Assignment - Black Viking (16 page)

“If man so controls the elements—yes.”

“Your brother Peter can.”

“So those men said.”

“Teh me about them again.”

“They came.” Dr. Eric shrugged. “They have brought my brother near here. On a vessel, a submarine. They say he is ill. I know he suffers from an aneurism. He will die unless I can reach him and operate. They are to come back for me tonight.”

“Who are they?”

“A Chinese gentleman, a Dr. Lin Pi Tsung. I understand he is the foremost meteorologist for the Chinese People’s Republic. My brother Peter was in communication with him on scientific matters for many years.”

“But Dr. Lin wasn’t alone, was he?”

“No, he had sailors with him. Also Chinese.”

“In uniform?”

“Not exactly. They wanted to see my brother’s laboratory, where he developed his weather control devices.”

“Is that laboratory here?” Durell asked.

“No, it is on Skelleftsvik proper—the island. A mile away.” Gustaffson smiled with grim weariness. “It might as well be on the moon, gentlemen. No one could get across the Walk to reach that building now.”

Smurov rumbled: “But we must go there at once.” “Impossible,” the doctor said. “I could not ask my people to take the longship out again. And your schooner could never make it. Accept my word for it.”

“Then we just wait?” Smurov sounded ugly. His keglike body leaned forward. “We did not come all this way simply to wait, Dr. Gustaffson. We must reach your brother and take his machine and stop this storm. And I must recover the submarine—” He paused and looked angrily at Durell.

Durell said tiredly: “So the sub is one of yours, after all?”

“They took it by piracy, a year back.” The admission came reluctantly from Smurov. Then he spoke more quickly, as if it were no longer of importance. “It was when certain fools in Moscow—since eliminated—believed we could overlook our traditional enmity with those on our Siberian borders. It was one of our first nuclear-powered boats. Better than yours, Americanski.” 

“Naturally,” Durell said dryly.

“It was on a so-called goodwill tour.” Smurov spat on the polished teak floors. “For one reason or another, the Chinese found excuses to keep it in harbor, and finally they simply seized it.”

“And now it’s here,” Durell said.

“Perhaps. Yes. With Professor Peter and his weather machine aboard. Let us be frank, eh? We guess what has happened. The machine is out of order. The weather goes from bad to worse. And Professor Gustaffson is too ill to repair the damage. They lie on the bottom of the Baltic and do not know what to do. So they come here for help —from the laboratory and from this doctor brother of Peter’s. We have arrived in time. And it is now time for me to insist on our agreement. I will now take command.” “I never agreed to that.” Durell spoke mildly, but his blue eyes turned abruptly black. Smurov’s big hands were deep in the pockets of his dark coat.

“Your agreement was never necessary,” said Smurov. “You are no longer needed.”

He drew his gun. He was no faster than Durell, whose own weapon leaped into his hand with a life all its own. But then Durell checked himself. Smurov had not pointed his gun at him. Its black muzzle was aimed squarely at the giant Eric’s head.

Smurov’s wide mouth grinned like a frog’s. “If you shoot me, gospodin, I can still kill Dr. Eric. He is the only man who can save Peter, eh? If Eric goes, then Peter goes—without surgery—and all is lost for everyone.” “Muzhik, you wouldn’t dare.”

“I have dared much more in my time. Now you will listen to my proposal?”

Durell saw death in Smurov’s narrow eyes. The man’s smile was meaningless, exposing a steel tooth. He looked at Eric. The surgeon stood in frozen surprise behind his polished desk, as if he understood nothing of what was happening.

“And what is your proposal?” Durell said.

“I am in command,” Smurov repeated. “I shall use the radio Dr. Eric so kindly mentioned. And we shall have a small invasion. Oh, only temporary,” he added quickly. “We shall occupy this area and take back the submarine that belongs to us. Our brave Soviet parachutists can drop here, if I give them a signal to home in on.”

“It could be suicide,” Durell suggested.

“For some, but others would survive to do the needed work. The submarine, after all, belongs to the Soviet Union. So we merely take back what is ours.”

“Along with everything in it?”

“The weather equipment, yes.”

And Smurov laughed.

Durell lowered his gun.

DR. ERIC led them into the radio room. There were comfortable leather chairs, a large chart indicating world-wide amateur radio stations he had contacted in the past, and a powerful transmitter. Beyond the windows, the storm screamed like a frustrated animal. The snow was deeper. A gray darkness had settled over the world.

