A check showed there were enough body parts for two men but only one head, with most of the skin stripped from the face, eyes long since gone leaving an ice-blackened skull smiling up at Banks in a thin-lipped rictus grin.
A rough track led away from the rear of the huts, away from the water and rising steeply up the wall of the fjord. The path was partially snow covered and there were no fresh tracks in it. Whatever had happened here, it certainly wasn’t recent.
But it is a mystery. And the colonel doesn’t like mysteries.
He had the squad do a quick survey of the whole area looking for clues but there was only the cold ground and the scattered remains of the dead, and they weren’t talking.
- 3 -
He gave the order to head back for the hut where they’d got the fire going; the weather had become a fully fledged storm. The sky had gone so dark he had to check his watch to make sure he hadn’t misjudged the time and that night wasn’t in fact falling early. He let the squad go first and brought up the rear, being almost blown back along the shore now that the swirling wind was mostly at his back. He got inside the hut and had to push to close the door against the force of the breeze outside. He shook snow off himself like a wet dog.
Wiggins was already at the fire, stoking it up with fresh logs, and Davies was at the camp stove getting more coffee brewed. Banks retrieved the sat phone from his inside pocket and put a call through to the skipper of the supply vessel offshore.
“The weather has closed in. Any idea how long this storm will last?”
“The rest of the day and most of the night, Captain. I’m afraid you’re stuck there for the duration. It’s not safe to try to take the dinghy out in these waters in this.”
“I’m not about to try it,” Banks replied. “We’ve got plenty of comforts and we’ve seen out storms in much worse places than this.”
“Stay warm,” the skipper replied. “We’ve got a run to make to one of our rigs overnight. We’ll swing by in the morning and I’ll give you a call back then.”
“Willco,” Banks replied and closed the call just as the door opened at his back and Wiggins turned to smile.
“Be right back, Cap,” he said. “Just going to get my round in.”
Before Banks could stop him, the corporal stepped out into the storm.
Fortunately, Wiggins wasn’t gone long enough for Banks to start to worry. He arrived back a few minutes later carrying a bottle in each hand — one half-full of vodka, the other almost full of a popular Scottish blended whisky.
“I thought we might as well get comfortable if we’re staying the night,” Wiggins said with a grin. Hynd cuffed him around the ear but in truth, Banks thought they might all be glad of the liquor in the long hours of the night to come.
They found two oil lamps in the debris that were still functional, broke out the ration packs from their kit, and had a meal with their coffee. Banks’ was some kind of chicken curry that tasted too sharply of pepper but it did its job in putting some heat in his belly. After coffee, the other four members of the squad settled around the fire with a smoke and a pack of cards, drinking liquor in their coffee cups. Banks added a generous splash of Scotch to his own coffee then went to sit below one of the lamps. He took the journal they’d found from inside his jacket and started looking for the cause of the carnage they’d seen at that last hut.
Although the light was dim, the writing was in a good-quality black ink and was perfectly legible.
The first entry appeared to be for the first days of the site.
September 23rd 1949
The weather held up for our trip in and we arrived only a day later than planned. The Norwegians have been as good as their word and the jetty, if not pretty, is perfectly functional and we were able to unload our cargo in double-quick time. I write this in a tent while work continues apace around me and hope that by tonight we might all be able to bed down in shelter and comfort.
The huts are going up fast around us and we are all looking forward to getting some warmth back into our bones. I for one will be glad of it, for my bad knee is giving me gip constantly in this damp cold and has me hobbling around the site like an old man.
The Norwegians are proving most accommodating and generous hosts and have kept us all supplied with plenty of food and drink. I cannot take to the herring but the vodka is most welcome. The only dark spot so far has been the glowers and black looks from the crew of the boat that brought us here. I am led to believe that this stretch of coast has long been shunned by the locals but as to why that should be and why they are so against our presence here, I have yet to uncover.
It is not a new feeling to me on this outing for I have been in the dark ever since leaving Edinburgh. When I opened my orders this morning, I was glad of finally getting some clue as to why I’d been sent away from my warm desk to these frozen northern climes.
I must say it sounds like something out of an H. G. Wells book or one of those awful Yank movies with its talk of chimeras and its hopes of creating a modern weapon from ancient samples. But orders are orders. I do what I’m told and Jensen our lead scientist assures me that it is not some wild goose chase and that the material is indeed there in the hills waiting to be gathered.
If I am to believe what I have been told, the map we have came from a sixteenth-century Scottish fishing captain who undertook an investigation in this area and got more, far more, than he bargained for. His supposed encounter read to me like a prolonged attempt at an excuse by a man who had tarried too long at sea for the liking of his wife in Aberdeen but the brass appear to put at least some credence by it. As for myself, I cannot put any faith in the specifics of the old tale as it was told, full as it is of superstitious claptrap about bogles and bloody carnage. But I am assured that the cave itself most certainly exists and its position has been confirmed in several aerial flyovers. My superiors seem to agree with the Norwegian scientists that there is something there worth investigating, something that might prove valuable in our efforts to keep the Russians from gaining too much influence in these northern climes now that the Jerries have been sent packing.
I will send Jensen and a small team into the mountains and to the cave as soon as all of the huts are up, the laboratories prepared, and all the equipment unpacked, which at the current rate of progress should be by this coming Saturday.
The next page of the journal was given over to a rudimentary map showing a route from the shoreline of the fjord, taking the same path he’d seen at the rear of the demolished hut, up the cliffs, and across a high plateau to a mountain valley. A group of a dozen buildings was depicted at the head of a river and above that a round black hole that was marked simply, CAVE. Banks’ heart sank.
I have a feeling I’m not going to like this.
The temptation was to skip ahead in the narrative but he needed every scrap of information available to him; as soon as the colonel saw this journal, he’d have questions.