The Arctic Event

by Robert Ludlum

  A moment of silence followed, then, “Clear.”

  Smith took his own fast look around inside the unheated building. There was only the camp’s auxiliary gasoline generator and ranked shelves packed with equipment and stores. The reserves were somewhat depleted after a season in the field, but a sizable emergency stock remained. It was an old just-in-case for polar exploration. For a one-season stay, you supplied for two.

  The central hut was the combination laboratory and radio shack. A wind turbine mounted on a short, heavily guylined mast purred nearby, pumping out electric power. A second, taller steel girder mast, carrying the communications antenna, stood atop a low ice-covered knoll some hundred yards beyond the camp area.

  The last word from Kayla Brown had come from the radio shack.

  Again the team repeated the entry drill.

  Again, “Clear!”

  Rifles lowered, Smith and Valentina followed Randi into the hut. A smoky warmth struck Smith’s face as he pushed through the inner snow lock door. This building still held life. Laboratory implements gleamed untouched on the workbenches and central table. Sample and equipment cases lay on the floor, some closed and secure, ready to load. Others were open and in the process of being filled.

  The heat in the cabin issued from a small coal stove centered on the north wall. Crossing to it, Metrace lifted the stove lid, revealing glowing orange ash. “I wonder how long one of these things can hold a fire,” she mused, adding a few chunks of glossy black anthracite from the scuttle.

  “Probably for some time,” Smith commented, looking around the lab. “There’s no sign of a struggle, and there are plenty of delicate things in here to smash.”

  “Um-hm,” Valentina agreed, pointing toward a row of empty hooks near the exterior doorway. “Miss Brown must have had the chance to put on her snow gear. Apparently she left under controlled circumstances.”

  Smith went on into the radio room. With her gloves off and her hood thrown back, Randi was sitting in the sidebands operator’s chair, a frown on her face. The radios were still switched on. Check lights glowed green, and the thin hiss of a carrier wave issued from the speakers. As Smith looked on she pressed the transmit key at the base of the desk mike. “CGAH Haley CGAH Haley, this is KGWI Wednesday Island. This is a check call. This is a check call. Do you copy? Over.”

  The carrier hissed back emptily.

  “What do you think, Randi?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “We’re on frequency, and the transmitter gain indicates we’re putting out.” She adjusted the receiver squelch and transmitter power and repeated the test call, to no effect. “Either they’re not hearing us or we’re not hearing them.”

  There was a sat phone and data link at the far end of the console. Smith stepped around Randi and lifted the receiver, punching in the Haley’s address code. “No joy here, either,” he reported after a moment. “It’s not accessing the satellite.”

  “Could it be the antennas?”

  “Possibly. That’ll be something to check out later. Let’s go.”

  The last hut in the row was the bunk room. The leading edge of the snow squall had enveloped the station, and visibility was graying out as the team approached the building.

  Once more they repeated the entry drill. Flanking the snow lock door, Smith and Metrace listened as Randi pushed her way into the bunk room. After a moment, they heard her exclaim aloud, “Now, this is just too weird!”

  Smith and the historian looked at each other and shouldered through the lock into the bunk room.

  Inside, the overall layout was similar to the laboratory. There were two sets of bunk beds and a small coal heater against the north wall of the cabin. Kitchen equipment and a food preparation counter were on the south, with a communal mess table in its center. A set of women’s quarters had been partitioned in the far end of the hut, an accordion-style sliding door standing half open.

  The bunk room had been heavily personalized with a variety of photographs, hard-copy downloads, and sketches, humorous and otherwise, tacked and taped to the walls.

  Randi was standing beside the mess table, staring down at a plate holding a half-consumed corned beef sandwich and a half-empty glass of tea.

  “I concur, Miss Russell,” Valentina Metrace said, joining in the stare at the sandwich. “That is indeed the limit.”

