"Owen, come on! Why are we stopping?"
He glanced ahead. "Icebergs can sometimes be unstable. They slowly melt and as they change shape their center of gravity shifts and they roll. Sometimes the weight of a person or a seal or even a penguin can make the final difference. If we climb onto it and go into the water we're dead."
She looked impatient. "If we wait here we're dead."
"I know, I know. You go first then, to minimize the weight. I think if I stand here they'll hesitate in case I have a gun. Then I'll follow."
Now it was she who hesitated.
"Go. Quickly!"
Greta leaped a thin crevice of seawater and began scrambling across the iceberg, trying to ignore its ominous rock. As Owen had expected, the pursuing Germans slowed cautiously when they saw him standing there. One fired a tentative burst but the distance was still too great: the bullets went wide. Hart looked the other way. Greta had disappeared over the crest of the berg.
He leaped and the iceberg heaved unsteadily beneath him. Hart followed in Greta's tracks, praying their bridge would stay stable. More bullets whipped around him as he scrambled over the crest. Then he was sliding down the other side toward a gap of dark water and jumped again. The flatter ice cracked as he landed on it but didn't give way.
Greta seized his hand. "Hurry!"
On they went, the world a white miasma. They had no sense of direction except to get away.
"Hart! Oweeennnn Hart!"
They looked back. It was Drexler, standing on the crest of the iceberg and hoisting a machine gun. "Your lives in return for the drug, Hart! It isn't too late to make a bargain!"
They stopped to confer. "If we agree," said Greta, "they might survive to take the microbe back to Germany."
"And kill us anyway." Hart raised his arm.
Drexler lifted his binoculars, focusing. A middle finger came into view. Bastard!
The Nazi charged down the iceberg after them then, his men swarming over the crest just behind. The Germans came down in a tight group, neared the edge...
The iceberg rolled.
The movement was as spectacular as it was sudden. The hill of ice upended like a sinking ship, the end nearest Owen and Greta dipping into the water. The storm troopers screamed as they tumbled, desperately trying to claw away from the gulping water. Drexler leaped, his legs churning, his arms outspread. He landed flat on the stable pack ice, the air going out of him with a whoosh. The iceberg continued to roll behind him and the three remaining storm troopers slid into the sea, thousands of tons of ice flipping to drive them deep. Their scream was chopped off as abruptly as the fall of an ax.
"Jesus," Hart whispered. "I'd heard of it, but never seen it."
The overturned iceberg was pitching uneasily now, seeking a new equilibrium. Seawater poured off its flanks in a hundred small waterfalls.
Drexler slowly got to his hands and knees.
Then one of his soldiers surfaced like a cork, thrashing. "Save me!" The sound exploded from his lungs but was thin and frail across the broad expanse of sea ice. Jürgen looked dully back over his shoulder. The man's hand was clutching at the air.
"He has no chance," Hart said. "The water's too cold."
The soldier had flailed his way to the edge of the pack ice and frantically hauled himself up on it, flopping like a fish. He was pleading, saying something to Drexler that they couldn't hear. The Nazi didn't respond at first. But as the soldier began to crawl pitifully toward Jürgen the SS colonel finally got to his feet. The soldier was slowing. A rime of ice was forming on his clothes.
Drexler regarded the man solemnly and then walked over to point his submachine gun. The storm trooper lifted his head. There was a short burst and the soaked soldier jerked and lay still.
Then the SS colonel looked at the two fugitives a hundred yards away across the ice. Grimly, he began trotting after them again.
* * *
The U-boat sounded like a tuberculosis ward. Men were hacking and sneezing, sweat beginning to dot their flushed faces. Schmidt felt ill as well but for his own protection from angry sailors he stayed near Freiwald in the control room, clutching the periscope. At least the submarine was beginning to move again. They'd find Drexler's motor launch, learn where Hart had gone, hunt down the antibiotic... He looked around the enclosing chamber bleakly. Time. Time.
He noticed a calendar near the helm. Almost Christmas. Rocket assembly should have begun by now. Laboratory space was being readied in the mines of the Ruhr. Warheads were being test-fired with anthrax. They were so close. So close! How he longed to squeeze the life out of that traitorous bitch.
"How late in the disease can we take the antidote and live, Doctor?" Freiwald asked.
