Chapter 13

Some time after the medic had left, a complaining stomach reminded me first that I'd had no food that day, secondly that Kelleher had eaten nothing for at least thirty hours, and thirdly that no arrangements had been made for meals to be sent to us in the hospital. Something would have to be done. I picked up the phone, dialled the cookhouse number, and waited while it rang and rang. Then I hung up and dialled again. Still no response. Next I tried the command office, on the grounds that Allen would fix it. No response there, either, and that was strange: the command office was manned day and night. Then, just a few minutes later, the door opened and Allen himself stood in the doorway. He was swaying, half-doubled over, his black skin gone greasy grey, his arms folded tight and low across his stomach. He started to say something, but gagged deep in his throat, half-turned and vomited uncontrollably out of the door. It took me a couple of seconds to reach him and when I did I could only stand holding him as he continued retching. Then he seemed to have finished and tried to straighten, but another spasm gripped him and he retched again, groaning and shaking and clearly in considerable pain. When he spoke it was in a strangled croak, so punctuated by contractions of throat and stomach that it seemed the words would never come. At last he managed to get them out. 'Food poisoning.'

'Come in,' I said. 'Lie down and - '

'Not just me,' Allen gasped. 'The cookhouse . . , half the camp .., for God's sake look .., look.., in the Doc's books!' Then he was retching again, sinking to his knees in the doorway. The next few hours were horrific. Almost eighty men were affected and it seemed at times that the entire population of the camp was collapsing in the snow with acute stomach pains, vomiting and diarrhoea, and there was no help to be had from the medical staff at Thule because radio communication had again disintegrated into mush and static. We all did what we could, pouring saline solution into the sufferers, hustling them off to bed, wrapping blankets round them. The book said victims must be kept warm, and the hospital's stock of hot water bottles numbered four. Anything that would hold hot water was filled and distributed. We didn't know what we were dealing with, and since the medic, who might conceivably have known, was one of the worst victims, we didn't even know if the treatment was correct. By late evening, three men were dead and many others in a state of almost total collapse, being nursed by their friends. But by then we had radio contact again and were able to raid the dispensary for botulinus antitoxin. It almost certainly saved several lives. Kirton, if he'd been alive, might well have saved more.

I don't know when I heard about Barney. It must have been some time during the long afternoon that someone said Major Smales, too, was a victim, but I was too busy to take much notice, and in any case, with so many affected, it was hardly surprising. Later, it was rumoured for a while that he'd died, and Westlake too, but I learned later still that, though both were badly affected, they seemed to be holding their own.

By that night, Camp Hundred was in a mess. Two Air Force doctors from Thule had volunteered to be parachuted in, but the offer had to be turned down. Weather conditions up above were very bad, with winds gusting near a hundred miles an hour and the temperature thirty below. Two brave men would have been jumping to their deaths.

At one point in the afternoon, I'd slipped Kelleher a couple of sleeping tablets, in the belief that, since I couldn't release him to help and he would only chafe angrily if he were to lie helpless through it all, he'd be better asleep. They worked, but not for long. By that time he'd slept so much that it would have needed a hammer to keep his eyes closed for long. So, though he'd slept for a couple of hours, he'd also Iain awake, thinking. I was sitting beside his bed, which I'd dragged into the office to leave more space free in the ward, drinking coffee and eating a bar of chocolate, when he said, 'You reckon this whole thing could be deliberate?'

I turned and stared at him. I'd been so busy the thought hadn't even occurred to me. 'How could it be? It's on too big a scale.'

Kelleher said slowly, 'You got a freezer at home, Harry ?'

I shook my head.

'We have,' he said. 'The instructions, the books, the deep freeze centres, they all warn you the same way. It's dangerous to thaw and freeze again.'

'So?'

'So up here it's all frozen. Well, most of the stuff is. Meat is, that's for damn sure. You got any idea what those guys ate?'

I said, 'As far as we can tell, it was the ham they had at breakfast. Some of them were feeling queasy before lunch. Nobody seems to think it was the lunch food. How do you feel, anyway?'

