RED ICE

by R. L. Crossland

  “Yuri often asked me, in a veiled way, what good was harnessing the universe when at the same time men’s souls were being tethered. ‘Couldn’t I think of any higher calling than physics?’ I couldn’t understand him. Wasn’t he a physics student himself? I sensed he questioned my particular vocational choice. Despite these mystifying exchanges, we remained firm and loyal friends.

  “Not until several years later, after capture with my artillery unit and my subsequent escape from a German POW camp, did I begin to understand Yuri. To our Soviet masters, the story of my escape and naïve return to the Red Army had to be the flimsy cover story of a spy. (In retrospect, I now fully appreciate how incredible such an act must have appeared to one who understood the Soviet system—which I did not, then.)

  “The first weeks, those weeks before you’re sent to a camp, are the hardest. I was thrown into an ancient prison east of Moscow. Despair is simply a word until you have survived long periods of torture and lack of sleep.

  “Your thinking changes when the single driving purpose of life is the avoidance of pain. You begin to doubt everything and abandon all you once valued. You decide that you were a fool. Your whole spectrum was off center. If this is the depths of man’s depravity toward man then you must shift your moral spectrum a good deal lower. You were aiming too high when you sought the center. You expected too much. Obviously if men permit such a system, this is the system they deserve. I had hit, I believe the American expression is, ‘rock bottom.’

  “Then, during one particularly savage beating, Yuri’s words came to me. Yes, there was a higher calling than physics—not the caduceus, nor the scales, nor the sword, but—the pen. A reason for living now separated me from the doomed. Eventually I was to see thousands die who had no cause but personal survival. My cause was survival, but more, to destroy the system that established and maintained the camps.

  “Yuri cared for my wife and daughter until they, too, were imprisoned. He smuggled us all food and notes of encouragement. Yuri’s words kept me alive and gave me a mission. I endured knowing someday I would fight back. All this I owe Yuri and can never pay back.

  “I have never mentioned Yuri by name, but he appears as a character in many of my books. The KGB wasn’t able to establish his identity until recently. They seized him on as flimsy a pretext as they ever need and have transported him to a camp somewhere near the Sea of Okhotsk. Yuri was never a strong man physically. As a special prisoner—a status his association with me will rate him—he can’t last six months.”

  Kurganov brought his trembling, gnarled hands before him and stared straight at me through those mournful hound-dog eyes.

  “That is why I need your help. You must rescue Yuri from that corrective labor camp in eastern Siberia.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I whistled two long notes. Q. Frazer Enterprises; the extremely difficult we accomplish immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.

  “Lieutenant Commander Frazer, I have never done anything by part measures. You are a top man in your field. I am confident if anyone can effect this rescue, it must be a man of your experience. You must tell me you will do it for me. Yes, you must tell me that.”

  His confidence was flattering but was it well founded? Admittedly I had done several prisoner rescues and agent exfiltrations while on active duty. Recently, I’d smuggled families out of East Germany and Iran. This was well beyond all that—by contrast those operations were wading-pool exercises. This was a Channel swim.

  I rubbed my right shoulder.

  But where else could Kurganov go? The Central Intelligence Agency wouldn’t touch a bombshell like this in its present emasculated form. Moreover, there was nothing in it for the Company. Bluntly, Yuri had only sentimental value.

  Had anyone else asked, I would have politely declined. Access to Siberia was too limited, the number of risks from man and weather too high, the probability of success too low. But this giant had six decades of Russian suffering etched on his face and it was a heavier burden than any man deserved.

  “Mr. Kurganov, I’ll look into it. There are many reasons why such an operation may not be feasible. I must know all you know about camp life, where Yuri is held, as well as what intelligence I can gather on the region before I can give you a conclusive answer. If it can be done, I will find and train the men to do it. I assure you. One other thing, this is going to call for considerable resources.”

  Sato translated and Kurganov smiled. It seemed such a shock to see a face like that distorted into a smile. I had the urge to hug him, it must have been the Russian influence.

