Iceberg

Chapter 17

Pitt stood like a solitary tree on a great empty plain. A dark green mosslike vegetation spread in every direction as far as he could see, edged on one horizon by a range of high hills and cloaked by a sun-whitened mist on two others. Except for a few small rises dotting the desolate landscape, most of the ground was nearly flat. At first he thought he was completely alone. But then he saw a tiny snipe that soared across the sky like a dart in search of an unseen target. It came closer, and from a height of two hundred feet it circled and looked down at Pitt, as if curiously inspecting the strange animal that stood out so vividly in red and yellow plumage against the center of the unending green carpet. After three cursory sweeps, the little bird's inquisitiveness waned and it fluttered its wings against the air and continued on its seeming flight to nowhere.

As if perceiving the bird's thoughts, Pitt stared down at his offbeat clothing and murmured vaguely to himself, "I've heard of being all dressed up with no place to go, but this is ridiculous."

The sound of his voice suddenly woke him up to the fact that his mind was working again. He felt the relief that was due from overcoming the exhausting climb from the ravine, the high elation of being alive and the hope of finding help before the people below died from the near-freezing temperatures. Jubilantly he struck out across the tundra toward the distant hills.

Fifty feet, no further, that was as far as Pitt got when it abruptly hit him. He was lost. The sun was high above the skyline. There were no stars to guide him.

North, south, east and west were words that meant nothing, had no definition in terms of measurement or accuracy. Once he entered the mist that was crawling across the land toward him, he would have no guideline, no landmarks to take a sight on. He was lost, adrift without any sense of direction.

For once that cold, damp morning, he didn't feel the grip of fear.

It wasn't that he knew fear would cloud his thoughts, confuse his reasoning. He was consumed with sharp anger that he should have been so beautifully tricked into complacency, so ignorantly unaware that he was stumbling to his death. Every contingency, the computers of Hermit Limited, his arch-enemy, had mechanically figured on every contingency. The stakes were too high in the murderous game that Kelly, Rondheim and their group of incredibly ruthless business associates were playing. But he swore to himself that he wasn't going to be forced to land on Boardwalk and pay a rent he couldn't afford without passing Go. He stopped, sat down and took stock.

It didn't take any great ingenious deduction to determine that he was sitting somewhere in the middle of the uninhabited part of Iceland.

He tried to remember what little he had learned about the Eden of the North Atlantic, what few facts he bad absorbed when studying the flight maps on board the Catawaba. The island stretched one hundred ninety miles from north to south, he recalled, and nearly three hundred miles from east to west. Since the shortest distance between two points was north and south, the other two directions were eliminated. If he traveled south, there was every possibility that he would run onto the Vatnajbkull ice mass, not only Iceland's but Europe's largest glacier, a great frozen wall that would have signaled the end of every thing.

North it was, he decided. The logic behind his decision bordered on the primitive, but there was another reason, a compelling urge to outsmart the computers by traveling in the direction least expected, a direction that offered the least obvious chance of success. The average man in similar circumstances would have probably headed toward Reykjavik, the largest sprawl of civilization, far to the west and south. That is undoubtedly, he hoped, what the computers had been programmed for-the average man.

Now he had an answer, but it was only half an answer. Which way was north? Even if he knew for certain, he had no means to follow it along a straight line.

The accepted fact that a man who was right-handed would eventually make a great arc to his right without any landmarks to guide him, came back to haunt Pitts thoughts.

The whine of the jet engines interrupted his reverie and he looked up, holding his hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the cobalt blue sky, sighting a commercial airliner cruising serenely ahead of its long white contrails. Pitt could only wonder at the aircraft's course.

It could have been heading anywhere: west to Reykjavik, east to Norway, southeast to London. There was no way to tell for certain unless he had a compass.

A compass, the word lingered in his mind, savored like the thought of an ice-cold beer by a man dying of thirst in the middle of the Mojave Desert. A compass, a simple piece of magnetic iron mounted on a pivot and floating in a mixture of glycerin and water. Then a light suddenly clicked on deep in the recesses of his brain. A long-forgotten bit of outdoor lore he'd learned many years before during a four-day hike in the Sierras with his old Boy Scout troop began to break through the fog-shrouded barrier of time.

It took him nearly ten minutes of searching before he found a small pool of water trapped in a shallow depression beneath a dome-shaped hill. Quickly, as dexterously as his raw and bleeding fingers would allow, Pitt unclasped the brown sash and tore off the pin that held it in place. Wrapping one end of the long silk material around his knee, he knelt and pulled it taut with his left hand and with his right began stroking the pin from head to tip in a single direction against the silk, building friction and magnetizing the tiny piece of metal.

