into the water we're dead."

She looked impatient. "If we wait here we're dead."

"I know, I know. You go first then, to minimize the weight. I think if I stand here they'll hesitate in case I have a gun. Then I'll follow."

Now it was she who hesitated.

"Go. Quickly!"

Greta leaped a thin crevice of seawater and began scrambling across the iceberg, trying to ignore its ominous rock. As Owen had expected, the pursuing Germans slowed cautiously when they saw him standing there. One fired a tentative burst but the distance was still too great: the bullets went wide. Hart looked the other way. Greta had disappeared over the crest of the berg.

He leaped and the iceberg heaved unsteadily beneath him. Hart followed in Greta's tracks, praying their bridge would stay stable. More bullets whipped around him as he scrambled over the crest. Then he was sliding down the other side toward a gap of dark water and jumped again. The flatter ice cracked as he landed on it but didn't give way.

Greta seized his hand. "Hurry!"

On they went, the world a white miasma. They had no sense of direction except to get away.

"Hart! Oweeennnn Hart!"

They looked back. It was Drexler, standing on the crest of the iceberg and hoisting a machine gun. "Your lives in return for the drug, Hart! It isn't too late to make a bargain!"

They stopped to confer. "If we agree," said Greta, "they might survive to take the microbe back to Germany."

"And kill us anyway." Hart raised his arm.

Drexler lifted his binoculars, focusing. A middle finger came into view. Bastard!

The Nazi charged down the iceberg after them then, his men swarming over the crest just behind. The Germans came down in a tight group, neared the edge…

The iceberg rolled.

The movement was as spectacular as it was sudden. The hill of ice upended like a sinking ship, the end nearest Owen and Greta dipping into the water. The storm troopers screamed as they tumbled, desperately trying to claw away from the gulping water. Drexler leaped, his legs churning, his arms outspread. He landed flat on the stable pack ice, the air going out of him with a whoosh. The iceberg continued to roll behind him and the three remaining storm troopers slid into the sea, thousands of tons of ice flipping to drive them deep. Their scream was chopped off as abruptly as the fall of an ax.

"Jesus," Hart whispered. "I'd heard of it, but never seen it."

The overturned iceberg was pitching uneasily now, seeking a new equilibrium. Seawater poured off its flanks in a hundred small waterfalls.

Drexler slowly got to his hands and knees.

Then one of his soldiers surfaced like a cork, thrashing. "Save me!" The sound exploded from his lungs but was thin and frail across the broad expanse of sea ice. Jürgen looked dully back over his shoulder. The man's hand was clutching at the air.

"He has no chance," Hart said. "The water's too cold."

The soldier had flailed his way to the edge of the pack ice and frantically hauled himself up on it, flopping like a fish. He was pleading, saying something to Drexler that they couldn't hear. The Nazi didn't respond at first. But as the soldier began to crawl pitifully toward Jürgen the SS colonel finally got to his feet. The soldier was slowing. A rime of ice was forming on his clothes.

Drexler regarded the man solemnly and then walked over to point his submachine gun. The storm trooper lifted his head. There was a short burst and the soaked soldier jerked and lay still.

Then the SS colonel looked at the two fugitives a hundred yards away across the ice. Grimly, he began trotting after them again.

The U-boat sounded like a tuberculosis ward. Men were hacking and sneezing, sweat beginning to dot their flushed faces. Schmidt felt ill as well but for his own protection from angry sailors he stayed near Freiwald in the control room, clutching the periscope. At least the submarine was beginning to move again. They'd find Drexler's motor launch, learn where Hart had gone, hunt down the antibiotic… He looked around the enclosing chamber bleakly. Time. Time.

He noticed a calendar near the helm. Almost Christmas. Rocket assembly should have begun by now. Laboratory space was being readied in the mines of the Ruhr. Warheads were being test-fired with anthrax. They were so close. So close! How he longed to squeeze the life out of that traitorous bitch.

"How late in the disease can we take the antidote and live, Doctor?" Freiwald asked.

He shrugged. "Who knows?"

"You'd better damn well know!"

Schmidt sighed. "The rabbits lived. A seaman on the first voyage drank some after infection and lived. Hart, damn his soul, lived. So. We have to hope."

The captain looked bleak. "Myself I don't care about. But my men… If they start to die, Doctor, they'll blame you. For bringing the spores aboard. You know that."