Smurov waved Durell and Eric impatiently against the wall. He seemed supremely confident. He heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction as he studied the equipment, and snapped switches with a familiarity that bespoke excellent training, which did not surprise Durell.

“You are being reasonable,” the KGB man said. “I am grateful. Your dossier mentions your intelligence as well as your caution.”

“Don’t mistake it for fear,” Durell said.

“No, I know all about that, too.” Smurov all but smirked in his triumph. “After my message gets through, it will take only two hours before my people arrive. All is ready for me. They wait only for my signal.”

Two hours, Durell thought, could change a lot. Ice now rattled against the windows, and the wind clawed through tiny crevices and made the bright curtains blow. He could afford to wait. But they could not afford to have Dr. Eric killed. And he knew that Smurov would not hesitate to bring them all to an icy death rather than be defeated.

He thought he saw a signal in Eric’s eyes, and followed the doctor’s glance toward another door that was shut, but which Smurov hadn’t noticed or chose to ignore. Smurov put his gun beside the radio but kept it close at hand as he waited for the equipment to warm up. Durell saw the door handle slowly turn behind Smurov’s back. Dr. Eric drew a deep breath and Smurov looked up quickly, his little eyes at once suspicious. But then the dials indicated the transmitter was ready, and he turned back to it, rapidly coding a message on a paper pad, using his left hand.

The door opened.

Durell had not known whom to expect. Sigrid, or Elgiva, or one of Dr. Eric’s Laplanders.

But it was none of these.

It was Olaf.

He wore high boots, a heavy sheepskin coat that came down to his knees, and a knitted woolen snow cap. Ice clung to him, and he looked like some demon out of a pagan tale of dreadful Arctic creatures. There was the same glare of madness in his eyes that Durell had seen before. Somehow, Durell was not surpised. Olaf had a habit of turning up at the wrong time and the wrong place.

The roar of Olaf's heavy gun shattered the thick, sudden silence in the room. Smurov lurched up from the radio operator’s seat and tried to turn his gun to face Olaf Jannsen. His mouth gaped. His eyes were incredulous. He looked down at his stomach and gasped something in Russian and collapsed slowly, like a fat balloon. He fell across the radio and slid to his knees and then his eyes slewed to Durell. Durell saw despair and perhaps reproach in Smurov’s look. Perhaps Smurov thought Olaf had entered on Durell’s order, and that Olaf was a K Section man.

But there was no time for anything but the berserker and his gun. Everything happened in a few split-seconds. Eric shouted above the echoes of Olaf's shot, and there was a higher cry, unmistakably from Sigrid, in the study they had just left. Olaf heard it and bit his lip and pointed his weapon at Durell.

“It was necessary,” Olaf said harshly. His eyes were wild. “I came a long way. It was hard. You must forgive me, Dr. Eric.”

“But you were my guest. . . .” Gustaffson whispered.

“I am happy you did not tell these—these people I was here in your house.” Olaf grinned suddenly, then erased it. He waggled his gun nervously. His thick shock of black hair almost touched the low ceiling. Snow melted on his sheepskin coat. He carried one glove in his left hand. His right, holding the gun, looked blue and halffrozen; but he held the weapon steadily at Durell.

“I should kill you,” Olaf whispered. “But I want you with me.”

“Whatever you say.” Durell did not want Olaf roused to more shooting. He tossed his gun on the table. It skidded and fell to the floor at Eric’s feet. The red-haired man looked at it and licked his lips but did not bend to pick it up. Gustaffson said: “Colonel Smurov is dying, Olaf. You have betrayed my hospitality. I have known you since you were a little boy—”

“Spare me the sentiment, Doctor.”

“—and I was willing to help when you said you were in desperate trouble. When you came here last night—” 

“Shut up!”

“I am a doctor, Olaf. This Russian needs my help.” Eric was grim. His great bulk was almost as heavy as Olaf's. “He bleeds badly. You did not have to shoot him.” Olaf nodded. “You do not understand. Durell understands. I had to.”

Eric said stubbornly: “But I must help Smurov. I cannot let him die like this.”

“Stand where you are, Uncle Eric.”

“Go ahead and shoot me, then,” Eric said.

He walked around the table to where Smurov lay face down on the floor, under the radio. A pool of blood had collected, and the Russian’s breathing was a rasping, desperate clutch for air. Olaf bit his lip.

Then Sigrid came in.