  Randi set her submachine gun on the table. “I feel like I’ve just gone aboard the Mary Celeste.” She tugged off one of her leather inner gloves and touched a couple of fingers to the side of the glass. “Still warm,” she commented.

  Looking up, she tapped the rim of the glass with a fingernail.

  Jon Smith knew that he truly had a team working at that moment. None of the three in the bunk room had to say a word to understand her meaning.

  The portable SINCGARS transceiver squalled and shrieked, with only the faintest fragmentary hint of human speech discernible through the clamor of the disintegrating Heaviside layer. Even with the extended-range eighteen-foot antenna strung in the rafters of the laboratory hut, it was futility.

  Smith snapped off the radio. “I think the Haley might be receiving us and I think they might be trying to acknowledge our call, but I wouldn’t count on anything beyond that.”

  “It’s the same with the set in the Ranger,” Randi added. “While we’re on the ground it doesn’t have enough power to punch through the solar interference. We might have more luck with the big station SSB, but I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.”

  With their gear unloaded and the helicopter tarped and tied down against the weather, the landing party from the Haley had gathered in the laboratory hut, both to make a futile attempt to contact their mother ship and to develop a course of action.

  “What do we do now, Colonel?” Smyslov inquired.

  “We do what we came here to do: get a look at the crash site.” Smith glanced out of the lab window. The snow had slackened for the moment, but the wind still gusted uneasily. “We’ve got enough daylight left to reach the saddleback. Major, Val, you’re with me. Get your gear together and plan for a night on the ice. Doctor Trowbridge, as you’ve stated, this station is your responsibility. I think it’s best you stay here. Randi, if you could step outside with me for a moment. I need to talk with you.”

  Garbing up, they pushed out through the snow lock, making the transition from the enclosed warmth of the hut to the piercing cold of the outdoors. Smith led Randi up the packed snow trail between the cabins until there was no chance of being overheard.

  “All right,” he said, turning to her. “We have a problem.”

  Randi produced a wry ChapSticked smile. “Another one?”

  “You might think so,” Smith replied, the mist of his breath swirling around his face. “Here’s the situation. I’m going to have to do something I don’t want to do. I have to split my forces, such as they are, to cover both the station and the bomber. I’m going to need both Professor Metrace and Major Smyslov with me at the crash site. That means I’m going to have to leave you here on your own. I don’t like it, but I’m stuck with it.”

  Randi’s face went dark. “Thanks so much for the vote of confidence, Colonel.”

  Annoyance cut across Smith’s features. “Don’t cop an attitude with me, Randi. I don’t need it. I suspect the minimum you’ll be confronting down here is a mass murderer. Your only backup will be Professor Trowbridge, who, I also suspect, will be about as much use in a fight as an extra bucket of water on a sinking ship. If I didn’t think you were the most survivable member of this team, I wouldn’t even be considering this scenario. As it stands, I estimate you have the best chance of coming out of this job alive. Are we absolutely clear on this?”

  The cold words and cold focus in those dark blue eyes jolted her back momentarily. This was a facet of Jon Smith Randi had not encountered before, either in his time with Sophia or in her chance encounters since then. This was the full-house soldier, the warrior.

  “
I’m sorry, Jon, I got off base. I’ll cover things here for you, no problem.”

  The look on his face disengaged, and Smith smiled one of his rare full smiles, resting a hand momentarily on her shoulder. “I never doubted it, Randi. In a lot of ways this will be the tougher job. You’ve got to verify our suspicions about what’s happened here while watching your back to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. You’ve also got to find out how the word was passed off the island and who it was passed to. Trowbridge may be of help to you there. That’s one of the reasons I brought him along. Anything you can learn about the identities, resources, and intents of the hostiles could be critical.”

  She nodded. “I have some ideas about that. I’ll try and get the big radio working, too.”

  “Good enough.” Smith’s expression closed up again. “But while you’re about it, remember to stay alive, all right?”

