William Dietrich - Ice Reich

Hart took Popper aside. "This guy is offering me a job in Germany," he said. "What do you think of him?"

Popper shrugged and spat. "He paid me in cash."

Later, at the mission house, the two bush pilots ate some soup and bread and warmed themselves in front of the stove. Hart thought about what Kohl had said. The German's arrival seemed so well timed. He wondered if Elmer's angel was real after all.

"Sorry about your plane, Hart," Popper said.

"It's simpler in Antarctica," Hart said drowsily. He was trying to resummon that world.

"What do you mean?"

"No one lives there. No one stays there. It has no memory."

"No memory? Bah! Every place has history."

"No," Hart said. "Here there's history, because people are here to remember, but not there. It has no past. Only a great, yawning now."

"Sounds too simple to me."

Owen smiled. "Maybe you're right." He sighed. "But when everything is now, you can always start over."

Berlin was a brown city set ablaze with the red of Nazi banners, their fabric caressing hard stone. To Hart, arriving in the fall of 1938, it seemed a richly conservative metropolis crackling with the excitement of the dangerously new, a resurgently smug place with a sense of watchful unease. A place on stage, a grand opera that was dramatically unfolding. Boots and high heels, black uniforms and silver furs.

"Welcome to the future," Otto Kohl greeted him.

The two had parted company at Fairbanks. Kohl had gone ahead to Washington and Germany while Hart remained in Alaska to check out of his rooming house, store his meager belongings, and wrap up his simple affairs. Being single and bankrupt gave life a certain simplicity, he reflected. And now he felt infused with new purpose. Antarctica. He'd thought he would never go near the place again. Yet suddenly it promised both adventure and redemption. And with a bunch of krauts, no less!

He'd felt a curious German mix of arrogance and apprehension even on arrival in Hamburg. There'd been a sense of entering something captive being hurtled toward a great unknown. The energy of Germany was palpable. There was the drumbeat of reawakening industry, made visible by the shroud of steam and greasy smoke above the port city's factories. There was the officious, pompous bustle of uniformed bureaucrats, stamping this, peering at that, smelling of sausage and beer. There was the shriek of ferry and steamer whistles, the clang of trolleys and the excitement of crowds admiring an example of the beetle-shaped "people's car" that Hitler had invented. Yet the Germans were quieter than he'd imagined: not diffident, even a bit boastful about their astonishing transformation since the Nazis came to power, but cautiously restrained all the same. As if there was an unspoken lid on laughter and enthusiasms. There simply were a lot of uniforms.

Adding to the surreal quality were the many Berlin shop fronts still boarded up from the anti-Jewish terror of Crystal Night less than two weeks before. Hart had heard reports that some Jews were fleeing the country and rumors that others were simply disappearing into a vast new Nazi prison system. The pilot knew no Jews- at least he didn't know of knowing any- but the stories were unsettling. As hopeless as his situation had seemed in Alaska, he couldn't help wondering if accepting employment from these people was wise. He decided that he admired their resurgence but questioned their judgment. His task was to separate the application of polar expertise from politics, to remain focused on exploration and science.

The Germans lived up to their reputation for efficiency. Kohl was brisk at the Berlin train station: snapping orders to a porter to collect the pilot's bag, leading him at a near-trot to the taxi stand, issuing crisp instructions about the hotel, and giving him a clip of new Reichsmarks for meals and expenses. A courier would arrive at the hotel the next morning at nine o'clock with suitable clothes, Kohl explained. Hart would then be free until four when the German would pick him up to meet Reich Minister Hermann Goring. They would journey to Goring's estate of Karinhall at the outskirts of Berlin and dine that evening with the officers of the Antarctic expedition, preparatory to sailing late in the year for the southern continent. The expedition was timed to take advantage of Antarctica's brief "summer" of good weather, the opposite of seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. It was very much Goring's expedition, Kohl explained, and the powerful minister was giving it his personal attention. He had a curiosity about the world.

Hart was welcome to tour Berlin but was not to take notes or pictures, speak to anyone more than necessary, or discuss the expedition. "Circumspection is a key to our success," Kohl had said, pushing Hart into a taxi. The pilot found himself at the swank Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden, not far from the Foreign and Propaganda ministries.

An Interior Ministry courier arrived promptly the next morning as promised, greeting Hart at his hotel room door with a stiff-armed salute and a "Heil Hitler!"

Hart looked at him with bemusement. "For God's sake, put your arm down." The messenger looked miffed, as if a compliment had been batted away, unacknowledged. He delivered a written invitation to the Reich Minister's Karinhall and a box with a suit, shirt, and tie. A handwritten note from Kohl told Hart to be wearing them at four.

To kill time the pilot wandered outside. The traffic and bustle of a huge city intimidated him so he crossed to the Tiergarten Park, barren and empty in November. He walked briskly, enjoying the empty cold. Then he returned to his room, gave himself a full hour to struggle into the new suit, descended to the lobby fifteen minutes early, and waited uncomfortably. He felt the concierge sneaking glances at him.

As if driven by a clock, a black Mercedes limousine arrived outside the hotel doors promptly at four and the chauffeur opened the rear door with a click of booted heels. The rearmost seat was filled but the facing one was empty, so Hart climbed in to find himself sitting backward, knee to knee with Kohl and a beautiful young blonde in an evening dress and fur wrap. The door clicked shut and the car purred forward.

"This is Leni Stauffenberg, the film actress," said Kohl, who looked as assured in his business suit as Hart felt uncomfortable.

The woman flashed a stunning but distant smile, sufficient to serve notice that there was an insurmountable wall between them. She had no interest in mere pilots.

"The Reich Minister enjoys the company of lovely women from the film industry," Kohl explained. "After being widowed he married the actress Emmy Sonnemann, you may know. It was the most stunning ceremony of the new regime."

"I preferred the '36 Opera Ball," Leni said. "I was told he spent a million marks on that one."

"Miss Stauffenberg later caught his eye in perhaps her finest work, Conquest of the Crest. Remarkable climbing picture. Have you heard of it?"

"We don't get German movies in Alaska."

"Of course." Kohl smiled thinly.

"I almost froze making that picture," Leni said. "That bastard Reinhardt insisted on shooting everything outdoors. I got caught in an avalanche! I nearly died!"

Hart studied her. He couldn't imagine this woman on a mountain, let alone in an avalanche. He wondered what her intention was in attending this dinner. She gave no sign of being attached to Kohl, and Goring, while famous, was not only married, he was fat. Maybe the Reich Minister had something to do with the German movie business.

Noting his curious scrutiny of the actress, Kohl felt compelled to issue a caution. "I should mention, it's best not to be too inquisitive about the Reich Minister's social life when we're at Karinhall. The presence of his female guests is decorative, you understand. Suppose nothing else."