The Iceberg - [Richard Mariner 05]

by Peter Tonkin

  John shouted aloud with shock. He lurched back onto his knees, knocked upright as though by an upper cut. The lips in the face, spread wide in a grinning grimace, were nearly black. The teeth were pearl white and square, seemingly huge between shrunken gums. The nose was fine, slightly hooked and skinless down one side. The cheekbones were sharp, the chin square. The eyes were wide and staring, like marbles; dead as doll’s eyes. John shouted again and scrabbled backwards wildly until he was stopped by what felt like two tree trunks close together. He tore his gaze away from the hypnotically shocking vision frozen into the ice cliff and looked up at the figure of Richard Mariner towering above him. Richard reached down, gripped him by the shoulder and, as though he was weightless, raised him to his feet. Without taking his eyes off the figure which had so shocked John, he said quietly, ‘So that’s what happened to him. I wondered. We all did.’

  Still deeply gripped by shock, John gasped and gobbled for a moment until die effect die corpse had had on Richard registered. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Who wondered what, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Robin, Colin, Ann Cable; everyone else who knew him. Wondered what happened to him after they got away.’

  ‘You know who this is? You remember who this is?’ John simply could not believe what was happening. How could the shock of finding another corpse on this God-cursed iceberg possibly have jolted Richard’s memory back into place?

  But it had. ‘Oh yes,’ he said quietly, his voice even colder than the unforgiving ice around him. ‘I remember everything about this particular son of a bitch. I never actually met him, but I’ve seen his picture often enough and I know all there is to know about him, now.’

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The messages both found their way desultorily and at different times into the communications room in the bowels of 2 Dzerzhinsky Street, Moscow. One came direct from England and the other, more circuitously, from Washington via East Germany in the normal liaison between the STASI and the KGB. Thence they were passed to the records section as neither report was tagged urgent or important. In the old days, they would have been filed - everything was always filed - and forgotten for years until some grey apparatchik made a connection on the third or fourth routine check. But not now. Now they were fed straight into the computer to join the millions of other random pieces of information in its almost infinite memory. Because the mainframe was only updated with non-urgent information once a month, it happened that the news of both Dougie Dundas’s strange death and the form of Paul Chan’s unusual scar were fed in together.

  Seven years or so previously, in the aftermath of Chernobyl and before Tomsk Seven had demonstrated how little anyone really cared about nuclear accidents in Russia, a perpetual file had been opened especially to contain facts related to the disaster. The file had been tagged, in those far-off days when the disaster was still of major political importance, for the attention of the Deputy Director. So that, although the reports individually were of no apparent importance, coming together as they did they caused the computer automatically to reactivate the Chernobyl file. The original program was clear and the directive inescapable: into this file the computer had to place any reports of radioactive black glass and any reports of the words Leonid and Brezhnev when associated with ships, the sea or radioactivity.

  And the fact that the file was being reactivated and thus updated rang an alarm bell in the Deputy Director’s office.

  ~ * ~

  Moscow was in turmoil. President Yeltsin was preparing for direct confrontation with the People’s Assembly who were preparing to barricade themselves in the White House. There was a threat of revolution in the air and senior officers of both the armed and security services were habitually rushing hither and yon at a moment’s notice, summoned for secret negotiations by one side or the other as the political situation slid rapidly out of control.

  Even so, it was unusual for a senior officer in GRU Army Intelligence to be riding towards Dzerzhinksy Street last thing on a Friday evening - unless he was going to the Detsky Mir toy store to buy a doll for his daughter who was waiting with his wife at their weekend dacha out in the woods. This, indeed, was an idea which appealed to Lieutenant General Boris Bovary, for he did not relish being summoned to the offices of a rival organisation on such short notice. But he was an acute man, and he had not risen to eminence merely by being the most successful intelligence commander in Afghanistan. No, he thought as his Zil pulled up and his driver saluted him smartly out of the back, the KGB might be a toothless tiger, but it still had long claws. And an infinite memory.

  He paused on the steps and looked across the wide road towards the bright bustle of the store where only the most privileged, the richest, and the foreign could afford to shop. Like most of the other big shops, in fact, during this painful period of post-Party reconstruction.

  Bovary had been careful not to speculate about why he had been summoned here. No one in his own office had been able to think of anything. His commanding officer had also been stumped but gruffly certain of the importance of whatever it was. The old man was tired and out of touch nowadays but Boris respected his contacts. Indeed, he respected his own contacts, too. So, if there was no glimmer of news, then this was either very secret or extremely obscure. Speculation would only serve to channel his mind into presuppositions which would blinker him and be counterproductive, perhaps dangerous.

  With his mind absolutely blank, therefore, he presented his credentials and followed the shapely figure of a young secretary sent to escort him up to his destination. She had a fine-boned, intelligent face, a full chest which caused the buttons of her fine blouse to strain, a slim waist and wide, welcoming hips. In the lift, alone with her, he sniffed secretly but appreciatively. She smelt of soap, even in this heat. Most attractive.