  “As long as it doesn’t interfere with the mission,” she replied. Then she tried to lighten the Zen of her statement. “And while you’re up there on that mountain I suggest you watch your own back with that scheming brunette. I think she has designs on you.”

  Smith threw his head back and laughed, and for an instant Randi could see what had enraptured her sister. “An arctic glacier is hardly the environment for a romantic interlude, Randi.”

  “Where there’s a will there’s a way, Jon Smith, and I have a hunch that lady has a lot of will.”

  Standing outside the laboratory hut, Randi watched the three small figures trudge up the flag-marked trail, the one that led eastward along the shoreline toward the central peaks. The snow had stopped altogether, but the mist, the near-perpetual “sea smoke” of the poles, was closing in. The arctic camouflage her teammates wore blended them into the environment until, abruptly, they were gone.

  “What now?” Doctor Trowbridge stood beside her in the lee of the hut, garish in the Day-Glo orange cold-weather gear issued to the science expedition. Randi could see that the academic was beginning to regret his momentary burst of responsibility back aboard the Haley.

  He was a man meant for the warm classrooms and comfortable offices of a university campus, not for the wild, cold, and dangerous areas of the world. She could see the fear and loneliness of this place sinking into him. It would be so even without the overlay of the Misha scenario.

  He was questioning his only companion as well, this alien being with the submachine gun slung over her shoulder.

  Randi felt a momentary surge of contempt for the academic. Then, angrily, she dismissed the thought. Rosen Trowbridge could no more help what he was than she could help being the bitch wolf she had become. She had no right to judge who was the superior.

  “That was a computer data link attached to the satellite phone, wasn’t it?”

  Trowbridge blinked at her. “Yes, that was how most of the expedition’s findings were downloaded to the project universities.”

  “Were the expedition members allowed access to that data link?”

  “Of course. Every expedition member had a personal computer and was allotted several hours of Internet access a week for their project studies and for personal use—for e-mail and the like.”

  “Right,” Randi replied. “That would work. The first thing we do, Doctor, is to collect laptops.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The Southern Face of West Peak

  After the first hour they had been forced to strap on crampons, and their ice axes had become something more than walking staffs. The safety line linking them together had also become a comfort rather than an encumbrance.

  “This is it. Last flag. End of the trail.” Smith shot a look up the mountain slope above them, checking for unstable rock formations and snow cornices. “Let’s take a breather.”

  He and his teammates shrugged out of their pack frames and sank down with their backs to the vertical wall of the broad ledge they had been following. The climb itself had not been technically challenging. There had been no piton and rope work involved, but the cold, the icy footing, and the intermittent patches of broken stone had made it physically demanding.

  They’d been climbing into the overcast, and the gray haze had folded in around them, limiting their world to a fifty-yard radius. Visibility grew somewhat better-looking downward from the ledge. They could see as far as Wednesday’s coastline, but the differentiation between ice-sheathed land and ice-sheathed sea was a subtle one.

  “Hydrate, people.” With his snow mask tugged down and his goggles lifted, Smith opened the zip of his parka, removing a canteen from one of the large inside pockets, where the warmth of his body kept the water liquid.

  With a physician’s instincts he watched as his companions followed suit. “A little more, Val,” he counseled. “Just because you don’t feel like you need water in this environment doesn’t mean you don’t require it.”

  She made a face and took another grudging mouthful. “It’s not the input that I’m worried about; it’s the inevitable outflow.” She screwed the cap back onto her canteen and turned to Smyslov. “That’s the curse of having a doctor perennially in the house, Gregori. He goes around insisting you enjoy good health.”

  The Russian nodded ruefully. “He erodes you like water dripping on a rock. The bastard has me down to ten cigarettes a day and feeling guilty about them.”

  “If he starts going off on chocolate and champagne, I’m planting a cake spatula between his shoulder blades.”

  “Or vodka,” Smyslov agreed. “I will not have him attacking my national identity.”

