Miller rose from the hovercraft. It turned out that he was an expert in craft repairs. He looked around. “We still have enough daylight time.”
“It may appear so,” agreed the expedition leader, “but a storm is on the way, and it’s coming fast. We should camp.”
“Where?” asked Miller with some urgency.
Itay Friedman stepped aside. “I’ll go look around.”
The crew started spreading out. Olivia took pictures and talked in her Dictaphone. Peter Williams, bored and stiff in his knees, followed behind her. When he was close enough, Olivia said, “What if your billionaire isn’t who he claims to be?”
Peter pointed at the Dictaphone. “You have it on record?”
Olivia looked at the device. She shook her head. “What if it gets in the wrong hands?”
“What if you lose it?” Peter said evenly.
“Hey.”
The two turned around. Victor Borodin waved them over. “We are going to higher ground. The ice is thin out here. Watch where you step.”
—
By the time Itay Friedman found a suitable spot at the leeward side of a mountain about half a mile from where the crash had happened, it was almost evening.
The breeze that was now soughing through the expanse stung and scraped at their skin. Miller’s hovercraft had crashed because of a defective mechanism in the air propeller. The metal valve had been twisted, Miller found, with uneasy surprise.
He mentioned it to no one.
Slowly, the crew traveled to the spot behind the hill. When they arrived, Victor Borodin spread his arms. “What the hell is this place!?”
Friedman shrugged. “Let's call it home.”
Miller asked what the problem was.
“We are going to get all the heat when the storm comes,” the Russian said and stumbled off.
Nicolai commenced setting up a camp house. It was semi-circular structure, sturdy enough all by itself on account of the galvanized material. All the men, except Frank Miller and Ted Cooper, joined him in the work. Meanwhile, Olivia taped the effort.
Frank Miller busied with his map. Ted Cooper was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Ted?” Peter asked Itay Friedman, his first conversation with the Israeli guard.
“Ted who?”
Itay ignored him.
—
Ten thousand miles into the South Pacific Ocean an interesting event was happening. The Argentine Navy, Armada De La Republica Argentina, was in the middle of a Readiness Test, hurriedly scheduled and highly unusual.
The last time the country itself engaged in any sort of warfare was the small stint that installed Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. And it was a collaboration with the Americans and the Polish, a colorful yet amusing combination.
Admiral Anton Huebner, lean from constant drills that he made all his men go through with him, stood grim-faced at starboard. Beside him was his executive officer, Ramirez Vasquez, a young and ambitious hull head.
“Everything going fine?” Huebner asked.
“Yes sir, it is.”
The young executive would follow Huebner down with the ship if it comes to it. Huebner was aware of this fact. It was for this and other reasons that he made the switch. Huebner's former officer was a plant by the Navy.
Since his son died a shameful death all the way in America, Huebner’s career had taken a plunge and had refused to come above water. Two years ago he hatched a plan—not to set his career back on track, he was beyond that remedy now—but to punish his detractors.
Then the Navy had suddenly announced this exercise and his time had come to hatch his plan. It had required a few underhanded doings here and there but it would be worth it.
Halfway through an exercise that included all four destroyers and five warships, Admiral Huebner called his exec.
The young man also knew something was off, something was coming. The admiral was oddly quiet. They had made two errors in strikes within the past one hour.
Admiral Anton Huebner hardly ever made such errors.
Huebner brought his field glasses to his face. The exec noted that the admiral's attention wasn’t on the ocean before them, where ships were now coming back into formation.
The admiral was looking at the island of ice on the left, Antarctica.
The exec played his hand. “Something wrong, Admiral, sir?”
A smile had crept into the weather-beaten face. Dark, Spanish, and Machiavellian eyes that have seen so much battle gazed into that shelf of old ice, calculating. His hands grabbed the metal railing that stopped him from toppling off into the broiling water almost a hundred feet below.
“Everything is fine, Vasquez, everything is just fine,” said the admiral.
—
Summer night fell with the half-light of a dead sun. They could not see it, the sun was too far away on account of the earth’s tilt. The only member of the crew who wasn’t troubled by sleep was Nicolai, he being a resident of the continent all year round.
Olivia yawned, as did the others, in obedience to their body clocks. Peter’s neon wristwatch said the time was after 8 pm. Outside the tent the winds howled. A storm was coming indeed.
“A shit storm if I ever saw one, but we can always move in it,” said Liam Murphy.
“How many have you seen?” Victor Borodin asked him.
“Quite a number.”
Borodin shook his head and smiled. When it finally came, there was no doubt in any of the crew member’s minds that they were going to be holing up in the tent for a while.
Treacherous winds rocked the reinforced scandium tubes, threatened to pull the tent off the ice foundation. The crew ate concentrates for dinner, sardines and canned beans boiled in fat.
The noise outside made conversation inside almost impossible without yelling so crew members went to sleep.
Olivia could not make any recordings. And when she lay down, sleep came down upon her like a shroud, the seams inlayed with an old nightmare.
—
She was in the junkyard with John Williams. It was always in a junkyard in the dreams. And John was always there too, holding her hands and pulling her down behind rows of tires and scraps from torn motor parts. The air was always hazy, like looking through pouring rain.
