Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
I made my way to the last hut — the hut that held the charred remnants of the seven men who had died in the fire. The stench of charred flesh and burnt diesel seemed stronger, more nauseating than ever. I stood in the doorway and the last thing I wanted to do was to approach even an inch closer. I peeled off fur and woollen mittens, set the lamp on a table, pulled out my torch and knelt by the first dead man.
Ten minutes passed and all I wanted was out of there. There are some things that doctors, even hardened pathologists, will go a long way to avoid. Bodies that have been too long in the sea is one: bodies that have been in the immediate vicinity of underwater explosion is another; and men who have literally been burned alive is another. I was beginning to feel more than slightly sick; but I wasn’t going to leave there until I was finished.
The door creaked open. I turned and watched Commander Swanson come in. He’d been a long time, I’d expected him before then. Lieutenant Hansen, his damaged left hand wrapped in some thick woollen material, came in after him. That was what the phone call had been about, the Commander calling up reinforcements. Swanson switched off his torch, pushed up his snow-goggles and pulled down his mask. His eyes narrowed at the scene before him, his nostrils wrinkled in involuntary disgust, and the colour drained swiftly from his ruddy cheeks. Both Hansen and I had told him what to expect, but he hadn’t been prepared for this: not often can the imagination encompass the reality. For a moment I thought he was going to be sick, but then I saw a slight tinge of colour touch the cheekbones and I knew he wasn’t.
‘Dr Carpenter,’ he said in a voice in which the unsteady huskiness seemed only to emphasise the stilted formality, ‘I wish you to return at once to the ship where you will remain confined to your quarters. I would prefer you went voluntarily, accompanied by Lieutenant Hansen here. I wish no trouble. I trust you don’t either. If you do, we can accommodate you. Rawlings and Murphy are waiting outside that door.’
‘Those are fighting words, Commander,’ I said, ‘and very unfriendly. Rawlings and Murphy are going to get uncommon cold out there.’ I put my right hand in my caribou pants pocket — the one with the gun in it — and surveyed him unhurriedly. ‘Have you had a brainstorm?’
Swanson looked at Hansen and nodded in the direction of the door. Hansen half-turned, then stopped as I said: ‘Very highhanded, aren’t we? I’m not worth an explanation, is that it?’
Hansen looked uncomfortable. He didn’t like any part of this. I suspected Swanson didn’t either, but he was going to do what he had to do and let his feelings look elsewhere.
‘Unless you’re a great deal less intelligent than I believe — and I credit you with a high intelligence — you know exactly what the explanation is. When you came aboard the Dolphin in the Holy Loch both Admiral Garvie and myself were highly suspicious of you. You spun us a story about being an expert in Arctic conditions and of having helped set up this station here. When we wouldn’t accept that as sufficient authority or reason to take you along with us you told a highly convincing tale about this being an advanced missile-warning outpost and even although it was peculiar that Admiral Garvie had never heard of it, we accepted it. The huge dish aerial you spoke of, the radar masts, the electronic computers — what’s happened to them, Dr Carpenter? A bit insubstantial, weren’t they? Like all figments of the imagination.’
I looked at him, considering, and let him go on.
‘There never were any of those things, were there? You’re up to the neck in something very murky indeed, my friend. What it is I don’t know nor, for the moment, do I care. All I care for is the safety of the ship, the welfare of the crew and bringing the Zebra survivors safely back home and I’m taking no chances at all.’
‘The wishes of the British Admiralty, the orders from your own Director of Underseas Warfare -those mean nothing to you?’
I’m beginning to have very strong reservations about the way those orders were obtained,’ Swanson said grimly. ‘You’re altogether too mysterious for my liking, Dr Carpenter — as well as being a fluent liar.’
‘Those are harsh, harsh words, Commander.’
‘The truth not infrequently sounds that way. Will you please come?’
‘Sorry. I’m not through here yet.’