The cold was increasing now, creeping into his.sweat-soaked clothes and forcing a spasm of shivers to grip his body. The pin slipped through his fingers, and he spent useless minutes probing the mossy ground cover until he discovered the little silver sliver by accidentally running it a quarter of an inch under a fingernail.

He was almost thankful for the pain, as it meant there was still feeling in his hands. He kept pushing the pin back and forth across the silk, careful not to let it slip through his fingers again.

When he felt satisfied that further friction would add nothing more, he rubbed the pin over his forehead and nose, covering it with as much skin oil as it could hold. Then he took two slender bits of thread from the lining of his red jacket and doubled them loosely around the pin. The tricky part of the operation was yet to come, so Pitt relaxed for a moment flexing his fingers and massaging them much like a piano player preparing to tackle Chopin's Minute Waltz.

Feeling he was ready, he gingerly picked up the two loops and with painstaking slowness lowered the pin into the calm little pond. Holding a deep breath, Pitt watched the water bend under the weight of the metal. Then ever so gently his fingers cautiously slid the threads apart until the pin swam by itself, kept afloat by the oil and the surface tension of the water.

Only a child at Christmastime, staring wide-eyed at an array of gifts under the tree, could have experienced the same feeling of wonder that Pitt did that moment as he sat entranced and watched that crazy little pin swing leisurely in a half circle until its head pointed toward magnetic north. He sat there unmoving for a full three minutes, staring at his makeshift compass, almost afraid that if he blinked his eyes, it would sink and disappear.

"Let's see your goddamned computer come up with that one," Pitt murmured to the empty air.

A tenderfoot might have impatiently started running in the direction the pin pointed, mistaken in the assumption that a compass always faithfully aims its point toward true north. Pitt knew that the only place where a compass would unerringly indicate the North Pole was a small area in the Great Lakes between the United States and Canada where by chance the North and Magnetic Poles come into line. As an experienced navigator, he was also aware that the Magnetic Pole lay somewhere beneath Prince of Wales Island above Hudson Bay, approximately one thousand miles below the Arctic Pole and only a few hundred miles above Iceland. That meant that the pin was pointing a few degrees north of west. Pitt figured his compass declination at about eighty degrees, a rough guess at best, but at least he was certain that north now stood at a near right angle to the head of the pin.

Pitt took his bearing and picked the rudimentary compass needle Out of the water and started walking into the mist. He hadn't covered a hundred yards when he could taste the blood springing from the open cuts on his inner lips, the teeth loosened in his gums, and with all he had already suffered, the pain inaugurated by Rondheim's kick to the groin, which made it impossible for him to walk without — a heavy limping gait. He forced himself to keep going, to cling tenaciously to the thread Of consciousness. The ground was rough and uneven and he soon lost count of the number of times he stumbled and fell, wrapping his arms around his chest in a vain attempt to deaden the torture from the cracked ribs.

Luck stayed with him and the mist disappeared after an hour and a half, offering him a chance to take advantage of the many hot springs he passed and orient his bearings with the compass pin. Now he could line up a landmark to the north and keep shifting from one landmark to the next until he was sure he was straying.

Then he would stop and take another compass reading and begin the process over again.

Two hours became three. Three hours became four. Each minute was an infinite unit of misery and suffering of aching cold, of intense burning pain, of fighting for control of his mind. Time. melted into an eternity which Pitt knew might not end until he fell against the soft, damp grass for the last time. In spite of his determination, he began to have doubts that he would live through the next few hours.

One step in front of the other, an endless cycle that slowly pushed Pitt further and further into total exhaustion. His thoughts had no room now for anything but the next landmark, and when he reached it, he concentrated every ounce of his sinking energy on the next one. Logic was nearly nonexistent. Only when he heard a muted alarm going off somewhere in the dim corners of his brain, warning him that he was straying off course, did he stop at a steaming sulfur pool to regain a heading with his compass.

Even twelve hours ago to Pitt seemed like twelve years, then his reflexes had been razor-edged, honed and pointed for any necessary mental command, but now as he set the pin in the water his trembling hands failed him and the ingenious little compass supped beneath the surface and shot to the bottom of the deep crystal-clear pool. Pitt had time to grab it before it sank out of reach, but he could only sit there and stare transfixed for wasted seconds before he reacted to the setback. Then it was too late, far too late, for his hope for finding his way out of Iceland's barren island plateau was lost.