'Hungry as hell, but I can sure resist it now.'

'Otherwise?'

'Fine. No problems. Head's clear. Whatever it was, LSD or what, it's all worn off.' He gave me a lopsided grin. 'But either you let me out of this goddam thing or you make like a nurse with bottles and bedpans.'

I was too tired to argue. I bent over the bed and began to undo strappings. A few minutes later he was on his feet, stretching cramped muscles and I turned my back on him. If he was going to attack, I thought wearily, it might as well be now. I counted to ten slowly, then turned to face him. He was holding on to the bedrail slowly doing leg-bending exercises.

'Tell you how it could be done,' Kelleher said. 'You've seen the food trenches?'

I nodded.

'Food, meat in particular, comes up on the Swing, stays frozen clear across the cap. When it gets here it's hung in a trench, still frozen. Keeps forever, almost, courtesy of Mother Nature. Now, we got a bad outbreak of food poisoning, right? Okay, so somebody maybe got himself a coupla sides of ham.'

'Go on.'

'Anyway, they're frozen. He takes them, hangs 'em some place warm for a while, puts 'em back; maybe he even does it again. Then he puts 'em right at the front of the rack of ham, okay? Then along comes the guy from the cookhouse. Ham for break fast again, there's ham for breakfast every day. He takes the first couple of sides, slices it into strips and there you got it!'

I didn't answer; I was thinking about the dreadful suffering of eighty men. And even though I'd no doubts in my own mind that somebody was sabotaging Camp Hundred, it was hard to believe anyone would set out deliberately to poison so many.

'It fits,' Kelleher said.

'Yes,' I said slowly. 'It fits. Do you believe it ?'

'I'll believe anything of the man who'd slip acid to a guy working on a reactor!'

I went and washed my hands and face in cold water. I felt sluggish and sleepy and dared not give in to it. If Kelleher was right, and if the homicidal idiot at Camp Hundred was now prepared to go to any lengths to wreck the whole establishment, nobody could afford the luxury of rest. The cold water made me feel a little fresher, but not much. I wasn't at even the fifty-per-cent efficiency promised for life at Hundred; five per cent was more like it.

Kelleher, however, was like an Airedale terrier with a newly-discovered bone. 'I thought about all this. I can see maybe how it's all happened. What I don't see is why?' I shrugged. 'Somebody wants Camp Hundred out of action.'

'Okay. Why?'

'Difficult to see. Hates the army perhaps.'

'Everybody hates the army. A little or a lot, but everybody.'

I said, 'We're talking about a madman. Death and destruction in bloody great bucketsful.'

'He's a smart madman!'

'That's not uncommon. Look, perhaps he hates the army and this is a way of striking back. Or, perhaps he hates Camp Hundred, and ditto. Or, he hates Barney, or you, or me even. What it is doesn't matter. He's hitting as hard as he can at everything and everybody in the place.'

Kelleher considered it. 'I don't go for that blind hate.'

'Give me an alternative.'

'Guy's got something to hide.'

'Like what ? If anybody wants to hide anything, this is probably the best place in the world. Seventeen feet of snow every winter.

It'll cover anything.'

'No. Not an object. Some offence or other. Something that's got to be kept quiet.'

'All right. In that case we have another theory, but it's no more than that. If Camp Hundred were a normal army camp, somebody might be organizing a fiddle, flogging rations or petrol or something. But not here.'

Kelleher looked up at me. 'So we got to find out.'

'Yes.'

'Question is how.'

'Yes.' I wasn't being unhelpful. I'd been over this ground so many times in my mind that I knew every bump and hollow. My own brain wasn't going to dig out bright new thoughts. Kelieher's might. He said, 'Okay, we start somewhere.'

'Like?'

'I'll tell you - ' but he didn't. Not then, anyway, because we were interrupted. The door opened and a less-than-young lieutenant entered and announced that until his seniors were recovered, he was in temporary command. His name was Coveney and I'd met him, exchanged a word or two in the officers'

club. He'd struck me as dull and a bit taciturn.

Kelleher said, 'How's Barney?' His tone was flat. I got the impression he didn't like Coveney.

