The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (22 page)

But as the vessel passed farther northward, the ports took on the more
primitive look of remote China, with rough-hewn wooden walls or stacked stones,
woven roofs, and pointed arches. All of it was blanketed by snow.

Concerned about being seen as they drew closer to their quarry, Captain Nemo
ordered the
Nautilus
to submerge and proceed along its course. It
wouldn't be long now before they found where Dorian Gray and M had gone to
ground.

At the Amur River at dawn, a curving silver-blue line of frozen water cut
through a windswept landscape of snow and jutting gray rock. A few gnarled
trees, bent low from the ever-blowing wind of the constant winter, dotted the
monotonous steppe.

Today, even the ravens had taken shelter in the scrub brush, too miserable to
search for carrion. Silence pervaded the frigid atmosphere.

Suddenly, with a cracking roar and the creak of broken slabs of ice, the
Nautilus
's reinforced conning tower hammered through the frozen surface
and rose into the air with a shower of snow and a spray of icy river water.

The vessel's upper hatch opened with a clang, and five people emerged,
climbing up into the chill northern air. They all wore thick arctic clothing,
heavy gloves, and hooded jackets. The wind whistling across the steppes carried
with it a deeper chill, but even the biting cold could not bring a rosy flush to
Mina Harkers pale cheeks. The others shaded their eyes from the glare of sun on
endless ice and snow.

Skittish Jekyll slipped on the slick coating of fresh-frozen ice that covered
the armored upper deck, but Quatermain caught him. "Careful, man. You wouldn't
last a minute in water that cold." The slushy Amur knocked ice chunks against
the side of the
Nautilus
, and Jekyll looked down wide-eyed at where he
had almost fallen.

Nemo took his binocular device and scanned the landscape. "According to my
charts, we should be very near to our destination."

Sawyer, Jekyll, and Mina shared a telescope that First Mate Patel had brought
up for them. Jekyll peered toward a distant rocky ridge. "Aren't the Fantoms'
manufactories over there?" He had a difficult time holding the eyepiece steady
in his trembling hands. His teeth chattered.

Nemo nodded. "We may have to set off overland."

Quatermain took the binoculars to see for himself. He focused on snow-frosted
piles of rock and stripped logs that had once been clustered homes, but had now
fallen into complete disrepair. "Deserted peasant settlements."

Mina took the telescope from Jekyll. "Completely empty, no sign of life.
They're close to a river, probably on a trade route. The houses themselves seem
habitable."

"Well, with a bit of fixing up," Sawyer agreed, lowering the binoculars.

Mina continued to stare, using only her sharp green eyes. "Still, why would
an entire village be deserted?"

Then oily smoke rose up in angry black whorls over the rim of the jagged
rise, accompanied by a fiery glow, as if a doorway to Hell itself had been
opened—just a crack.

"Fear, no doubt," Nemo said.

The icy plains of Mongolia were a far cry from the African veldt, but
Quatermain still led the expedition.

Sawyer, Jekyll, and Mina trudged after him, picking a path over the
treacherous ground: slick ice, uncertain rocks, deep snow. Nemo brought up the
rear with a squad of
Nautilus
crewmen, all of them warmly dressed and
well-armed. They ascended the steep hillside to the top of the rocky ridge
beyond the abandoned peasant village. Behind them, the conning tower of the
submarine vessel protruded from the Amur ice, like the ruins of a castle
battlement.

One by one, the group struggled up through a windswept crack in the snow.
Sawyer politely helped Mina, though her grip was stronger than his. Loose rocks
tumbled from ledges, bouncing and picking up speed as they rolled down the
slope.

After cresting the rise, they looked down to see a Cossack fortress, the lair
of the counterfeit Fantom.
M
.

The giant structure seemed to be an amalgamation of a blocky gothic castle
and the industrial revolutions dirtiest factory nightmare—a black stone folly of
an exiled czar, built to rule over the landscape. Great bulbous minarets spired
skyward, and huge blasts of fire coughed forth from tall chimneys atop foundries
and processing lines. Its workshops, living quarters, and dungeons glowered out
at friend and foe alike. The industrial fires of smithies, smelters, and
incinerators made his fortress look like a restless volcano, accompanied by a
loud clamor and the syncopated puffs of small explosions.