His puffed eyes were almost totally closed, his legs cramped from exhaustion, and his breath coming in agonized gasps that broke the clear still air, but he struggled to his feet and stumbled forward, urged on by an inner strength he didn't know existed. For the next two hours he blundered along in a void all of his own. Then, in the middle of climbing a small eight-foot embankment, his body turned off the switch to consciousness and collapsed like a deflated balloon just inches from the top of the ridge.

Pitt knew he had crossed over the threshold from physical sensibility to the inertness of twilight sleep. But something didn't quite jell. His body was dead; all pain was gone, all feeling, even human emotion seemingly had died. Yet, he could still see, though his total panorama consisted only of grass-covered ground no more than a few inches in front of his eyes. And he could hear, his ears relayed a throbbing sound to a numbed brain that refused to relay any explanation as to the cause or the distance from which the strange coughing beat came.

Then suddenly there was silence. The sound had died away, leaving only the vision of green blades wavering slightly in a whispering breeze. Something in the desolation over which he had stumbled was out of context.

The superhuman, courageous effort had been wasted, the responsibility to the people back in the freezing ravine now evaporated into the empty atmosphere. Pitt was past caring or knowing or sensing now, he could relinquish his hold on life and peacefully die under the cold Norse sun. It would have been so easy to let go and fall into the black pit of no return except for something that didn't belong in the picture, an illusion that shattered the whole conception of death.

A pair of boots, two worn leather boots, standing in front of Pitts unseeing eyes where only a moment before was an empty plot of wild grass. And then phantom hands rolled him over on his back and he became aware of a face framed by the vacant sky-a stern face with sea-blue eyes. Gray hair flowed around a broad forehead like the helmet on a warrior in a Flemish painting. An old man, aged somewhere beyond seventy years, wearing a worn turtleneck sweater, bent and touched Pitts face.

Then without saying a word, with surprising strength for a man of his years, he lifted Pitt up and carried him over the rise. Through the cobwebs of his mind, Pitt began to wonder at the sheer coincidence, the miracle, which indeed it was, that led to his discovery.

No more than one easy stride over the small summit lay a road; he had fallen within spitting distance of a small dirt road that paralleled a tumbling glacial river of white froth, rushing swiftly through a narrow gorge of black lava rock. Yet the sound Pitts ears had detected came not from the roar of the falling water, but from the exhaust of an engine belonging to a battered, dustcovered British-made jeep.

Like a child placing a doll in a highchair, the old Icelander set Pitt in the front passenger seat of the jeep.

Then he climbed behind the wheel and steered the rugged little vehicle over the winding road, stopping every so often to open a closed cattle gate, an operation that became routine as they entered a section of rolling hills divided by lush green meadows bursting with plovers that clouded the sky at the approach of the jeep. They stopped in front of a small farmhouse with white sideboards and a red roof. Pitt shrugged off the supporting hands and staggered into the living room of the comfortable little house. "A telephone, quickly. I need a telephone.

The blue eyes narrowed. "You are English?" the Icelander asked slowly in a heavy Nordic accent.

"American," Pitt answered impatiently. "There are two dozen seriously injured people out there who will die if we don't get help to them soon."

"There are others on the plateau?" there was no concealing the astonishment.

"Yes, yes!" Pitt nodded his head violently. God, man, the phone. Where do you keep it?"

The Icelander shrugged helplessly. "The nearest telephone lines are forty kilometers away."

A great tidal wave of despair swept over Pitt only to ebb and vanish at the stranger's next words.

"However, I have a radio transmitter." He motioned to a side room. "Please, this way."

Pitt followed him into a small, well-lit, but Spartan room, the three primary pieces of furniture being a chair, a cabinet and an ancient hand-carved table holding a gleaming transmitter, not more than a few months from manufacture; Pitt could only marvel at the latest equipment being used in an isolated farmhouse. The Icelander crossed hurriedly to the transmitter, sat down and began twisting the array of dials and knobs. He switched the radio to SEND, selected the frequency and picked up the microphone.

He spoke a few words rapidly in Icelandic and waited. Nothing came back over the speaker. He shifted the transmitting frequency fractionally and spoke again.

This time a voice answered almost immediately. The pressure of the race against death made Pitt as tense as a guy wire in a hurricane gale, and in total indifference to his pain and fatigue he paced the floor while his benefactor conversed with the — Reykjavik authorities. After ten minutes of explanation and translation, Pitt requested and received a call from the American Embassy.

"Where in the goddamned hell have you been?"

Sandecker's voice exploded over the speaker so loudly that it might have come from the doorway.

"Waiting for a streetcar, walking in the park," Pitt snapped back.

"It makes no difference. How soon before a team of medics can be assembled and in the air?"