‘I see. John, will you -’
‘I can give you an explanation. I see I have to. Won’t you listen?’
‘A third fairy-story?’ A headshake. ‘No.’
‘And I’m not ready to leave. Impasse.’
Swanson looked at Hansen, who turned to go. I said: ‘Well, if you’re too stiff-necked to listen to me, call up the bloodhounds. Isn’t it just luck, now, that we have three fully-qualified doctors here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean this.’ Guns have different characteristics in appearance. Some look relatively harmless, some ugly, some business-like, some wicked-looking. The Mannlicher-Schoenauer in my hand just looked plain downright wicked. Very wicked indeed. The white light from the Coleman glittered off the blued metal, menacing and sinister. It was a great gun to terrify people with.
‘You wouldn’t use it,’ Swanson said flatly.
‘I’m through talking. I’m through asking for a hearing. Bring on the bailiffs, friend.’
‘You’re bluffing, mister,’ Hansen said savagely. ‘You don’t dare.’
‘There’s too much at stake for me not to dare. Find out now. Don’t be a coward. Don’t hide behind your enlisted men’s backs. Don’t order them to get themselves shot.’ I snapped off the safety-catch. ‘Come and take it from me yourself.’
‘Stay right where you are, John,’ Swanson said sharply. ‘He means it. I suppose you have a whole armoury in that combination-lock suitcase of yours,’ he said bitterly.
‘That’s it. Automatic carbines, six-inch naval guns, the lot. But for a small-size situation a small-size gun. Do I get my hearing?’
‘You get your hearing.’
‘Send Rawlings and Murphy away. I don’t want anyone else to know anything about this. Anyway, they’re probably freezing to death.’
Swanson nodded. Hansen went to the door, opened it, spoke briefly and returned. I laid the gun on the table, picked up my torch and moved some paces away. I said: ‘Come and have a look at this.’
They came. Both of them passed by the table with the gun lying there and didn’t even look at it. I stopped before one of the grotesquely misshapen charred lumps lying on the floor. Swanson came close and stared down. His face had lost whatever little colour it had regained. He made a queer noise in his throat.
‘That ring, that gold ring —’ he began, then stopped short.
‘I wasn’t lying about that.’
‘No. No you weren’t. II don’t know what to say. I’m most damnably —’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said roughly. ‘Look here. At the back. I’m afraid I had to remove some of the carbon.’
‘The neck,’ Swanson whispered. ‘It’s broken.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Something heavy, I don’t know, a beam from one of the huts, must have fallen —’
‘You’ve just seen one of those huts. They have no beams. There’s an inch and a half of the vertebrae missing. If anything sufficiently heavy to smash off an inch and a half of the backbone had struck him, the broken piece would be imbedded in his neck. It’s not. It was blown out. He was shot from the front, through the base of the throat. The bullet went out the back of the neck. A soft-nosed bullet — you can tell by the size of the exit hole — from a powerful gun, something like a .38 Colt or Luger or Mauser.’
‘Good God above!’ For the first time, Swanson was badly shaken. He stared at the thing on the floor, then at me. ‘Murdered. You mean he was murdered.’
‘Who would have done this?’ Hansen said hoarsely. ‘Who, man, who? And in God’s name, why?’
‘I don’t know who did it.’
Swanson looked at me, his eyes strange. ‘You just found this out?’
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‘You found out last night.’ The words were slow, far-spaced, a distinct hiatus between each two. ‘And all the time since, aboard the ship, you never said — you never showed — my God, Carpenter, you’re inhuman.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘See that gun there. It makes a loud bang and when I use it to kill the man who did this I won’t even blink. I’m inhuman, all right.’
‘I was speaking out of turn. Sorry.’ Swanson was making a visible effort to bring himself under normal control. He looked at the Mannlicher-Schoenauer, then at me, then back at the gun. ‘Private revenge is out, Carpenter. No one is going to take the law into his own hands.’