  “Lieutenant Commander, I am a rich man…a best-selling author with much, too much money. You will receive…” he named a sensible number “… plus expenses. I will cover the invoices for anything that needs to be done.”

  He clearly was not overpaying me personally. I liked his emphasis on the job rather than the rewards. Professionalism in this business did not equate with big dollars. Kurganov had done his homework; he knew Frazer.

  I don’t know who had convinced him he was employing a genuine professional and not some useless driftwood. What would I do with the money? Hell, I’d only spend it. For Kurganov, I’d have agreed to try it for a good bottle of vodka. Well, nearly.

  But perhaps he was right and I was the genuine professional he thought my record indicated. Already I was weighing different plans. A thousand questions were caroming about within the inner armor of my brain. Most were about the rescue…some were about Kurganov.

  CHAPTER 4

  Through Sato I explained, “The project contains three basic problem areas. They are, one, determining Vyshinsky’s location; two, arranging transportation to and from a point within striking distance of that location; and three, recruiting and training a raiding party.”

  “Da, da…” Kurganov agreed before Sato could finish his sentence.

  “The first, and likely the most difficult task will be to pin down Yuri’s whereabouts precisely.”

  “Yes, this will be very difficult. Mr. Kurganov believes his contacts in the CCCP should prove very useful. However, the corrective-labor-camp system often moves prisoners among several camps. It is not unusual for a prisoner to be moved through many camps before his…” Sato’s voice trailed off, leaving the end result unsaid.

  A vivid image of human scarecrows in black, numbered uniforms stumbling through knee-deep snow made a sharp contrast with the thick carpet and plush upholstery of Sato’s office. It was a discomforting image.

  “A further problem, I’ll venture, will be that the communications through Kurganov’s pipeline will be slow and, out of necessity, often cryptic. It would be the ultimate nightmare to penetrate a camp and find Vyshinsky had been moved. You must make this clear to Mr. Kurganov.”

  I paused.

  “Secondly, it will be no easy task getting delivered within raiding distance of Yuri’s camp and still be able to execute an orderly withdrawal. Does Kurganov have any idea of which portion of eastern Siberia?”

  “The Kamchatka Peninsula, Magadan, or possibly the Kurils. In one of the timber-cutting or mining camps, or in the Kurils, a construction camp.”

  I shook my head understandingly. So this was why he had come to an ex-SEAL officer; all possibilities were coastal and good prospects for seaborne raiding.

  “Good, that broadens our prospects. I can think of several options. If the particular coastline lies close to a shipping lane, our party can launch from a slow-moving merchant ship in either rubber boats or kayaks. Or under ideal conditions, we would go in along the coast using a low-flying seaplane, still using smallcraft to get to shore. Our best alternative would be to go in by submarine, lockout, or wet-deck launch, and respectively swim or paddle to the first substantial coastal ice.”

  Fatigue was starting to show in Sato’s face. He had to strain for the Russian equivalents of all these unlawyerlike terms. Wearily, he raked his fingers through his hair, yet I felt he could go on for days like this.


  “Third and easiest, but by no means without its problems, will be recruiting and training a squad for covert, cold-weather, commando raiding. Through personal contact, I can bring in two or three more SEALs. The rest will have to be picked mercenaries.

  “Siberia will be a problem. It would have been easy to recruit for a raid on one of the world’s steamy regions. The bars of Marseilles swarm with men ‘of experience and resource’ who can survive for weeks with a rifle, canteen, and ten sticky fingers. Cold-weather warfare is a different variety of misery, requiring advance planning and discipline. Both of these elements have been rare in the soldier-of-fortune operations of the past several decades. Experienced mercenaries, aware of this failing, will be reluctant to sign on for a trip through the Russian winter wonderland. The mere mention of an objective as dismally grim as ours will deter most. To top all, a six-month outside limit means we will be braving the worst of the Siberian winter.”

