Icebound

8:20 DETONATION IN THREE HOURS FORTY MINUTES

Gorov, Zhukov, and Seaman Semichastny clambered onto the bridge and faced the port side. The sea was neither calm nor as tumultuous as it had been when they had surfaced earlier to receive the message from the Naval Ministry. The iceberg lay off to port, sheltering them from some of the power of the storm waves and the wind.

They couldn't see the berg, even though the radar and sonar images had indicated that it was massive both above and below the water line. They were only fifty to sixty yards from the target, but the darkness was impenetrable. Instinct alone told Gorov that something enormous loomed over them, and the awareness of being in the shadow of an invisible colossus was one of the eeriest and most disconcerting feelings that he had ever known.

They were warmly dressed and wore goggles. Riding in the lee of the iceberg, however, made it possible to go without snow masks, and conversation was not as difficult as when they'd been running on the surface a few hours previously.

“It's like a windowless dungeon out there,” Zhukov said.

No stars. No moon. No phosphorescence on the waves. Gorov had never seen such a perfectly lightless night.

Above and behind them on the sail, the hundred-watt bridge lamp illuminated the immediate steelwork and allowed the three men to see one another. Clotted with scattered small chunks of ice, choppy waves broke against the curved hull, reflecting just enough of that red light to give the impression that the Pogodin was sailing not on water but on an ocean of wine-dark blood. Beyond that tiny illumined circle lay an unrelieved blackness so flawless and deep that Gorov's eyes began to ache when he stared at it too long.

Most of the bridge rail was sheathed in ice. Gorov gripped it to steady himself as the boat yawed, but he happened to take hold of a section of bare metal. His glove froze to the steel. He ripped it free and examined the palm: the outer layer of leather was torn, and the lining was exposed. If he had been wearing sealskin gloves, he would not have stuck fast, and he should have remembered to get that particular item of arctic gear out of the storage locker. If he hadn't been wearing gloves at all, his hand would have welded instantly to the railing, and when he pulled loose, he would have lost a substantial patch of flesh.

Staring in amazement at the captain's shredded glove, Seaman Semichastny exclaimed: “Incredible!”

Zhukov said, “What a miserable place.”

“Indeed.”

The snow that swept across the bridge was not in the form of flakes. The subzero temperatures and the fierce wind conspired to produce hard beads of snow — what a meteorologist would call “gravel,” like millions of granules of white buckshot, the next worst thing to a storm of ice spicules.

Tapping the bridge anemometer, the first officer said, “We've got wind velocity of thirty miles an hour, even leeward of the iceberg. It must be blowing twice to three times that hard on top of the ice or on the open sea.”

With the wind factored in, Gorov suspected that the subjective temperature atop the iceberg had to be at least minus sixty or minus seventy degrees. Rescuing the Edgeway scientists under those hideous conditions was a greater challenge than any he had ever faced in his entire naval career. No part of it would be easy. It might even be impossible. And he began to worry that, once again, he had arrived too late.

“Let's have some light,” Gorov ordered.

Semichastny immediately swung the floodlight to port and closed the switch.

The two-foot-diameter beam pierced the darkness as if a furnace door had been thrown open in an unlighted basement. Canted down on its gimbal ring, the big floodlight illuminated a circular swatch of sea only ten yards from the submarine: churning waves filigreed with icy foam, a seething maelstrom but one that was not too difficult to ride. Sheets of spray exploded into the bitter air as the waves met the boat, froze instantly into intricate and glittering laces of ice, hung suspended for a timeless time, and then fell back into the water, their strange beauty as ephemeral as that of any moment in a perfect sunset.

The ocean temperature was a few degrees above freezing, but the water retained sufficient heat and was in such turmoil — and was sufficiently salty, of course — that the only ice it contained was that which had broken off from the polar cap, fifteen miles to the north. Mostly small chunks, none larger than a car, which rode the waves and crashed into one another.

Grasping the pair of handles on the back of the floodlight, Semichastny tilted it up, swung it more directly toward port. The piercing beam bore through the polar blackness and the seething snow — and blazed against a towering palisade of ice, so enormous and so close that the sight of it made all three men gasp.

Fifty yards away, the berg drifted slowly east-southeast in a mild winter current. Even with the storm win pretty much behind it, the massive island of ice was able to make no more than two or three knots; most of it lay under the water, and it was driven not by the surface tempest but by deeper influences.

Semichastny moved the floodlight slowly to the right, then back to the left.

The cliff was so long and high that Gorov could not get an idea of the overall appearance of it. Each brilliantly lighted circle of ice, although visible in considerable detail from their front-row seat, seemed disassociated from the one that had come before it. Comprehending the whole of the palisade was like trying to envision the finished image of a jigsaw puzzle merely by glancing at five hundred jumbled, disconnected pieces.

“Lieutenant Zhukov, put up a flare.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zhukov was carrying the signal gun. He raised it — a stubbly pistol with a fat, extra long barrel and a two-inch muzzle — held it at arm's length, and fired up into the port-side gloom.

The rocket climbed swiftly through the falling snow. It was visible for a moment as it trailed red sparks and smoke, but then it vanished into the blizzard as though it had passed through a veil into another dimension.

Three hundred feet… four hundred feet… five hundred…

High above, the rocket burst into a brilliant incandescent moon. It didn't immediately begin to lose altitude, but drifted southward on the wind.

Beneath the flare, three hundred yards in every direction, the ocean was painted with cold light that revealed its green-gray hue. The arrhythmic ranks of choppy waves cast jagged, razor-edged shadows that fluttered like uncountable flocks of frantic dark birds feeding on little fishes in the shallow troughs.

The iceberg loomed: a daunting presence, at least one hundred feet high, disappearing into the darkness to the right and left, a huge rampart more formidable than the fortifications of any castle in the world. During their radar- and sonar-guided approach to the site, they had discovered that the berg was four fifths of a mile long. Rising dramatically from the mottled green-gray-black sea, it was curiously like a totem, a man-made monolith with mysterious religious significance. It soared, glass-smooth, gleaming, marred by neither major outcroppings nor indentations: vertical, harsh, forbidding.

Gorov had hoped to find a ragged cliff, one that shelved into the water in easy steps. The sea was not discouragingly rough there in the leeward shadow, and a few men might be able to get across to the ice. But he saw no place for them to land.

Among the submarine's equipment stores were three inflatable, motorized rubber rafts and a large selection of the highest-quality climbing gear. On fifteen separate occasions in the past seven years, the Ilya Pogodin had carried top-secret passengers — mostly special-forces operatives from the army's Spetsnaz division, highly trained saboteurs, assassins, reconnaissance teams — and had put them ashore at night on rugged coastlines in seven Western countries. Furthermore, in the event of war, the boat could carry a nine-member commando team in addition to her full crew and could put them safely ashore in less than five minutes, even in bad weather.

But they had to find a place to land the rafts. A small shelf, a tiny cove. A niche above the water line. Something.

As if reading the captain's mind, Zhukov said, “Even if we could land men over there, it would be one hell of a climb.”

“We could do it.”

“It's as straight and smooth as a hundred-foot sheet of window glass.”

“We could chop footholds out of the ice,” Gorov said. “We have the climbing picks. Axes. Ropes and pitons. We've got the climbing boots and the grappling hooks. Everything we need.”

“But these men are submariners, sir. Not mountain climbers.”

The flare was high over the Ilya Pogodin now, still drifting southward. The light was no longer either fierce or white; it had taken on a yellowish tint and was dwindling. Smoke streamed around the flare and threw bizarre shadows that curled and writhed across the face of the iceberg.

“The right men could make it,” Gorov insisted.

“Yes, sir,” Zhukov said. “I know they could. I could even make it myself if I had to, and I'm afraid of heights. But neither I nor the men are very experienced at this sort of thing. We don't have a single man aboard who could make that climb in even half the time it would take trained mountaineer. We'd need hours, maybe three or four, maybe even five hours, to get to the top and to rig a system for bringing the Edgeway scientists down to the rafts. And by the time—”

“—by the time we've worked out a way to land them on the ice, they'll be lucky to have even an hour left,” Gorov said, finishing the first officer's argument for him.

Midnight was fast approaching.

The flare winked out.

Semichastny still trained the floodlight on the iceberg, moving it slowly from left to right, focusing at the water line, hopefully searching for a shelf, a fissure, a flaw, anything that they had missed.

“Let's have a look at the windward flank,” Gorov said, “Maybe it'll have something better to offer.”

In the cave, waiting for more news from Gunvald, they were exhilarated by the prospect of rescue — but sobered by the thought that the submarine might not arrive quickly enough to take them off the iceberg before midnight. At times, they were all silent, but at other times, they all seemed to be talking at once.

After waiting until the chamber was filled with excited chatter and the others were particularly distracted, Harry quietly excused himself to go to the latrine. Passing Pete Johnson, he whispered, “I want to talk to you alone.”

Pete blinked in surprise.

Not even breaking stride as he spoke, barely glancing at the engineer, Harry put his goggles in place and pulled up his snow mask and walked out of the cave. He bent into the wind, switched on his flashlight, and trudged past the rumbling snowmobiles.

He doubted that much fuel remained in their tanks. The engines would conk out soon. No more light. No more heat.

Past the snowmobiles, the area that they had used for the temporary-camp lavatory lay on the far side of a U-shaped, ten-foot-high ridge of broken ice and drifted snow, twenty yards beyond the inflatable igloos that now lay in ruins. Harry actually had no need to relieve himself, but the call of nature provided the most convenient and least suspicious excuse for getting out of the cave and away from the others. He reached the opening in the crescent ridge that formed the windbreak, shuffled through drifted snow to the rear of that pocket of relative calm, and stood with his back to the ridge wall.

He supposed he might be making a big mistake with Pete Johnson. As he'd told Brian, no one could ever be entirely sure what might lie within the mind of another human being. Even a friend or loved one, well known and trusted, might harbor some unspeakable dark urge and despicable desire. Everyone was a mystery within a mystery, wrapped in an enigma. In his lifelong quest for adventure, Harry had settled by chance into a line of work that brought him into contact with fewer people on a daily basis than he would have met in virtually any other profession, and each time he took on a new challenge, the adversary was never another person but always Mother Nature herself. Nature could be hard but never treacherous, powerful and uncaring but never consciously cruel; in any contest with her, he didn't have to worry about losing because of deceit or betrayal. Nevertheless, he had decided to risk confronting Pete Johnson alone.

He wished that he had a gun.

Considering the assault on Brian, it seemed criminally stupid of Harry to have come to the icecap without a large-caliber personal weapon holstered under his parka at all times. Of course, in his experience, geological research had never before required him to shoot anyone.

In a minute, Pete arrived and joined him at the back wall of the U-shaped, roofless shelter.

They faced each other, snow masks pulled down and goggles up on their foreheads, flashlights aimed at their boots. The light bounced back up at them, and Pete's face glowed as if irradiated. Harry knew that his own countenance looked much the same: brightest around the chin and mouth, darker toward the forehead, eyes glittering from the depths of what appeared to be dark holes in his skull — as spooky as any Halloween mask.

Pete said, “Are we here to gossip about someone? Or have you suddenly taken a romantic interest in me?”

“This is serious, Pete.”

“Damn right it is. If Rita finds out, she'll beat the crap out of me.”

“Let's get right to the point. I want to know… why did you try to kill Brian Dougherty?”

“I don't like the way he parts his hair.”

“Pete, I'm not joking.”

“Well, okay, it was because he called me a darky.”

Harry stared at him but said nothing.

Above their heads, at the crest of the sheltering ridge, the storm wind whistled and huffed through the natural crenellations in the tumbled-together slabs of ice.

Pete's grin faded. “Man, you are serious.”

“Cut the bullshit, Pete.”

“Harry, for God's sake, what's going on here?”

Harry watched him for long seconds, using silence to disconcert him, waiting either to be attacked — or not. Finally, he said, “Maybe I believe you.”

