Operation Norway

- 3 -

He gave the order to head back for the hut where they’d got the fire going; the weather had become a fully fledged storm. The sky had gone so dark he had to check his watch to make sure he hadn’t misjudged the time and that night wasn’t in fact falling early. He let the squad go first and brought up the rear, being almost blown back along the shore now that the swirling wind was mostly at his back. He got inside the hut and had to push to close the door against the force of the breeze outside. He shook snow off himself like a wet dog.

Wiggins was already at the fire, stoking it up with fresh logs, and Davies was at the camp stove getting more coffee brewed. Banks retrieved the sat phone from his inside pocket and put a call through to the skipper of the supply vessel offshore.

“The weather has closed in. Any idea how long this storm will last?”

“The rest of the day and most of the night, Captain. I’m afraid you’re stuck there for the duration. It’s not safe to try to take the dinghy out in these waters in this.”

“I’m not about to try it,” Banks replied. “We’ve got plenty of comforts and we’ve seen out storms in much worse places than this.”

“Stay warm,” the skipper replied. “We’ve got a run to make to one of our rigs overnight. We’ll swing by in the morning and I’ll give you a call back then.”

“Willco,” Banks replied and closed the call just as the door opened at his back and Wiggins turned to smile.

“Be right back, Cap,” he said. “Just going to get my round in.”

Before Banks could stop him, the corporal stepped out into the storm.

Fortunately, Wiggins wasn’t gone long enough for Banks to start to worry. He arrived back a few minutes later carrying a bottle in each hand — one half-full of vodka, the other almost full of a popular Scottish blended whisky.

“I thought we might as well get comfortable if we’re staying the night,” Wiggins said with a grin. Hynd cuffed him around the ear but in truth, Banks thought they might all be glad of the liquor in the long hours of the night to come.

They found two oil lamps in the debris that were still functional, broke out the ration packs from their kit, and had a meal with their coffee. Banks’ was some kind of chicken curry that tasted too sharply of pepper but it did its job in putting some heat in his belly. After coffee, the other four members of the squad settled around the fire with a smoke and a pack of cards, drinking liquor in their coffee cups. Banks added a generous splash of Scotch to his own coffee then went to sit below one of the lamps. He took the journal they’d found from inside his jacket and started looking for the cause of the carnage they’d seen at that last hut.

Although the light was dim, the writing was in a good-quality black ink and was perfectly legible.

The first entry appeared to be for the first days of the site.

September 23rd 1949

The weather held up for our trip in and we arrived only a day later than planned. The Norwegians have been as good as their word and the jetty, if not pretty, is perfectly functional and we were able to unload our cargo in double-quick time. I write this in a tent while work continues apace around me and hope that by tonight we might all be able to bed down in shelter and comfort.

The huts are going up fast around us and we are all looking forward to getting some warmth back into our bones. I for one will be glad of it, for my bad knee is giving me gip constantly in this damp cold and has me hobbling around the site like an old man.

The Norwegians are proving most accommodating and generous hosts and have kept us all supplied with plenty of food and drink. I cannot take to the herring but the vodka is most welcome. The only dark spot so far has been the glowers and black looks from the crew of the boat that brought us here. I am led to believe that this stretch of coast has long been shunned by the locals but as to why that should be and why they are so against our presence here, I have yet to uncover.

It is not a new feeling to me on this outing for I have been in the dark ever since leaving Edinburgh. When I opened my orders this morning, I was glad of finally getting some clue as to why I’d been sent away from my warm desk to these frozen northern climes.

I must say it sounds like something out of an H. G. Wells book or one of those awful Yank movies with its talk of chimeras and its hopes of creating a modern weapon from ancient samples. But orders are orders. I do what I’m told and Jensen our lead scientist assures me that it is not some wild goose chase and that the material is indeed there in the hills waiting to be gathered.