He shrugged. "Who knows?"
"You'd better damn well know!"
Schmidt sighed. "The rabbits lived. A seaman on the first voyage drank some after infection and lived. Hart, damn his soul, lived. So. We have to hope."
The captain looked bleak. "Myself I don't care about. But my men... If they start to die, Doctor, they'll blame you. For bringing the spores aboard. You know that."
Schmidt nodded. "No matter. I'm older, less resistant. And I was infected first." He smiled broadly, lips drawn back from yellow teeth. "I'll beat them all to hell."
* * *
"Oh my God, Owen. Only open water."
They stopped, panting. They'd run and run and run, always the remorseless dark figure of Jürgen Drexler tagging behind as tireless as a shadow. They'd run until their clothes were soaked with sweat in the bitter cold, run until their lungs were on fire and their sides ached. Now they could run no more. The ice pack had ended in a wide lead of water as dark and shiny as tar. There was no way around. They were pinned between Jürgen Drexler and the sea.
The couple looked back. Their pursuer had slowed to a weary walk himself now, his submachine gun leveled lest they try to dash along the edge of the ice. He had to be as exhausted as they were. He had to be feeling the plague. But they'd run out of time to wait for his collapse.
Hart glanced around. The world was a gauzy gray, chill and bleak. The ice was an inhospitable plain, its only mark the trail of their footprints. The volcano behind was smoking more furiously and for the first time they could hear its low rumble. Had they succeeded they would have gotten away from the damnable island just in time, he thought. Hell was breathing. Fire and ice.
"I'm sorry, Greta. I don't have a weapon. I don't even have any strength." He looked at her fondly, sadly. At least I knew her, he thought. And because of that I've had a good life.
"It's all right, Owen," she replied, as if reading his thoughts. She held his hand.
Jürgen stopped twenty feet short, pinning them on a small peninsula of ice. His breath steamed, his parka covered with frost. He looked ill.
"So. We come together for the final time."
"Give it up, Jürgen," Hart tiredly tried. "Your men are dead. The submarine is contaminated. It's over."
"No, Hart." He coughed. "What you don't understand— what you've never understood— is that it isn't over until
I
say so. Do you really think I'm going to let you destroy my work and sail off with my wife? I don't know which to be more impressed by: your irredeemable stupidity or your irrepressible persistence. A lesser man would have surrendered by now, you know. Perhaps you're not such a coward after all."
"Excuse me if I don't give a damn."
Drexler nodded. "No, at times like this other things seem more important, yes? I'm sick, you're helpless. We all think of what might have been."
"Jürgen, please," Greta pleaded. "We can still choose life..."
"Life?" He looked at her in amazement. "Life? My command butchered? My crew poisoned? Life, in this
wasteland?
Look around you, Greta. Do you see anything alive, anywhere, in this kingdom of the dead?" He coughed again, then swung the machine gun at Owen's chest. "So, I'll give you a final choice, Hart. You can be shot down. Or drown."
"Go to hell."
Greta glanced away as Drexler spoke, studying the opening of dark water. Something had moved to catch her eye, producing a dark eddy. Then it sank soundlessly. She slid her hand inside her parka and pulled out the steel tank. "Jürgen, wait. If you kill Owen I'll throw the drug into the sea. You'll die of plague, a horrible death."
He was still breathing hard. "Then give it here."
"You can have it for the gun. Then we'll all live."
He licked his lips. "No. Give it here or I'll simply shoot you and take it."
"Do you promise not to kill us?"
"I promise to kill you if you
don't
hand that over."
She glanced at Owen. He shook his head. She cocked her arm.
"No!" said Drexler. "Don't throw it!"
She threw.
"God damn you!"
The cylinder landed in the snow at the edge of the water, almost going in. Neither man was certain if she'd been aiming for the water or Drexler. "I'm sorry. I was never good at throwing."
"Pathetic bitch." Keeping the machine gun aimed, he sidled to pick it up. "My life was ruined from the moment I met you, do you realize that? You never understood anything: not me, not Germany, not science— " He bent.
The water exploded.
Hart jumped back as if he'd been shot. There was an astonishing blur and the momentary flicker of a yawning pink mouth with white teeth. Then with a scream and a titanic splash, Jürgen Drexler was gone.