  After reviewing these points and many minor ones, it was late afternoon. I suggested that Kurganov advance me $100,000 for expenses to see if the rescue could be put together. Gesturing acceptance, he gave me a typically middle European dead-fish handshake and I left. Part of Kurganov’s burden left with me.

  I flexed my right shoulder. Some wounds had memories.

  The train from Yokohama cast long autumn shadows on the fields.

  Why was I drawn to these projects? I had served my time, eight years as a regular naval officer. I had already earned my red badge of courage; no one could fault me for saying “enough.” The system had kicked me out. Nothing could be simpler. The answer “enough” could be explained with a dozen justifications and some very telling legal proscriptions.

  But I was a military officer, nothing more. I could not see myself any other way.

  I leaned back in the train seat.

  Why?

  Was it factors beyond my control? Heredity? Genes? Had my family something to do with it? Some family tradition?

  My father had grown up in a fishing village in western Scotland and was attending school in Glasgow when World War II broke out. He was graduated with a certificate in mechanical engineering near the end of the unexploded bomb scare in London. In desperation, they gave him a quick course in bomb disposal and a commission in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve.

  “Ach, by the time I was ready the trouble had subsided, an’ I talked ma way onto a wee Fairmile boat. More style, thought I, than diggin’ up bombs in cellars,” he’d said more than once. “And a different type a grit required. On a dark night, with the wind just right, you felt like Drake.”

  His boat was assigned to the Coastal Forces and saw only a moderate amount of action. He met my mother, a U.S. Army nurse assigned to patch up Rangers who were attending the Achnacarry Commando Course in Inverness. “Butcher and Bolt School” he’d called it. His Fairmile had ferried Rangers across the Channel on D-Day.

  Time softened his recollections. It must have been rough on him in many ways. The Regular Royal Navy did not look upon engineering officers with high regard…or officers with RNVR commissions…or officers without university degrees…or bookish officers with broken fingernails and noses…who ran bloody piddling little boats. I could tell he had been proud of that commission. He had been a naval officer. And that meant something.

  My mother, a Dolliver, one of the Salem Dollivers, came from a family of steady distinction and little cash. My mother had never said much about the courtship with the raven-haired Scot, but the family album of World War II pictures was treated like a rare book. I often wondered how my father had managed to win her affections in the running competition with the cocky Rangers and Commandos.

  After the war he took a job in the States, in the industrial New England town of Pequonnock, where my brothers and I were born. He had worked his way up to plant manager by the time I graduated from Berkeley.

  There was the unspoken assumption that my brothers and I would serve someday. I knew the periodic skeet-shooting sessions were not purely recreational. Nor were the camping trips and long hikes. Doing your duty required a little hardening in the formative years.

  “There’s a grand lot of bullies can’t abide a Frazer. Remember that,” he’d say on those stiff-legged hikes. “We’re no’ big but we can terrier the hell oot a them. And mind you, no’ all bullies are big or found in a schoolyard.”

  Later, when I went into the Navy, he added, “Bear in mind, too, that no’ all villains wear a different uniform than you do. I can remember a grand lot of toffy-nosed, ring-cuffed blokes in the Andrew whose actions really helped the other side. There are Chinamen who play three-sided chess. ’Tis a more realistic game. It’ll be a rare war when you’re fighting only one enemy or where all your enemies are out in front of you.”

  My second year in the Navy, he died in a plant explosion. They say he was seen rushing to close several key valves when the second blast came.

  My mother died of cancer two years later.

  A passenger train whizzing by in the opposite direction made the train wobble. Two children in school uniforms played with a toy robot or spaceman the size of my thumb.

  Why?

  Was it factors beyond my control? Environment? Had there been something in my food? Water? Air?

  The town of Pequonnock was a brick-and-cobblestone collage of rubber factories, shoe and sweater mills, and heaps of bivalve shells. It was jammed with a little bit of everything. You could go a mile down the coast from the coal barges and see some of the most impressive sailing yachts in New England. Not many of the townspeople had anything you could call a yacht, though more than a few had boats.

