Ice Station Wolfenstein

Chapter 13

Alexandr was the first to laugh. "Very good, Mr. Purdue, very good!" he cried, slapping Purdue on the back. "Better even than my Ke'let story! Excellent!"

Fatima was sitting bolt upright beside Nina, her body quivering with tension. She gave a nervous chuckle. "You had me worried for a moment there, Purdue," she said. "I thought you were actually planning to change our destination in mid-trip! Your storytelling skills are amazing."

Delicately, Purdue adjusted the cuffs on his sweater. "Dr. al-Fayed, that is exactly my intention. Rest assured, we shall make it to Neumayer. Your research will not be abandoned, just slightly delayed. That is why, when we first corresponded, I was so keen to know whether your work was in any way dependent on the seasons. We could have gone to Neumayer first, but who could wait longer than they had to for discoveries such as these?"

"You've got to be joking." Fatima's voice was barely audible.

"I am not."

Fatima stared wildly around the rest of the group. "This is insane!" she cried. "We're in incredibly dangerous territory. This is the kind of place where you survive by having a plan and sticking to it. We can't just go wandering off into the mountains, that's how you get killed." Now on her feet, she whirled around to face the Russian guide. "Alexandr, back me up here!"

Arichenkov made no reply but stood stroking his beard, his eyes closed, apparently lost in a world of his own. In three strides Fatima had crossed the floor and grabbed hold of his shoulders, shaking him and yelling at him to speak. With a laugh, he took hold of her wrists and stopped her. He looked her straight in the eye. "Fatima," he said softly, "do you not trust me to keep all of you safe? Would you not like to explore new territory, perhaps find the thing that will bring you back for your next voyage of discovery? You think this story of a Nazi ice station is a fairy tale. So do I. But what if it is not? Our supplies are plentiful, our equipment is excellent, and we are well-placed to make such a detour."

"Well-placed!" Fatima erupted. "You're insane! Have you looked at this expedition? Have you? Fewer than half these people are prepared to be here at all, let alone to be going off the beaten track on some wild-goose chase. I guarantee you that if we go wandering off into those mountains, most — perhaps all — of them are going to die. Is that what you want? Is this some kind of suicide trip for you? How can you seriously be considering this?"

Alexandr shrugged. "I am paid to guide this expedition. Where it goes is of little matter to me. For the right sum, I will take you anywhere you like. And I will get you home alive."

Unable to believe the lack of support she was encountering from Alexandr, Fatima rounded on the rest of the group. "Why am I the only one who seems to have a problem with this?" she snarled. "Are you all completely suicidal? Or am I the only one who didn't know about this? Did all of you come here specifically to play Nazi hunter?" She turned a beseeching look on Nina. "Did you know?"

"I don't know anything more than I've told you already," Nina's voice was as calm as she could make it. "As far as I'm concerned, we're here in the hope of finding some evidence that there was an attempt to establish a Nazi base here. I didn't have any plans to drag you off course. But knowing what I do of Mr. Purdue, I'm not entirely surprised. I should have made it clearer to you that he's crazy and not overly concerned with anyone's safety. I didn't know about his plan, but I have to admit that now we're here… if it's feasible to investigate properly, I think we should do it while we have the chance. Especially if we're already almost on top of it."

Fatima threw up her hands in frustrated fury and went back to yelling at Purdue, demanding to know where he got his evidence and how he could justify doing this to the rest of the group. As she got close, Ziv Blomstein stepped silently forward and stood between them. Fatima dodged to one side, determined to get to Purdue, but Blomstein blocked her again. "Hands off, Arab bitch," he growled.

Sam lunged forward and grabbed Fatima as she shrieked with rage and her fist flew back to prepare for the punch. Nina had the same idea, and between the two of them they wrestled her away from Blomstein while Purdue watched with amusement. Crazy bastard, thought Sam.

"May I say a few words?"

They turned their heads in the direction of the unfamiliar voice. The white-haired old man was kneeling next to the alcohol burner, his air of quiet composure undisturbed by the tension in the rest of the tent.

"I can understand your alarm, Dr. al-Fayed," he nodded in Fatima's direction. "I can imagine that this must be a great shock to you, and that you may feel that there is not sufficient evidence to justify going in search of the ice station. But Mr. Purdue's tale, while very exciting and dramatic, is only part of the story. I can tell you more, if you are prepared to listen. But first, I would appreciate it if someone would make some tea. My hands are not as steady as they used to be and I am not confident of my ability to work the burner."

Glad of something constructive to do, Sam hurried over and fed a fuel tablet into the burner and filled the pot with melt water. While Sam added teabags and stirred the brew, the old man began to speak.

"I haven't been properly introduced to all of you," he began, "so for those of you who do not know me already, my name is Frederic Whitsun. Admiral Whitsun, if we're being completely accurate." Sam fumbled the pot and nearly spilled its contents, catching it by sheer good luck before the boiling water could end up all over the groundsheet. Nina looked at him quizzically, but she was the only one who paid any attention. Sam gave her a quick smile and she returned her focus to the old man.

"I can tell by the looks that some of you have been giving me that you are wondering why an old man such as me is making such a dangerous trip. Let me assure you that I'm not as frail as I look — and if it proves I have overestimated myself and am truly too old and infirm to survive this environment, Mr. Purdue and Mr. Arichenkov have strict instructions to leave me to my fate. I would rather die here than risk endangering any of you.

