Ice Brothers (49 page)

Paul did not know, but he often wished he was in command of a submarine or a torpedo boat that could choose the time and place to attack, not a trawler that had to pretend it wasn't just a sitting duck trying to act like a hunter or a hawk. Yet self-deception was necessary for emotional survival. Paul refused to let himself think of the
Arluk
's job as defending Greenland from German penetration. No, he was there to attack the Germans with any subterfuge he could invent.

Studying the chart, and trying to imagine himself as a German commander who wanted Greenland weather reports, Paul could see why GreenPat had ordered him to have a look at Scoresbysund. It was the largest harbor in navigable waters on the east coast, a great sound with many fingers extending hundreds of miles into the Arctic wilderness. Any number of small weather stations could be hidden here and supplied, perhaps only once a year, by icebreakers or trawlers. If the Germans had devised a way to send reports which radio direction finders could not pick up, they could be discovered only by accident.

The job of looking for a needle in a haystack would be easy compared to that of looking for small groups of Germans in the limitless wastes of the Arctic, but Paul found some comfort in imagining himself the captain of a German weather ship or of a vessel trying to supply shore stations. Somehow he would have to get into the ice pack and out again without being detected by ships or planes. The mysterious German method of getting weather signals out could not be perfect—in some way it must leave them vulnerable. And any ship could make mistakes, using the wrong frequencies at the wrong time, or sailing in visibility good enough to invite sighting by Eskimos, Danes, aircraft or the lookouts of the
Arluk
, if they were not asleep. The Germans must make mistakes sometimes and luck could not always be on their side. The Germans probably could find a man far more experienced than Paul to put in command of their ship, but Paul's confidence in his own intelligence and determination was growing. Who the hell, after all, did the Germans think they were? All the smart Krauts had gone to America long ago. Who but idiots would take on England, Russia, and the United States at the same time?

His job was to kill a mad dog without getting bit—but it didn't help much when he thought of the possibility of meeting a German icebreaker with eight-inch guns. The whole world was mad when one came right down to it, and the only good part of life was illegal sex.

Two days after they had left Angmagssalik, Paul took dawn star sights, was happy to find that they placed him in a tiny triangle exactly like that drawn in the textbooks, and went back to his bunk. He had just fallen into a state in which his memories of his few hours in the little cabin of Brit's ketch merged with dreams when Nathan called him.

“Skipper,” Nathan said, “we see something ahead, looks like a boat—”

Paul jumped from his bunk and ran to the bridge. The sea was as calm and blue as Long Island Sound in summer, and the October sunshine was surprisingly warm. In the distance to his left the ice pack glittered, and a large ice castle was a mile off the starboard bow with smaller bergs scattered in a circle around them. At first this is all he saw.

“One point off the port bow, sir,” Guns said. “About halfway to the horizon. I think it's a lifeboat.”

Paul adjusted his binoculars and finally he saw it, not much more than a black speck on the sapphire sea. It could be a lifeboat, a very small ship or the conning tower of a submarine.

“Sound general quarters,” Paul said. “I want all guns manned and loaded.”

“Can I turn on the radar?” Nathan asked.

“Yes. Track it. See if it's moving, however slowly. Seth, take visual bearings.”

The klaxon horn honked with ridiculous urgency for so pleasant a morning. The men scrambled to their guns.

“Hell, we's going to get us a lifeboat,” Guns said.

“The object is five point eight miles, bearing three five one,” Nathan said, opening a pilothouse window. “I believe it's stationary, and I do not believe it's a steel vessel. It's very small.”

Probably it is a lifeboat, Paul thought. With all those ships being sunk out in the Atlantic, a few would be bound to drift this way. The object seemed to rock slightly in the calm sea. A lifeboat, almost certainly.

“We haven't seen any signals from it,” a lookout called from the flying bridge. “Shall I try to raise someone on blinker?”