  The style was smokestack exotic. Some joked that our phone book had the greatest concentration of consonants in the state. We had pastry shops in four languages. It took a month and a half for the divergent groups to stop celebrating their different Christmases.

  My memories were of boyish games played in and about the railroad sidings, the piers, and the barges near where my father worked. And of flashlight tag, led by an Estonian scoutmaster, around upstate ponds. It was a game at which I excelled. You could will yourself into invisibility. Conform to the low-lying scrub, and don’t move. Don’t flutter an eyelash.

  In later years I remember roaming the dunes and tidal marshes that formed an L at one end of town. These coastal badlands were the site of endless imaginary adventures. The occasional old tire, the abandoned refrigerator, and the three-wheeled shopping carts became props for my solitary fantasies. But Pequonnock had a way of jarring you back.

  The Hungarian revolution left its mark on the town. The work force, already heavily central European, swelled with Hungarian refugees within the year. A year later a tufted-browed teacher arrived at our school. His fastidious manner, Gabor-sister accent, and firm sense of discipline did not sit well with his students. On my way out of the school building one day, I spotted two schoolmates with DA haircuts loosening the lug nuts on Mr. Horvath’s tires.

  “Get away from that car.”

  “Aw, get stuffed, rah-rah.”

  “You heard me, get away from that car.”

  I waivered.

  “It’s old man Horvath’s, an’ he gets what he gets. Man, you ever hear ’im talk? Sounds like a fairy kraut or weirdo Russki or somethin’.”

  “You’d be the funny-sounding one where he comes from,” I said lamely.

  “Well, send him back. Hey, smartstuff, just get out of here. Or maybe you wanna stop us?” one said, working himself up.

  I tried. Things were always scuffling and inconclusive at that age. Then, too, they had the tire iron. In the end it cost me twelve stitches, a lump on the head, a jammed thumb, and two weeks of detentions levied by Horvath. He had, however, offered to drive me home after we retightened the lug nuts.

  “I am a civilized man,” he said with his eyes firmly on the road. “Am” sounded like “ham.” “It is my recently learned experience,” the weary teacher said thoughtfully, “that it is not very good t
o be too civilized.”

  The train passed through a tunnel that reminded me of a collapsed parachute and a training raid in Korea. The SEAL parachutist had broken his back.

  Why?

  Maybe it was just me.

  A series of aptitudes and inclinations marked the course I held. These aptitudes and inclinations stood out like channel buoys among the flotsam and jetsam that defined Quillon Frazer.

  Clausewitz had said that war was the province of physical exertion and suffering.

  I was good at sports, but particularly drawn to mettle-testing “ordeal” sports: distance running, distance swimming, cross-country skiing, and the like. Then again “punishing” sports like boxing, wrestling, and the martial arts carried great weight in a blue-collar town. If nothing else, they kept the schoolyard predators away from a management kid who read too much. Unconsciously, I had prepared and continued to prepare myself for wars of movement where man alone provided the only reliable momentum, and for battles fought at close quarters where the ability to absorb pain and a strong arm might make the difference.

  Clausewitz had stated that war was the province of friction.

  You could talk about the world the way it ought to be. Others could do that. The world the way it ought to be seemed a long way off to a veteran with my combat experience. Yet the hot spots of the world were where it was changing, for the better if I could help it. These hot spots were the points of friction for careening political philosophies, religions, cultures, and economies on collision courses.

  Some men could change the coefficient of friction at these points. Worldwide, at any given time, there were perhaps five hundred men who had participated in special operations under fire and were ready to participate in them again. I was one.

  War was a rough study in abrading contrasts, but it was an important study. There would always be war in the same way there would always be disease. If you acknowledged that and realized that you brought a degree of skill and industry to your side, then you appreciated the parallel between you and the surgeon who, through the destructive cut of his knife, saved good tissue and prolonged life.