There was a tense silence before the admiral answered. There was, he knew, a tone of urgent insistence in Pitts voice, a tone Sandecker had seldom heard from Pitts lips. "I can have a team of Air Force paramedics ready to load in thirty minutes," he said slowly. "Would you mind telling me the reason behind your request for a medical unit?"

Pitt didn't answer immediately. His thoughts were barely able to focus. He nodded thankfully as the Icelander offered him the chair.

"Every minute we waste with explanations, someone may die. For God's sake, Admiral," Pitt implored, "contact the Air Force and get their paramedics loaded on helicopters and supplied to aid victims of an air disaster. Then while there's time, I can fill you in on the details."

"Understood," Sandecker said without wasting a word. "Stand by."

Pitt nodded again, this time to himself, and slumped dejectedly in the chair. It won't be long now, he thought, if only they're in time. He felt a hand on his shoulder, half turned and managed a crooked smile up at the warm-eyed Icelander.

"I've been a rude guest," he said quietly. "I haven't introduced myself or thanked you for saving my life."

The old man offered a long, weathered hand.

"Golfur Andursson," he said. "I am chief guide for the Rarfur River."

Pitt grit)ped Andursson's hand and introduced himself and then asked, "A chief guide?"

"Yes, a guide is also the river warden. We act as guides for fishermen and watch over the ecology of the river, much like a conservationist in your own country who protects the natural resoarces of your inland water grounds."

"It must be lonely work-" Pitts mouth stopped working and he gasped as a sharp pain in his chest nearly carried him into blackness. He clutched the table, fighting to remain conscious.

"Come," Andursson said. "You must let me tend to your injuries."

"No," Pitt answered firmly. "I must stay by the radio. I'm not leaving this chair."

Andursson hesitated. Then he shook his head and said nothing. He disappeared from the room and returned in less than two minutes carrying a large first-aid case and a bottle.

You are lucky," he said smiling. "One of your countrymen fished the river just last month and left this with me." He held up and proudly displayed a fifth of Seagram's V.O. Canadian Whiskey. Pitt noticed that the seal on the cap had not been broken.

Pitt was on his fourth healthy swig and the old river warden had just finished binding his chest when the radio crackled and Sandecker's gravel voice broke into the room again.

"Major Pitt, do you read me?"

Pitt lifted the microphone and pressed the transmitting switch. "Pitt here. I read you, Admiral."

"The paramedics are mustering at Keflavik and Iceland's civilian search and rescue units are standing by. I'll maintain radio contact and coordinate their efforts." There was a momentary silence. "You have a lot of worried people here. Keflavik has no report Of a missing plane, either military or commercial."

Rondheim wasn't taking any chances, Pitt thought.

The bastard. was taking his own sweet time about reporting his overdue and missing guests. Pitt breathed deeply and took another shot of the V.O. Then he replied: "Notification isn't scheduled yet."

Total uncomprehension broke in Sandecker's voice.

"Come again. Please repeat."

"Trust me, Admiral. I can't even begin to answer a tenth of the questions that must be running through everyone's mind, especially over the radio repeatespecially over the radio."

Somehow, Pitt thought, the names of the internationally known men back in the ravine had to be kept from the news services for at least the next thirty-six hours time enough to stop Kelly, Rondheim and Hermit Limited before they could be warned and go underground. He had to give the admiral credit. Sandecker caught Pitts implication of the need for secrecy almost immediately. "Your message is understood. Can you give me the location? Use your reverse coordination map."

"Sorry, I know of no such-"

"Dammit!" Sandecker shouted, turning the speaker into a thunderbolt of distorted static. "Do as you're ordered."

Pitt sat and stared dumbly at the radio's speaker for nearly thirty seconds before Sandecker's hidden meaning began to register in his weary mind. The admiral was offering him a chance to answer questions withOut giving away valid information, by replying in the contrary. He mentally kicked himself for letting Sandecker outdo him in the verbal gymnastics.

Pitt flicked off the mike switch and turned to Andursson. "How far is the nearest town and in what direction?"

Andursson vaguely pointed out the window. "Sodafoss… we are exactly fifty kilometers south of its town square."

Pitt quickly added to the Icelander's figure to allow for the distance he had stumbled across the plateau.

"back to the radio. The aircraft came down approximately eighty kilometers north of Sodafoss. I repeat, eighty kilometers north of Sodafoss."

"Was the aircraft civilian or military?"

"Military."

"How many survivors?"

"Can't say for certain. Two, maybe four."

Pitt could only hope the admiral would grasp the total number of twenty-four. The feisty old oceanographer didn't fail him.