Overhead, the wide sky was thick with gray clouds and the wind picked up as
the storm gathered, carrying the metallic scent of impending snow.

"His summer retreat. Can't say I care for the color." Sawyer made ready to
move. "Lets nail this son of a bitch."

"Unprepared and unplanned? No, lad." Quatermain looked around the gnarled
rocky outcroppings, the stark lichen-encrusted boulders. The first heavy flakes
of snow began spitting down on them from the dark clouds. "This is where Skinner
signaled he'd meet us. So we wait."

Later, the League members and Nemo's armed men gathered around a meager
campfire inside a rock cave, surrounded by snowdrifts. Sawyer and several
crewmen carrying axes had volunteered to go back to the empty peasant village to
chop some of the frozen wood into chunks and splinters. As the storm grew worse,
filling the air with pelting snow, the group had laboriously brought the pieces
up to their makeshift shelter. Although the light from their fire seemed a mere
spark in the vast emptiness of the steppes, for those huddled close to its
warmth, the effort had paid off.

They melted snow and boiled the water, which Mina used to make tea. After
taking a long swallow of straight whiskey from his hip flask, Quatermain offered
it to fortify the brew, then went out into the continuing blizzard to stand
guard.

The old adventurer sat on a rock at the cave entrance and kept watch, in
spite of the freezing cold of the blustery night and blinding snow that whipped
all around him. Though M surely believed them all dead and the
Nautilus
sunk, he refused to let down their guard so near to the enemy's fortress. He
would take no chances.

Quatermain hunched over his rock, clenching his mittened hands together, his
faithful elephant gun Matilda leaning against him. He was unused to such severe
cold, and his wounded shoulder sent twinges of pain down his arm, reminding him
that he was no longer the young, resilient man he had once been. He gritted his
teeth and ignored the pain.

The heavy storm blocked the stars, rendering the skies a grayish black.
Blowing snow smeared out details in the distance, too, muting the fiery fortress
to a sore red-orange glow that could not penetrate the blizzard. None of his men
could possibly see the tiny, sheltered camp-fire in the cave.

Suddenly, Quatermain heard a noise. Swift and silent, the hunter yanked off
his mittens, dropped them to the ground, and grabbed the elephant gun. He
brought it to his shoulder and swept the barrel in a slow arc, looking for a
target out in the blowing snow. In a low voice that the wind snatched away, he
called out ftirtively, "Skinner?"

From out of the blizzard, an old white tiger appeared. Its camouflage had
changed to winter coloring, pale as shadows on ice. It was powerful, dangerous,
a hunter out in the emptiness, probably hungry enough to kill human prey.
Quatermain sighted along Matilda, not needing his glasses now. The magnificent
Siberian tiger was unnervingly close and utterly silent. It made no growl, no
sound at all as it moved through the snow.

Keeping his breaths steady and even, Quatermain locked eyes with the tiger.
It was motionless now, watching him. Its whiskers moved as it snuffled more of
the man-scent. Snow eddied and swirled around the two hunters, sealing them in a
curious, timeless moment, as if their tableau had been captured inside a child's
snow globe. Quatermain closed one eye to take better aim, tentatively fingered
the trigger.

But he couldn't do it.

The old adventurer had faced many deadly beasts before, yet he and the tiger
shared a strange kinship. Perhaps they were meant to meet, in this far-off
place… With a sigh he lowered the elephant gun, looked once more into the tigers
eyes, and prepared to accept his fate. A few seconds passed.

Then the beast turned and stalked back into the blowing white wind, seeking
other prey.

"We heard a noise," Mina said from the edge of the cave, startling him. He
turned to see her standing there beside Nemo. The captain, his scimitar ready,
stared off into the darkness.

"It was… nothing." Quatermains' throat was dry, his heart pounding.

"Just an old tiger sensing his end," Nemo said with eerie insight. He
indicated a track of paw prints heading away into the snow.

Quatermain rested the elephant gun's stock on the ground and retrieved his
mittens, tugging them over his numb fingers. "Perhaps this isn't his time to die
after all." Nemo nodded wryly.

Suddenly, Mina stifled a cry as she was goosed from behind. She leaped
awkwardly forward in alarm, skittered around while regaining her balance, then
crouched to defend herself.