“Believe me about what?” The bafflement on the big man's broad, black face seemed as genuine as any lamb's sweet look of innocence; the only hint of evil was entirely the theatrical effect from the upwash of the flashlight beams. “Are you saying somebody actually did try to kill him? When? Back at the third blasting site, when he got left behind? But he fell, you said. He said. He told us that he fell and hit his head. Didn't he?”

Harry sighed, and some of the tension went out of his neck and shoulders. “Damn. If you are the one, you're good. I believe you really don't know.”

“Hey, I know I really don't know.”

“Brian didn't fall and knock himself unconscious, and he wasn't left behind by accident. Someone struck him on the back of the head. Twice.”

Pete was speechless. His line of work didn't usually require him to carry a sidearm, either.

As quickly as he could, Harry recounted the conversation that he'd had with Brian in the snowmobile cabin a few hours ago.

“Jesus!” Pete said. “And you thought I might be the one.”

“Yeah. Although I didn't suspect you as much as I do some of the others.”

“You thought I might go for your throat a minute ago.”

“I'm sorry. I like you a hell of a lot, Pete. But I've known you only eight or nine months, after all. There could be things you've hidden from me, certain attitudes, prejudices—”

Pete shook his head. “Hey, you don't have to explain yourself. You had no reason to trust me further than you did the others. I'm not asking for an apology. I'm just saying you've got guts. You aren't exactly a little guy, but physically I'm more than a match for you.”

Harry had to look up to see Pete's face, and suddenly his friend seemed more of a giant than ever before. Shoulders almost too broad for a conventional doorway. Massive arms. If he had accepted those offers to play pro football, he would have been a formidable presence on the field, and if a polar bear showed up now, he might be able to give it a good fight.

“If I'd been this psycho,” Pete said, “and if I'd decided to kill you here and now, you wouldn't have had much chance.”

“Yeah, but I didn't have a choice. I needed one more ally, and you were the best prospect. By the way, thanks for not tearing my head off.”

Pete coughed and spat in the snow. “I've changed my mind about you, Harry. You don't have a hero complex after all. This is just perfectly natural for you, this kind of courage. You're built this way. This is how you came into the world.”

“I only did what I had to do,” Harry said impatiently. “So long as we were stranded on this iceberg, so long as it appeared that we were all going to die at midnight, I thought Rita and I could watch over Brian. I figured our would-be killer might take advantage of any opening we gave him at the boy, but I didn't think he'd bother to engineer any opportunities. But with this submarine on the way… Well, if he thinks Brian will be rescued, he might do something bold. He might make another attempt on the boy's life, even if he has to reveal himself to do it. And I need someone besides Rita and me to help stop him when the time comes.”

“And I've been nominated.”

“Congratulations.”

A whirl of wind crested the ridge and swooped down on them. They lowered their heads while a column of spinning snow passed over them, so dense that it seemed almost like an avalanche. For a few seconds they were blinded and deafened. Then the squall-within-a-storm passed out of the open end of the crescent ridge.

Pete said, “So far as you're concerned, is there any one of them we should watch more closely than the others?”

“I ought to have asked you that question. I already know what Rita, Brian and I think. I need a fresh perspective.”

Pete didn't have to ponder the question to come up with an answer. “George Lin,” he said at once.

“That was my own first choice.”

“Not first and last? So you think he's too obvious?”

“Maybe. But that doesn't rule him out.”

“What's wrong with him, anyway? I mean, the way he acts with Brian, the anger — what's that all about?”

“I'm not sure,” Harry said. “Something happened to him in China when he was a child, very young. It must've been in the last days of Chiang's rule, something traumatic. He seems to connect Brian to that, because of his family's politics.”

“And the pressure we've been under these past nine hours might have snapped him.”

“I suppose it's possible.”

“But it doesn't feel right.”

“Not quite.”

They thought about it.

Pete Johnson started walking in place to keep his feet from getting chilled. Harry followed suit, stepping smartly up and down, going nowhere.

After a minute or so, still exercising, Pete said, “What about Franz Fischer?”

“What about him?”

“He's cool toward you. And toward Rita. Not cool toward her exactly… but there's sure something odd in the way he looks at her.”

“You're observant.”

“Maybe it's professional jealousy because of all these science awards the two of you have piled up the last few years.”

“He's not that petty.”

“What then?” When Harry hesitated, Pete said, “None of my business?”

“He knew her when.”

“Before she married you?”

“Yes. They were lovers.”

“So he is jealous, but not because of the awards.”

“Apparently, yeah.”

“She's a terrific lady,” Pete said. “Anybody who lost her to you would not be likely to think you're such a great guy. You ever think maybe that should have been a reason not to bring Franz onto this team?”

“If Rita and I could put that part of the past behind us, why couldn't he?”

“Because he's not you and Rita, man. He's a self-involved science nerd, for one thing. He may be good-looking and smart and sophisticated in some ways, but he's basically insecure. Probably accepted the invitation to join the expedition just so Rita would have a chance to compare him and you under extreme conditions. He probably thought you'd stumble around like a dweeb here on the ice, while he'd be Nanook of the North, larger than life, a macho man by comparison. From day one, of course, he must have realized it wasn't going to work out that way, which explains why he's been so bitchy.”

“Doesn't make sense.”

“Does to me.”

Harry stopped exercising, afraid of working up a chilling sweat. “Franz might hate me and perhaps even Rita, but how do his feelings toward us translate into an attack on Brian?”

After a dozen more steps, Pete also quit walking in place. “Who knows how a psychopath's mind works?”

Harry shook his head. “It might be Franz. But not because he's jealous of me.”

“Breskin?”

“He's a cipher.”

“He strikes me as too self-contained.”

“We always tend to suspect the longer,” Harry said, “the quiet man who keeps to himself. But that's no more logical than suspecting Franz merely because he had a relationship with Rita years ago.”

“Why did Breskin emigrate to Canada from the U.S.?”

“I don't recall. Maybe he never said.”

“Could have been for political reasons,” Pete suggested.

“Yeah, maybe. But Canada and the U.S. have basically similar politics. I mean, if a man leaves his homeland and takes citizenship in a new country, you'd expect him to go somewhere that was radically different, a whole other system of government, economics.” Harry sniffed as he felt his nose beginning to run. “Besides, Roger had a chance to kill the kid early this afternoon. When Brian was dangling over the cliff, trying to reach George, Roger could have cut the rope. Who would have been the wiser?”

“Maybe he doesn't want to kill anyone but Brian. Maybe that's his only obsession. If he had cut the rope, he wouldn't have been able to save Lin all by himself.”

“He could have cut it after Lin was brought up.”

“But then George would have been a witness.”

“What psychopath has that degree of self-control? Besides, I'm not sure that George was in any condition to be a witness, little more than half conscious at that point.”

“But like you said, Roger's a cipher.”

“We're going in circles.”

As they breathed, the vapor they expelled crystallized between them. The cloud had become so thick that they could not see each other clearly, though they were no more than two feet apart.

Waving the fog out of their way and far enough from the sheltering ridge wall for a draft to catch it, Pete said, “We're left with Claude.”

“He seems the least likely of the lot.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Fifteen years. Sixteen. Thereabouts.”

“You've been on the ice with him before?”

“Several times,” Harry said. “He's a wonderful man.”

“He often talks about his late wife. Colette. He still gets teary about it, shaky. When did she die?”

“Three years ago this month. Claude was on the ice, his first expedition in two and a half years, when she was murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“She'd flown from Paris to London to a holiday. She was in England just three days. The IRA had planted a bomb in a restaurant where she went for lunch. She was one of the eight killed in the blast.”

“Good God!”

“They caught one of the men involved. He's still in prison.”

Pete said, “And Claude took it very hard.”

“Oh, yes. Colette was great. You'd have liked her. She and Claude were as close as Rita and I.”

For a moment neither of them spoke.

At the top of the ridge, the wind moaned like a revenant trapped between this world and the next. Again, the ice reminded Harry of a graveyard. He shuddered.

Pete said, “If a man is deeply in love with a woman, and she's taken from him, blown to pieces by a bomb — he might be twisted by the loss.”

“Not Claude. Broken, yes. Depressed, yes. But not twisted. He's the kindest—”

“His wife was killed by Irishmen.”

“So?”

“Dougherty is Irish.”

“That's a stretch, Pete. Irish-American, actually. And third generation.”

“You said one of these bombers was apprehended?”

“Yeah. They never nailed any of the others.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“No.”

“Was it Dougherty, anything like Dougherty?”

Harry grimaced and waved one hand dismissively. “Come on now, Pete. You've stretched it to the breaking point.”

The big man began to walk in place once more. “I guess I have. But you know… both Brian's uncle and his father have been accused of playing favorites with their Irish-American constituencies at the expense of other groups. And some people say they sympathized with the IRA's leftward tilt to the extent that for years they secretly funneled donations to them.”

“I've heard it all too. But it was never proved. Political slander, as far as we know. The actual fact is… we have four suspects, and none of them looks like a sure bet.”

“Correction.”

“What?”

“Six suspects.”

“Franz, George, Roger, Claude…”

“And me.”

“I've ruled you out.”

“Not at all.”

“Now pull the other leg.”

“I'm serious,” Pete said.

“After the conversation we've just had, I know you can't—”

“Is there a law that says a psychopathic killer can't be a good actor?”

Harry stared at him, trying to read his expression. Suddenly the malevolence in Johnson's face didn't seem to be entirely a trick played by the peculiar backwash of light. “You're making me edgy, Pete.”

“Good.”

“I know you told me the truth, you're not they guy. But what you're saying is that I mustn't trust anyone, not even for a moment, not even if I think I know him like a brother.”

“Precisely. And it goes for both of us. That's why the sixth name on the list of suspects is yours.”

“What? Me?”

“You were at the third blasting shaft with the rest of us.”

“But I'm the one who found him when we went back.”

“And you were the one who assigned search areas. You could have given yourself the right one, so you'd make sure he was dead before you 'found' him. Then Breskin stumbled on you before you had a chance to deal Brian the coup de grâce.”

Harry gaped at him.

“And if you're twisted enough,” Pete said, “you might not even realize there's a killer inside you.”

“You don't really think I'm capable of murder?”

“It's a chance in a million. But I've seen people win on much longer odds.”

Although he knew that Pete was giving him a taste of his own medicine, letting him know what it was like to be treated as a suspect, Harry felt a tension ache return to his neck and shoulders. “You know what's wrong with you Californians?”

“Yeah. We make you Bostonians feel inferior, because we're so self-aware and mellow, but you're so repressed and uptight.”

“Actually, I'd been thinking that all the earthquakes and fires and mudslides and riots and serial killers out there have made you paranoid.”

They smiled at each other.

Harry said, “We'd better be getting back.”

Two flares floated five hundred feet apart in the night sky, and the floodlight swept back and forth along the base of the gleaming ice cliffs.

The windward flank of the iceberg was not as forbidding as the featureless, vertical leeward wall had been. Three rugged shelves stepped back and up from the water line. Each appeared to be between eight and ten yards deep, and altogether they jutted twenty or twenty-five feet above the sea. Beyond the shelves, the cliff rose at an angle for fifty feet or more and then broke at a narrow ledge. Above the ledge was a sheer face of about twenty feet of vertical ice, and then the brink.

“Rafts could land on those shelves,” Zhukov said, examining the ice through his binoculars. “And even untrained men could climb that cliff. But not in this weather.”

Gorov could barely hear him above the raucous voice of the storm and the boat's rhythmic collisions with the high waves.

The sea was remarkably more violent on the windward flank than it had been on the protected leeward side. Huge waves crashed across the steps at the base of the iceberg. They would overturn a medium-sized lifeboat and tear one of the Pogodin's motorized rubber rafts to pieces. Even the submarine, with its forty-thousand-horsepower turbines and sixty-five-hundred-ton surface displacement, was having some difficulty making way properly. Frequently the bow was underwater, and when it did manage to nose up, it resembled an animal fighting quicksand. Waves slammed into the super-structure deck with shocking fury, sent protracted shudders through the hull, exploded against the sail, washed onto the bridge, cast spray higher than Gorov's head. All three men were wearing suits of ice: ice-covered boots, ice-rimed trousers, ice-plated coattails.