"Let — us hope we can have them safe and sound by this time tomorrow." Sandecker's intimation of twenty-four hours quickly settled any doubt. He paused, and then his voice came through, low, quiet with a strong inflection of concern. "Is miss Royal with you?"

"Yes.

Sandecker didn't reply immediately. Pitt could almost see the sudden paling, almost hear the sudden intake of breath. Then the admiral said, "Has she… has she given you any trouble?"

Pitt thought a moment. trying to piece together the right words. "You know how women are, Admiral, always complaining. First it was an imaginary ache in her ankles, now she claims she's freezing to death. I'll be eternally grateful if you use all haste in taking this griping female off my hands."

"Will do all possible at this end to grant your request." The gravel-like tone was back now. "Stand by."

Pitt hummed softly to himself. This was taking too much time, each minute was precious, each second irreplaceable. He looked at his watch. Exactly one o'clock-seven hours since he crawled out of the ravine. He felt a sudden chill and took another swallow from the bottle.

The radio crackled again. "Major Pitt."

"Come in, Admiral."

"We have a problem here. Every helicopter on the island is grounded. The paramedics will have to be airdropped from a transport."

"Do you understand? It is imperative that helicopters be used. The survivors must be airlifted out. And most important, Admiral. I must lead the search-repeat-I must lead the search. The crash site is invisible from the air. Your rescue party could search for days and never find it."

Pitt could sense the gloom at the other end. Sandecker took a long time in answering. Then he spoke wearily, defeated, as if he were delivering the last rites, which indeed he very nearly was.

"Negative to your request. There are seven copters on the island. Three belong to the Air Force, four to the Icelandic Search and Rescue Department. All are grounded due to maintenance problems." Sandecker paused, then went on slowly. "The possibility seems remote, but our people and the government authorities smell sabotage."

"Oh, Christ!" Pitt murmured, and suddenly his blood ran cold. Every contingency. The term came back to haunt him again and again. Kelly's computers had built the wau ever higher against hope of rescue. Rondheim's coldly efficient gang of killers had carried out the mechanical commands to the letter.

"Do you have enough flat ground for a light plane to land and pick you up?" Sandecker probed expectantly. "If affirmative, you could direct a rescue drop from the air."

"A small plane might make it," Pitt said. "I have a level meadow here the length of a football field."

Outside, unnoticed by Pitt, the sun, a perfect orange disk in the northern latitudes, was being rapidly overtaken by great rolling black clouds that soon surrounded and cut off its bright glow. A chilling breeze had sprung up and was bending the grass in the meadows and hills. Pitt became aware of Andursson's hand on his shoulder and the sudden dimming light in the room at the same time.

"A storm from the north," Andursson said solemnly. "It will snow withiin the hour."

Pitt threw back the chair and hurriedly crossed the room to a small double window. He stared through the glass, his eyes unbelieving, and he struck his fist against the wall in despair.

"God, no!" he whispered. "It would be suicidal for the paramedics to parachute through a blinding snowstorm."

"Nor could a light plane fly through the turbulence," Andursson said. "I have seen the coming of many northerns and have known their ferocity. This will be a bad one."

Pitt weaved drunkenly back to the radio and collapsed in the chair. He held his cut and swollen face in his hands and muttered softly, "God save them. God save all of them now. Hopeless, hopeless."

Sandecker came over the radio, but Pitt sat unhearing. "Your exact position, Major. Can you give me your exact position?"

Andursson reached over Pitt and took the microphone. "One minute, Admiral Sandecker," he said firmly. "Please stand by."

He took Pitts right hand and gripped it hard.

"Major Pitt, you must control your mind." He looked down, his eyes bright with compassion. " 'The knot of death, though it be bound like stone, may be unravelled by he who knows the frail strand.' "

Pitt slowly looked up into Andursson's eyes. "So, I have another poet on my hands."

Andursson simply nodded his head shyly.

"This has certainly been my week for poets," Pitt sighed. Then he swore softly to himself. He had already spent far too much time in needless talk and useless pity, and time was running short. He needed a plan, a device, a gimmick to reach those who put their trust in him. Computers make mistakes, he told himself. Those cold electronic monsters can make an error-an error that may be infinitesimal, but none the less the possibility exists. There is no emotion built into their wiring, no sentiment, no room for nostalgia.

"Nostalgia," Pitt said out loud, rolling the word on his tongue, savoring every syllable, repeating it at least three more times.

Andursson stared at him strangely. "I do not understand."

"You'll soon see," Pitt said. "I'm not waiting to find the frail strand in your poetic knot of death. I'ming to cut it with blades," The old man looked more lost than ever.

"Blades?"

"Yes, propeller blades. Three of them, to be exact."