If I am to believe what I have been told, the map we have came from a sixteenth-century Scottish fishing captain who undertook an investigation in this area and got more, far more, than he bargained for. His supposed encounter read to me like a prolonged attempt at an excuse by a man who had tarried too long at sea for the liking of his wife in Aberdeen but the brass appear to put at least some credence by it. As for myself, I cannot put any faith in the specifics of the old tale as it was told, full as it is of superstitious claptrap about bogles and bloody carnage. But I am assured that the cave itself most certainly exists and its position has been confirmed in several aerial flyovers. My superiors seem to agree with the Norwegian scientists that there is something there worth investigating, something that might prove valuable in our efforts to keep the Russians from gaining too much influence in these northern climes now that the Jerries have been sent packing.

I will send Jensen and a small team into the mountains and to the cave as soon as all of the huts are up, the laboratories prepared, and all the equipment unpacked, which at the current rate of progress should be by this coming Saturday.

The next page of the journal was given over to a rudimentary map showing a route from the shoreline of the fjord, taking the same path he’d seen at the rear of the demolished hut, up the cliffs, and across a high plateau to a mountain valley. A group of a dozen buildings was depicted at the head of a river and above that a round black hole that was marked simply, CAVE. Banks’ heart sank.

I have a feeling I’m not going to like this.

The temptation was to skip ahead in the narrative but he needed every scrap of information available to him; as soon as the colonel saw this journal, he’d have questions.

And I need to have answers.

Oct 5th 1949

Jensen has returned from the cave some 24 hours late and just as I was about to lead a second team to check nothing untoward had occurred. I am glad of his return for this dashed gammy knee of mine would have made clambering about in the hills a tricky business indeed.

The delay was due, so Jensen has told me, to the fact that the specimens proved to be difficult to extract from the rock, as if they had become fused there over time and necessitating a degree of brute force in their removal. There has also been some trouble with the small group of villagers, shepherds of the caribou herds that roam those high plateaus in some numbers. Apparently, there was a skirmish that led to shots being fired by our men.

Jensen assures me that no one was badly hurt although relations with the people of the high valley will henceforth be strained should we need to retrieve anything more from the cave site. But it was worth it, for Jensen succeeded in his quest for samples that will allow our work to proceed from this point onward.

The specimens, while still straining my credulity somewhat given that on initial sighting they look merely like chunks of rock, are most impressive when under close inspection. They certainly give me pause for thought about my earlier skepticism regarding the tales told of the cave and the Scot’s fisherman’s adventures therein. Jensen assures me that he has more than enough material and that even if that were not the case, more of the same remains are embedded in the rock in the cave and can be retrieved should it be required. And while I am loath to cause any harm to come to the caribou herdsmen in the mountains, I will have no qualms in sending another team into the hills if necessary.

The huts on the shoreline are all up and functional, the laboratory gear is unpacked, and the test subjects will arrive by supply boat on the morrow. So begins the part of this show that I might have moral disagreement with should I give myself enough time to think on the matter, for I fear what the poor men will have in store for them.

But they have been told, as loudly and as often as I have been told myself, that it is for the common good. Having seen the samples collected in the cave, I cannot in all conscience deny that I am as eager as Jensen to see the experiment get underway. The sooner we get things moving, the sooner I can see my way back to the warmth of my office back home in Edinburgh and a decent cup of tea.

“Coffee and a dram, Cap?” Wiggins said, breaking Banks’ concentration. He closed the journal with a sigh and took it with him over to the fireplace. The temptation was to toss it into the flames and pretend he’d never read it. But duty was stronger than that and he knew the colonel was adept at spotting any lies. No, he’d read it now and what had been seen couldn’t be unseen.

Now that he knew that part of the work here had involved the cave in the hills, he only had one option left to him. He let the men enjoy their coffee, smokes, and liquor here in the warmth. For in the morning, weather permitting, he knew they’d be moving out, not back to the supply boat but into the hills, up to the high valley in search of a cave and something that remained.