Schmidt nodded. "No matter. I'm older, less resistant. And I was infected first." He smiled broadly, lips drawn back from yellow teeth. "I'll beat them all to hell."

"Oh my God, Owen. Only open water."

They stopped, panting. They'd run and run and run, always the remorseless dark figure of Jürgen Drexler tagging behind as tireless as a shadow. They'd run until their clothes were soaked with sweat in the bitter cold, run until their lungs were on fire and their sides ached. Now they could run no more. The ice pack had ended in a wide lead of water as dark and shiny as tar. There was no way around. They were pinned between Jürgen Drexler and the sea.

The couple looked back. Their pursuer had slowed to a weary walk himself now, his submachine gun leveled lest they try to dash along the edge of the ice. He had to be as exhausted as they were. He had to be feeling the plague. But they'd run out of time to wait for his collapse.

Hart glanced around. The world was a gauzy gray, chill and bleak. The ice was an inhospitable plain, its only mark the trail of their footprints. The volcano behind was smoking more furiously and for the first time they could hear its low rumble. Had they succeeded they would have gotten away from the damnable island just in time, he thought. Hell was breathing. Fire and ice.

"I'm sorry, Greta. I don't have a weapon. I don't even have any strength." He looked at her fondly, sadly. At least I knew her, he thought. And because of that I've had a good life.

"It's all right, Owen," she replied, as if reading his thoughts. She held his hand.

Jürgen stopped twenty feet short, pinning them on a small peninsula of ice. His breath steamed, his parka covered with frost. He looked ill.

"So. We come together for the final time."

"Give it up, Jürgen," Hart tiredly tried. "Your men are dead. The submarine is contaminated. It's over."

"No, Hart." He coughed. "What you don't understand— what you've never understood— is that it isn't over until I say so. Do you really think I'm going to let you destroy my work and sail off with my wife? I don't know which to be more impressed by: your irredeemable stupidity or your irrepressible persistence. A lesser man would have surrendered by now, you know. Perhaps you're not such a coward after all."

"Excuse me if I don't give a damn."

Drexler nodded. "No, at times like this other things seem more important, yes? I'm sick, you're helpless. We all think of what might have been."

"Jürgen, please," Greta pleaded. "We can still choose life…"

"Life?" He looked at her in amazement. "Life? My command butchered? My crew poisoned? Life, in this wasteland? Look around you, Greta. Do you see anything alive, anywhere, in this kingdom of the dead?" He coughed again, then swung the machine gun at Owen's chest. "So, I'll give you a final choice, Hart. You can be shot down. Or drown."

"Go to hell."

Greta glanced away as Drexler spoke, studying the opening of dark water. Something had moved to catch her eye, producing a dark eddy. Then it sank soundlessly. She slid her hand inside her parka and pulled out the steel tank. "Jürgen, wait. If you kill Owen I'll throw the drug into the sea. You'll die of plague, a horrible death."

He was still breathing hard. "Then give it here."

"You can have it for the gun. Then we'll all live."

He licked his lips. "No. Give it here or I'll simply shoot you and take it."

"Do you promise not to kill us?"

"I promise to kill you if you don't hand that over."

She glanced at Owen. He shook his head. She cocked her arm.

"No!" said Drexler. "Don't throw it!"

She threw.

"God damn you!"

The cylinder landed in the snow at the edge of the water, almost going in. Neither man was certain if she'd been aiming for the water or Drexler. "I'm sorry. I was never good at throwing."

"Pathetic bitch." Keeping the machine gun aimed, he sidled to pick it up. "My life was ruined from the moment I met you, do you realize that? You never understood anything: not me, not Germany, not science— " He bent.

The water exploded.

Hart jumped back as if he'd been shot. There was an astonishing blur and the momentary flicker of a yawning pink mouth with white teeth. Then with a scream and a titanic splash, Jürgen Drexler was gone.

"Christ!" the pilot cried.

"Leopard seal," said Greta grimly. "It thought he was a penguin."

The cold was like fire, the shock so powerful that Drexler didn't even notice the animal's teeth had punctured his thigh. The gun and the tank of drug slipped away. Then, dismayed by the strange mouthful of cloth and flesh it had seized, the seal let go. The Nazi couldn't swim but the shock drove instinct. He thrashed toward the surface in a cloud of blood, erupting with a shriek.

"Save me!"

Hart considered only for a moment. Then he sprang forward and grabbed.

"Owen, no!"