“No.” The thought occurred to Paul that a drifting lifeboat might be some sort of trap. Perhaps his imagination was overactive, but some smart German might leave a boat in an open stretch of sea, hide behind the nearest iceberg and wait for a ship with a captain sucker enough to stop and pick it up. If the Kraut had seen the
Arluk
coming, he might have had time to arrange that. Or the lifeboat could be booby-trapped. It could be loaded with explosives—or with dying sailors too weak to signal.

I'll have to come close enough to inspect it, try not to take any unnecessary chances, Paul decided. “Come right slowly,” he said. “I'm going to circle around all those icebergs just to make sure we're alone out here. Then I'll approach to within about half a mile of whatever that is up there and let our whaleboat go in to make a close inspection.”

The crew, Paul was sure, thought he was crazy as he methodically toured all nearby icebergs, like a child looking behind bushes in a game of hide and seek. No German ship was in evidence. Turning finally toward the small dark object, Paul approached close enough to make sure that it was a lifeboat. Through his binoculars he could see a standard gray double-ended hull. It could be empty, full of corpses or men too weak to sit or stand. As he approached to within half a mile and slowed, Paul saw that some objects were lashed around the sides of the boat, dark blobs that made no sense at all, but maybe they were life preservers tied there to give more stability. The boat was very low in the water. It could be heavily laden with explosives or it could be half flooded.

“All right, lower the whaleboat,” Paul said as the
Arluk
glided to a standstill. “Boats, take two men armed with automatic rifles. Don't touch that damned boat—it could be booby-trapped. Just go close enough to see what's there.”

The crew lowered the whaleboat smartly and Guns provided the rifles with clips. As soon as the whaleboat pulled away, Paul got the
Arluk
moving in a broad circle. Eight knots was not fast, but it was better than presenting a stationary target, and excessive precautions were better than sitting there fat and dumb.

The whaleboat slowed as it neared the lifeboat, chugged slowly around it at a distance of only about thirty feet and headed back toward the
Arluk
, which stopped her engine. Boats was standing in the stern.

As he came near he called, “They're all dead. It's full of decomposed bodies, some in lifejackets lashed all around the gun'lls—”

In his mind's eye Paul could see the lifeboat pulling away from a sinking vessel, maybe a troopship. The boat was full and the sea was swarming with men trying to get into it. They had lashed as many as they could to the gun'lls, and had all waited there dumbly hoping for rescue while they froze to death.

“Skipper, pass us a can of gasoline,” Boats said. “We'll douse the bodies and we can set it off with the twenties.”

“Could we read a funeral service or something?” Williams asked.

“No,” Paul said. “We're setting no fires.”

“You're just going to leave them here?” Nathan asked.

“You could see the smoke from a fire for thirty miles at least.”

“It doesn't seem right,” Nathan said.

“Could we give them a burial at sea, wrap them in flags or something?” Williams said.

“We'll take no decomposed bodies aboard here—”

“Skipper …”

“If I were dead I wouldn't want to do that to a ship's crew,” Paul said. “Now get that whaleboat aboard and let's get out of here.”

No one talked as they brought the whaleboat aboard.

“Captain,” Williams said, “could we at least read some kind of a service over them?”

“I don't
have
any service—”

“Any Bible—”

“I don't have a Bible and I doubt if any man in the crew does.”

“I have one,” Williams said. “Can I read from it?”

“You can if you make it fast,” Paul said. “Don't ask me to stop the ship.”

Williams went to the wardroom and soon appeared with a black book in his hand. Standing on the fantail he read something as the
Arluk
passed the lifeboat, but the rumble of the screw made his quavering voice impossible to understand. The men stood hatless except for Boats, who faced the lifeboat and held a salute for thirty seconds. When Williams stopped reading, he ducked into the wardroom with his book, and the men off watch went to the forecastle for coffee.

“Could we sink the boat with gunfire?” Nathan asked.

“You can hear gunfire for twenty miles.”

Boats came to stand on the bridge beside them. He was shivering when he said, “Sharks got the legs of the people in the water and seagulls were pecking at the eyes of the men in the boat. There wasn't a hell of a lot left to burn.”

