The inn’s manager, Vladimir Panshin, a Russian expatriate with the raw, earthy look of a Brueghel peasant, didn’t buy the atheists’ claim to be disaffected jetsetters seeking those exotic, exciting places the travel bureaus didn’t know about. (“Whoever told you Jan Mayen is exciting,” said Panshin, “must get an orgasm from flossing his teeth.”) But ultimately his suspicions didn’t matter. He was more than happy to book the atheists into the Gabler and sell them the half pound of Gouda cheese (five American dollars), the gallon of reindeer milk (six dollars), and the dozen sticks of caribou jerky (one dollar each) they’d need for the next day’s trek.
Oliver slept badly that evening — Winston’s cyclonic snoring combined with the challenge of digesting overpriced ptarmigan stew — rousing himself the next morning only with the aid of the Gabler’s strongest coffee. At eight o’clock, Jan Mayen time, the atheists trudged past the city limits and entered the trackless tundra beyond.
After an hour’s hike they paused for lunch, spreading out their picnic on the narrow neck of rock marking the way to Upper Mayen. The cheese was moldy, the milk sour, the jerky tough and gritty. Inevitably Oliver imagined Anthony Van Horne’s cargo fashioning this particular isthmus: the gigantic hands reaching down from heaven, pinching the island in the middle. The vision alarmed and depressed him. What would the scientists back in Ibsen City do if they ever found out that their elaborate theories of uniformitarianism and plate tectonics were fundamentally meaningless? How would they react upon learning that the real answer to the geomorphic riddle was, of all things, divine intervention?
Crossing into Upper Mayen, the three men followed a pumice-covered path through the foothills of the Carolus Mountains, a journey made entertaining by a particularly dazzling performance from the aurora borealis. Had Oliver brought his art supplies along, he would have tried painting the phenomenon, laboring to capture on canvas its diaphanous arcs, ethereal swirls, and eerie crimson flickers.
At last Eylandt Fjord lay before them, a smooth expanse of steel blue water irregularly punctuated by gigantic chunks of floating pack ice. Oliver’s great fear was that the Enterprise would be delayed and they would have to camp on the tundra, so his mood brightened considerably when he saw her lying at anchor, four PBY flying boats tethered to her stern. His joy did not last.
The carrier looked old, feeble, small. She was small, he knew: smaller than the Valparaíso by half, smaller than God by a factor of twenty. The five dozen warplanes strapped to her flight deck did not seem remotely equal to the task at hand.
Barclay worked his portable semaphore, sending bursts of electric light across the fjord. G-O-D-H-E-A-D, the code name for their campaign.
The Enterprise replied: W-E-A-R-E-C-O-M-I-N-G.
The atheists scrambled down the cliff face, a treacherous descent through slippery patches of moss, jagged chunks of pumice, and a thorny, mean-spirited plant that tore their mukluks and bloodied their ankles. They reached the beach simultaneously with the carrier’s barge: a wooden inboard motorboat sporting a canvas canopy over her helm and flying a historically accurate 48-star flag. Dressed in a Memphis Belle bomber jacket, Sidney Pembroke sat on the foredeck, waving a mittened hand.
“Welcome to Point Luck!” Condensed breath gushed from Pembroke’s mouth. Even with the Arctic air flushing his cheeks, he still looked anemic. “Hop aboard, men!”
“There’s plenty of piping hot Campbell’s tomato soup back on Enterprise,” called Albert Flume, also bloodless, from behind the wheel. “Mmm, mmm, good!” He’d traded his zoot suit for the saboteur look: vicu сa vest, blue crewneck sweater, black watch cap, like Anthony Quinn in The Guns of Navarone.
Wrapping a calfskin bombardier’s glove around the throttle, Flume eased the motor into neutral. Beside him stood a granite-jawed, swag-bellied man wearing the unassuming khaki uniform of an American naval officer in the process of winning World War Two. Admirals’ stars decorated his shoulders.
Oliver waded into the shallows, wincing as the icy water gushed through the rips in his mukluks, and climbed over the transom, Barclay and Winston right behind. The Navy man ducked out from under the canopy and smiled, an unlit briar pipe clamped between his teeth.
“You must be Mr. Shostak,” said the admiral, subjecting Oliver to a strenuous handshake. “Spruance here, Ray Spruance. I use your dad’s brand of rubber all the time. Boy, I’ll bet this AIDS thing’s been a real boon to your family, right? It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.”
Oliver grimaced and said, “These are my colleagues — Barclay Cabot, Winston Hawke.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, fellas.”
“What’s your actual name?” asked Winston, beating back a smirk.
“Doesn’t matter, Mr. Hawke. For the next two weeks, I’m Raymond A. Spruance, rear admiral, U.S. Navy, charged with the tactical side of this operation.”
“As opposed to the strategic?” asked Oliver. He was beginning to understand how these idiots thought.
“Yep. Strategy’s Admiral Nimitz, back at Pearl Harbor.”
“Where’s Nimitz really?”
“New York,” said Flume.
“We’re not paying him, are we?” asked Oliver.
“Of course we’re paying him.” Putting the motor in gear, Flume guided the barge away from the beach.
“Why are we paying him if he’s not doing anything?”
“He is doing something.”
“What?”
“Ray just told you. Strategy.”
“But we know the strategy.”
“Look, boys,” said Spruance’s portrayer, whipping the briar pipe from his mouth, “if I couldn’t picture old Chesty Nimitz back at Pearl, planning our strategy, I wouldn’t have the heart to go through with this.”
“But he’s not at Pearl,” said Oliver. “He’s in New York.”
“We could send him to Pearl if you wanted,” said Flume, “but it’d cost you a pretty penny.”
Biting his tongue, Oliver said nothing.
“You know, I’d never heard of vigilante capitalism until Sidney and Albert told me about it” — Spruance offered the atheists a sly, conspiratorial wink — “but I must say, I’m impressed.”
“Some folks think we’re out of line,” said Winston, “but that won’t stop us from doing our patriotic duty.”
“Hey, you needn’t persuade me,” said Spruance. “For years I been sayin’ the Nips are a bigger threat to America right now than they ever were in ’42.”
As Flume piloted them across the fjord, Pembroke climbed off the foredeck, wiped a dollop of eider-duck guano from his bomber jacket, and drew up beside Winston. “So how do you like Task Force Sixteen?” Pembroke asked, pointing toward the Enterprise.
“I see only one ship,” said Winston.
“Well, it’s a task force to us,” said Pembroke in an aggrieved tone. “Task Force Sixteen. We’ve got Enterprise, her barge, four PBYs…”
“Right.”
“A task force, yes?”
“You bet.”
“Things go okay on Martha’s Vineyard?” asked Barclay.
“Beautiful,” said Pembroke. “A sell-out crowd.”
“We watched it all from Dad’s cabin cruiser,” said Flume. “A regular ringside seat.”
“Alby brought along the most amazing picnic.”
“Everything’s better with the Battle of Midway raging all around you.”
“Potato salad’s better. Chocolate cake’s better.”
“Except Soryu — wouldn’t you know it? — she didn’t sink,” said Flume, carefully maneuvering the barge alongside the carrier.
“Oh?” said Oliver.