  Smith chuckled at the exchange. He didn’t need to worry about team morale at any time soon. Nor about the capabilities of his companions.

  Smyslov had obviously undergone the same kind of mountain warfare training and conditioning he had. He knew and could apply the simple, effective basics, with no unnecessary flash. Valentina Metrace was a tyro but with a very steep learning curve. She was quick, she kept her eyes open, and she was ready and willing to take instruction—the kind of individual who could pick up an understanding of any skill rapidly. And for all her urbane drawing room sophistication there was a startling reserve of wiry strength in that slender, long-lined body.

  There were intriguing things to be learned about this woman, Smith mused. Where had she come from? Her accent was an odd combination of educated American, British, and something else. And how had she developed the odd set of talents that made her a cipher agent.

  And as one of Fred Klein’s ciphers, she, like Smith, must be a person without personal attachments or commitments. What disaster had made her alone?

  Smith forced his mind back to immediate concerns. Unsnapping his map case, he took out a laminated sectional photo map of Wednesday Island as scanned from polar orbit. “This is as far as the expedition’s ground parties got—the official ones anyway. From here the climbing party that found the bomber started working directly upslope to the peak. We’ll follow on around the mountain to a point above the glacier in the saddleback.”

  “How does the route ahead look, Colonel?” Smyslov asked.

  “Not bad if this map’s any indication.” Smith passed the photo chart down to the Russian. “This ledge we’ve been following seems to keep going for another half mile or so. At its end we can drop down into the glacier. We might need to do some rope work, but it shouldn’t be too bad. The crash site’s almost at the foot of the east peak, about a mile, mile and a quarter across the ice. With no hang-ups we should make it well before nightfall.”

  He glanced at Metrace. She was sitting back against the rock wall, her eyes closed for the moment. “Holding up okay, Val?”

  “Marvelous,” she replied, not opening her eyes. “Just assure me there’ll be a steaming bubbly spa, a roaring fireplace, and a quart of hot buttered rum waiting for me at our destination and I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t promise anything but a sleeping bag and a solid belt of some very good medicinal whisky in your MRE coffee.”

  “A dis
tant second, but acceptable.” She opened her eyes and looked back at him, a quizzical smile brushing her face. “I thought you medical types had decided that consuming ardent spirits in freezing weather was another biological no-no.”

  “I’m not that healthy yet, Professor.”

  Her smile deepened in approval. “There is hope for you yet, Colonel.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Wednesday Island Station

  “Shouldn’t you have a warrant or something?” Doctor Trowbridge asked suddenly.

  Distracted, Randi looked up from the row of six identical Dell laptops on the laboratory worktable. “What?”

  “These computers contain personal documents and information. Shouldn’t you have some kind of a warrant before you go rummaging around in them?”

  Randi shrugged and turned back to the computers, tapping a series of on buttons. “Damned if I know, Doctor.”

  “Well, you are a government...agent of some nature.”

  “I don’t recall saying that.”

  The six screens glowed, cycling through their start-up sequences. Of the six, only two demanded access code words: those belonging to Dr. Hasegawa and Stefan Kropodkin.

  “Still, before I can allow you to violate the privacy of my expedition’s staff members there must be some kind of...”

  Randi sighed, fixing a baleful gaze on Trowbridge. “First, Doctor, I don’t have anyplace to get a warrant from. Secondly, I don’t have anybody to give a warrant to, and finally, I don’t really give a shit! Okay?”

  Trowbridge subsided in outraged bafflement for a moment, turning to stare out of the lab window.

  Turning back to the computers, Randi methodically set to work, checked the four open systems first, skimming through the e-mail files and address lists. Nothing sprang out at her from the stored correspondence. Professional and personal business, letters from wives, families, and friends. The English boy, Ian, was apparently on very good terms with at least three different girlfriends, and the American girl, Kayla, was discussing a marriage with a fiancé.