The pilot ignored her. He heaved and Drexler slithered up on the ice, gasping.

"Why did you do that?"

"Because he has something that belongs to us."

Ice was forming on Drexler's clothes. His body was shaking uncontrollably, his strength and coordination ebbing, his brain shutting down. "Please…"

"I'll never understand you, Jürgen," Hart said, squatting. "You had heaven. You had Greta. And you chose hell." He yanked open the German's parka and began feeling his pockets. "Where is it, dammit?"

"Please…"

"Owen, the cylinder went in the water with him. It's gone." She looked at the smoking volcano. "God's will, perhaps."

"That's not what I'm looking for." He hoisted Drexler up off the snow and ripped open the flap of his chest pocket. "Here!" Then he dropped the German and backed away.

Drexler's lips were blue, his mouth still open. His eyes had lost focus. The pulse of blood from his bite wound had become sluggish. His movements were ending.

Greta stared without expression. "I don't feel anything except release, Owen," she confessed. "My compassion has died."

"He killed it. And in the end he's luckier than he deserves. The plague would have killed him more slowly." He turned to her and opened his hand. It was the penguin locket. "This is why I pulled him out. He showed me he'd kept the thing, to gloat." Yanking his gloves off with his teeth he opened it, inspecting. "Lost the pebble, I see." He unfastened the chain. "Put your hood down."

She did so and bent her head. Tenderly, he reached around and hooked the locket. She let it dangle a minute on the outside of her parka so he could see it.

"I gave the pebble to my father," she said. "So he could keep it safely for us."

"You trusted him not to sell it?" It was a grin.

"He wouldn't sell it. Not anymore."

Hart pulled her hood back up. "We need to conserve every bit of heat and energy we can now." They glanced down at Drexler's body. "You're a widow again."

She nodded— not with sadness but release. "Yes. But a widow with prospects." Her look was shy.

His look was a combination of pleasure and apprehension. "I should say so. If we can survive the sea."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Owen and Greta were quiet on the long walk back to the boat. Exhaustion was taking its toll and the trek was grim. They skirted the frozen soldier by the iceberg, rounded the open water, and worked back to their packs where they gathered their supplies. They passed the body of the other man that Hart had shot and found a third lying in the half-sunken motor launch. The pilot had hoped to transfer to that larger craft and use its engine to get clear of the ice but his gunfire had holed it. The dead storm trooper lay in pink water that had risen halfway up to the gunwales, its surface freezing into slush. So the couple restowed their gear in the whaler's lifeboat and pushed off from the pack ice, rowing numbly.

After several hundred yards they stopped and Hart tethered the boat to another ice island. They crawled into the bottom of the boat and covered themselves with a blanket and tarp. A light snow was falling and it dusted the covering. They kissed wearily in their cocoon and cupped like spoons, Greta nested into Owen. Then they slept. For the first time in weeks, dark dreams did not plague them.

The pair woke stiff but somewhat recovered, crawling out from under the tarp like burrowing animals. Hart looked around. The panorama was gray, water the color of lead. The ice was dull under a ceiling of cloud. He'd no idea what time it was, or even what day it was. Time had stopped, or become irrelevant. Atropos Island continued to thunder, the volcanic plume bulging under the overcast like a sagging belly. Mist fogged the distant glaciers and flakes of snow spat at them in lazy fashion. Everywhere Hart looked there was utter emptiness, a land and seascape absolutely vacuumed of life, of warmth, of history. They were in a frozen limbo and the only sound in all that chilly vastness was the drum of their own pumping blood, the only sparks of heat the ones each carried in their core. All that mattered in the end, he realized, was each other.

"I feel like we're the last living things on earth," he told her.

She was biting off a piece of bread, her eyes shining. To have awakened this morning was like awakening from her terrible dream. She'd never felt such relief.

"No, Owen. The sea is still alive. Look." She pointed.

There was a hiss. A cloud of rank vapor, evidence of another huge beating heart, puffed above the water. The surface roiled as the small hillock of a whale's back appeared. Then it submerged again and the tail broke the surface, waving. Beckoning them to the sea.

"It's a good sign," she promised. "That despite all the kilometers ahead we're going to make it."

Hart unhooked the boat from the ice and they began to row, following the whale. Slowly they worked out of the pack ice that clung to the island.