'Major Smales is very sick,' Coveney said. 'Conscious only in patches. However, I managed to speak to him briefly and he agrees to my assumption of temporary command.' He looked from Kelleher to me and back again. 'I understood you, Mr Kelleher, were under restraint.'

'That's right.'

'Under whose orders were you released ?'

I said. 'I released him. There's nothing wrong with him now.'

'You're a qualified psychiatrist, Mr er - ?'

'Bowes,' I said, 'and even a hovercraft pilot can see he's okay now.'

He looked at me along his narrow nose. 'The restraint was ordered by the commander and has not been rescinded. A man who only yesterday was totally unbalanced can hardly be - '

I said, 'So rescind it.'

'On the contrary, I insist that Major Smales's orders be carried out.'

Kelleher said incredulously, 'You want me back in the strait-jacket?'

'That was the prescribed restraint.'

I said, 'Don't be bloody stupid!'

Coveney said, 'If necessary, I will call for assistance. I have no wish to use force, but if it should prove necessary, it will be used.'

'One problem,' Kelleher said with heavy sarcasm. 'Those jackets aren't made like raincoats; the guy who's wearing it can't fasten it up.'

'Mr Bowes will fasten it. He will also be responsible for you until further notice. Furthermore, Major Smales's orders concerning Mr Bowes continue in force. He is not to leave this medical block without the permission of the commander.'

'You?'

'That's right, Mr Bowes. Until Major Smales is recovered you answer to me. Now please put the jacket on to Mr Kelleher.'

I was going to refuse, tell him to shove off, be as corrosively rude as I wanted to be. What stopped me was the realization that Coveney had the power. If I didn't truss Kelleher, somebody else would. If I indulged my splenetic instincts, Coveney could simply separate us, and lock me up somewhere. So I went back to the ward, got the straitjacket and buckled the visibly-fuming Kelleher into it. Nor was that the end. Coveney insisted that Kelleher's jacket be secured to the steel bed and he watched while I fastened the straps.

I'd felt it necessary to restrain my reactions. Kelleher obviously didn't. As I worked on the fastening, he said scathingly, 'They get like this after they've been passed over for promotion a few times.'

Coveney looked at him. 'In the current crisis situation here I feel it necessary to take every sensible precaution. I regret having to order this, naturally, and I will say so in my report. But in view of Mr Kelleher's recent mental history there is no option. Good night.'

Kelleher was shouting, 'I'll be making reports, too, and don't you forget it.' The door's closing click punctuated the sentence; no doubt Coveney heard the first relevant words, but it was beneath him either to return or reply.

I bent over Kelleher, unfastened all the strappings and asked, 'Why does he love you ?'

He gave a little grin. 'Playing bad bridge keeps him poor. Maybe it keeps him a lieutenant, too.'

'You've taken a lot of his money?'

'Let's just say I don't earn all my bread making contracts. I just reckon I could. I was gonna tell you where we start, right ?'

'Where?'

'Here. Medical records.'

I shook my head. 'I thought of it earlier. The filing cabinets are all locked.'

'Keys must be around some place.'

We searched for a while and failed to find any keys at all. I said, 'Doc Kirton must have carried them with him. Presumably all his personal effects would have been taken from his body. They'll be wherever things like that are kept.'

'Barney has a safe,' Kelleher said.

'Which will also require keys.'

'Yeah.' The corners of his mouth turned down, then he rose and went over to the steel cabinets. 'Time was,' he said, 'when you could just drill a little hole, right here above the lock, and push a paper clip in and work the lock-spring.' He examined the cabinet closely. 'Nope. Not any more. Uncle Sam only buys the best"!'

'We could lever it open,' I said. 'Burst the lock.'

Kelleher jerked his head towards the ward. 'No need. Allen's in there.'

'Allen,' I said, 'is a very sick man.'

'Sure. But he'll know where the keys are. Allen knows everything.'

'Except who's doing all this.'

We went through into the ward. It stank of sweat and vomit, and two young soldiers who'd volunteered to act as nurses looked almost as ill as the patients. Kelleher said to one of them, 'Take a half-hour break, son. We'll watch out."

