Whiteout!

'Sure,' he said. 'There's - ' I let him finish, but had the answer already. Why the hell hadn't I thought of it, or anybody else for that matter: Coveney, Smales, Allen himself, anybody?

'There's that trench where the bodies are,' Allen said.

'Who can get in?'

'Two keys to the door. One on that ring. Major Smales has the other.'

'Did you look inside?'

He shook his head.

Kelleher said, 'But Barney would, surely.'

'Why should he? It's been locked for days. There are only two keys and - '

'Locked it myself,' Allen said, 'right after we put Doc Kirton's body in there.'

I held up the key-ring. 'Which one?'

Allen pointed with a weary hand. 'Okay.' I turned to Kelleher. 'Let's go have a look.'

'We're gonna be spotted,' Kelleher said. 'Leastways I am.'

'We've got to risk it. Do what I did. Pinch a parka with somebody else's name on it. And carry something. Nobody looks twice at a beast of burden . . , take some sheets, you'll look like part of Coveney's clean-up.'

We grabbed another of the parkas the sick men wouldn't be needing and gathered some soiled sheets from the laundry baskets and left the medical block cautiously, ready to duck back if we encountered anybody. But Main Street was deserted. We hurried to the trench. A notice on the locked door read:

'No admittance under any circumstances' and we glanced at one another grimly. I turned the key, the lock slid smoothly back, and in a moment we were inside and locking the door. I had brought a handlamp from the hospital, but we didn't need it. The light switch clicked and the overhead strip lights flickered on.

There was no sign of Carson, but we went the length of the trench to make sure, sidestepping bodies as we walked. At the bottom of the escape hatch stair, Kelleher looked at me and gave a little shudder.

'C'mon, let's get out of here.'

I shared his keenness to leave, and we turned and walked back briskly towards the door. But something only half-remembered began to prickle in my mind and I stopped, looking down at the bodies.

'Just a minute.' Each of the bodies, blanket-shrouded, lay fastened to a steel-framed stretcher sled.

'You spotted something?'

'Hang on. Let me think.' I tried to remember the time I'd been in here before, in the darkness, when I'd blundered in a panic among these hard frozen remnants that had once been men. And there had been something odd about one of them. I'd assumed it had been Kirton, but. . . I said, 'How many men should be here?'

'Seven, I guess. Six from the helo crash, plus Doc Kirton. Why? And what in hell are you doing?'

I was on my knees, swallowing my revulsion and making myself run my hands over the shrouded forms. The fourth was the one that had lingered in my mind. I glanced at the identifying label tied to the sled, and said, 'Not much left of Private First Class Marvin K. Harrer.'

'He was in a helo crash!' Kelleher said impatiently. 'What do you expect? Leave the poor guy alone!'

Ignoring him, I began to unfasten the ties that held the shrouding blanket: as I pulled the material back from where the head should have been, I found myself looking down at a chunk of kapok wearing an Arctic-issue hat. 'I think,' I said, 'that we'd better see the rest of him.'

Kelleher said, 'Be your age. There's got to be something to bury. The army sometimes has to return the body to the family with the lid screwed tight.' But the conviction was going out of his voice, and by the time I'd peeled the blanket right back to reveal lengths of wood positioned where the arms and legs would have been, he had no protests left. 'Six bodies,' he said. 'And there should be seven. So where's the other one?'

We stared at one another and both of us shuddered.

'Wait. Wait a second,' Kelleher said. 'Let's just be damn sure this is right. We got - '

'It's right!' I said, and my voice sounded harsh in my own ears. 'Somebody has used a body for something, and faked this up to make it look as though they're all here.'

'What about the others?'

I examined them quickly, squeamishness suppressed. Therewas a corpse on each of the remaining sleds. I didn't linger; one glance at each of the pale, waxy, dead faces was more than enough, and when I came to the pulverized remnants of Kirton, my stomach threatened revolt. As I moved from sled to sled, Kelleher followed behind, in silence, replacing each cover. When we'd done, I rose and said, 'Why would he steal a corpse?'

'Because of what it would show?' Kelleher hazarded. 'Because the pathologist could prove something from it?'

I nodded. It seemed the likeliest explanation.

Then Kelleher said slowly, 'But it would have to be something obvious, that's for damn sure. Look, they fly these poor guys out to Thule first chance, okay? They unwrap the corpses, dress 'em up to ship 'em Stateside. But they know how they died. A helicopter crashed. So nobody's looking for anything suspicious.' He paused a moment. 'Listen. Thule's got the whole works, pathologists, morgues, even a mortician, for God's sake. The whole deal. It's a big place and people die, right? So .., this guy who steals a corpse, what's his reasoning ? I'll tell you. There's something about that corpse, about Pfc Harrer, that's gonna attract attention and fast ! When the bodies arrive, the pathologist takes a quick look because the book says look, then he gives the okay to the mortician for the screwed-down lid. Only he doesn't, not with Harrer, because that quick look's gonna ring alarm bells. So the body has to be stolen and got rid of.'

'Wrong,' I said.

'Why?'

'Because alarm bells ring anyway. Instead of a body there's a bundle of wood and kapok.'

Kelleher sighed. 'True enough. Maybe I did go nuts back there!'

'The minute that little bundle arrives,' I said, 'all sorts of things happen, and the first is a bloody great investigation of what's going on up here. Shipping this out draws attention.'

'Maybe the other thing was worse.'

'Perhaps.' But it didn't ring true. We stared at one another for a moment, bafflement complete. I said,

'Let's try Allen.'

As we slipped cautiously out of the trench, Coveney and a couple of others were moving purposefully along Main Streetabout fifty yards off, fortunately heading away from us. A glance would have been enough, but nobody seemed to turn and look. Kelleher carried his bundle of sheets at face level as we hurried back to the medical block.

Allen was sleeping, but Kelleher didn't hesitate. His forefinger was prodding the master sergeant awake as 1 closed the door into the ward. Rapidly we told him what had happened. He was physically very low, blinking with the need for sleep, but he listened with determined attention. Our account finished, we stood still, watching him try to think.

Finally he said, 'Nope. Can't see any reason.' He was sick and bone weary; it was an effort to stay awake and after a few moments his eyelids closed.

I was exasperatedly lighting a cigarette when he said, suddenly and clearly, 'What did you say the name was?'

'Harrer,' I said, 'Pfc Harrer."

Allen pursed his lips. 'We had this show a coupla months back. Stage show. Camp concert. Funny sketches and comic songs, you know the kind of thing.'

I thought for a second he'd begun to ramble. 'What about Harrer?'

'Harrer did a comedy routine about Doc Kirton. Best number in the show.'

I didn't see the point, but Kelleher suddenly snapped his fingers. 'You mean he looked like Doc Kirton?'

Allen gave a little nod. 'Enough for that kind of show. Big build. Dark hair. He wasn't a double, it wasn't even close, but on that stage with make-up and a stethoscope and a white coat...'

Kelleher interrupted him. 'So if that's not Kirton in there ...'

We talked, we thrashed at it, we speculated, we postulated, and at the end of it all, we still had only questions. Not an answer in sight. There was still somebody, malevolent, cunning, ruthless and inevitably insane, who was responsible for everything that had happened at Camp Hundred, but there was no clue to his identity or even to his thinking. There were plenty of insoluble mysteries, with a new one added: what possible use might have been made of Harrer's body and his resemblance to Kirton? It was Allen who finally said, 'Got to know whose body it is.'