As they neared the open ocean the wind began to pick up. They hoisted the sail and huddled for warmth in the stern, the lifeboat taking on an easy motion as it slid up and down the swells. An iceberg passed by on the starboard side and they saw penguins standing on it. Yes, there was life after all.

"How far to land?" she asked.

"About four thousand kilometers to Africa."

"My God." The impossibility was obvious.

"We have to try."

They sailed on. Strangely, their mood was not despair but contentment. They were alone and with each other. It was enough. The sea was gray, the swells cresting with foam but not yet threatening to overpower their little boat. Seabirds appeared and began trailing them, riding the wind in long, looping circles. The overcast broke and a tantalizing rift of blue showed through. Behind, the island began to look simply like a gigantic dark cloud.

Hours passed. Greta dozed in Owen's arms, lulled by the roll of the sea. Then she lazily came awake again, watching the water. It was hypnotic, swells marking a timeless rhythm. She squinted, her gaze caught on something that broke the pattern. Something above the surface. Something hard. "My God. Is that a ship?" She pointed.

He followed her arm eagerly, then looked uneasy. "I think it's the submarine. I think it's the U-4501."

"No." She put her arms around him. "This is too much."

He studied the craft. "It would be. Except it isn't trying to intercept us, I think."

"Hasn't it spotted us? Should we drop the sail to hide?"

"No," he said, now more puzzled than alarmed. "That's not it. The sub isn't trying to do anything. I think it's dead."

"Dead?"

"Plague." He aimed for the vessel.

The U-boat was wallowing sluggishly, drifting as if it had lost all power. The main deck was awash, only the conning tower clear of the sea. It rocked back and forth like a lonely buoy.

"I don't see anybody," Greta said quietly.

Owen hove to and then watched the submarine for a while in grim wonder. "No," he replied. "I suspect there's no one to see. It's a ghost ship now, like the Bergen."

"So I really killed them. I'm looking at their tomb."

"No, they killed themselves."

She crossed herself. He turned the rudder and began sailing away.

"The conning tower looks like it's slowly sinking," she judged, staring after the disappearing U-boat.

"Maybe Freiwald's taking her to the bottom. Maybe there's a leak."

"So it's really over, isn't it?"

"That part is."

They sailed on, the day getting late. They took turns eating and steering, catching snatches of sleep. Both felt immensely tired. The euphoria of escape was wearing off and life's insistence at worrying about the next danger was pecking persistently at their mood. Night fell, a cloudy one as dark as the cave, and then the gray dawn revealed mostly empty ocean. A few icebergs drifted miles from their position but the island was lost below the southern horizon.

"I want to talk about our future," Greta said. "A future that will keep my spirits up."

"All right." Hart thought a moment. "What kind of house shall we have?"

"A sunny one," she said promptly. "With a tree, and a table under the tree. Not big, like I had in Berlin. But bright."

He laughed. "It sounds affordable. And what kind of car?"

"Do ordinary people really have cars in America?"

"Yes, some of them. You need one. The country's big."

"Well then, I want one of those too. But not black. A happy color."

"Like in a children's book?"

"Exactly."

The clouds parted briefly and for a while the horizon sparkled. Then the weather closed again and the wind began to rise ominously. The tiny boat was like a leaf on a prairie, the sea slowly building and breaking white. The sky was darkening. Hart shortened sail.

"They call this latitude the Furious Fifties," he said. "Now we'll see why."

The boat was beginning to toboggan down one side of the swells and climb laboriously up the next, the wind singing in the rigging. Spray breaking across the prow began to wet them. It would be a long second night.

Greta looked across the cold seascape, her hair blowing past her cheeks with a sad, faraway look that reminded the pilot of their days on the Schwabenland. He wondered what her picture of America was, and what she would think of it if they ever got there. The boat rolled steeply and she shifted her body automatically to help balance. A streak of foam hissed away from their stern. She began to bail, barely keeping pace with the rain of spray.

"We're not going to make it, are we, Owen?" she asked finally when she rested. "We could never make it. Like you said."

He was looking out across the water, his eyes narrow, his mouth in its half smile of concentration. "I was wrong. We'll make it."

"Ah, the optimistic American." She couldn't help smiling. "You don't give up easily, do you?"

"Not anymore."

"And how do you know that we'll make it, Mr. Hart?"

"Well, for one thing, we've only got three thousand and nine hundred kilometers to go. Much less if you count in nautical miles."

She laughed. "I hadn't realized we were so close!"

"And for another thing, you have an angel on your shoulder."