‘Don’t make me laugh out loud. A morgue isn’t a fit place for it. Besides, I’m not through showing you things yet. There’s more. Something that I’ve just found out now. Not last night.’ I pointed to another huddled black shape on the ground. ‘Care to have a look at this man here?’
‘I’d rather not,’ Swanson said steadily. ‘Suppose you tell us?’
‘You can see from where you are. The head. I’ve cleaned it up. Small hole in the front, in the middle of the face and slightly to the right: larger exit hole at the back of the top of the head. Same gun. Same man behind the gun.’
Neither man said anything. They were too sick, too shocked to say anything.
‘Queer path the bullet took,’ I went on. ‘Ranged sharply upwards. As if the man who fired the shot had been lying or sitting down while his victim stood above him.’
‘Yes.’ Swanson didn’t seem to have heard me. ‘Murder. Two murders. This is a job for the authorities, for the police.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘For the police. Let’s just ring the sergeant at the local station and ask him if he would mind stepping this way for a few minutes.’
‘It’s not a job for us,’ Swanson persisted. ‘As captain of an American naval vessel with a duty to discharge I am primarily interested in bringing my ship and the Zebra survivors back to Scotland again.’
‘Without endangering the ship?’ I asked. ‘With a murderer aboard the possibility of endangering the ship does not arise?’
‘We don’t know he is — or will be — aboard.’
‘You don’t even begin to believe that yourself. You know he will be. You know as well as I do why this fire broke out and you know damn’ well that it was no accident. If there was any accidental element about it it was just the size and extent of the fire. The killer may have miscalculated that. But both time and weather conditions were against him: I don’t think he had very much option. The only possible way in which he could obliterate all traces of his crime was to have a fire of sufficient proportions to obliterate those traces. He would have got off with it too, if I hadn’t been here, if I hadn’t been convinced before we left port that something was very far wrong indeed. But he would take very good care that he wouldn’t obliterate himself in the process. Like it or not, Commander, you’re going to have a killer aboard your ship.’
‘But all of those men have been burned, some very severely —’
‘What the hell did you expect? That the unknown X would go about without a mark on him, without as much as a cigarette burn, proclaiming to the world that he had been the one who had been throwing matches about and had then thoughtfully stood to one side? Local colour. He had to get himself burnt.’
‘It doesn’t follow,’ Hansen said. ‘He wasn’t to know that anyone was going to get suspicious and start investigating.’
‘You’ll be well advised to join your captain in keeping out of the detecting racket,’ I said shortly. ‘The men behind this are top-flight experts with far-reaching contacts — part of a criminal octopus with tentacles so long that it can even reach out and sabotage your ship in the Holy Loch. Why they did that, I don’t know. What matters is that top-flight operators like those never take chances. They always operate on the assumption that they may be found out. They take every possible precaution against every possible eventuality. Besides, when the fire was at its height — we don’t know the story of that, yet — the killer would have had to pitch in and rescue those trapped. It would have seemed damned odd if he hadn’t. And so he got burnt.’
‘My God.’ Swanson’s teeth were beginning to chatter with the cold but he didn’t seem to notice it. ‘What a hellish set-up.’
‘Isn’t it? I dare say there’s nothing in your navy regulations to cover this lot.’
‘But what — what are we going to do?’
‘We call the cops. That’s me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I say. I have more authority, more official backing, more scope, more power and more freedom of action than any cop you ever saw. You must believe me. What I say is true.’
‘I’m beginning to believe it is true,’ Swanson said in slow thoughtfulness. ‘I’ve been wondering more and more about you in the past twenty-four hours. I’ve kept telling myself I was wrong, even ten minutes before I kept telling myself. You’re a policeman? Or detective?’
‘Naval officer. Intelligence. I have credentials in my suitcase which I am empowered to show in an emergency.’ It didn’t seem the time to tell him just how wide a selection of credentials I did have. ‘This is the emergency.’