The brutal wind registered seventy-two miles per hour on the bridge anemometer, with gusts half again as strong. The pellets of snow were like swarming bees; they stung Gorov's face and brought tears to his eyes.

“We'll go around to leeward again,” the captain shouted, though standing virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with his subordinates on the small bridge.

He remembered too vividly the smooth hundred-foot cliff that awaited them on the other side, but he had no choice. The windward flank offered them no hope at all.

“And on the other side — what then?” Zhukov asked.

Gorov hesitated, thinking about it. “We'll shoot a line across. Get a man over there. Rig a breeches buoy.”

“Shoot a line?” Zhukov was doubtful. He leaned closer, face-to-face with his captain, and shouted out his concern: “Even if that works, even if it holds in the ice, can it be done from one moving object to another?”

“In desperation, perhaps. I don't know. Got to try it. It's a place to start.”

If a few men with enough equipment could be gotten from the sub to the leeward face of the iceberg by means of a breeches buoy, they could blast out a landing shelf to allow the rafts to follow them. Then they might be able to shoot a line to the top. With that, they could ascend the cliff as easily as flies walking on walls.

Zhukov glanced at his watch. “Three and a half hours!” he shouted above the Armageddon wind. “Be better begin.”

“Clear the bridge!” Gorov ordered. He sounded the diving alarm.

When he reached the control room half a minute later, he heard the petty officer say, “Green board!”

Zhukov and Semichastny had already gone to their quarters to get into dry clothes.

As Gorov stepped off the conning-tower ladder, shedding brittle jackets of ice as he moved, the diving officer turned to him and said, “Captain?”

“I'm going to change clothes. Take us down to seventy-five feet and get back into the leeward shadow of the iceberg.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'll take over in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

In his quarters, after he had changed out of his sodden and frozen gear into a dry uniform, Gorov sat at the corner desk and picked up the photograph of his dead son. Everyone in the picture was smiling: the piano-accordion player, Gorov, and Nikki. The boy's smile was the broadest of the three — genuine, and assumed for the camera. He was gripping his father's hand. In his other hand, he held a large, two-scoop cone of vanilla ice cream that was dripping onto his fingers. Ice cream frosted his upper lip. His thick, windblown golden hair fell across his right eye. Even on the flat, two-dimensional surface of the photo, one could sense the aura of delight, love, and pleasure that the child had always radiated in life.

“I swear I came as quickly as I could,” Gorov murmured to the photograph.

The boy stared, smiling.

“I'm going to get those people off the iceberg before midnight.” Gorov hardly recognized his own voice. “No more putting assassins and saboteurs ashore. Saving lives now, Nikki. I know I can do it. I'm not going to let them die. That's a promise.”

He was squeezing the photograph so tightly that his fingers were pale, bloodless.

The silence in the cabin was oppressive, for it was the silence of the other world to which Nikki had gone, the silence of lost love, of a future that would never happen, of stillborn dreams.

Someone walked by Gorov's door, whistling.

As if the whistle were a slap in the face, the captain twitched and sat up straight, suddenly aware of how maudlin he had become. He was privately humiliated. Sentimentalism would not help him adjust to his loss; sentimentality was a corruption of the legacy of good memories and laughter that this honest and good-hearted boy had left behind.

Annoyed with himself, Gorov put down the photograph. He got to his feet and left the cabin.

Lieutenant Timoshenko had been off duty for the past four hours. He had eaten dinner and napped for two hours. Now, at eight-forty-five, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, he had returned to the communications center once more, preparing to take the last watch of the day, which would end at one o'clock in the morning. One of his subordinates manned the equipment while Timoshenko sat at a corner desk, reading a magazine and drinking hot tea from an aluminum mug.

Captain Gorov stepped in from the companionway. “Lieutenant, I believe it's time to make direct radio contact with those people on the iceberg.”

Timoshenko put down his tea and got up. “Will we be surfacing again, sir?”

“In a few minutes.”

“Do you want to talk to them?”

“I'll leave that to you,” Gorov said.

“And what should I tell them?”

Gorov quickly explained what they had found on their trip around the huge island of ice — the hopelessly stormy seas on the windward side, the sheer wall on the leeward side — and outlined his plans for the breeches buoy. “And tell them that from here on out, we'll keep them informed of our progress, or lack of it, every step of the way.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gorov turned to go.

“Sir? They're certain to ask — do you think we've a good chance of saving them?”

“Not good, no. Only fair.”

“Should I be honest with them?”

“I think that's best.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But also tell them that if it's at all humanly possible, we'll do it, one way or the other. No matter what the odds against, by God, we'll try our damnedest to get them off. I'm more determined about that than I've been about anything else in my life. Tell them that, Lieutenant. Make sure you tell them that.”

8:57

Harry was surprised to hear his mother tongue spoken so fluently by a Russian radio operator. The man sounded as though he had taken a degree at a good middle-level university in Britain. English was the official language of the Edgeway expedition, as it was of nearly every multinational scientific study group. But somehow it seemed wrong for a Russian submariner to speak it so flawlessly. Gradually, however, as Timoshenko explained why the leeward flank was the only avenue of approach to the iceberg worth investigating, Harry became accustomed to the man's fluency and to his decidedly English accent.

“But if the berg is five hundred yards wide,” Harry said, “why couldn't your men come on from one end or the other?”

“Unfortunately, the sea is as stormy at either end as it is on the windward side.”

“But a breeches buoy,” Harry said doubtfully. “It can't be easy to rig one of those between two moving points, and in this weather.”

“We can match speeds with the ice pretty much dead on, which makes it almost like rigging between two stationary points. Besides, a breeches buoy is only one of our options. If we're unable to make it work, we'll get to you some other way. You needn't worry about that.”

“Wouldn't it be simpler to send divers across to the ice? You must have scuba equipment aboard.”

“And we've a number of well-trained frogmen,” Timoshenko said. “But even the leeward sea is much too rough for them. These waves and currents would carry them away as quickly as if they leaped into a waterfall.”

“We certainly don't want anyone put at too great a risk on our behalf. It wouldn't make sense to lose some people to save others. From what you said, your captain sounds confident. So I guess we're better off leaving all the worrying to you. Have you anything else to tell me?”

“That's all for the moment,” Timoshenko said. “Stay by your radio. We'll keep you informed of developments.”

Everyone except Harry and George had something to say about the call from the Ilya Pogodin's communications officer — suggestions about preparations to be made for the rescue party, ideas about how they might be able to help the Russians scale the leeward wall — and everyone seemed determined to say it first, now, instantly. Their voices, echoes of their voices, and echoes of the echoes filled the ice cave.

Harry acted as a moderator and tried to keep them from jabbering on to no point.

When George Lin saw that their excitement had begun to abate and that they were growing quieter, he finally joined the group and faced Harry. He had something to say after all, and he had only been waiting until he was certain he would be heard. “What was a Russian submarine doing in this part of the world?”

“This part of the world?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I'm afraid I don't, George.”

“It doesn't belong here.”

“But these are international waters.”

“They're a long way from Russia.”

“Not all that far, actually.”

Lin's face was distorted by anger, and his voice was strained. “But how did they learn about us?”

“From monitoring radio reports, I suppose.”

“Exactly. Precisely,” Lin said, as if he had proved a point. He looked at Fischer and then at Claude, searching for a supporter. “Radio reports. Monitoring.” He turned to Roger Breskin. “And why would the Russians be monitoring communications in this part of the world?” When Breskin shrugged, Lin said, “I'll tell you why. For the same reason this Lieutenant Timoshenko speaks English so well: The Pogodin is on a surveillance mission. It's a goddamned spy ship, that's what it is.”

“Most likely,” Claude agreed, “but that's hardly a startling revelation, George. We may not like it much, but we all know how the world works.”

“Of course it's a spy ship,” Fischer said. “If it had been a nuclear-missile sub, one of their doomsday boats, they wouldn't even let us know they were in the area. They wouldn't allow one of those to break security. We're lucky it's a spy ship, actually, something they're willing to compromise.”

Lin was clearly baffled by their lack of outrage, but he was determined to make them see the situation with the same degree of alarm that he himself obviously felt. “Listen to me, think about this: It isn't just a spy ship.” His voice rose on the last few words. His hands were at his sides, opening and closing repeatedly, almost spastically. “It's carrying motorized rafts, for God's sake, and the equipment to rig a breeches buoy to point on land. That means it puts spies ashore in other countries, saboteurs and maybe even assassins, probably puts them ashore in our own countries.”

“Assassins and saboteurs may be stretching it,” Fischer said.

“Not stretching it at all!” Lin responded ardently. His face was flushed, and his sense of urgency grew visibly by the moment, as if the greatest threat were not the deadly cold or the sixty time bombs buried in the ice, but the Russian who proposed to rescue them. “Assassins and saboteurs. I'm sure of it, positive. These communist bastards—”

“They aren't communists any more,” Roger noted.

“Their new government's riddled with the old criminals, the same old criminals, and when the moment's right, they'll be back. You'd better believe it. And they're barbarians, they're capable of anything. Anything.”

Pete Johnson rolled his eyes for Harry's benefit. “Listen, George, I'm sure the U.S. does some of the same things. It's a fact of life, standard international relations. The Russians aren't the only people who spy on their neighbors.”

Trembling, visibly, Lin said, “It's more than spying. Anyway, goddammit, that's no reason for us to legitimize the Ilya Pogodin!” He slammed his left fist into the open palm of his right hand.

Brian winced at the gesture and glanced at Harry.

Harry wondered if that might be the same hand — and the same violent temper — that had turned against Brian out on the ice.

Gently putting one hand on Lin's shoulder, Rita said, “George, calm down. What do you mean, 'legitimize' it? You aren't making a great deal of sense.”

Whipping around to face her as though she had threatened him, Lin said, “Don't you realize why these Russians want to rescue us? They aren't acting out of any humanitarian principles. It's strictly the propaganda value of the situation that interests them. They're going to use us. At best, we're pawns to them. They're going to use us to generate pro-Russian sentiment in the world press.”

“That's certainly true,” Harry said.

Lin turned to him again, hopeful of making a convert. “Of course it's true.”

“At least in part.”

“No, Harry. Not partly true. It's entirely true. Entirely. And we can't let them get away with it!”

“We're in no position to reject them,” Harry said.

“Unless we stay here and die,” Roger Breskin said. His deep voice, although devoid of emotion, gave his simple statement the quality of an ominous prophecy.

Pete's patience with Lin had been exhausted. “Is that what you want, George? Have you taken leave of your senses altogether? Do you want to stay here and die?”

Lin was flustered. He shook his head: no. “But you've got to see—”

“No.”

“Don't you understand…?”

“What?”

“What they are, what they want?” the Chinese said with such misery that Harry felt sorry for him. “They're… they're…”

Pete pressed his point. “Do you want to stay here and die? That's the only question that matters. That's the bottom line. Do you want to die?”

Lin fidgeted, searched their faces for a sign of support, and then looked down at the floor. “No. Of course not. Nobody wants to die. I'm just… just… Sorry. Excuse me.” He walked to the far end of the cave and began to pace as he had done earlier, when he had been embarrassed about the way he had treated Brian.

Leaning close to Rita, Harry whispered, “Why don't you go talk to him?”

“Sure,” she said with a big, theatrical smile. “We can discuss the international communist conspiracy.”

“Ho ho.”

“He's such a charming conversationalist.”

“You know what I'm asking,” Harry murmured conspiratorially. “Lift his spirits.”

“I don't think I'm strong enough.”

“If you aren't, then nobody it. Go on, tell him about your own fear, how you deal with it every single day. None of them know how difficult it is for you to be here, what a challenge it is for you every day. Hearing about that might give George the courage to face up to what he fears.”

“If he's the one who clubbed Brian, I don't care what he fears.”