My father's name was Witzinger. As you can imagine from the name, my family was German. My mother and I fled our homeland when I was a boy, just before the outbreak of the war, and changed our name during our time in an internment camp on the Isle of Wight. My father, on the other hand, did not escape the grip of the Nazis. He was a brilliant chemist, and in the mid-1930s they recruited him to work at Peenemünde. You can imagine, I'm sure, that this was not the kind of job offer one could refuse.

"From Peenemünde he was transferred to another location — he was unable to tell us where, but I believe he spent some time as a doctor in one of the concentration camps. Then later, he was transferred out of Germany. My mother received a heavily censored letter from him, telling her that he was being sent to a remote location. Then we heard nothing from him again, apart from a letter informing my mother of his death. To the best of our knowledge, he died in that place where he was stationed. I have come here because it is important to me that I find my father's final resting place before I myself die."

The admiral reached into his pack and pulled out a small bundle of papers. "I appreciate that you may wish to know what evidence I have to suggest that my father ended up here. Please, feel free to examine these. Some are personal letters; some are the papers that were in with my father's belongings when they were returned to my mother."

"Oh, how could I have forgotten?" Purdue chimed in. "I was so wrapped up in my own story that I completely omitted one of the best parts! I have a little tangible evidence myself — something I obtained not long ago, just before we set off." From a concealed pocket he withdrew a small notebook and added it to the papers being passed around.

Professor Matlock stepped in and took charge of the papers straight away. With ostentatious care he unfolded letters and spread them out on a sleeping bag, laying the little black notebook beside them, then stood guard over them while the others crowded around to look.

"What are they?" Fatima demanded. "What are we looking at?"

"These are the letters to the admiral's mother," Nina explained, scrutinizing the papers. "I don't see much about where he's stationed — that will be under the blacked-out bits, if he wrote anything about it at all. But these are his notes here… That's the chemical symbol for mercury, and I think this is some kind of formula. Anyone understand it?"

Alexandr peered over her shoulder. "I am no great chemist," he said, "but I will guess that this is a type of fuel. Rocket fuel, perhaps?"

"That would make sense," Nina agreed. "If the admiral's father was at Peenemünde and then transferred down here, it seems likely that he was involved with either aeronautics or ballistics. These here are army documents, just like the ones I've seen before — and they're in the same kind of code. Now, let's have a look at this." She picked up the notebook and opened it to a random page. Sam saw a look of puzzlement cross her face. "Ok, it says… It shall be the greatest of adventures… Worthy of Holmes, of Nemo, of Doctor Moreau…" Her face was white as she shut the book. "Purdue, where did you get this?"

Purdue faced her calmly. "I have a wide range of sources, Nina. When I began to prepare for this expedition I asked a few associates of mine to obtain material like this for me, at any price. Why do you ask? Is it something I'm not supposed to have?"

"This notebook…" Nina paused, confused, searching for a solution in her head. "This notebook belongs to Sam, by rights. This is one of the notebooks that was stolen from me after he gave it to me to translate. Who did you get it from?"

"I'm afraid I can't remember off the top of my head," Purdue said dismissively. "I do keep a database of these things, but as you can imagine I would struggle to check it just now. Once we return to Scotland I shall find out who supplied it and see if I can trace the thief, all right? Will that do?"

Nina nodded, but Sam could read the suspicion on her face. She was not happy with Purdue's explanation and neither, in truth, was he. When he said he had sources who had told him about Nina's funding application, I thought he meant other people in her department, Sam thought. Did he know about all this before she even applied? What the hell is going on here? And why the hell am I in the same tent as Admiral Whitsun?

The academics continued to pore over the evidence for a while and eventually concluded that the papers and the notebook corroborated each other on the likely existence of the ice station and its coordinates. The admiral's father had had a map in his pocket, which looked like nothing more than a few squiggles at first glance, but on closer inspection revealed markings indicating all the topographic features of the area and the location of something marked "W" with a few scrawled numbers around it. The numbers correlated to the coordinates Nina had pulled from the notebook. When they realized this, most of the group gasped, but Purdue sat smugly, certain that the evidence was in his favor.

"For me, that's sufficient evidence to justify investigating," said Nina. "But that's just me. Judging by these coordinates and the map, we wouldn't have to cross the mountains or even enter the mountain range. The entrance is marked as being right at the edge, about a kilometer from our current location. Having come this far, I would hate to turn back without having checked out whether this place is real and whether we can find it. But I can only make a decision for myself, not the rest of you. So I suggest we put it to a vote. There are nine of us. Shall we say that more than six counts as a majority? Is everyone happy to go with a majority vote? Or should we agree that if it's not unanimous we proceed with the original plan as most of us understood it and go straight to Neumayer IV?"

"I'm not exactly thrilled either way," said Fatima, "but I trust most of you to have some sense of self-preservation. If there's a majority vote in favor, I'm happy with that. I just don't want to be dragged off on the whim of one maniac."

Once Fatima had spoken, no one else spoke up against the idea of a majority vote. Nina asked those in favor of looking for the ice station to raise their hands, then counted herself, Sam, Purdue, Blomstein, Admiral Whitsun, Jefferson Daniels, and Alexandr Arichenkov.

"Those against?"

Fatima and Professor Matlock raised their hands. Alexandr offered to contact Neumayer and ask that the two dissenters be collected and taken to safety before the rest of the group began their hunt, but they both declined.

"I'm staying in case you need me," Fatima said.

"I am just making my feelings known," said Matlock. "If — or when — this expedition comes to a sticky end, I would like us all to remember at the last that I, at least, was not in favor of it."