And there was always the sound of gunfire; semiautomatic weapons, shotguns, and police issues. And this time, unlike the other dreams, she heard the voice of Tom Garcia.
Rob Cohen was behind her in this dream as well. Rob asked him what she’ll do now if the deal fell through.
“Hit the bottle, eh, Olivia? Are you gonna ruin everything else with your self-pity? I have a business to run here!”
Then one of the drug dealers, a handsome young boy with Spanish eyes and black beautiful hair, appears from nowhere. He begins to spatter the spot where her head had just been with lead from his semiautomatic.
John pulled him down.
“Watch it, Olivia!” he screams, then whispers to her, “Keep your head down, I can’t lose you.”
But it was he who raised his head up, at the wrong time. In the dream, it was wrong timing. That was the gift her dreams always gave her: the excuse that John had died of wrong timing.
His full head went up one minute and the next time Olivia looked, the head had mushroomed into a claret of brain matter and mashed bones.
She screamed in the dream. She screamed on and on. Her lungs sucked in air and expunged a terrifying shriek that went on and on—
—
A hand was slapping her face gently.
“Olivia, wake up, come on, easy. Wake up!”
Her eyes opened. Peter’s face was on top of hers. She caught the last, drawn syllable of scream leaving her lungs along with a vestige of the nightmare in her head.
She got up on her elbows and looked around. The sound of the wind outside confused her. When she saw the other people sleeping she recalled where she was.
“You were dreaming,” Peter explained.
; “Was I?”
“And you screamed too.” Peter’s face was etched with concern. “You called a name, John.”
Her heart broke then, with it, the dam of tears.
3
Catharsis was not only achieved when we cry, but also when we share. As she poured her story out to Peter Williams, some of her emptiness filled.
Olivia cried into Peter’s shoulder for some time.
Then when she had settled down she told him. “I was working a case of arms smuggling from the US army stockpile into south America and Africa...” she began in a tight, small voice.
“John and I had been working on tips from an informant. The tips were good and credible. We went as buyers. The sale was on until something happened. One of the smugglers got itchy hands and started shooting. All hell broke loose and there was gunfire everywhere. The FBI agents took some hits.”
“John took my hands and we were escaping and then…” She broke off.
It was the part of the nightmare that was always hard to remember, harder to retell. She swallowed. Her eyes itched from dehydration. She looked at Peter. She touched the side of her face.
“Here, the bullet went in, here and…” She bit her lower lip and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Olivia.”
She wrung her hands. “You know, it’s been so long now and I ought to have moved on but I can’t. I don’t know how. So I drank to forget, but the more I drank the more the dreams come. And it’s a vicious cycle of pain and I’m caught in the middle of my own shit storm. Every night.”
Her head fell on Peter’s shoulder again.
There they stayed, for the rest of the storm.
—
The wind let up five hours after.
Frank Miller had Itay Friedman and Nicolai erect a map stand on the wall of the tent. Nicolai also provided Olivia with a small gas stove on which she cooked for the crew.
Victor Borodin groaned, “Oh finally, some real food.”
It wasn’t much. Beaten eggs, vegetables, and oats. Miller had a small collection of white wine that went around too. The billionaire watched the crew eat. Itay Friedman finished setting up a comprehensive map of Antarctica.
“May I have your attention please?” He tapped the map with a stick.
“Class in session,” Olivia whispered to Peter. Her voice was still sore from crying.
Peter chuckled at the joke. It felt like a century ago that they left Miami. He missed his office, his students. He was going to miss Craig’s wedding too. And he sure was going to renege on his promise to handle Craig’s classes for the week. It wasn’t even clear how much longer before they found what they were after.
“This is a map of the continent. We are here”—Miller tapped at a corner of the white mass that was the Antarctic—“and here is where I believe we are headed.”
He tapped a spot on the map where there was a big red spot.
“Somewhere not far from here is Hitler’s secret laboratory,” Miller added.
“The what?” Liam Murphy said, half yelling.
Frank Miller’s eyes scanned the crew. The expressions varied from mild surprise to shock, wonder, and amused confusion. After the silence came murmuring.
Anabia Nassif rose from one of the improvised benches from Novolavarevskaya. “We were told that this was a scientific research expedition into the effects of global warming on the Antarctic, I mean. What’s this, what’s going on?”
Victor Borodin dropped his glass of wine.
He wiped his hands on the spill stain on his trousers. “Shit,” he cussed. Then the arguments started again. Everyone talking all at once. Peter, Olivia, and Ted Cooper were the only members least surprised.
Liam Murphy looked at Olivia. “Hey, you knew about this all along?”
“Ya’ll better listen to what moneybags has to say.” Olivia pointed.
Ted Cooper smiled at her.
—
The shock wore off.
Liam Murphy dropped on his bench. He threw his hands up. “Hitler lives after all.”
Unruffled, Frank Miller said, “Now I know most of us will find this subject impossible to believe. It was why I chose the road of non-disclosure when recruiting some of you, except for the two professors and the journalist, I mean Ms. Olivia Newton.
