"That's right," Hawk said, the cigar in his mouth. The noxious gray cloud increased.
"And what will you do, sir?"
Hawk glared at Carter. The AXE chief stood, walked three paces across the room, turned, and retraced his steps. His teeth clamped the cigar. His hands knotted behind his back. He walked back and forth like a caged tiger. A powerful caged tiger.
Wait. Watch," the AXE director said. "This isn't the only operation I've got. I have people on assignment in the Middle East, Berlin, Beirut, Central and South America, South Africa, you name it. Anything could blow up. Right now the Antarctic business is the most active, the most crucial. And with Blenkochev here… well, you know about that. But meanwhile, I've got a brigade of people out there trying to cap volcanoes of potential violence. What else can I do?"
"You could go into the field with me."
Hawk skipped pacing. He looked at Carter. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth, studied it, and jammed it back in.
"It's what I want, of course," he said quietly.
"There'd be two of us. A better chance at success."
Hawk was silent, his steels eyes suddenly taking on a wistful glow. He looked around the small white room.
The sleeping quarter, where Carter and Hawk met belonged to an officer with a wife and two young daughters. The family picture sat on a low shell above the desk. The blond officer in dress whites, the wife in a summer dress that showed good shoulders and a sunny disposition, and the daughters in starched pinafores over frilly dresses. It was a smiling, happy family, holding hands, the girls each on a parent's lap. The best of us. What freedom was all about.
Hawk's chin jutted with determination.
"You have your job," he said gruffly, "I have mine."
"And Blenkochev?"
"Blenkochev's a damned fool. Always was. Conniving and shrewd, but given to extremes. My guess is that he's working that man in the Mazda, using him as his direct assistant. Just because Blenkochev is out in the field neglecting everything else is no reason for me to. But then he's got a bureaucracy sixteen layers deep that will keep his operation going."
"What tempts you is that you know him better than any of us."
Hawk allowed himself a smile of acknowledgment. Carter understood.
"A conceit on my part, I suppose," the powerful AXE chief admitted. "The greatest adversary I ever had. Wily as a fox. Totally amoral. What's he up to? It's enough to tempt me into stupidity. You've the only agent I trust to take him on, Nick. Blenkochev was never too proud to get help even from despicable sources. Silver Dove isn't my idea of a group with a good cause. They're bigots. They draw members from Russians who constantly push the Communist ideology against religions of all kinds — particularly Jews. Speaking out against religious practice isn't enough for them. They bomb churches, cathedrals, and synagogues. They kill religious leaders. Those in positions of power won't let Jews emigrate. Instead they throw them into prisons and 'hospitals' where they are tortured. It's one thing to be an atheist. It's something else entirely to hate people who have a god just because they have a god. And then you add their poisonous attitudes toward different races — blacks, Orientals, whatever — and women… and you have a really swell group of supporters."
"Or employees."
"Yes. Employees."
Hawk sat again in the chair by the desk. He waved a hand absently through the cigar smoke and laid the foul-smelling cigar butt in an ashtray to die a natural death.
The ventilation system worked doggedly on the close atmosphere. The small living quarters with the bright white walls was gloomy not only with smoke, but with the two men's thoughts.
"We can't make the world better until people's inner lives are ruled by love and compassion, not fear and hate," Carter observed.
"People can't make themselves better until countries encourage understanding and appreciation among one another. They've got to realize that national fears and hatreds lead ultimately only to destruction. And if governments are designed as well to guarantee a man or woman's basic needs, then individuals can develop themselves and their potential to the highest level."
Carter ground out his cigarette. The men stood. The submarine would surface soon.
"I suppose the answer," Carter said, "is that both have to happen simultaneously. Individuals and nations striving for the best together."
"And meanwhile," Hawk added, "we have work to do."
Carter nodded, then held the door for the older man.
"Blenkochev and Silver Dove," Carter said.
Flat-topped icebergs glowed eerily blue in the choppy South Pacific. They drifted past the submarine like fat elegant matrons on the way to the bank.
It was summer in Antarctica, January, a time of around the-clock sunlight and the pulsing activity of an international array of scientists studying winds, rock formations, tectonic movement, sea life, ocean currents, glaciation, and human nature.
McMurdo Station was not far ahead, just beyond Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound. The U.S.-operated station would be Carter's jumping off point. It was also the major Antarctic port for U.S. and New Zealand scientific activity.
He stood with Hawk, bundled in khaki-colored easy movement fiberfilled clothes, pined by the captain and lookout on the submarine's bridge as they approached the world's southernmost land. Antarctica itself came from the Greek word antarktikos, which meant "opposite the bear," the northern constellation.
The wind was brisk and sharp. Broad-winged skuas circled and dove for fish. Emperor penguins in their tuxedo disguises swam and played.
"A good day to arrive," Hawk observed, his eyes in binoculars scanning the white and gray land ahead.
"Hope it stays that way," the captain agreed as he, too, studied the Antarctic coast through binoculars. "Weather's changeable as hell."
Within an hour, the iceberg-clogged waters could alter from deep blue to silver to gray to black, and the sky from sapphire blue to a tempestuous white and charcoal life-threatening blizzard.
To the submarine's left loomed the vast Ross Ice Shelf, almost six hundred miles wide. It was bracketed on the far end by Little America and on this end by McMurdo Station, both operated by the United States.
To the right of McMurdo rose the rough, austere Queen Maud Mountains, as raw a range of rocky peaks as any on the globe. Carter would have to fly across them to reach the South Pole.
The submarine passed Cape Adare and a groaning glacial iceberg factory that casually calved chunks of ice the size of breadboxes and warehouses into the churning sea. They passed Ross Island where Mount Erebus stood in grandeur, one of the few continuously active volcanoes in Antarctica. And then, stars and stripes waving smartly overhead, the submarine came to port in McMurdo.
In the ice hut, Hawk spent the rest of the day overseeing Carter's outfitting. He selected the best and most recent equipment. Clothing, snow survival gear, processed food, and — most important — a small nuclear helicopter, large enough for only a pilot and passenger. With luck, the passenger would be a retrieved Rocky Diamond.
The two men packed the gear themselves, aware that a mistake — something lost, misplaced, or forgotten — could mean Carter's death. The AXE agent had not only Silver Dove and Blenkochev to contend with, but also the most relentlessly savage weather in the world.
Hawk posted a guard on the helicopter and gear it contained, then the two men ate dinner and found empty beds. They would arise in precisely eight hours.
During their time at the base, they'd found no one who'd seen or heard of Rocky Diamond.
Farther north, well above the Antarctic Circle, it was dawn. But at McMurdo Station in Antarctica where Carter and Hawk walked out toward the helicopter, it was just another ordinary hour in the continuous summer day. For two-thirds of the year, the continent at the bottom of the world was shut down and inaccessible completely frozen in. The wasteland was so trapped in brutal snowstorms and endless night that even the native plant and sea life couldn't reproduce.