“We don't know it was George.”

“He's a better bet than the Loch Ness monster.”

“Please, Rita.”

She sighed, relented, and went to have a word with George Lin at the back of the ice cave.

Harry joined the others, nearer the entrance.

Roger Breskin had taken hi watch from a zippered pocket in his parka. “Five after nine.”

“Less than three hours,” Claude said.

“Can it be done in three hours?” Brian wondered. “Can they get to us and take us off the ice in just three hours?”

“If they can't,” Harry said, trying to lighten the moment, “I'm going to be really pissed.”

9:10

Emil Zhukov climbed onto the bridge with a Thermos of hot tea and three aluminum mugs. “Have they assembled the gun?”

“A few minutes yet,” Gorov said. He held one of the mugs while the first officer poured the tea.

Suddenly the night smelled of herbs and lemons and honey, and Nikita Gorov's mouth watered. Then the wind caught the fragrant steam rising from the mug, crystallized it, and carried it away from him. He sipped the brew and smiled. Already the tea was growing cool, but sufficient heat remained to put an end to the chills that had been racing along his spine.

Below the bridge, on the forward section of the main deck, framed by four emergency lights, three crewmen were busy assembling the special gun that would be used to shoot a messenger line to the iceberg. All three wore black, insulated wet suits, with heat packs at their waists, and their faces were covered by rubber hoods and large diving masks. Each man was secured by a steel-link tether that was fixed to the forward escape hatch; the tethers were long enough to allow them to work freely, but not long enough to let them fall overboard.

Although it was not a weapon, the gun looked so wicked that an uninformed observer might have expected it to fire nuclear mortar rounds. Nearly as tall as any of the men assembling it, weighing three hundred fifty pounds, it consisted of just three primary components that were now pretty much locked together. The square base contained the motor that operated the pulleys for the breeches buoy, and it was fastened to four small steel rings recessed in the deck. The rings had been a feature of the boat ever since the Pogodin had begun putting special-forces agents ashore in foreign lands. The blocklike middle component of the gun fitted into a swivel mount on the base and contained the firing mechanism, the gunman's handgrips, and a large drum of messenger line. The final piece was a four-foot-long barrel with a five-inch-diameter bore, which the three-man team had just inserted in its socket; an any-light scope was mounted at the base of the barrel. The device appeared capable of blowing a hole through a tank; on a battlefield, however, it would have been every bit as ineffective as a child's peashooter.

At times the runneled deck was nearly dry, but that wasn't the typical condition, and it lasted only briefly. Every time the bow dipped and a wave broke against the hull, the forward end of the boat was awash. Brightened by chunks of ice and cottony collars of frozen foam, the frigid dark sea rushed onto the deck, sloshed between the crewmen's legs, battered their thighs, and surged to their waists before gushing away. If the Ilya Pogodin had been on the windward side of the iceberg, the towering waves of the storm would have overwhelmed the men and knocked them about mercilessly. In the sheltered lee, however, as long as they anticipated and prepared for each downward arc of the bow, they were able to stay on their feet and perform their tasks even when the sea swirled around them; and in those moments when the deck was free of water, they worked at top speed and made up for lost time.

The tallest of the three crewmen stepped away from the gun, glanced up at the bridge, and signaled the captain that they were ready to begin.

Gorov threw out the last of his tea. He gave the mug to Zhukov. “Alert the control room.”

If his risky plan to use the breeches buoy was to have any chance to succeed, the submarine had to match speeds perfectly with the iceberg. If the boat outpaced the ice, or if the ice surged ahead by even a fraction of a knot, the messenger line might pull taut, stretch, and snap faster than they could reel out new slack.

Gorov glanced at his watch. A quarter past nine. The minutes were slipping away too quickly.

One of the men on the forward deck uncapped the muzzle of the gun, which had been sealed to keep out moisture. Another man loaded a shell into the breech at the bottom.

The projectile, which would tow the messenger line, was simple in design. It looked rather like a fireworks rocket: two feet long, nearly five inches in diameter. Trailing the nylon-and-wire line, it would strike the face of the cliff, explode on impact, and fire a four-inch bolt into the ice.

That bolt, to which the messenger line was joined, could slam eight to twelve inches into a solid rockface, essentially fusing it with the natural material around it, extruding reverse-hooked pins to prevent extraction. Welded to granite or limestone — or even to shale if the rock strata were tight enough — the bolt was a reliable anchor. Certain that the far point was securely fixed, a man could travel to shore on the messenger line if necessary, climbing hand over hand. Depending on the angle of approach, he could even convey himself in a simple sling suspended from a pair of small Teflon-coated steel wheels with deep concavities in which the line traveled, propelled by a vertical hand crank. Either way, he could take with him the heavy-duty pulley and a stronger line to rig an even more reliable system from the other end.

Unfortunately, Gorov thought, they were not dealing with granite or limestone or hard shale. A large element of the unknown had been introduced. The anchor might not penetrate the ice properly or fuse with it as it did with most varieties of stone.

One of the crewmen took hold of the handgrips, in one of which the trigger was seated. With the help of the other two men, he got a range fix and a wind reading. The target area was thirty feet above the water line. Semichastny had marked it with the floodlight. Compensating for the wind, the shooter aimed to the left of the mark.

Zhukov put up two flares.

Gorov lifted his night glasses. He focused on the circle of light on the face of the cliff.

A heavy whump! Was audible above the wind.

Even before the sound of the shot faded, the rocket exploded against the iceberg fifty yards away.

“Direct hit!” Zhukov said.

With cannonlike volleys of sound, the cliff fractured. Cracks zigzagged outward in every direction from the tow rocket's point of impact. The ice shifted, rippled like jelly at first, then shattered as completely as a plate glass window. A prodigious wall of ice — two hundred yards long, seventy or eighty fee high, and several feet thick — slid away from the side of the berg, collapsed violently into the sea, and sent shimmering fountains of dark water more than fifty feet into the air.

The messenger line went down with the ice.

Like a great amorphous, primordial beast, a twenty-foot-high tidal wave of displaced water surged across the fifty yards of open sea toward the port flank of the submarine, and there was no time to take evasive action. One of the three crewmen on the deck cried out as the small tsunami crashed across the main deck with enough power to rock the Pogodin to starboard. With the messenger-line gun, all three vanished under that black tide. Cold brine exploded against the sail, and drenching geysers shot high into the night air, hung for a moment in defiance of gravity, and then collapsed across the bridge. Carried on the flood, hundreds of fragments of ice, some as large as a man's fist, rained down against the steel and pummeled Gorov, Zhukov, and Semichastny.

The water poured away through the bridge scuppers, and the boat wallowed back to port. A secondary displacement wave hit them with only a small fraction of the force of the first.

On the main deck, the three crewmen had been knocked flat. If they hadn't been tethered, they would have been washed overboard and possibly lost.

As the crewmen struggled to their feet, Gorov turned his field glasses on the iceberg again.

“It's still too damned sheer.”

The tremendous icefall had done little to change the vertical topography of the leeward flank of the berg. A two-hundred-yard-long indentation marked the collapse, but even that new feature was a sheer plane, uncannily smooth, unmarked by ledges or projections or wide fissures that might have been of use to a climber. The cliff dropped straight into the water, much as it had before the rocket was fired; there was still no shelf or sheltering niche where a motorized raft could put in and tie up.

Gorov lowered his night glasses. Turning again toward the three men on the forward main deck, he signaled them to dismantle the gun and get below.

Dispirited, Zhukov said, “We could edge closer, then send two men across on a raft. They could match speeds with the berg, ride close to it, somehow anchor themselves to it, and just let it tow them along. Then the raft itself might be able to serve as the platform for the climbers to—”

“No. Too unsteady,” Gorov said.

“Or they could take explosives over in the raft and blast out a landing shelf and operations platform.”

Gorov shook his head. “No. That would be an extremely risky proposition. Like riding a bicycle alongside a speeding express train and trying to grab on for a free trip. The ice isn't moving as fast as an express train, of course. But there's the problem of the rough seas, the wind. I'm not sending anyone out on a suicide mission. The landing shelf must already be there when the rafts reach the ice.”

“What now?”

Gorov wiped his goggles with the back of one ice-crusted glove. He studied the cliff through the binoculars. At last he said, “Tell Timoshenko to put through a call to the Edgeway group.”

“Yes, sir. What should he say to them?”

“Find out where their cave is located. If it's near the leeward side… Well, this might not be necessary, but if it is near the leeward side, they ought to move out of there altogether, right now.”

“Move?” Zhukov said.

“I'm going to see if I can create a landing shaft if I torpedo the base of the cliff.”

“The rest of you go ahead,” Harry insisted. “I've got to let Gunvald know what's happening here. As soon as I've talked to him, I'll bring out the radio.”

“But surely Larsson's been monitoring every conversation you've had with the Russians,” Franz said.

Harry nodded. “Probably. But if he hasn't been, he has a right to know about this.”

“You've only got a few minutes,” Rita said worriedly. She reached for his hand, as if she might pull him out of the cave with her, whether he wanted to go or not. But then she seemed to sense that he had another and better reason for calling Gunvald, a reason that he preferred to conceal from the others. Their eyes met, and understanding passed between them. She said, “A few minutes. You remember that. Don't you start chatting with him about old girlfriends.”

Harry smiled. “I never had any.”

“Just young ones, right?”

Claude said, “Harry, I really think it's foolish to—”

“Don't worry. I promise I'll be out of here long before the shooting starts. Now the rest of you get moving. Go, go.”

The ice cave was neither along the leeward flank of the berg nor near the midpoint of its length, where the Russian radioman had said the torpedo would strike. Nevertheless, they had unanimously decided to retreat to the snowmobiles. The concussion from the torpedo would pass through the berg from one end to the other. And the hundreds of interlocking slabs of ice that formed the ceiling of the cave might succumb to the vibrations.

As soon as he was along, Harry knelt in front of the radio and called Larsson.

“I read you, Harry.” Gunvald's voice was distant, faint, and overlaid with static.

Harry said, “Have you been listening in to my conversation with the Russians?”

“What I could hear of them. This storm is beginning to generate a hell of a lot of interference, and you're drifting farther away from me by the minute.”

“At least you've got a general idea of the situation here,” Harry said. “I haven't time to chat about that. I'm calling to ask you to do something important for me. Something you may find morally repugnant.”

As succinctly as he could, Harry told Gunvald Larsson about the attempt to kill Brian Dougherty and then quickly explained what he wanted done. Although shocked by the attack on Brian, the Swede appreciated the need for haste and didn't waste time asking for more details. “What you want me to do isn't especially pleasant,” he agreed. “But under the circumstances it—”

Static blotted out the rest of the sentence.

Harry cursed, glanced at the entrance of the cave, turned to the microphone again, and said, “Better repeat that. I didn't read you.”

Through crackling atmospherics: “…said under the circumstances…seems necessary.”

“You'll do it, will you?”

“Yes. At once.”

“How long will you need?”

“If I'm to be thorough…” Gunvald faded out. Then in again: “…if I can expect that what I'm searching for will be hidden…half an hour.”

“Good enough. But hurry. Do it.”

As Harry put down the microphone, Pete Johnson entered the cave. “Man, are you suicidal? Maybe I was wrong about you being a natural-born hero. Maybe you're just a natural-born masochist. Let's get the hell out of here before the roof falls in.”

Unplugging the microphone and handing it to Pete, Harry said, “That wouldn't faze me. I'm a Bostonian, remember. Let the roof fall in. I couldn't care less.”

“Maybe you aren't a masochist, either. Maybe you're just flat-out crazy.”

Picking up the radio by the thick, crisscrossing leather straps atop the case, Harry said, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midnight sun.”

He didn't mention what he had asked Gunvald to do, because he had decided to take Pete's advice to heart. He wasn't going to trust anyone. Except himself. And Rita. And Brian Dougherty.