"Christ!" the pilot cried.
"Leopard seal," said Greta grimly. "It thought he was a penguin."
The cold was like fire, the shock so powerful that Drexler didn't even notice the animal's teeth had punctured his thigh. The gun and the tank of drug slipped away. Then, dismayed by the strange mouthful of cloth and flesh it had seized, the seal let go. The Nazi couldn't swim but the shock drove instinct. He thrashed toward the surface in a cloud of blood, erupting with a shriek.
"Save me!"
Hart considered only for a moment. Then he sprang forward and grabbed.
"Owen, no!"
The pilot ignored her. He heaved and Drexler slithered up on the ice, gasping.
"Why did you
do
that?"
"Because he has something that belongs to us."
Ice was forming on Drexler's clothes. His body was shaking uncontrollably, his strength and coordination ebbing, his brain shutting down. "Please..."
"I'll never understand you, Jürgen," Hart said, squatting. "You had heaven. You had Greta. And you chose hell." He yanked open the German's parka and began feeling his pockets. "Where is it, dammit?"
"Please..."
"Owen, the cylinder went in the water with him. It's gone." She looked at the smoking volcano. "God's will, perhaps."
"That's not what I'm looking for." He hoisted Drexler up off the snow and ripped open the flap of his chest pocket. "Here!" Then he dropped the German and backed away.
Drexler's lips were blue, his mouth still open. His eyes had lost focus. The pulse of blood from his bite wound had become sluggish. His movements were ending.
Greta stared without expression. "I don't feel anything except release, Owen," she confessed. "My compassion has died."
"He killed it. And in the end he's luckier than he deserves. The plague would have killed him more slowly." He turned to her and opened his hand. It was the penguin locket. "This is why I pulled him out. He showed me he'd kept the thing, to gloat." Yanking his gloves off with his teeth he opened it, inspecting. "Lost the pebble, I see." He unfastened the chain. "Put your hood down."
She did so and bent her head. Tenderly, he reached around and hooked the locket. She let it dangle a minute on the outside of her parka so he could see it.
"I gave the pebble to my father," she said. "So he could keep it safely for us."
"You trusted him not to sell it?" It was a grin.
"He wouldn't sell it. Not anymore."
Hart pulled her hood back up. "We need to conserve every bit of heat and energy we can now." They glanced down at Drexler's body. "You're a widow again."
She nodded— not with sadness but release. "Yes. But a widow with
prospects.
" Her look was shy.
His look was a combination of pleasure and apprehension. "I should say so.
If
we can survive the sea."
Owen and Greta were quiet on the long walk back to the boat. Exhaustion was taking its toll and the trek was grim. They skirted the frozen soldier by the iceberg, rounded the open water, and worked back to their packs where they gathered their supplies. They passed the body of the other man that Hart had shot and found a third lying in the half-sunken motor launch. The pilot had hoped to transfer to that larger craft and use its engine to get clear of the ice but his gunfire had holed it. The dead storm trooper lay in pink water that had risen halfway up to the gunwales, its surface freezing into slush. So the couple restowed their gear in the whaler's lifeboat and pushed off from the pack ice, rowing numbly.
After several hundred yards they stopped and Hart tethered the boat to another ice island. They crawled into the bottom of the boat and covered themselves with a blanket and tarp. A light snow was falling and it dusted the covering. They kissed wearily in their cocoon and cupped like spoons, Greta nested into Owen. Then they slept. For the first time in weeks, dark dreams did not plague them.
The pair woke stiff but somewhat recovered, crawling out from under the tarp like burrowing animals. Hart looked around. The panorama was gray, water the color of lead. The ice was dull under a ceiling of cloud. He'd no idea what time it was, or even what day it was. Time had stopped, or become irrelevant. Atropos Island continued to thunder, the volcanic plume bulging under the overcast like a sagging belly. Mist fogged the distant glaciers and flakes of snow spat at them in lazy fashion. Everywhere Hart looked there was utter emptiness, a land and seascape absolutely vacuumed of life, of warmth, of history. They were in a frozen limbo and the only sound in all that chilly vastness was the drum of their own pumping blood, the only sparks of heat the ones each carried in their core. All that mattered in the end, he realized, was each other.