"Oh really?" She turned to look. "Very small, I think. But that's what your Eskimo friend promised, yes?"

Hart nodded. "And Elmer was right."

She slumped in the bottom of the boat, huddling against the cold. "I wish he was but I don't see this angel, Owen. The angels have deserted me, I suspect."

"No they haven't." He pointed. "I can see it."

She didn't bother to look this time. Her eyes closed.

"Greta?" he said impatiently.

"Hmmmm?"

"Please get out the flare gun you packed."

"What?" Her eyes opened wide.

"For your angel." He pointed again. And this time she swung to look.

There was a gray shape on the horizon. Another ship.

"My God. It's true!"

Owen was beaming now, his face stung with spray, his hair whipping in the wind. "Of course it's true. Because of the person I'm with, I suspect." He leaned and seized and kissed her, passionately happy. "Get out the flare, dammit!"

She did so and a red star shot skyward in the gloom. They waited a few minutes. Then another.

The ship began pointing toward them.

Owen whooped, waving his hand wildly as if they could see it at such a distance. Then he beamed at his companion. "Did I ever tell you that women are good luck?"

The American destroyer Reuben Gray picked them up at dusk. Greta went up the rope ladder first, sailors eagerly lifting her the last few feet and marveling at the novelty of a woman.

Then a sailor pointed to the ladder urgently and gestured at Hart.

"Speak English, kid!" the pilot asked.

His mouth dropped open. "You sound American!"

"Montanan. Never thought I'd see so much fucking water in my life." The Norwegian lifeboat was heavy with it, he realized, accumulated spray sloshing under the floorboards. They wouldn't have lasted the night. He grabbed the ladder and hoisted himself aboard.

"Where'd you come from?" The sailor's wide eyes looked out at an empty sea.

"Heaven. And hell."

Hart looked down at the lifeboat a last time with appreciation. On its second chance it had done its job.

"Big wave!" someone called from the deck, pointing. The two men looked. A dark hill was mounding, aiming for the destroyer's stern quarter.

"Hang on!" the sailor shouted, shoving Hart. The pilot needed no encouragement. He wrapped an arm around a metal rack. The stern of the ship dipped, a mountain of gray water looming over it. Then the wave broke, spray crashing against the stern like breakers on a rocky coast.

There was a splintering crack. The stern rose, twisted, dropped again. The destroyer tilted as it sought equilibrium.

Hart let go and looked back over the side. The Norwegian lifeboat had been hurled against the steel ship's side and shattered. It was gone, except for a scrap of wood attached to one line. The destroyer began to accelerate and steered a more favorable course into the waves, steadying. And at last the island seemed reassuringly remote. They were safe. But what was an American destroyer doing way down here?

Owen walked across the fantail to a hatchway where yellow light beckoned. Greta was there, her hood down and a halo of illumination around her hair. And there was someone else too.

"Fortune is curious, isn't it, Mr. Hart?"

"I don't believe it."

Otto Kohl smiled like the proprietor of a private yacht. "You're lucky we found you in time. And I'm lucky you found us. I think the captain was ready to pitch me overboard if I didn't find a submarine to sink or an island to invade. And I feared I was going to help him kill the two of you. Instead I saved you. Now perhaps you can convince him of the truth of what I've been saying."

Hart stepped inside, feeling himself sagging in the relative warmth. "I'll try. But what are you doing here?"

"I went to the Americans. I confessed all. They didn't believe me until they intercepted a radio signal from your U-boat. Then they made me a captive guide, exhibiting a sorry mistrust I've only slowly been overcoming."

"Well, it's too late to guide them, Otto. They're all dead, even Jürgen. The submarine is gone, the island volcano erupting, the disease and cure lost. Forever, I hope. It would be insane to go back there."

"The submarine… gone?"

"It was full of plague and slowly sinking the last time we saw it. This destroyer can look in hopes of practicing its naval gunnery, but I don't think they'll find it."

"And was anything salvaged from this vessel?"

"Of course not. You want a souvenir?"

Kohl sighed. "No. Just that Jürgen was holding some… papers of mine."

"Ah. I saw those come aboard. Important?"

The German thought about that. Then he shook his head. "No. Not important. Not anymore. Because life goes on, I think. Because it's time to start over and make up for the past, no?"

Hart nodded. "Admiral Byrd once remarked that Antarctica can provide a man with a chance to remake himself. Maybe he was right. But I'm sorry about your papers, Otto. I don't know what other evidence we have to back up your story."

