Jack whistled. “Pretty deep.”
“Over three thousand feet.”
“That underwater ridge on the image, across the mouth of the fjord,” Jack said. “I assume that’s where the ice tongue reached its maximum extent?”
“The Danes who settled here in the eighteenth century called it Isfjeldsbanken, the threshold,” Macleod replied. “A huge sill of sediment bulldozed by the glacier. The tip of the threshold’s only about six hundred feet deep, so the bigger bergs get stuck on it. Until recently it marked the edge of the ice tongue, the congestion of bergs that choked the fjord.”
“But now the breakup occurs several miles closer to the ice cap, where we are now?”
“Correct.” Macleod tapped the screen and another image appeared, a satellite photo of the fjord. “Courtesy of NASA, a composite image from the Landsat satellite. The sequence of red lines across the fjord shows the retreat of the calving front of the glacier between 2001 and 2005. At the same time the glacier has accelerated dramatically, almost doubling its velocity. And airborne laser altimetry measurements have shown a thinning of the glacier by up to fifty feet a year.”
“Global warming,” Jeremy said.
“Bad news for the environment, but good news for us.” Macleod snapped the screen closed and re-engaged the cyclic, pulling the helicopter round on a westward bearing and flying through the mist away from the ice face. “Bad news because it suggests global warming has a more dramatic effect on the ice cap than many have feared. Good news because it allows us to work in the fjord itself, to carry out research that’s never before been possible.”
“And now we’re into summer,” Jack said. “I’m assuming that increases the rate of calving and ice disintegration along the glacier front?”
“That’s why I wanted you here now,” Macleod replied. “A few more days and we’re closing shop. We’re working on the edge in more ways than one.”
Twenty minutes later he eased back on the cyclic and the Lynx began to descend over the jagged line of icebergs near the head of the fjord. Jack’s heart began to pound as he saw a ship’s superstructure appear out of the mist to seaward. Macleod reached over to the ship-to-shore intercom, but before pressing engage he turned and looked at Jack.
“And now it’s time to let you know why I dragged you halfway round the world to this place.”
6
The man in the prison cell slowly raised his head and listened hard for any signs of life, but heard nothing. He had heard nothing but the sounds of his jailers for more than five years now. He closed his eyes and breathed in slow and deep, immune to the aroma of feces and urine and vomit that had long ago impregnated the fabric of the prison. He had been sent to serve out his sentence in his grandfather’s homeland, in an empty prison left over from the Gulag, saving them the trouble of putting him in solitary confinement. But sensory deprivation held no fear for him, his training having taught him to exclude the reality of confinement and live in a world of his own creation. He slowly bent his head from side to side and then leaned again over the chessboard, the only indulgence he had asked of his captors. He lowered his elbows to the table and raised his hands together in their fingerless mitts, rubbing them against the damp chill that pervaded the cell all year round. For the thousandth time he reached down and picked up a little white pawn, shaped like a Viking warrior with chain mail and a shield, and placed it in front of the Christian king.
“Checkmate,” he said quietly.
He leaned back on his stool with the exaggerated slowness of a man whose tiniest movements have become his main preoccupation, his way of filling the solitary hours of yet another day. He lifted his left hand slowly to his face and drew his index finger along the scar that ran from his eye socket to his lower jaw, testing himself against the pain he felt every time. From his jaw he moved his hand to the wall beside him and began to trace his finger along the lines of incised graffiti, his hourly ritual, quietly reciting the words like a scholar with a holy text. “Paul Kruger,” he murmured. “Hauptsturmfuhrer, Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. Kurt Hausser, Sturmbannfuhrer, Panzergrenadier-Division Das Reich. Otto Lehmann, Brigadefuhrer, Panzer-Division Wiking.” He knew the names by heart, names of the true heroes of the Great Patriotic War, crusaders in the struggle against the East, the captured survivors of Kharkov and Kursk and countless other battles, sent by the Russians to this cell more than half a century ago, their last stop before the squalid execution chamber at the end of the corridor. Names like his grandfather’s. Only his grandfather had been luckier, for a while.
He shut his eyes and raised his hand to the jagged runes that cut across the names, knowing exactly where to place his two fingers to draw them down, then up, then down, lines so deeply carved that the Soviet guards had given up trying to erase them decades ago. They were the graffiti he liked to trace his fingers over best, the symbol of his grandfather’s order, Schutzstaffel, the SS. He dropped his hand slowly as his fingers fell away from the lines and pressed his ear against the clammy wall, feeling he was truly communing with the knights of the past, brothers in arms who had left their last imprint on this wall to give him strength, to guide him in his quest to find their holiest treasure, to put to rest all who had gone before him and failed.
“Anton Poellner.” The prisoner emerged from a well of blackness as the voice spoke loudly through the slot in the door. He pushed himself upright as the bolts were drawn and the door clanged open. An official in a peaked cap stood between two guards, silhouetted against the harshly lit corridor behind.
“Anton Poellner.” The official repeated his name, and the man in the cell held his hand up against the glare before slowly replying in English.
“What do you want?”
“By order of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” the official said, speaking in Lithuanian. “Case number IT-99-37b, the Prosecutor of the Tribunal against Anton Poellner, former paid mercenary of the Bosnian Serb Army. Indicted under Article 7 on the basis of individual criminal responsibility, for genocide and crimes against humanity.” The man paused, then raised a document he had been carrying. “Under the amnesty convention signed last year in The Hague, your case came up for review in the Appeals Chamber.” The official lowered the paper and spoke with obvious distaste. “You are free to go.”
He snapped his fingers and the two guards heaved the man to his feet, throwing an old Soviet greatcoat around him as they did so. The man blinked furiously against the light as they shoved him through the cell door, then shackled his feet for the last time and jostled him down the corridor. He was the final occupant of a condemned prison, and as the echoes of his chains resounded through the empty cells it was as if the ghosts of the past were urging him on, knowing he was their last hope that any would escape.
At the final door they unshackled his feet and thrust him wordlessly into the outside world. It was drizzling and unseasonably cold for early summer, but the man raised his pallid face upwards and smiled as the rain coursed over his skin. He picked up the duffel bag that had been dropped beside him and began to walk slowly towards the open outer gate and the road beyond, falling into the easy stride of a man accustomed to route marches. Outside the gate he shouldered the bag and thrust his hands into the greatcoat pockets, waiting for the car he knew would come. Minutes later a dark Mercedes rolled out of the shadows, its rear passenger door swinging open as it stopped in front of him. Without looking once at the prison he stooped down and got in.
“Welcome back,” a voice said in English from the front seat. “Your instructions.”