The boy looked grateful, wasted no time in accepting, and took his partner with him. We crossed to Allen's bed. He looked bad; skin still grey and sickly, sweat shining on his face, and he was dozing. I didn't want to awaken him; Kelleher didn't hesitate; he put his big hand on Allen's shoulder and shook it gently.

After a moment, Allen's eyes opened. He blinked, then gave a little groan.

'You strong enough to talk?" Kelleher asked quietly.

Allen blinked again, swallowed in that awful way of the nauseated, when it's a toss-up whether the forced swallow will overcome the regurgitative reflex. He looked a little relieved, and nodded faintly.

'What is it?' His voice was weak, not quite a whisper.

Kelleher said, 'When Doc Kirton died, what happened to his possessions ?'

Allen's eyes widened. 'What do you want?'

Kelleher glanced round the ward. Not all the men were asleep. He said very softly, 'Mr Bowes and I, we think all this, the food poisoning, Captain Carson's disappearance, the whole deal, we think it's all been done by one guy.'

Allen looked at him steadily. 'You - ' he swallowed again -'you got reasons for that?'

Kelleher said, 'What happened to me was a bad acid trip. Somebody slipped me acid. There are too many accidents now. Too much to explain. It's got to be tracked down. We want to see the medical records but the files are locked.'

'A bad trip,' Allen repeated. He paused, then turned his head to look at me. 'You saw . . , yesterday.'

'Saw what?'

'Major Smales. Right early. He was - ' again that suspenseful swallow - 'real strange. You noticed.'

1 stared at him, recalling the interview that had so puzzled me, and the oblique conversation with Allen in his office afterwards.

'Yes,' I said, 'I noticed. Barney told me he had a migraine.'

'Migraine, huh?' Kelleher said. 'Tell you something. I'm a migraine man myself. One effect is a kind of flashing light, it's like you've just been dazzled.'

'It seemed to wear off quickly.'

'Maybe he only got a real small shot.'

'Maybe. How did he get it?'

Allen had struggled to sit up. Now, speech made difficult by the continuing stomach contractions, he managed to explain that Barney slept badly and always woke early and kept a flask of coffee at his bedside. He could have woken in the middle of the night, taken coffee, and slept again.

'Which means,' Kelleher said, 'that the stuff could already have been wearing off?'

'Right.' Allen turned, put his feet on the floor.

'Stay where you are,' I said.

He shook his head weakly. 'I can go into the command office for the keys. You guys can't do that.'

'You'd never make it,' Kelleher said.

Allen swallowed again painfully. 'I'll make it.'

I glanced at Kelleher. We were both reluctant even to let Allen try. All the same, weak and shaky though he was, he'd forced himself to his feet and now he took two or three slow steps. 'I ain't gonna win no marathons,' Allen said, 'but I'll make it.'

He was determined and Kelleher and I conceded, feeling guilty about it. We helped Allen into his parka and boots, and went to the door with him. As he was about to go, I said, 'Doc Kirton's effects. Where will they be?'

He turned. 'They're still on his body. What's left of it. We figured we'd leave all that. He was kind of a mess.'

Kelleher patted his shoulder. 'Listen, take your time.'

'Sure.' Allen looked as though he was about to be sick again, but he fought it and won. Then he said,

'Reckon I'll try talking to Major Smales.'

'Don't,' I said.

'Maybe he'll listen to me.'

'Don't bank on it.'

He went down the two steps and slowly off along the trench. We watched through the open door until he reached Main Street and turned towards the command hut.