Stepping out of the cave into the wildly howling night, Harry discovered that the snow had at last given way entirely to an ice storm. The tiny spicules were harder than mere sleet, needle-sharp, glittering in the headlamps, coming along like great clouds of diamond dust, on a course nearly horizontal to the ground, hissing abrasively across every surface they encountered. They stung the exposed sections of Harry's face and began immediately to plate his storm suit with transparent armor.

The supply shed at Edgeway Station was a pair of joined Nissen huts, in which the expedition stored tools, spare parts, any equipment that wasn't in use, comestibles, and the other provisions. Just inside the door, Gunvald stripped out of his heavy coat and hung it on a wooden rack near one of the electric heaters. The coat was sheathed in ice, and water began to stream from it by the time he had taken off his outer boots.

Although the trip from the communications shack to the supply shed was a short one, he had been chilled as he's shuffled through deep drifts of snow and prickling clouds of wind-driven ice spicules. Now he reveled in the blessed warmth.

As he walked to the back of the long hut in his felt boots, he didn't make a sound. He had an unpleasant but unshakable image of himself: a thief in a strange house, prowling.

The rear half of the supply shed lay in velvety darkness. The only light was the small bulb at the door, where he had come inside. For a moment he had the eerie notion that someone was waiting for him in the shadows.

He was alone, of course. His uneasiness arose from guilt. He didn't like having to do what he was there to do, and he felt as if he deserved to be caught in the act.

Reaching overhead in the blackness, he located the light chain and tugged it. A naked hundred-watt bulb blinked on, shedding cold white light. When he let go of the chain, the bulb swung back and forth on its cord, and the supply shed was filled with leaping shadows.

Along the back wall, nine metal lockers stood like narrow, upright caskets. A name was stenciled on the gray door of each, white letters above the set of three narrow ventilation slits: H.CARPENTER, R. CARPENTER, JOHNSON, JOBERT, and so forth.

Gunvald went to the tool rack and took down a heavy hammer and an iron crowbar. He was going to have to force open five of those lockers. He intended to breach them one after the other, as quickly as possible, before he had any second thoughts that might deter him.

Previous expeditions onto the icecap had learned that every man needed a private space, no matter how small, even a few cubic feet, that he could regard as his and his alone, where he could keep personal belongings and where inadvertent trespass wasn't possible. In the cramped environment of an Arctic research station, especially in one established with minimum funding in an age of tight money and especially during particularly extended tours of duty, the average person's natural preference for privacy could rapidly degenerate into a craving for it, a debilitating obsession.

There were no private quarters at Edgeway Station, no bedrooms where one could sleep alone. Most huts housed two, in addition to various pieces of equipment. And the vast, empty land beyond the camp offered no refuge for anyone in need of solitude. If one valued his life, he simply didn't go out there alone, not ever.

Often, the only way to have solitude and actually ensure it for a few minutes was to visit one of the two heated toilet stalls that were attached to the supply shed. But it wasn't practical to cache personal effects in the toilet.

After all, everyone had at least a handful of items that he preferred to keep private: love letters, photographs, mementos, a personal journal, whatever. Nothing shameful was likely to be hidden in the lockers, nothing that would shock Gunvald or embarrass its owner; scientists like themselves, perhaps excessively rational and all but compulsively dedicated to their work, were a bland lot, not the sort to have terrible dark secrets to conceal. The purpose of the lockers was merely to maintain a totally personal space as a way to preserve each person's necessary sense of identity in a claustrophobic and communal environment where, in time, it was easy to feel absorbed into a group identity and thereby become psychologically disassociated and quietly depressed.

Stashing one's most personal belongings under the bed was an unsatisfactory solution, even if it was understood that the space beneath a mattress was sacrosanct. This was not to say that members of any expedition automatically distrusted one another. Trust had nothing to with it. The need for a secure private space was a deep and perhaps even irrational psychological need, and only those locked metal cabinets could satisfy it.

Gunvald used the hammer to smash combination dials from five of the lockers, one after the other. The shattered parts clattered across the floor, pinged off the walls, and the supply shed sounded like a busy foundry.

If a psychopathic killer was a member of the Edgeway expedition, if one of the apparent lambs of science was a wolf in disguise, and if evidence existed to identify that man, then the lockers were the logical — the sole — place to look. Harry had been certain of that. Reluctantly, Gunvald agreed with him. It seemed reasonable to suppose that in his personal effects, even a sociopath who could easily pass for normal might possess something revealing different from the usual items that sane men treasured and carried with them to the top of the world. Something indicative of a bizarre fixation or obsession. Perhaps something horrifying. Something unexpected and so unusual that it would say at once, This belongs to a dangerously disturbed person.

Wedging the hook of the crowbar into the round hole where the combination dial had been, Gunvald pulled backward with all his might and tore the lock from the first locker. The metal squealed and bent, and the door popped open. He didn't pause to look inside but quickly proceeded to wrench open the other four: bang, bang, bang, bang! Done.

He threw the crowbar aside.

His hands were sweating. He wiped them on his insulated vest and then on his quilted trousers.

After he had taken half a minute to catch his breath, he picked up a wooden crate full of freeze-dried food from the large stacks of supplies along the right-hand wall. He put the crate in front of the first locker and sat on it.

He reached to a zippered vest pocket for his pipe, but decided against it. He touched the bowl, but his fingers twitched, and he withdrew his hand. The pipe relaxed him. It had pleasant associations. And this search definitely was not a high point of pleasure in his life. If he used the pipe, if he puffed away on it while he poked through the contents of his friends' lockers, then… Well, he had a hunch that he would never be able to enjoy a good smoke again.

All right then. Where should be start?

Roger Breskin.

Franz Fischer.

George Lin.

Claude Jobert.

Pete Johnson.

Those were the five suspects. All were good men, as far as Gunvald was aware, although some were friendlier and easier to get to know than others. They were smarter and more well-balanced than the average person on the street; they had to be so, in order to have successful research careers in the Arctic or Antarctic, where the arduousness of the job and the unusual pressures quickly eliminated those who weren't self-reliant and exceptionally stable. None was a likely candidate for the tag “psychopathic killer,” not even George Lin, who had revealed aberrant behavior only on this expedition and only recently, after having participated in many other projects on the ice during a long and admirable career.

He decided to begin with Roger Breskin because Roger's locker was the first in line. All the shelves were bare except the top one, on which was a cardboard box. Gunvald lifted the box out and put it between his feet.

As he had expected, the Canadian traveled light. The box contained only four items. A laminated eight-by-ten color photograph of Roger's mother: a strong-jawed woman with a winning smile, curly gray hair, and black-rimmed glasses. One silver brush-and-comb set: tarnished. A rosary. And a scrapbook filled with photographs and newspaper clippings, all concerned with Breskin's career as an amateur weight lifter.

Gunvald left everything on the floor and moved the wooden crate two feet to the left. He sat in front of Fischer's locker.

The submarine was submerged again, holding steady just below the surface, at its highest periscope depth. It was lying in wait along the iceberg's projected course.

On the conning-tower platform in the control room, Nikita Gorov stood at the periscope, his arms draped over the horizontal “ears” at the base of it. Even though the top of the scope was eight or nine feet above the sea level, the storm waves exploded against it and washed over it, obscuring his view from time to time. When the upper window was out of the water, however, the night sea was revealed, dimly lighted by four drifting, dying flares.

The iceberg had already begun to cross their bow, three hundred yards north of their position. That gleaming white mountain was starkly silhouetted against the black night and sea.

Zhukov stood next to the captain. He was wearing headphones and listening on an open line that connected him to the petty officer in the forward torpedo room. He said, “Number one tube ready.”

To Gorov's right, a young seaman was monitoring a backup safety board full of green and red lights that represented equipment and hatches in the torpedo room. When Zhukov, relaying the torpedo-room report, said that the breach door was secure, the seaman at the backup board confirmed: “Green and check.”

“Tube flooded.”

From the backup board: “Flood indicated.”

“Muzzle door open.”

“Red and check.”

“Tube shutters open.”

“Red and check.”

The Ilya Pogodin was not primarily a warship but an information gatherer. It didn't carry nuclear missiles. However, the Russian Naval Ministry had planned that every submarine should be prepared to bring the battle to the enemy in the event of a non-nuclear war. Therefore, the boat was carrying twelve electric torpedoes. Weighing over a ton and a half, packed with seven hundred pounds of high explosives, each of these steel sharks had huge destructive potential. The Ilya Pogodin was not primarily a warship, but if so ordered, it could have sunk a considerable tonnage of enemy ordnance.

“Number one tube ready,” Zhukov said again as the officer in the torpedo room repeated that announcement over the headset.

“Number one tube ready,” said the enunciator.

Nikita Gorov realized for the first time that the process of readying and launching a torpedo had a ritualistic quality that was oddly similar to a religious service. Perhaps because worship and war both dealt in different ways with the subject of death.

At the penultimate moment of the litany, the control room behind him fell into silence, except for the soft hum of machinery and the electronic muttering of computers.

After a protracted and almost reverent silence, Nikita Gorov said, “March bearings… and… shoot!”

“Fire one!” Zhukov said.

The young seaman glanced at his fire-control panel as the torpedo was let go. “One gone.”

Gorov squinted through the eyepiece of the periscope, tense and expectant.

The torpedo had been programmed to seek a depth of fifteen feet. It would strike the cliff exactly that far below the water line. With luck, the configuration of the ice after the explosion would be more amenable than it was now to the landing of a couple of rafts and the establishment of a base platform for the climbers.

The torpedo hit its mark.

Gorov said, “Strike!”

The black ocean swelled and leaped at the base of the cliff, and for an instant the water was full of fiery yellow light, as if sea serpents with radiant eyes were surfacing.

Echoes of the concussion vibrated through the submarine's outer hull. Gorov felt the deck plates thrum.

The bottom of the white cliff began to dissolve. A house-size chunk of the brittle palisade tumbled into the water and was followed by an avalanche of broken ice.

Gorov winced. He knew that the explosives were not powerful enough to do major damage to the iceberg, let alone blast it to pieces. In fact, the target was so enormous that the torpedo could do little more than take a chip out of it. But for a few seconds, there was an illusion of utter destruction.

The petty officer in the forward torpedo room told Zhukov that the breach door was shut, and the first officer passed the word to the technicians.

“Green and check,” one of them confirmed.

Lifting the headset from one ear, Zhukov said, “How's it look out there, sir?”

Keeping his eye to the periscope, Gorov said, “Not much better than it did.”

“No landing shelf?”

“Not really. But the ice is still falling.”

Zhukov paused, listening to the petty officer at the other end of the line. “Muzzle door shut.”

“Green and check.”

“Blowing number one tube.”

Gorov wasn't listening closely to the series of safety checks, because his full attention was riveted on the iceberg. Something was wrong. The floating mountain had begun to act strangely. Or was it his imagination? He squinted, trying to get a better view of the ice behemoth between the high waves, which still continued to wash rhythmically over the upper window of the periscope. The target seemed not to be advancing eastward any longer. Indeed, he thought the “bow” of it was even beginning to swing around to the south. Ever so slightly toward the south. No. absurd. Couldn't happen. He closed his eyes and told himself that he was seeing things. But when he looked again, he was even more certain that—”

The radar technician said, “Target's changing course!”

“It can't be,” Zhukov said, startled. “Not all that quickly. It doesn't have any power of its own.

“Nevertheless, it's changing,” Gorov said.

“Not because of the torpedo. Just one torpedo — even all our torpedoes — couldn't have such a profound effect on an object that large.”

“No. Something else is at work here,” Gorov said worriedly. The captain turned away from the periscope. From the ceiling, he pulled down a microphone on a steel-spring neck and spoke both to the control room around him and to the sonar room, which was the next compartment forward in the boat. “I want an all-systems analysis of the lower fathoms to a depth of seven hundred feet.”

The voice that issued from the overhead squawk box was crisp and efficient. “Commencing full scan, sir.”

Gorov put his eye to the periscope again.