"Aheh! I've been waiting all week to do that," Skinners voice said. He
stepped back out into the wind, and his man-shaped outline was visible in the
blowing snow.

"Get a grip, man," Quatermain said, furious with him.

"I thought I just did," Skinner said. "Never thought I'd get away from that
damned tiger. He's been tracking me for a mile. Smelled me but couldn't see me.
Heh!"

"Report," Nemo said, sheathing his scimitar. "Tell us everything you—"

The invisible man interrupted him. "Hello to you, too, my dear captain." He
came closer, leaving bare footprints in the drifted snow outside the cave. "Need
I remind you that I'm naked in the snow in this bloody freezing wasteland. I
can't feel any of my extremities.
Any
of them."

While thawing out by the fire after shouldering various crewmen aside so he
could hold his invisible hands and other extremities closer to the warmth,
Skinner donned spare clothing and once again reapplied his white face makeup. He
looked like a frozen corpse, but at least he had stopped shivering, unlike Henry
Jekyll.

"Ah, the things I do for the Empire." He was deeply disappointed to learn
that his comrades had finished the last drops of whiskey in Quatermams hip
flask.

When the other League members listened to the scraping whisper of the
blizzard outside, Nemo was the first to demand answers. "So, if you weren't
among the traitors, how is it you knew to follow Gray?"

"Heh! He was the only one creeping around as much as me." The invisible man
turned his ghostly painted face to Mina, and his lips curved in a broad smile.
"He has quite a way with him, eh, Mina?"

She didn't answer. She was dressed warmly, though the cold of their
surroundings did not seem to affect her anyway.

Sawyer expressed indignation on her behalf. "So why didn't you just tell any
of us?"

Skinner snorted at the suggestion. "With all the suspicion on the ship, I
knew you'd never believe I wasn't the spy. You've been such dear friends, after
all, aheh! So, I did what I'm good at. I thought it best to 'disappear' and wait
for the real traitor to show himself."

Minas face remained hard, and she stared at him with icy green eyes across
the firelight. "Why not do something to the nautiloid? It sounds as if you had
plenty of opportunities."

"I'm invisible, not heroic," Skinner said.

Quatermain shifted his position, mentally reassessing everything they thought
they knew. "Skinner, we need your information. What are we dealing with? Tell us
everything you saw and learned while you were out sight-seeing."

"Sight-seeing? Why don't
you
try creeping around naked in the snow
for hours?" He scowled at Quatermain's empty silver flask, then grudgingly
accepted a cup of fortified tea. "All right, I'll describe everything for you as
best I can. That fortress is an awfully big place."

"Where did it come from?" Sawyer asked. "Did M design it himself?"

"It was built long ago by a czar who allied himself with Cossack bandits and
warlords in an attempt to conquer Europe and Asia. But they caught him cheating
at a gambling game and slit his throat in his sleep. Not very good at thinking
ahead, those Cossacks. Without the czar, they were left to do their raping and
pillaging across Mongolia on a more customary scale."

"The citadel was abandoned… and M simply couldn't resist its allure. The
place has all the amenities a discriminating mad genius bent on world domination
could ask for." The invisible man slurped his lukewarm tea. "He's made a few
modifications and improvements, of course."

Using words as an artist might use a fine brush, Skinner painted detailed
verbal pictures of all he had seen inside. Foundry furnaces stoked by Mongol
laborers produced fresh iron for making his weapons of destruction. Sweating and
straining in the simmering orange heat, they poured molten metal into large
casts. After the molds were quenched and cooled with icy water pumped from the
nearby Amur River, muscular laborers used hammers to break the components free.
Parts for his war machines.

Chains dangling from winches and pulleys raised the heavy iron pieces and
shuttled them over to a maze of lathes, drills, and presses on the factory
floor, where they were pieced together. Some workers constructed massive land
ironclads, such as the one that had smashed through the Bank of England vault;
others assembled monstrous long-barreled cannons, smaller guns, and
rocket-launching tubes. Outside in the frigid daylight, teams test-fired the
weapons, launching explosive artillery shells and shrieking rockets, using the
empty peasant dwellings as makeshift targets.