‘But — but you are a doctor.’
‘Sure I am. A navy doctor — on the side. My speciality is investigating sabotage in the U.K. armed forces. The cover-up of research doctor is the ideal one. My duties are deliberately vague and I have the power to poke and pry into all sorts of corners and situations and talk to all sorts of people on the grounds of being an investigating psychologist that would be impossible for the average serving officer.’
There was a long silence, then Swanson said bitterly: ‘You might have told us before this.’
‘I might have broadcast it all over your Tannoy system. Why the hell should I? I don’t want to trip over blundering amateurs every step I take. Ask any cop. The biggest menace of his life is the self-appointed Sherlock. Besides, I couldn’t trust you, and before you start getting all hot and bothered about that I might add that I don’t mean you’d deliberately give me away or anything like that but that you might inadvertently give me away. Now I’ve no option but to tell you what I can and chance the consequences. Why couldn’t you just have accepted that directive from your Director of Naval Operations and acted accordingly?’
‘Directive?’ Hansen looked at Swanson. ‘What directive?’
‘Orders from Washington to give Dr Carpenter here carte blanche for practically everything. Be reasonable, Carpenter. I don’t like operating in the dark and I’m naturally suspicious. You came aboard in highly questionable circumstances. You knew too damn’ much about submarines. You were as evasive as hell. You had this sabotage theory all cut and dried. Damn it, man, of course I had reservations. Wouldn’t you have had, in my place?’
‘I suppose so. I don’t know. Me, I obey orders.’
‘Uh-huh. And your orders in this case?’
‘Meaning what exactly is all this about,’ I sighed. ‘It would have to come to this. You must be told now — and you’ll understand why your Director of Naval Operations was so anxious that you give me every help possible.’
‘We can believe this one?’ Swanson asked.
‘You can believe this one. The story I spun back in the Holy Loch wasn’t all malarkey — I just dressed it up a bit to make sure you’d take me along. They did indeed have a very special item of equipment here — an electronic marvel that was used for monitoring the count-down of Soviet missiles and pin-pointing their locations. This machine was kept in one of the huts now destroyed — the second from the west in the south now. Night and day a giant captive radio-sonde balloon reached thirty thousand feet up into the sky — but it had no radio attached. It was just a huge aerial. Incidentally, I should think that is the reason why the fuel oil appears to have been flung over so large an area — an explosion caused by the bursting of the hydrogen cylinders u
‘Did everybody in Zebra know about this monitoring machine?’
‘No. Most of them thought it a device for investigating cosmic rays. Only four people knew what it really was — my brother and the three others who all slept in the hut that housed this machine. Now the hut is destroyed. The free world’s most advanced listening-post. You wonder why your D.N.O. was so anxious?’
‘Four men?’ Swanson looked at me, a faint speculation still in his eye. ‘Which four men, Dr Carpenter?’
‘Do you have to ask? Four of the seven men you see lying here, Commander.’
He stared down at the floor then looked quickly away. He said: ‘You mentioned that you were convinced even before we left port that something was far wrong. Why?’
‘My brother had a top-secret code. We had messages sent by himself — he was an expert radio operator. One said that there had been two separate attempts to wreck the monitor. He didn’t go into details. Another said that he had been attacked and left unconscious when making a midnight check and found someone bleeding off the gas from the hydrogen cylinders — without the radio-sonde aerial the monitor would have been useless. He was lucky, he was out only for a few minutes, as long again and he would have frozen to death. In the circumstances did you expect me to believe that the fire was unconnected with the attempts to sabotage the monitor?’
‘But how would anyone know what it was?’ Hansen objected. ‘Apart from your brother and the other three men, that is?’ Like Swanson, he glanced at the floor and, like Swanson, looked as hurriedly away. ‘For my money this is the work of a psycho. A madman. A coldly calculating criminal would — well, he wouldn’t go in for wholesale murder like this. But a psycho would.’