The purpose of the scan was to look for a major ocean current that was strong enough to affect an object as large as the iceberg. Through the use of limited-range sonar, thermal-analysis sensors, sophisticated listening devices, and other marine-survey equipment, the Ilya Pogodin's technicians were able to plot the movements of both warm- and cold-blooded forms of sea life beneath and to all sides of the boat. Schools of small fish and millions upon millions of krill, shrimplike creatures upon which many of the larger fish fed, were swept along by the more powerful currents or lived in them by choice, especially if those oceanic highways were warmer than the surrounding water. If masses of fish and krill — as well as thick strata of plankton — were found to be moving in the same direction, and if several other factors could be correlated with the movement, they could identify a major current, lower a current meter, and get a reasonable indication of the water's velocity.

Two minutes after Gorov had ordered the scan, the squawk box crackled again. “Strong current detected. Traveling due south, beginning at a depth of three hundred forty feet.”

Gorov looked away from the scope and pulled down the overhead microphone again. “How deep does it run below three forty?”

“Can't tell, sir. It's choked with sea life. Probing it is like trying to see through a wall. We have gotten readings as deep as six hundred sixty feet but that's not the bottom of it.”

“How fast is it moving?”

“Approximately nine knots, sir.”

Gorov blanched. “Repeat.”

“Nine knots.”

“Impossible!”

“Have mercy,” Zhukov said.

Gorov released the microphone, which sprang up out of the way, and with a new sense of urgency, he returned to the periscope. They were in the path of a juggernaut. The massive island of ice had been swinging slowly, ponderously into the new current, but now the full force of the fast-moving water was squarely behind it. The berg was still turning, bringing its “bow” around, but it was mostly sideways to the submarine and would remain like that for several minutes yet.

“Target closing,” the radar operator said. “Five hundred yards!” He read off the bearing that he had taken.

Before Gorov could reply, the boat was suddenly shaken as if a giant hand had taken hold of it. Zhukov fell. Papers slid off the chart table. The event lasted only two or three seconds, but everyone was rattled.

“What the hell?” Zhukov asked, scrambling to his feet.

“Collision.”

“With what?”

The berg was still five hundred yards away.

“Probably a small floe of ice,” Gorov said. He ordered damage reports from every part of the boat.

He knew that they hadn't collided with a large object, for if they had done so, they would already be sinking. The submarine's hull wasn't tempered, because it required a degree of flexibility to descend and ascend rapidly through realms of varying temperatures and pressures. Consequently, even a single ton of ice, if moving with sufficient velocity to have substantial impact energy, would cave in the hull as if crashing into a cardboard vessel. Whatever they had encountered was clearly of limited size; nevertheless, it must have caused at least minor damage.

The sonar operator called out the position of the iceberg: “Four hundred fifty yards and closing!”

Gorov was in a bind. If he didn't take the boat down, they would collide with that mountain of ice. But if he dived before he knew what damage had been sustained, they might never be able to surface again. There simply wasn't enough time to bring the big boat around and flee either to the east or to the west; because the iceberg was rushing at them sideways, it stretched nearly two-fifths of a mile both to port and starboard. The nine-knot, deepwater current, which began at a depth of three hundred forty feet, would not manage to turn the narrow profile of the berg toward them for another few minutes, and Gorov could not escape the full width of it before it reached them.

He snapped up the horizontal bar on the periscope and sent it into its hydraulic sleeve.

“Four hundred twenty years and closing!” called the sonar operator.

“Dive!” Gorov said, even as the first damage reports were being made. “Dive!”

The diving klaxons blasted throughout the boat. Simultaneously the collision alarm wailed.

“We're going under the ice before it hits us,” Gorov said.

Zhukov paled. “It must ride six hundred feet below the damn water line!”

Heart racing, mouth dry, Nikita Gorov said, “I know. I'm not certain we'll make it.”

A fierce gale relentlessly hammered the Nissen huts. The rivets in the metal walls creaked. At the two small, triple-pane windows, ice spicules tapped like the fingernails of ten thousand dead men wanting in, and great rivers of subzero air moaned and keened as they rushed over the Quonset-shaped structures.

In the supply shed, Gunvald had discovered nothing of interest, though he had pored through the lockers belonging to Franz Fischer and George Lin. If either man had murderous tendencies or was in any way less than entirely stable and normal, nothing in his personal effects gave him away.

Gunvald moved on to Pete Johnson's locker.

Gorov knew that, among men of other nations, Russians were often perceived as dour, somber, determinedly gloomy people. Of course, in spite of a dismaying historical tendency to afflict themselves with brutal rulers and with tragically flawed ideologies, that stereotype was as empty of truth as any other. Russians laughed and partied and made love and got drunk and made fools of themselves, as did people everywhere. Most university students in the West had read Feodor Dostoyevsky and had tried to read Tolstoy, and it was from those few pieces of literature that they had formed their opinions of modern-day Russians. Yet, if there had been any foreigners in the control room of the Ilya Pogodin at that moment, they would have seen precisely the Russians that the sterotype described: somber-faced men, all frowning, all with deeply beetled brows, all weighed down with a profound respect for fate.

The damage reports had been made: No bulkheads had buckled; no water was entering the boat. The shock had been worse in the forward quarters than anywhere else, and it had been especially unsettling to the men in the torpedo room, two decks below the control room. Though the safety-light boards registered no immediate danger, the boat had apparently sustained some degree of exterior hull damage immediately aft and starboard of the bow, just past the diving planes, which did not themselves seem to have been affected.

If the outer skin had only been scraped, or if it had suffered only a minor dent, the boat would survive. However, if the hull had sustained even moderate compaction at any point — and worst of all, distortion that lay across welded seams — they might not live through a deep dive. The pressure on the submarine would not be uniformly resisted by the damaged areas, which could cause severe strain, and the boat might fail them, implode, and sink straight to the ocean floor.

The young diving officer's voice was loud but, in spite of the circumstances, not shaky. “Two hundred feet and descending.”

The sonar operator reported: “The profile of the target is narrowing. She's continuing to come bow-around in the current.”

“Two hundred fifty feet,” said the diving officer.

They had to get down at least six hundred feet. Approximately a hundred feet of ice had been visible above the water line, and only one seventh of an iceberg's mass rode above the surface. To be safe, Gorov preferred to descend to seven hundred feet, though the speed of the target's approach reduced their chances of attaining even six hundred in time to avoid it.

The sonar operator called the distance: “Three hundred eighty yards and closing.”

“If I weren't an atheist,” Zhukov said, “I'd start praying.”

No one laughed. At that moment none of them was an atheist — not even Emil Zhukov, in spite of what he'd said.

Even though everyone appeared cool and confident, Gorov could smell the fear in the control room. That was neither an exaggeration nor a theatrical conceit. Fear did have a pungent odor of its own: the tang of an unusually acrid sweat. Cold sweat. Virtually every man in the control chamber was perspiring. The place was redolent of fear.

“Three hundred twenty feet,” the diving officer announced.

The sonar operator reported on the iceberg as well: “Three hundred fifty yards and closing fast.”

“Three hundred sixty feet.”

They were in a crash dive. Going down fast. A lot of strain on the hull.

Even as each man monitored the equipment at his station, he found time to glance repeatedly at the diving stand, which suddenly seemed to have become the very center of the room. The needle on the depth gauge was falling rapidly, far faster than they had ever seen it drop before.

Three hundred eighty feet.

Four hundred.

Four hundred twenty feet.

Everyone aboard knew that the boat had been designed for sudden and radical maneuvers, but that knowledge did not relieve anyone's tension. In recent years, as the country had struggled to rise out of the impoverishment in which decades of totalitarianism had left it, defense budgets had been trimmed — except in the nuclear-weapons development programs — and systems maintenance had been scaled back, delayed, and in some instances postponed indefinitely. The Pogodin was not in the best shape of its life, an aging fleet submarine that might have years of faithful service in it — or that might be running with a stress crack serious enough to spell doom at any moment.

“Four hundred sixty feet,” said the diving officer.

“Target at three hundred yards.”

“Depth at four hundred eighty feet.”

With both hands, Gorov gripped the command-pad railing tightly and resisted the pull of the inclined deck until his arms ached. His knuckles were as sharp and white as bare bones.

“Target at two hundred yards!”

Zhukov said, “It's picking up speed like it's going downhill.”

“Five hundred twenty feet.”

Their descent was accelerating, but not fast enough to please Gorov. They would need to get down at least another hundred and eighty feet until they were without a doubt safely under the iceberg — and perhaps, a great deal more than that.

“Five hundred forty feet.”

“I've only been this deep twice before in ten years of service,” Zhukov said.

“Something to write home about,” Gorov said.

“Target at one hundred sixty yards. Closing fast!” called the sonar operator.

“Five hundred sixty feet,” the diving officer said, although he must have known that everyone was watching the platter-size depth gauge.

One thousand feet was the official maximum operating depth for the Ilya Pogodin, because she wasn't one of the very-deep-running nuclear-war boats. Of course, if its outer skin had suffered a loss of integrity in the earlier collision, the thousand-foot figure was meaningless, and all bets were off. The starboard-bow damage might have rendered the boat vulnerable to implosion at considerably less depth than that stated in the official manual.

“Target at one hundred twenty yards and closing.”

Gorov was contributing his share to the stench within the small chamber. His shirt was sweat-stained down the middle of the back and under the arms.

The diving officer's voice had softened almost to whisper, yet it carried clearly through the control room. “Six hundred feet and descending.”

Emil Zhukov's face was as gaunt as a death mask.

Still bracing himself against the railing, Gorov said, “We've got to risk another eighty feet or a hundred, anyway. We've got to be well under the ice.”

Zhukov nodded.

“Six hundred twenty feet.”

The sonar operator struggled to control hi voice. Nevertheless, a faint note of distress colored his next report: “Target at sixty yards and closing fast. Dead ahead of the bow. It's going to hit us!”

“None of that!” Gorov said sharply. “We'll make it.”

“Depth at six hundred seventy feet.”

“Target at thirty yards.”

“Six hundred eighty feet.”

“Twenty yards.”

“Six hundred ninety.”

“Target lost,” the sonar operator said, his voice rising half an octave on the last word.

They froze, waiting for the grinding impact that would smash the hull.

I've been a fool to jeopardize my own and seventy-nine other lives just to save one tenth that number, Gorov thought.

The technician who was monitoring the surface fathometer cried, “Ice overhead!”

They were under the berg.

“What's our clearance?” Gorov asked.

“Fifty feet.”

No one cheered. They were still too tense for that. But they indulged in a modest, collective sigh of relief.

“We're under it,” Zhukov said, amazed.

“Seven hundred feet and descending,” the diving officer said worriedly.

“Blow negative to the mark,” Gorov said. “Stabilize at seven hundred forty.”

“We're safe,” Zhukov said.

Gorov pulled on his neatly trimmed beard and found it wet with perspiration. “No. Not entirely safe. Not yet. No iceberg will have a flat bottom. There'll be scattered protrusions below six hundred feet, and we might even encounter one that drops all the way down to our running depth. Not safe until we're completely out from under.”

A few minutes after the concussion from the torpedo had rumbled through the ice, Harry and Pete cautiously returned to the cave from the snowmobiles, in which the others were still taking shelter. They proceeded only as far as the entrance, where they stood with their backs to the furious wind.

They needed to take the radio, which Harry was carrying, to the deepest and quietest part of the cave in order to contact Lieutenant Timoshenko aboard the Pogodin and find out what would happen next. Outside, the wind was a beast of thousand voices, all deafeningly loud, and even in the cabins of the sleds, the roaring-shrieking-whistling gale made it impossible to hear one's own voice, let alone comprehend what was being said by anyone on the radio.

With his flashlight beam, Pete worriedly probed the jumbled slabs in the ceiling.

“Looks okay!” Harry shouted, though his mouth was no more than an inch from the other man's head.

Pete looked at him, not sure what he'd said.

“Okay!” Harry bellowed, and he made a thumbs-up sign.

Pete nodded agreement.