Durell saw her from the corner of his eye, and Olaf saw her, too, but spared her only a flickering glance. She had found fleece-lined ski clothes, and her face looked absurdly young and frightened above the bulky turtle neck of her Lapp sweater.

“Olaf, darling . . .”

“Go back to the other room, Sigrid.”

“I hoped you would be here,” she said. “Do not point that gun at Uncle Eric. Please don’t do anything like that. I beg of you.”

“Get out, you silly bitch,” he snarled.

“Olaf, for the sake of everything we—”

“Eric, don’t touch that man!” Olaf shouted.

But Dr. Eric was brave enough. He knelt beside Smurov and turned the heavy body over. Smurov’s face was the gray of old pewter. He was dying, Durell thought, and he had not wanted it this way. If only Eric had told him he’d allowed Olaf in the house . . .

Sigrid crossed the room, ignoring Olaf’s gun. Her face was very pale. “Olaf, give it all up. You must come over to our side. I’ve tried and tried to explain it to you. What you do is very wrong. Papa wouldn’t want it this way.” She looked into his mad eyes. “Would you shoot me, Olaf?”

Durell saw his trigger finger tighten. He yelled, and jumped for Olaf as the girl came between them, and Olaf’s gun crashed and Sigrid jerked backward into Durell. He got around her, but Olaf dived for the window. The glass shattered loudly, and there was a sudden roar of wind as an icy blast broke into the room. Snow swirled in with it. Durell jumped over Sigrid and dived for Olaf’s heels. But Olaf had landed in the deep snow outside. He floundered for a moment in the oblong of light, and then he vanished into the wild, driving snow.

Durell turned as Sigrid ran for the door. A small spatter of blood marked her steps. And she vanished, too.

“Sigrid!”

She had gone down the gallery steps before he came free of the study. A rack of skis stood by the door. The
Vesper’s
crew stood open-mouthed, watching as she snatched up a pair and yanked open the door. Her hair swung wildly as she looked back at Durell.

“Sigrid, he’ll kill you!” Durell shouted.

She shook her head and dashed her hair from her eyes. Her face was wet; he thought it was from her tears. But before he could cross the great council room, she had pulled open the main door and vanished into the night after Olaf.

IT WAS midnight. Durell could not remember when he’d had any decent sleep. He ached in every bone. He felt as if he would never get warm again. He almost envied Smurov his unconsciousness; Smurov was out of it all. But it wasn’t over yet. And Durell had to finish it, somehow. He watched Smurov’s breathing after Dr. Gustaffson removed the bullet from him. Gustaffson said they had best leave the Russian in the dispensary.

“He will live,” Eric said quietly. “But I am shocked at Olaf. I cannot apologize for him. I have known him for so long, and he and Sigrid, it was understood—”

“Sigrid told me all about that,” Durell said.

“But he shot her!”

“He’ll do worse if she tries to stop him. And she’s wounded. Have you any idea where they could have gone?”

“I do not know.”

“To Skelleftsvik? To Peter’s laboratory?”

“It is impossible to cross the Walk.”

“Is there ice to go on?”

“It would be suicide.”

“I’ll have to try it,” Durell said.

“But you are tired, you do not know the way, and in this storm—no, no, you would go into the sea.”

“Does Elgiva know the way?”

Gustaffson looked at him with haunted eyes. “I cannot permit it.”

“If Elgiva is willing, I’ll take her with me as my guide.” 

“But the enemy wants me, to help my brother, and they will come here soon—”

“We’ll beat them to the punch.”

Gustaffson paused. “If you go, I must go, too.”

“No. You must stay here to greet them, if they come. Put them off guard. We can’t hope to match their strength, even with your Lapps and the
Vesper’s
crew. They’re armed and disciplined. If you’re missing, they’ll be alerted. Our only chance is to take them by surprise.”

“Just you and Elgiva? You’re as mad as Olaf.” “Perhaps. Maybe it’s the weather. It freezes the soul. In any case, I’ll take two men from the
Vesper
. I can’t use more.”

He chose Gino and his uncle Mario. The Sicilians looked reluctant to go out into the icy storm. Gino, the boy from Chicago, was scornful.

“You’re out of your skull, dad,” he told Durell. “What’s the profit? I’m no hero. I didn’t ask to come here. If Uncle Mario hadn’t put me on the stupid boat, I’d be balling it up in Palermo right now. Warm and cozy.” Mario spoke in Italian. “The boy will come with us. He will learn to be a man now, or he will die.”