There was nothing we could do, except wait for Allen's return. We talked desultorily, almost pointlessly, going over the ground again and again. Kelleher, who knew Camp Hundred and its personnel far better than I, found himself totally unable to pick out a suspect. All I got from him was a new light on Barney's character: new and rather revealing. Ten years earlier, it seemed, when Darney had been in Antarctica on Operation Deep Freeze, he and half a dozen men had spent a winter on a big ice-floe. There had been trouble of various kinds: one man had fallen into super-cooled water off the edge of the floe, and the shock had killed him; another had died of peritonitis following a ruptured appendix, and there had been a fire in one of the huts. Barney had sent out anSOS

and Deep Freeze had mounted a massive, difficult and wildly expensive operation to lift off the five remaining men. It had been held at the time that theSOShad been unnecessary; that Captain Smales, as he then was, had not shown sufficient durability. He'd almost been thrown off Cold Regions Research and it had taken him a long time to work himself back into favour. I said, 'He worked himself back, though. They'd never have given him Camp Hundred otherwise.'

'Oh sure. But it's in his record, and he knows it. So he won't be exactly keen to admit it if things start slipping beyond his control.'

The minutes ticked by. Twice I went to the door and looked along the trench, hoping to see Allen returning, but there was no sign of him. After half an hour, when the two soldiers returned to duty in the ward, Allen still had not shown up and, what made it worse, there was no message from him. By now both of us were worried. It seemed to us that there were three possibilities : that Allen had collapsed somewhere and was being looked after; that he'd collapsed and was not being looked after. Or, the possibility that loomed in the forefront of both our minds, that he had been attacked and disposed of in some way.

At length Kelleher rose, crossed to the wall speaker, moved the switch and spoke into the address system. 'Will Master Sergeant Allen please report at once to the medical block.' He repeated the message and switched off. 'He ought to hear that.'

'If he's in a position to hear it.'

'Yeah.' Kelleher sat down heavily, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. He was frowning, staring straight ahead. After a moment he said, 'There's one thing's bugged me from the start.'

'Go on.'

'The water. Impurities in the water. That's what stopped us on the reactor, and I just don't understand it. Look, normally we use distilled water because you can't afford any contamination in the reactor. But melted snow, in effect, is distilled. It's been sucked up from the ocean, turned to vapour and then precipitated. So up here there's no need for distillation. Nowadays there's maybe some smoke mixed up in new snow, some pollution. But the snow that fell a hundred, two hundred years ago, well, water from that's as pure as you can get, right?'

I nodded.

'So all of a sudden it's polluted.'

'How badly?'

'Bad enough. Looks to me now as though our friendly maniac must have dropped something down the well.'

I said, 'Sergeant Vernon went down. He didn't see anything.'

'Don't mean a thing. You could let go any of a hundred things down there. Chemical salts, cleaning fluids, metal dust -there's a whole lot of ways - and the stuff's either so dispersed or dissolved nobody'd see anything. You'd need a real good lab to isolate what it was.'

I said, 'The top of the well's open. It wouldn't be difficult. But how many people are likely to know that the reactor could be disabled as easily as that ?'

He shrugged. 'Hell, anybody would know. All the reactor people anyway. There'd be plenty who'd know.'

'I didn't.'

He gave me a dismissive glance. 'You haven't read the manual.'

'Perhaps our friend has. Where is it?'

'Plenty around. There's copies here in the camp library.'

Still no word from Allen. As we talked, we read the worry in each other's faces. Kelleher's feelings matched my own: frustration at our confinement and consequent helplessness, a resentment that was the stronger because it was, in a way, voluntary; we were confined only by orders, and they were orders neither of us much respected.

The Tannoy came on then, with a click, and Coveney's voice boomed out of it. 'This is the Acting Commander, Camp Hundred,' he began, in one of those sharp military voices that snap and crackle like Rice Krispies. He sounded a bit like Field Marshal Montgomery with an American accent. The instructions came pouring out. Hundred was a shambles and must be cleaned. The men were scruffy and had been letting themselves go in the last few days. Starting now, all empty huts were to be fumigated and thoroughly cleaned and then the sick were to be transferred into them. Starting next morning, there would be an inspection parade in Main Street and he expected everything and everybody to be clean, pressed and shiny. And so on and so on.

I said, 'There'll be a bloody mutiny!'

Kelleher cocked art eyebrow at me. 'Don't bet on it. But you can bet there's gonna be chaos.'

'Opportunities for the maniac'

He nodded. 'Sure. For us, too.'

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