  But no. This kind of speculation could blinker a man just as effectively as any other kind. He wanted to be acute, not lustful. He blanked his mind again, automatically rearranging the already perfect lines of his sage-brown dress uniform - and failed to notice the speculative glance she shot him from the corner of her wide, violet eyes.

  ~ * ~

  The office of the Deputy Director looked down towards the square where the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky himself had stood until so recently. With his mind still carefully blank, Boris Bovary glanced across the room from the doorway, noted the view and then concentrated on the man who was standing idly looking down upon it. At least the KGB was not yet run by women, the soldier mused, unlike the British Secret Services.

  ‘General Bovary, Deputy Director,’ said the woman by way of introduction, then she shut the door behind her as she left.

  The Deputy Director looked up, and the two men began to take the measure of each other. Each one might have been looking in a mirror. They were both square, solid Georgians whose thick hair and long eyes spoke eloquently of Cossack blood. There was only a year or two between them and it would have been hard to say which was the older.

  ‘What do you know about icebergs, General?’ asked the Deputy Director.

  Bovary stayed where he was, so close to the door that his shoulders might have touched it had he not been at parade ground attention. ‘Nothing germane, Deputy Director.’

  ‘Germane,’ mused the KGB man. ‘A good word. Well-chosen. Please sit down while I consider its implications.’

  Boris marched to the chair indicated. He bent his knees ninety degrees and his elbows one hundred and twenty degrees, allowing his hands to cross in his lap, but remained at attention as he sat. He refused to let his mind speculate, though this was now something of a strain.

  ‘By germane I suppose you mean in a relevant intelligence context. I see your point. How can icebergs be of any interest to the intelligence services? Well, I will tell you. Icebergs become relevant when they become politically important. You understand this?’

  ‘So, we are discussing the iceberg called Manhattan which is currently en route to Africa under the eyes of
the world’s most powerful leaders and the United Nations, with the widely welcomed support of Premier Yeltsin and the merchant marine personnel he has graciously supplied.’

  The Deputy Director’s eyebrows rose appreciatively. They were square, shaggy eyebrows, like those of the late Comrade Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.

  ‘Have you read the Red File on Chernobyl?’

  ‘It was one of the files passed to us during the internal perestroika phase. We passed many Red Files back to you. And, in any case, many of the facts in the Chernobyl file were originally supplied by us.’

  ‘I will accept that as a simple yes, shall I?’ There was an instant of silence. ‘I’m beginning to appreciate your use of language, General. Germane . . .’ The Deputy Director flicked open a humidor and the fragrance of Virginia tobacco filled the room. He gestured. Bovary accepted - American cigarettes were his only weakness. Well, perhaps not his only weakness ...

  The two men lit up, watching each other through the smoke.

  ‘You are speculating about the links between an iceberg called Manhattan and the disaster at Chernobyl,’ probed the Deputy Director.

  As a matter of fact, Bovary was not. But the strain of keeping his mind blank was beginning to make him sweat.

  ‘They can be encapsulated in two words,’ persisted the Deputy Director as seductively as Mephistopheles whispering to Faust. ‘Leonid Brezhnev.’

  Bovary jumped, struck against his will by the coincidence: he had been thinking of Brezhnev only an instant before - of his eyebrows.

  The Deputy Director supposed that he must have struck a chord in his military audience. ‘I am surprised you realise the significance of the name,’ he said, piqued. ‘I had not realised that the loss of the Brezhnev had reached your ears. She was so carefully... non-military. Unusually so; that was her only flaw. Or so we thought.’

  Bovary’s mind was no longer blank. It was making quantum leaps from one cryptic comment to the next, tying them together. How accurately he was making these links he had no idea as yet. He sat in silence, therefore, knowing how seductive that, too, could be.

  ‘There was pandemonium here when she vanished, of course. But then the received knowledge, the best guess, came to be that she was somewhere at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean near Novaya Zemlya. Which was where the black glass was supposed to be in any case. So. No harm done then, and everyone relaxed.’

  But now things have started turning up. Bovary began to gain enough confidence in his understanding to predict the Deputy Director’s words.

  ‘But now one or two unusual reports have appeared in the Chernobyl file.’

  Close. Black glass? On the iceberg Manhattan?

  ‘Firstly, we have a report of a death on the iceberg Manhattan, caused by the ingestion of radioactive black glass.’

  ‘Ingestion?’

  ‘A soldier swallowed it. He must have thought it was worth a lot.’

  Bovary nodded once. Smuggling was not unknown among his own soldiers either.

  ‘It killed him of course. In the same report we have dental records from another corpse discovered on Manhattan, a very much older corpse whose dental records conform with those of the first officer of the missing ship.’