They hesitated, however, because they didn't know if the Russian submarine was going to launch another torpedo.

If they reentered the cave with the radio and then the Russians fired on the ice again, the concussion might bring the ceiling down this time. They would be crushed or buried alive.

The malevolent wind at their backs was so powerful and fearfully cold, however, that Harry felt as though someone had dropped several ice cubes down his back, under his storm suit. He knew they dared not stand there much longer, paralyzed by indecision, so at last he stepped inside. Pete followed with the flashlight, and together they hurried toward the rear of the chamber.

The cacophony of the storm diminished drastically as they went deeper into the cave, though even against the back wall there was so much noise that they would need to turn the receiver volume all the way to its maximum setting.

The orange utility cord still trailed inside from one of the snowmobile batteries. Harry plugged in the radio. He preferred to power it from the sled so long as possible and save the batteries in the set, in case they were needed later.

As they worked, Pete said, “You've noticed the wind direction?”

They still had to raise their voices to hear each other, but it wasn't necessary to shout. Harry said, “Fifteen minutes ago it was blowing from another quarter of the compass.”

“The iceberg changed direction again.”

“What do you make of that?”

“Damned if I know.”

“You're the demolitions expert. Could the torpedo have been powerful enough to push the whole berg temporarily off its previous course?”

Shaking his head emphatically, Pete said, “No way.”

“I don't think so, either.”

Suddenly Harry was desperately weary and oppressed by a sense of utter helplessness. It seemed as if Mother Nature herself had set out to get them. The odds against their survival were growing by the minute and would soon be insurmountable — if they weren't already. In spite of the Vaseline that coated his face and the knitted snow mask that was usually so effective, in spite of layers of Gore-Tex and Thermolite insulation, in spite of having been able to shelter in the cave for part of the night and periodically in the comparative warmth of the heated snowmobile cabins, he was succumbing to the unyielding, merciless, thermometer-bursting cold. His joints ached. Even in gloves, his hands felt as cold as if he had been arranging things in a refrigerator for half an hour. And an unnerving numbness was gradually creeping into his feet. If the fuel tanks on the sled ran dry, denying them periodic sessions in the fifty-degree air of the cabins, frostbite of the face was a real danger, and what little energy they still possessed would be sapped quickly, leaving them too exhausted to stay either on their feet or awake, unable to meet the Russians halfway.

But no matter how heavily weariness and depression weighed on him, he could not buckle, for he had Rita to think about, he could not buckle, for he had Rita to think about. She was his responsibility, because she was not as comfortable on the ice as he was; she was frightened of it even in the best of times. Come what may, he was determined to be there when she needed him, till the last minute of her life. And because of her, he had something to live for: the reward of more years together, more laughter and love, which ought to be enough to sustain him no matter how fierce the storm became.

“The only other explanation,” Harry said as he switched on the radio and turned up the volume, “is that maybe the iceberg was picked up by a new current, something a whole lot stronger that pulled is out of its previous course and got it moving due south.”

“Is that going to make it easier or harder for the Russians to climb up here and get us?”

“Harder, I think. If the ice is heading south, and if the wind is coming pretty much from the north, then the only leeward area is at the bow. They can't put men onto the ice as it's rushing straight at them.”

“And it's nearly ten o'clock.”

“Exactly,” Harry said.

“If they can't get us off in time… if we have to stay here through midnight, will we come out of this alive? Don't bullshit me now. What's your honest opinion?”

“I should ask you. You're the man who designed those bombs. You know better than I what damage they'll do.”

Pete looked grim. “What I think is… the shock waves are going to smash up most of the ice we're standing on. There's a chance that five or six hundred feet of the berg will hold together, but not the entire length from the bow of it to the first bomb. And if only five or six hundred feet are left, do you know what's going to happen?”

Harry knew too well. “The iceberg will be five hundred feet long and seven hundred feet from top to bottom.”

“And it can't float that way.”

“Not for a minute. The center of gravity will be all wrong. It'll roll over, seek a new altitude.”

They stared at each other as the open radio frequency produced squeals and hisses that competed with the wind beyond the cave entrance.

At last Pete said, “If only we'd been able to dig out ten of the bombs.”

“But we weren't.” Harry picked up the microphone. “Let's see if the Russians have any good news.”

Gunvald found nothing incriminating in the lockers that belonged to Pete Johnson and Claude Jobert.

Five suspects. No sinister discoveries. No clues.

He got up from the wooden crate and went to the far end of the room. At that distance form the violated lockers — although distance itself didn't make him any less guilty — he felt that he could fill and light his pipe. He needed the pipe to calm him and to help him think. Soon the air was filled with the rich aroma of cherry-flavored tobacco.

He closed the eyes and leaned against the wall and thought about the numerous items that he had taken from the lockers. At a glance he had seen nothing outré in those personal effects. But it was possible that the clues, if any existed, would be subtle. He might discover them only on reflection. Therefore, he carefully recalled each of the things that he had found in the lockers, and he held it before his mind's eye, searching for some anomaly that he might have overlooked when he'd had the real object in his hand.

Roger Breskin.

Franz Fischer.

George Lin.

Claude Jobert.

Pete Johnson.

Nothing.

If one of those men was mentally unbalanced, a potential killer, then he was damned clever. He had hidden his madness so well that no sign of it could be found even in his most personal, private effects.

Frustrated, Gunvald emptied his pipe into a sand-filled waste can, put the pipe in his vest pocket, and returned to the lockers. The floor was littered with the precious detritus of five lives. As he gathered up the articles and put them back where he had found them, his guilt gave way to shame at the violation of privacy that he had committed, even though it had been necessitated by the events of the day.

And then he saw the envelope. Ten by twelve inches. About one inch thick. At the very bottom of the locker, against the back wall.

In his haste, he had overlooked it, largely because it was a shade of gray similar to that of the metal against which it stood and because it was in the lowest part of the locker, at foot level, tucked back at the rear of the twelve-inch-high space under the lowest shelf. Indeed, he was surprised that he'd noticed it even now. The instant he spotted the envelope, he was overcome by a vivid premonition that it contained the damaging evidence for which he had been searching.

It was stuck firmly to the locker wall. When he tore it free, he saw that six loops of electrician's tape had held it fast, so it had been placed there with considerable deliberation, in hope of keeping it a secret even if the locker was violated.

The flap was held shut only by a metal clasp, and Gunvald opened it. The envelope contained only a spiral-bound notebook with what appeared to be newspaper and magazine clippings interlarded among the pages.

Reluctantly but without hesitation, Gunvald opened the notebook and began to page through it. The contents hit him with tremendous force, shocked him as he had never imagined that he could be shocked. Hideous stuff. Page after page of it. He knew at once that the man who had compiled this collection, if not a raving maniac, was at least a seriously disturbed and dangerous individual.

He closed the book, yanked the chain to turn out the light at the back of the room, and hurriedly pulled on his coat and outer boots. Kicking through snowdrifts, head tucked down to protect his face from a savage wind filled with flaying specks of ice, he ran back to the telecommunications hut, frantic to let Harry know what he had found.

“Ice overhead. One hundred feet.”

Gorov left the command pad and stood behind the technician who was reading the surface Fathometer.

“Ice overhead. One hundred twenty feet.”

“How can it be receding?” Gorov frowned, reluctant to believe the proof provided by the very technology that he had always trusted. “By now the iceberg's turned its narrow profile to us, so we can't have passed under even half its length. There's still a huge, long mountain hanging over us.”

The technician frowned too. “I don't understand it, sir. But now it's up to a hundred and forty feet and still rising.”

“A hundred and forty feet of clear water between us and the bottom of the iceberg?”

“Yes, sir.”

The surface Fathometer was a sophisticated version of the echo sounder that had been used for decades to find the floor of the ocean beneath a submarine. It broadcast high-frequency sound waves upward in a tightly controlled spread, bounced an echo off the underside of the ice — if any actually lay overhead — and determined the distance between the top of the sail and the frozen ceiling of the sea. It was standard equipment on every ship that might possibly be called upon — on rare occasions, if ever — to pass under the icecap in order to fulfill its duties or to escape an enemy vessel.

“One hundred sixty feet, sir.”

The stylus on the surface Fathometer wiggled back and forth on a continuous drum of graph paper. The black band that it drew was steadily growing wider.

“Ice overhead. One hundred eighty feet.”

The ice continued to recede above them.

It made no sense.

The squawk box above the command pad hissed and crackled. The voice that issued from it was gruff by nature and metallic, as all voices were that passed through the intercom. The torpedo officer reported news that Nikita Gorov had hoped never to hear at any depth. Let alone at seven hundred forty feet: “Captain, our forward bulkhead is sweating.”

Everyone in the control room stiffened. Their attention had been riveted on the ice reports and on the sonar readings, because the greatest danger had seemed to be that they would ram into a long stalactite of ice hanging from the bottom of the berg. The torpedo officer's warning was an unnerving reminder that they had collided with an unknown mass of drift ice before initiating a crash dive and that they were more than seven hundred feet beneath the surface, where every square inch of the hull was under brutal pressure. Millions upon millions of tons of seawater lay between them and the world of sky and sun and open air that was their true home.

Pulling down an overhead microphone, Gorov said, “Captain to torpedo room. There's dry insulation behind the bulkhead.”

The squawk box was now the center of interest, as the diving gauge had been a moment ago. “Yes, sir. But it's sweating just the same. The insulation behind it must be wet now.”

Evidently they had sustained a dangerous amount of damage when they had collided with that floe ice. “Is there much water?”

“Just a sweat, sir. Just a film.”

“Where did you find it?”

The torpedo officer said, “Along the weld between number four tube and number five tube.”

“Any buckling?”

“No, sir.”

“Watch it closely,” Gorov said.

“I've got eyes for nothing else, sir.”

Gorov let go of the microphone, and it sprang back up out of the way.

Zhukov was at the command pad. “We could change course, sir.”

“No.”

Gorov knew what his first officer was thinking. They were passing under the length of the iceberg, with half of it — at least two fifths of a mile — still ahead of them. To port and starboard, however, open water could be found in two or three hundred yards, for the width of the berg was substantially less than its length. Changing course seemed reasonable, but it would be a waste of effort.

Gorov said, “By the time we could bring the boat around and to port or starboard, we'd have passed under the iceberg's stern and would be in open water anyway. Hold tight, Lieutenant.”

“All right, sir.”

“Rudder amidships, and keep it that way unless the current begins to push us around.”

The operator seated at the surface Fathometer announced. “Ice overhead. Two hundred fifty feet.”

The mystery of the receding ice again.

They were not descending. And Gorov knew damned well that the iceberg above them was not magically levitating out of the sea. So why was the distance between them steadily widening?

“Should we take her up, sir?” Zhukov suggested. “A little closer to the ice. If we ascend even to just six hundred feet, that torpedo-room bulkhead might stop sweating. The pressure would be considerably less.”

“Steady at seven hundred forty,” Gorov said shortly.

He was more worried about his sweating crew than he was about the sweating bulkhead. They were good men, and he'd had many reasons to be proud of them during the time that they had served under him. They'd been in numerous tight spots before, and without exception they had remained calm and professional. On every previous occasion, however, they had needed nothing but nerve and skill to see them through. This time a big measure of good luck was needed as well. No amount of nerve and skill could save them if the hull cracked under the titanic pressure to which it was currently being subjected. Unable to rely solely on themselves, they were forced to trust also in the faceless engineers who had designed the boat and the shipyard workers who had built it. Perhaps that would not have been too much to ask if they had not been acutely aware that the country's troubled economy had led to a reduction in the frequency and extent of dry-dock maintenance of the vessel. That was enough to make them a bit crazy — and perhaps careless.

“We can't go up,” Gorov insisted. “There's still all that ice above us. I don't know what's happening here, how the ice can be receding like this, but we'll be cautious until I understand the situation.”

“Ice overhead. Two hundred eighty feet.”

Gorov looked again at the surface Fathometer graph.

“Three hundred feet, sir.”

