Alistair MacLean - Ice Station Zebra

"I don't know who did it."

Swanson looked at me, his eyes strange. "You just found this out?" -

"I found out last night."

"You found out last night." The words were slow, farspaced, a distinct hiatus between each two. "And all the time since, aboard the ship, you never said… you never showed… My God, Carpenter, you're inhuman."

"Sure," I said. "See that gun there? It makes a loud bang, and when I use it to kill the man who did this, I won't even blink. I'm inhuman, all right."

"I was speaking out of turn. Sorry." Swanson was making a visible effort to bring himself under normal control. He looked at the Mannlicher-Schoenauer, then at me, then back at the gun. "Private revenge is out, Carpenter. No one is going to take the law into his own hands."

"Don't make me laugh out loud. A morgue isn't a fit place for it. Besides, I'm not through showing you things yet. There's more. Something that I've just found out now. Not last night." I pointed to another huddled black shape on the ground, "Care to have a look at this man here?"

"I'd rather not," Swanson said steadily. "Suppose you tell us?"

"You can see from where you are. The head. I've cleaned it up. Small hole in the front, in the middle of the face and slightly to the right: larger exit hole at the back of the top of the head. Same gun. Same man behind the gun."

Neither man said anything. They were too sick, too shocked to say anything.

"Queer path the bullet took," I went on. "Ranged sharply upwards. As if the man who fired the shot had been lying or sitting down while his victim stood above him."

"Yes." Swanson didn't seem to have heard me. "Murder, Two murders. This is a job for the authorities, for the police."

"Sure," I said. "For the police. Let's just ring the sergeant at the local station and ask him if he would mind stepping this way for a few minutes."

"It's not a job for us," Swanson persisted. "As captain of an American naval vessel, with a duty to discharge, I am primarily interested in bringing my ship and the Zebra survivors back to Scotland again."

"Without endangering the ship?" I asked. "With a murderer aboard, the possibility of endangering the ship does not arise?"

"We don't know he is — or will be — aboard."

"You don't even begin to believe that yourse1f. You know he will be. You know as well as I do why this fire broke out and you know damn well that it was no accident. If there was any accidental element about it, it was just the size and extent of the fire. The killer may have miscalculated that. But both time and weather conditions were against him: I don't think he had very much option. The only possible way in which he could obliterate all traces of his crime was to have a fire of sufficient proportions to obliterate those traces. He would have got away with it, too, if I hadn't been here, if I hadn't been convinced before we left port that something was very much wrong indeed. But he would take very good care that he wouldn't obliterate himself in the process. Like it or not, Commander, you're going to have a killer aboard your ship."

"But all of those men have been burned, some very severely — "

"What the hell did you expect? That the unknown X would go about without a mark on him, without as much as a cigarette burn, proclaiming to the world that he had been the one who had been throwing matches about and had then thoughtfully stood to one side? Local color. He «had» to get himself burned." -

"It doesn't necessarily follow," Hansen said. "How was he to know that anyone was going to get suspicious and start investigating?"

"You'd be well advised to join your captain in keeping out of the detecting racket," I said shortly. "The men behind this are top-flight experts with far-reaching contacts — part of a criminal octopus with tentacles so long that it can even reach out and sabotage your ship in the Holy Loch. Why they did that, I don't know. What matters is that top-flight operators like those «never» take chances. They always operate on the assumption that they «may» be found out. They take every possible precaution against every possible eventuality. Besides, when the fire was at its height — we don't know the story of that yet — the killer would have had to pitch in and rescue those trapped. It would have seemed damned odd if he hadn't. And so he got burned."

"My God." Swanson's teeth were beginning to chatter with the cold but he didn't seem to notice it. "What a hellish set-up."

"Isn't it? I dare say there's nothing in your Navy regulations to cover this."

"But what — what are we going to do?"

"We call the cops. That's me."

"What do you mean?"

"What I say. I have more authority, more official backing, more scope, more power and more freedom of action than any cop you ever saw. You must believe me. What I say is true."

"I'm beginning to believe it «is» true," Swanson said in slow thoughtfulness. "I've been wondering more and more about you in the past twenty-four hours. I've kept telling myself I was wrong, even ten minutes before I kept telling myself. You're a policeman? Or detective?"

"Naval officer. Intelligence. I have credentials in my suitcase which I am empowered to show in an emergency." It didn't seem the time to tell him just how wide a selection of credentials I did have. "This is the emergency."

"But — but you are a doctor."

"Sure I am. A Navy doctor — on the side. My specialty is investigating sabotage in the U.K. armed forces. The cover-up of research doctor is the ideal one. My duties are deliberately vague, and I have the power to poke and pry into all sorts of corners and situations and talk to all sorts of people on the grounds of being an investigating psychologist which would be impossible for the average officer."

There was a long silence; then Swanson said bitterly, "You might have told us before this."

"I might have broadcast it all over your tannoy system. Why the hell should 1? I don't want to trip over blundering amateurs every step I take. Ask any cop. The biggest menace of his life — is the self-appointed Sherlock. Besides, I couldn't trust you, and before you start getting all hot and bothered about that I might add that I don't mean you'd deliberately give me away or anything like that but that you may inadvertently give me away. Now I've no option but to tell you what I can and chance the consequences. Why couldn't you just have accepted that directive from your Chief of Naval Operations and acted accordingly?"

"Directive?" Hansen looked at Swanson. "What directive?"

"Order from Washington to give Dr. Carpenter here carte blanche for practically everything. Be reasonable, Carpenter. I don't like operating in the dark and I'm naturally suspicious. You came aboard in highly questionable circumstances. You knew too damn much about submarines. You were as evasive as hell. You had this sabotage theory all cut and dried. Damn it, man, of course I had reservations. Wouldn't you have had, in my place?"

"I suppose so. I don't know. Me, I obey orders."

"Uh-huh. And your orders in this case?"

"Meaning what exactly is all this about?" I sighed. "It would have to come to this. You must be told now, and you'll understand why your Chief of Naval Operations was so anxious that you give me every help possible."

"We can believe this one?" Swanson asked.

"You can believe this one. The story I spun you back in the Holy Loch wasn't all malarkey. I just dressed it up a bit to make sure you'd take me along. They did indeed have a very special item of equipment here-an electronic marvel that was used for monitoring the count-down of Soviet missiles and pinpointing their locations. This machine was kept in one of the huts now destroyed — the second from the west in the south row. Night and day a giant captive radio-sonde balloon reached thirty thousand feet up into the sky — but it had no radio attached. It was just a huge aerial. Incidentally, I should think that this is the reason why the oil fuel appears to have been flung over so large an area — an explosion caused by the bursting of the hydrogen cylinders used to inflate the balloons. They were stored in the fuel hut."