“They're
dead
, Boats,” Paul found himself shouting. “Do you think they'd be happier in some damn bronze coffin in a churchyard?”

“No.”

“Let the dead bury the dead,” Paul said. “That much of the Bible I remember. Our job is to stay alive.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Did you get the name of the ship that boat was from?” Paul suddenly asked.

“The S.S.
Garden City
out of New York.”

“Log it. Nathan, give him the position. And don't send any radio reports about it until you can tack it on the end of something you damned well have to send.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Boats, pick a shore party of twelve men who can handle rifles without shooting themelves. When we get to Scoresbysund, I'm not going to have any damned Danes telling me what I can do ashore—I'm going to search every settlement.”

“Aye, aye sir.”

“And don't make Guns part of that shore party. We're going ashore to look for radio transmitters, not to get laid … Tell yourself that too, captain … Nathan, tell Chief Banes to give us all the RPM he safely can. I want to get to Scoresbysund while this weather holds. Let's get on with it.”

CHAPTER 35

Scoresbysund turned out to be a vast almost landlocked sound, full of bays, islands and winding fjords. It was surprisingly free of ice and the smooth red granite mountains around it looked oddly warm in the short but sunny last days of October. The glittering ice of glaciers that pressed to the sea between the mountains, the odd indigo color of the water and the spectacular blazes of color at sunrise and sunset created breath-taking scenery, but the endless maze of ice, rock and water was a nightmare for anyone looking for a German weather station. The settlement there was about twice the size of the one at Angmagssalik, with similar wooden cottages and sod huts. The dozen or so Danes that Paul found were all old, but unlike the people at Angmagssalik, almost embarrassingly eager to help in any search for Germans. Paul felt ridiculous as with the aid of an armed shore party of twelve men he searched tiny attics and clothes closets in search of radio transmitters.

“Hell, any damned German would bury his equipment in the snow long before we got ashore,” Paul said to Nathan. “If they have a weather station in any of these damn fjords it would be in a sod hut covered with snow. They wouldn't even have to have a radio tower. They could rig a damn aerial to the side of a mountain and take it down when they saw us coming.”

“They'd have to get supplies,” Nathan said wearily.

For two weeks they explored Scoresbysund. When Nathan was not on the bridge he sat hunched over his radio equipment. No signals came from the immediate vicinity, but on high frequencies he often picked up scraps of code which might have skipped from almost anywhere.

They visited two small Eskimo settlements in Scoresbysund in addition to the main one. Here the natives lived in sod huts hardly bigger than dog kennels. They appeared childlike, eager to please and ultimately inscrutable. Regardless of what they had heard about the Germans, Paul was sure that they would help any white man who arrived with a few boxes of sugar, booze and canned meat, or even if he had nothing to offer them but a smile. Apparently the Eskimos really did love everyone, but these had been told not to fornicate with sailors. When the men in Paul's shore party gave them gifts of tea and Spam and kept repeating the word, “ping-ping,” the Eskimos giggled, laughed, shook their heads and retreated en masse into their huts.

Soon everyone aboard the
Arluk
felt completely frustrated, and no one was sorry when Commander GreenPat ordered the ship to go back to patrolling the coast. More radio activity had been picked up near Cape Farewell, and the
Arluk
was told to steam south.

Just as the pilotbook had warned, November marked the beginning of the Greenland winter. On October 30, low-scudding gray clouds wiped out the last scrap of blue sky, a northwesterly wind began to howl and the temperature took an abrupt dive to forty below zero. The only good part of this situation was that the northwesterly wind moved the ice pack a few miles off shore, leaving a sheltered belt of sea at the foot of the mountains in which the
Arluk
could maintain full speed. Although the clouds obscured the moon and stars, there was an eerie glow caused by the surrounding ice reflecting the slightest amount of light. The long Arctic nights were not as black as Paul had feared. With the radar turned on every hour long enough to give brief glimpses of the surrounding terrain and icescape, Paul found his job of navigation surprisingly easy.