Abruptly the stylus stopped jiggling. It produced a straight, thin, black line down the center of the drum.

“Clear water!” the technician said with obvious astonishment. “No ice overhead.”

“We're out from under?” Zhukov asked.

Gorov said, “Impossible. That's a monster berg at least four fifths of a mile long. No more than half of it has passed over us. We can't—”

“Ice overhead again!” the surface-Fathometer operator called out. “Three hundred feet. Ice at three hundred feet and falling now.”

Gorov watched the stylus closely. The channel of open water between the top of the Pogodin's sail and the bottom of the iceberg narrowed steadily, rapidly.

Two hundred sixty feet. Two hundred twenty.

One hundred eighty. One forty. One hundred.

Eighty. Sixty.

Separation held at fifty feet for a few seconds but then began to fluctuate wildly: fifty feet, a hundred and fifty feet, fifty feet again, a hundred feet, eighty, fifty feet, two hundred feet, up and down, up and down, in utterly unpredictable peaks and troughs. Then it reached fifty feet of clearance once more, and at last the stylus began to wiggle less erratically.

“Holding steady,” the surface-fathometer technician reported. “Fifty to sixty feet. Minor variations. Holding steady… still holding… holding…”

“Could the Fathometer have been malfunctioning back there?” Gorov asked.

The technician shook his head. “No, sir. I don't think so, sir. It seems fine now.”

“Then do I understand what just happened? Did we pass under a hole in the middle of the iceberg?”

The technician kept a close watch on the graph drum, ready to call out if the ceiling of ice above them began to drop lower than the fifty-foot mark. “Yes. I think so. From every indication, a hole. Approximately in the middle.”

“A funnel-shaped hole.”

“Yes, sir. It began to register as an inverted dish. But when we were directly under, the upper two thirds of the cavity narrowed drastically.”

With growing excitement, Gorov said. “And it went all the way to the top of the iceberg?”

“I don't know about that, sir. But it went up at least to sea level.”

The surface Fathometer, of course, couldn't take readings farther up than the surface of the sea.

“A hole,” Gorov said thoughtfully. “How in the name of God did it get there?”

No one had an answer.

Gorov shrugged. “Perhaps one of the Edgeway people will know. They've been studying the ice. The important thing is that it's there, however it came to be.”

“Why is this hole so important?” Zhukov asked.

Gorov had a seed of an idea, the germ of an outrageously daring plan to rescue the Edgeway scientists. If the hole was- "Clear water,” the technician announced. “No ice overhead.”

Emil Zhukov pressed a few keys on the command-pad console. He looked up at the computer screen to his right. “It checks. Taking into account the southward current and our forward speed, we should be entirely out from under. This time the berg's really gone.”

“Clear water,” the technician repeated.

Gorov glanced at his watch: 10:02. Less than two hours remaining until the sixty explosive charges would shatter the iceberg. In that length of time, the crew of the Pogodin could not possibly mount a conventional rescue attempt with any hope of success. The unorthodox scheme that the captain had in mind might seem to some to border on outright lunacy, but it had the advantage of being a plan that could work within the limited time they had left.

Zhukov cleared his throat. No doubt with a vivid mental image of that sweating bulkhead in the torpedo room, the first officer was waiting for orders to take the boat up to a less dangerous depth.

Pulling down the steel-spring microphone, Gorov said, “Captain to torpedo room. How's it look there?”

From the overhead speaker: “Still sweating, sir. It's not any better, but it's not any worse, either.”

“Keep watching. And stay calm.” Gorov released the microphone and returned to the command pad. “Engines at half speed. Left full rudder.”

Astonishment made Emil Zhukov's long face appear even longer. He opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't make a sound. He swallowed hard. His second attempt was successful: “You mean we aren't going up?”

“Not this minute,” Gorov said. “We've got to make another run under that behemoth. I want to have another look at the hole in the middle of it.”

The volume on the shortwave radio was it its maximum setting, so the Russian communications officer aboard the Pogodin could be heard over the roar of the storm beast that prowled at the entrance to the cave and above the roof of interlocking slabs of ice. Hard shatters of static and electronic squeals of interference echoed off the ice walls, rather like the enormously amplified sound of fingernails being dragged across a blackboard.

The others had joined Harry and Pete in the ice cave to hear the astounding news firsthand. They were crowded together near the back wall.

When Lieutenant Timoshenko had described the hole and the large area of dramatically scalloped ice on the bottom of their floating prison, Harry had explained the probable cause of it. The iceberg had been broken off the cap by a tsunami, and the tsunami had been generated by a seabed earthquake almost directly beneath them. In this part of the world, in association with this chain of fractures, volcanic activity was de rigueur, as witness the violent Icelandic eruptions a few decades ago. And if ocean-floor volcanic activity had been associated with the recent event, enormous quantities of lava could have been discharged into the sea, flung upward with tremendous force. Spouts of white-hot lava could have bored that hole, and the millions of gallons of boiling water that it produced could easily have sculpted the troughs and peaks that marked the bottom of the iceberg just past the hole.

Although it originated from a surfaced submarine only a fraction of a mile away, Timoshenko's voice was peppered with static, but the transmission didn't break up. “As Captain Gorov sees it, there are three possibilities. First, the hole in the bottom of your berg might end in solid ice above the water line. Or second, it might lead into a cavern or to the bottom of a shallow crevasse. Or third, it might even continue for another hundred feet above the sea level and open at the top of the iceberg. Does that analysis seem sound to you, Dr. Carpenter?”

“Yes,” Harry said, impressed by the captain's reasoning. “And I think I know which of the three it is.” He told Timoshenko about the crevasse that had opened midway in the iceberg's length when the gigantic seismic waves had passed under the edge of the winter field. “It didn't exist when we went out to position the explosives, but there it was, waiting for us, on our way back to the temporary camp. I nearly drove straight into it, lost my snowmobile.”

“And the bottom of this crevasse is open all the way down to the sea?” Timoshenko asked.

“I don't know, but now I suspect it is. As near as I'm able to calculate, it must lie directly above the hole you've found on the underside. Even if the lava spout didn't punch through the entire hundred feet of ice above the water line, the heat needed to bore upward through all that underwater mass would at least have cracked the ice above the surface. And those cracks are sure to lead all the way down to the open water that your Fathometer operator detected.”

“If the hole is at the bottom of the crevasse — I suppose we should call it a shaft or tunnel, rather than a hole — would you be willing to try to reach it by climbing down into the crevasse? Timoshenko inquired.

The question seemed bizarre to Harry. He could not see the point of going down into that chasm where his snowmobile had vanished. “If we had to do it, I suppose we could improvise some climbing equipment. But what would be the point? I don't understand where you're going with this.”

“That's how we're going to try to take you off the ice. Through the tunnel and out from underneath the berg.”

In the cave behind Harry, the seven others responded to that suggestion with noisy disbelief.

He gestured at them to be quiet. To the Russian radioman, he said, “Down through this hole, this tunnel, and somehow into the submarine? But how?”

Timoshenko said, “In diving gear.”

“We haven't any.”

“Yes, but we have.” Timoshenko explained how the gear would be gotten to them.

Harry was more impressed than ever with the Russian's ingenuity but still doubtful. “I've done some diving in the past. I'm not an expert at it, but I know a man can't dive that deep unless he's trained and has special equipment.”

“We've got the special equipment,” Timoshenko said. “I'm afraid you'll have to do without the special training.” He spent the next five minutes outline Captain Gorov's plan in some detail.

The scheme was brilliant, imaginative, daring, and well thought out. Harry wanted to meet this Captain Nikita Gorov, to see what kind of man could come up with such a stunningly clever idea. “It might work, but it's risky. And there's no guarantee that the tunnel from your end actually opens into the bottom of the crevasse at our end. Maybe we won't be able to find it.”

“Perhaps,” Timoshenko agreed. “But it's you best chance. In fact, it's your only chance. There's just an hour and a half until those explosives detonate. We can't get rafts across to the iceberg, climb up there, and bring you down as we'd planned. Not in ninety minutes. The wind is coming from the stern of the iceberg now, blowing hard along both flanks. We'd have to land the rafts at the bow, and that's impossible with the whole mountain of ice rushing down on us at nine knots.”

Harry knew that was true. He had said as much to Pete just half an hour ago. “Lieutenant Timoshenko, I need to discuss this with my colleagues. Give me a minute, please.” Still hunkering before the radio, he turned slightly to face the others and said, “Well?”

Rita would have to control her phobia as never before, because she would have to go down inside the ice, be entirely surrounded by it. Yet she was the first to speak in favor of the plan: “Let's not waste time. Of course we'll do it. We can't just sit here and wait to die.”

Claude Jobert nodded. “We haven't much choice.”

“We've got one chance in ten thousand of getting through alive,” Franz estimated. “But it's not altogether hopeless.”

“Teutonic gloom,” Rita said, grinning.

In spite of himself, Fischer managed a smile. “That's what you said when I was worried that an earthquake might strike before we got back to base camp.”

“Count me in,” Brian said.

Roger Breskin nodded, “And me.”

Pete Johnson said, “I joined up for the adventure. Now I'm sure as hell getting more of it than I bargained for. If we ever get out of this mess, I swear I'll be content to spend my evenings at home with a good book.”

Turning to Lin, Harry said, “Well, George?”

With his goggles up and his snow mask pulled down, Lin revealed his distress in every line and aspect of his face. “If we stayed here, if we didn't leave before midnight, isn't there a chance we'd come through the explosions on a piece of ice enough to sustain us? I was under the impression that we were counting on that before this submarine showed up.”

Harry put it bluntly: “If we've only one chance in ten thousand of living through the escape Captain Gorov has planned for us, then we've got not better than one chance in a million of living through the explosions at midnight.”

Lin was biting his lower lip so hard that Harry would not have been surprised to see blood trickle down his chin.

“George? Are you with us or not?”

Finally Lin nodded.

Harry picked up the microphone again. “Lieutenant Timoshenko?”

“I read you, Dr. Carpenter.”

“We've decided that your captain's plan makes sense if only because it's a necessity. We'll do it — if it can be done.”

“It can be done, Doctor. We're convinced of it.”

“We'll have to move quickly,” Harry said. “There isn't any hope in hell of our reaching the crevasse much before eleven o'clock. That leaves just one hour for the rest of it.”

Timoshenko said, “If we all keep in mind a vivid image of what's going to happen at midnight, we should be able to hustle through what needs to be done in the time we have. Good luck to all of you.”

“And to you,” Harry said.

When they were ready to leave the cave a few minutes later, Harry had still not heard from Gunvald regarding the contents of those five lockers. When he tried to raise Edgeway Station on the radio, he could get no response except squalls of static and the hollow hiss of dead air.

Apparently, they were going to have to descent into that deep crevasse and go down the tunnel beneath it without knowing which of them was likely to make another attempt on Brian Dougherty's life if the opportunity arose.

Even the most sophisticated telecommunications equipment was unable to cope with the interference that accompanied a storm in polar latitudes in the bitter heart of winter. Gunvald could no longer pick up the powerful transmissions emanating from the U.S. base at Thule. He tried every frequency band, but across all of them, the storm reigned. The only scraps of man-made sound that he detected were fragments of a program of big-band music that faded in and out on a five-second cycle. The speakers were choked with static: a wailing, screaming, screeching, hissing, crackling concert of chaos unaccompanied by even a single human voice.

He returned to the frequency where Harry was supposed to be awaiting his call, leaned toward the set, and held the microphone against his lips, as if he could will the connection to happen. “Harry, can you read me?”

Static.

For perhaps the fiftieth time, he read off his call numbers and their call numbers, raising his voice as if trying to shout above the interference.

No response. It wasn't a matter of hearing them or being heard through the static. They simply weren't receiving him at all.

He knew that he ought to give up.

He glanced at the spiral-bound notebook that lay open on the table beside him. Although he had looked at the same page a dozen times already, he shuddered.

He couldn't give up. They had to know the nature of the beast in their midst.

He called them again.

Static.