He shrugged. "Yourselves, certainly. How else did you come to be down here in an open boat?"

The pilot nodded. "There's that."

"And one other thing." Greta fished into her clothes and pulled out her bottle. "An algae or a sponge, a strange organism. Perhaps some scientist will confirm its novelty."

"Greta! You saved some?" The pilot was surprised.

"Just this raw sample, when I destroyed the rest. I'm curious. As a scientist, you know."

Otto peered. "This is what all the fuss has been about?"

"This and how humans could misuse it."

Kohl nodded. "That I understand." He paused then, considering the way the couple looked at each other. "Well. Would an engagement present be appropriate?"

"It would be very appropriate," Hart said. Greta smiled.

"Good. Because I've been carrying this halfway around the world and don't have a clue as to why." He reached into a pocket and took out a scrap of soiled ribbon, handing it to Greta. "But I kept it as you asked."

She looked happy as she unwrapped the pebble.

"What the devil is that rock?"

She lifted the locket out of her clothes and unsnapped it. "It's memory, Papa." She slipped the pebble in and closed the tiny container. "It goes here, near the heart."

Her father nodded. "And now you two go on to…?"

"California, I hope." Greta looked shyly at Owen. "It's warmer than Montana, I hear. And I want to be near the sea to study whales. Not to hunt them, but to learn from them."

"And you, Owen?"

"I think commercial aviation is going to increase after the war. I want to fly and I suspect California will be as good a place to start as any. I once spent some time there."

"Good. And I think I want to help rebuild some of what we destroyed after the Reich finally dies. They will need Otto Kohl, I think."

An ensign stepped into the room. "The captain wants to talk to you three. You have a lot of explaining to do."

"Of course, of course!" Kohl nodded. "What a story we have to tell! Lead the way, young man!" He put a cautious hand on Hart's shoulder. "Captain Reynolds and I are slowly becoming the best of friends," he whispered. "It's taking time but he's warming to me, I think. So you, of course, must let me do most of the talking."

As the trio climbed toward the vessel's bridge, Owen Hart slipped his arm around the woman he loved.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This book was inspired by a true incident. In 1938–39, Germany's Hermann Göring did send an expedition to Antarctica on the seaplane tender Schwabenland. Its pilots were the first to fly over the coastal ranges of Queen Maud Land and they assigned some names to the region that persist today. The Germans did drop swastika-engraved darts from their flying boats to establish a claim to the continent, and did greet curious penguins with a "Heil Hitler!" They named the area New Schwabenland.

Except for Hermann Göring, however, all the characters in this novel are imagined. None are meant to represent the actual members of the Schwabenland expedition. The history recounted here is solely the author's invention. To the degree possible, however, this novel's descriptions are based on historic accounts of the places, times, people, and mores of the Nazi era.

Those readers familiar with Antarctic history and geography will recognize some sources of the novel's ideas. Atropos Island is inspired by real-life Deception Island, for example. Dry valleys such as the one described do exist. So do leopard seals. The disease depicted is fiction but scientists have recently discovered underground ecosystems of bacteria fed by chemicals and the earth's heat energy. The drug was suggested by the story of penicillin, discovered accidentally in 1928 when mold spores blew through a scientist's window and fell on plates of bacteria. The strain that was developed as an antibiotic in World War II, Penicillin chrysogenum, came from a single moldy cantaloupe found by a researcher in a supermarket garbage bin in Peoria, Illinois. Proving again that truth is at least as strange as fiction.

This book would not have been possible without the opportunity to make two visits to Antarctica as a science journalist writing for the Seattle Times, under a fellowship program of the National Science Foundation. I am grateful to the Times, the NSF, and all the people I met there. They and the southern continent affected me deeply.

Antarctica is an extraordinary place, which tends to have an enormous impact on those who visit it. No continent on earth has quite its combination of hostility and beauty. In the twenty-first century Antarctica is likely to come under heavy pressure from nations eager to exploit its resources. It is imperative this unique place be preserved as the wilderness and research park it is today.

I am in debt to the encouragement of my agent, Kris Dahl, and the patient guidance and support of my editor, Rick Horgan. And I am at a loss to adequately thank my wife, Holly, for her help with this book. She became my collaborator on this novel under difficult circumstances. Across a vast distance we became closer, and I will always be grateful for that.