  ‘Pretty conclusive . . .’

  ‘And finally, we have a report from Washington that one of the scientists working on the ice seems to have an unusual radiation burn. It apparently looks like this.’ The Deputy Director pushed a piece of paper across to Bovary who instantly recognised the rough Cyrillic letters even though they were reversed.

  He sucked his cigarette and allowed his mind full rein.

  ‘It was the computer,’ said the Deputy Director, his defences destroyed by wonder. ‘A couple of reports from opposite sides of the world. Nothing to do with each other. Nothing to do with anything. In they go to the computer and my alarm bells start ringing and the Director says, “Cancel your weekend, Dimitri!” Vodka?’

  ‘The implications of the situation seem obvious.’ Bovary’s words were distantly academic, but he nodded yes as he spoke them. The Deputy Director reached into his desk drawer as he listened. ‘The potential political damage is incalculable. If the situation is discovered and blame is apportioned here, then we will be drummed out of the United Nations.’

  ‘Out of the international community,’ supplied the Deputy Director over the sound of clinking glass and gurgling liquid. ‘Goodbye World Bank. Goodbye international aid. Goodbye economy.’

  ‘Hello revolution.’ Bovary tossed back the vodka and slammed his glass down on the desk. ‘Hello anarchy.’ The fiery liquid seemed to have taken his breath away.

  ‘Hello civil war,’ said the Deputy Director, sipping his drink more slowly.

  Silence fell, broken only by the sound of vodka pouring and the scream of a siren from Dzerzhinsky Street.

  “The iceberg must be stopped, lost or destroyed before anyone finds out.’ Bovary drank his second vodka.

  ‘It represents a billion cubic metres of water. Remember, the one-tenth above the water alone is the size of Manhattan Island.’

  ‘It is not a situation calling for subtlety, then.’

  ‘Which is why we have turned to the GRU, General.’

  ‘The Russian personnel already involved ...’ The vodka was tempting Bovary into thinking aloud, something he rarely did.

  ‘A good thought, and one which is already being looked into.’

  ‘But also there is something else. Something military.’

  ‘Something relevant. Something elegant. You have a man out there. The right man. The relevant man. The man who started it all, so to speak.’

  ‘Gogol! Mother of God, you want me to send in Gogol!’

  ‘He is, as they say, in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘But he’s retired ... Sick . . . Dying. He’s a salesman, not—’

  ‘He’s within five hundred kilometres of the point of reception with a division of main battle tanks and a squadron of heavily-armed helicopters.’

  Bovary sat, stunned, staring fixedly at the clear greenish glass of his empty vodka tumbler. The Deputy Director refilled it for him.

  ‘Perhaps the first step would be to ask General Gogol to assess the situation.’

  Bovary tossed the clear liquid back. ‘Well, he could certainly take a look, I suppose.’

  ‘And no one any the wiser, if he’s careful.’

  Bovary shook his head in wonder. ‘Yes. He would have little trouble in arranging that, but I warn you . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’s not...’ Bovary paused, searching for a word that might impart his worry without divulging his knowledge. ‘Not answerable.’

  ‘You mean he’s out of control?’

  ‘No.’ Yes, thought Bovary, and the Deputy Director read it in his eyes.

  ‘A loose cannon, perhaps.’ The Deputy Director moderated the phrase carefully so that the military man could accept it.

  ‘Partly. Perhaps.’

  ‘But you can communicate with him? Ask him to take a look?’

  ‘I can order him to make a reconnaissance and a detailed tactical report, yes, of course.’

  ‘But how quickly? How soon?’

  ‘That depends on the clearance.’

  The Deputy Director slid across the desk a document on the bottom of which were a series of signatures. Bovary recognised them at first glance, though he checked their authenticity closely. The last, least important of them, belonged to his commanding general.

  He picked up the phone.

  ‘Who are you calling?’

  ‘First my commanding officer, then General Gogol.’

  ‘You’re calling Gogol? On the phone? From here? Now?’

  ‘If he’s in his tank or his helicopter I’ll get straight through- If he’s anywhere else they’ll page him. He’s on the Dark Continent, Dimitri, not in the Dark Ages.’

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  General Valerii Gogol stood
on the rocky outcrop above the drought-withered River Mau and looked around with the slow, intense concentration which Ann Cable remembered from his behaviour in the witness box after Chernobyl. The intensity of that gaze, even at this distance, made it seem that the general could all too easily see through lies, persiflage, disguises and rocky hiding places. Ann slithered back into the crack which was concealing both herself and Robert Gardiner. But then, typically, the action, an almost unconscious movement towards self-preservation, immediately begot its opposite. ‘Brace up, Cable,’ she muttered to herself and began to move outwards again, scrabbling for her camera.

  ‘What are you doing?’ whispered Robert anxiously, still in the self-preservation mode.