“For reasons that will become obvious to you all soon, I have decided to come clean. This project may have inherent hazards and it would be fair to give more information, to tell you all the truth as this is important for our continued cooperation.
“There is indeed a laboratory on this continent. It was a well-guarded secret for a time, until one of its protectors was killed recently by unknown people with their own interests.”
“In July 1938, the German government entrusted Captain Alfred Ritscher with the command of an Antarctic expedition. Within the space of a few months, an expedition was assembled and equipped, with the official objectives of obtaining topographical knowledge for the German whaling fleet, simultaneously carrying out a scientific program along the coast with respect to biology, meteorology, oceanography, and the earth’s magnetic field and exploring the unknown interior with a series of mapping flights. Since he only had a half year to get ready, Ritscher had to fall back on available ships and aircraft owned by German Lufthansa Airways that until then had been deployed on the Atlantic service. After some hurried modifications to the vessel ‘Schwabenland’ and to Boreas and Passat, the two Dornier ‘Whale’ flying boats, the expedition departed Hamburg in December 1938. Because the preparations were done in secret, the public had no prior inkling of the expedition.”
Olivia nudged Peter and whispered, “Your colleague was right.”
“Still don’t change the fact.”
“What fact?”
“That he’s an asshole.”
Miller went on.
“On flights made in January and February 1939, an area of about 350,000 km² was surveyed photographically using serial imaging cameras. In their course, they discovered hitherto completely unknown mountainous regions free of ice in the coastal hinterlands.”
“At the pivot points on the polygonal flight patterns, metal arrows bearing the national insignia were dropped in order to assert German territorial claims.”
“In the course of special added flights that Ritscher also took part in, they filmed and took color photos of areas of official interest. Biological investigations were carried out onboard the ‘Schwabenland’ and on the ocean ice along the coast. The expedition’s leadership named the surveyed and flown-over area between 10° W und 15° E ‘New Schwabenland.”
“From Captain Ritscher we have it that he was preparing another expedition with improved, lighter aircraft on skis, which, it has been assumed until now, never took place because of the start of the Second World War.”
“But, what if—?” Miller argued.
Liam Murphy chuckled. “What? What if it was just that, folks going about their whaling business?”
Frank Miller gave Liam the look a teacher would give a headstrong student. He went on.
“During the years 1940 to 1943, the German Reich carries out additional, this time secret, military operations in New Schwabenland and, in 1942/1943, it begins expanding an ice station into a German fortress. As the hostile armies gather on Germany’s borders, feverish attempts to evacuate material, high technology, secret documents, and important individuals to the base commence.
“More than three months after the German Reich capitulated in 1945, on the other side of the world the German submarine U-530 entered the Argentinian port of Mar del Plata. Its commander, described in the local newspapers as tall and blond, identified himself as Otto Wermuth. Neither he nor most of the crew could produce identification papers. Only one month later, the U-977 submarine, commanded by Heinz Schaeffer, reached the same port. Coincidence? There was a suspicion, floated by the Soviets, that Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and their closest aides had been on board and had been landed.
“In
the winter of 1946/1947, the US Navy conducted what was advertised as a purely scientific expedition to the Antarctic. Taking part in this operation, codenamed “Operation High Jump,” were an aircraft carrier, destroyers, icebreakers, a submarine for a total of 13 warships, 15 heavy transport aircraft and long-range reconnaissance planes, and almost 5,000 men.
“Does that sound to you like a scientific expedition?” Miller asked the camp.
“The expedition was slated to last six months. But three weeks into it, Admiral Byrd already ordered an end to it, because of the loss of several airplanes. Pilots had gone missing. It was such a hasty retreat that nine airplanes were left behind on the permanent ice.”
Miller handed his stick to Itay Friedman, crossed his hands on his chest, and stared at the crew.
“As I already said, this is quite a lot to digest. I myself would not believe it at first. I thought all of it was someone’s imagination. Some mad attempt at conspiracy.”
“How do you know all of this?” Anabia Nassif pushed his glasses up his nose.
“It is not important how I know, but we are here now. And I don’t suppose anyone here would think me mad enough to go on a wild goose chase. If the credibility of facts is what worries anyone here, I can assure you that we are on track.
“My suspicions were confirmed when my associates came upon a map which has been in the possession of a scientist who had worked in Hitler’s secret laboratory. Now we have the location, coordinates and all.”
Quiet, as solemn as the documents in Olivia’s computer in her apartment, settled on the camp. Miller glanced at Friedman and nodded. The bodyguard gave Miller another map.
“A scientist? Are you kidding me?” Anabia Nassif said.
“I don’t kid,” Miller answered softly. “The scientist’s name was Harald Kruger and he had all the evidence that has led us here.”
The biologist Anabia Nassif turned to look at Peter and Ted Cooper. He met deadpan gazes. Olivia watched the billionaire with some unease.
“Now you all have the rare opportunity as some of the very few people alive to see for themselves, for the first time after years-old mystery, the site of the laboratory here on this continent.” Miller hung Harald Kruger’s map over the former one.
Hunt for the Holy Grail Page 10
