Ethan knew that after the cessation of hostilities and victory in Europe, the allies had begun to view the Soviet Union with great mistrust, a feeling shared by their erstwhile Communist allies. Facing each other over the smoldering rubble of Germany, the two massive armies had settled into an uneasy peace that would soon become the chill of the Cold War and the dawning of the thermonuclear age.
‘Operation Highjump was to develop techniques for establishing, maintaining, and utilizing air bases on ice. The work would improve existing knowledge of electromagnetic, geological, geographic, hydrographic and meteorological propagation conditions on the continent.’
Hannah allowed a small smile to form on her lips.
‘You don’t sound like you think that was their main objective.’
Chandler and Amy had gathered on the bridge and were listening intently as Forrester went on.
‘The initial expedition went as planned, reaching the arena in late 1946 and launching reconnaissance missions. It was about then that things started to go wrong. A PBM Mariner aircraft assigned to the recon’ missions crashed with the loss of three crew members, along with the loss of another life on the Ross Ice Shelf in an accident. I suspect that you all are aware of the superstitious nature of seamen throughout the centuries, and already the station was gaining a reputation for ill luck, but by early 1947 the base Little America IV had a serviceable runway on the glaciers. At that point, according to the official reports the expedition was terminated due to the approach of winter.’
‘But it wasn’t?’ Ethan guessed.
‘The problem I and many others have with the official story is that the mission was considered a low-priority exploratory survey mission. Yet it was comprised of an aircraft carrier, twelve warships, a submarine, over twenty airplanes as well as a crew of four thousand men. Even Byrd himself suggested that the mission was high level and military in nature, despite the official announcements.’
Forrester gripped the Polar Star’s wheel more tightly as he spoke.
‘The region of the Antarctic to which we’re heading has seen more vessels lost than the Bermuda Triangle,’ he replied. ‘The list of vessels and aircraft that have vanished or been destroyed is almost endless: the San Telmo, lost in the Drake Passage in 1819 with the loss of over six hundred men; the Pisagua in 1913, run aground and wrecked; an Air New Zealand flight in 1979 that collided with Mount Erebus with the loss of over two hundred fifty lives; Explorer, holed and sunk; Insung 1, sunk with twenty one lives lost; Berserk, lost without trace; Jeong Woo 2, lost without trace and a DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft in 2013 that crashed into a mountain range with the loss of all lives on board. Those are just the cases I can remember off the top of my head but there are many, many others.’
Ethan frowned.
‘So you think the American expedition pulled out for fear of their lives?’
‘The leader of the expedition, Admiral Byrd, discussed the lessons learned from the expedition with International News Service aboard USS Mount Olympus, and warned of the danger of future wars resulting in foreign nations mounting aerial assaults via polar regions. Byrd said that the most important result of his observations and discoveries was the potential effect that they have in relation to the security of the United States. The fantastic speed with which the world was shrinking was one of the most important lessons learned.’
‘Sounds reasonable enough,’ Hannah pointed out.
‘But then, having established that point, neither the Soviet Union or the United States ever established a permanent military presence in Antarctica,’ Forrester went on. ‘Not only that, but a single documented event in 1946 seemed to precede the following flying saucer events of 1947. The expedition had captured some seventy thousand photographs and had been scheduled for five months’ duration, well through the Antarctic winter, but then it was abruptly and without public acknowledgement cancelled after just two months in what seemed to be a panic. No further announcements regarding the expedition were made by the Navy, and no further expeditions were conducted in the region.’
Ethan thought for a moment.
‘They found something,’ he said with clairvoyant certainty.
‘They found what the Germans had done,’ Forrester explained. ‘In August 1945, a year and a half before Byrd’s expedition, German U-boats U-530 and U-977 surrendered in the Argentinean harbor of Mar del Plata. The U-boats were from the so-called Führer convoy, an extremely secret formation whose exact mission remains unknown to this day. The crews of the submarines refused to talk, so we were able to learn very few details, although the captain of U-530 did supposedly speak of an operation by the name of Walküre 2. In line with this operation, his ship set sail from Kiel in Northern Germany for Antarctica two weeks before the end of the war; thanks to the Walther snorkel, it only had to surface once during the entire voyage across the Atlantic.’
Forrester guided the Polar Star to the right of a gigantic chunk of polar ice trapped in the frigid waters.
‘On board the U-Boats were passengers whose faces were allegedly masked, as well as important documents from the Third Reich. The captain of U-977, Heinz Schaeffer, confirmed to his captors that he sailed the same route with his boat shortly thereafter and in conducting their own research, we realized that numerous German U-boats travelled in the direction of Antarctica during the war and in its immediate aftermath.’ Forrester looked at Ethan. ‘Operation Highjump was a fully militarized operation to hunt down the last of the German Navy, believed to have been hiding beneath the Antarctic ice in a purpose-built base. So, one has to ask: what did Byrd’s fleet encounter down there and why has nobody ever returned to the site?’
A silence pervaded the bridge for a long moment before Hannah shrugged off the chilly atmosphere the captain had created.
‘Let’s stick with what we do know for now,’ she suggested. ‘Do we have precise coordinates for this German base you’re speaking of?’
‘Not precise coordinates,’ Forrester replied. ‘The base is likely to have been designed to ride the glacier it’s encased within otherwise it would have been torn apart by now. We’ve made a few calculations based on its likely position, seventy years after its construction. Your team will be deployed there from the shore as soon as we arrive.’
‘Which will be when?’ Ethan asked.
‘Four hours,’ the captain replied as he glanced up at a GPS display mounted to the ceiling of the bridge. ‘We’ll make the mouth of the glacier by dawn, at which point you’ll be on your own.’
Ethan turned away from the bridge and looked at the commander of the SEAL team. Lieutenant Riggs was leaning against a bulwark and had watched the entire exchange in silence.
‘We’d better get what rest we can,’ he suggested. ‘It’s going to be a long day.’
XII
The man stood across the street from the hospital and watched in silence as patients and loved ones filed in and out of the building. One of the busiest hospitals in the district, it would not be easy to get inside unobserved, find the target and eliminate them while leaving no trace. But he knew that the price paid for the taking of the life of Nicola Lopez would be well worth it, and that there would be nothing that she could do to prevent her murder.