Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

No one paid much attention to Paul, a slim junior officer standing at the back of the room. The good-looking blonde woman was apparently Anderson’s wife. She passed a platter with strips of salt cod and smoked salmon to Paul and filled his glass, but when he asked her if the winter had been hard, she smiled in confusion and said, “I have no English.” Even so, she seemed to understand the captain and laughed whenever he made a joke.

Soon a buffet dinner was served, largely native foods, Anderson explained, because they had long ago used up most of their supplies from Europe. There were several kinds of fish, all of them delicious, seals’ liver which tasted like good calves’ liver, bear meat, which was stringy, and ptarmigan, which was much like quail, although smaller. Newly-baked bread took the place of potatoes, and canned tomatoes which almost had to be spooned up like soup were the only vegetable. For dessert there was a variety of baked goods which gave the phrase “Danish pastry” new meaning. A sweet, homemade wine which had been made from raisins was served with the meal, but Mowrey stuck with tumblers of the warm martinis, which he tossed off with gusto.

Anderson apologized for being able to serve neither coffee nor tea. Except for one remaining pitcher of the martinis, he could offer nothing more to drink.

“Why hell,” Mowrey said, “I got a dozen cases of booze consigned to you down at the ship, and we got plenty coffee and tea. Yale, run down and have the boys bring up just enough for tonight right away. The booze is locked in the lazaret. I haven’t told no one about it.”

Shifting in his armchair, Mowrey took a key on a big ring from his pocket and handed it to Paul. “Hurry along now.”

After the stifling little room, the cold air felt good. Paul’s wristwatch told him that it was a little before ten in the evening, but the sun was still high above the polished backs of the dun-colored granite mountains. Still unable to take eternal daylight for granted, Paul felt odd as he walked back toward the ship. When the pack of dogs suddenly leaped from the shadow of a warehouse, he roared at them Mowrey-fashion and made throwing motions. “Get out of here, you sons of bitches!” There was great satisfaction in seeing them retreat. He was getting to be almost an old Greenland hand, he thought. Well, at least he was not a man who could be cowed by dogs.

Nearing the ship, he saw a line of Greenlanders carrying heavy crates and boxes from the wharf to the warehouse. When he saw their faces, he realized that they were all women. The men, who were dressed in similar furry clothes, were taller, and they were standing with folded arms, watching the women work and giving instructions. Boy, I wonder what Sylvia would think of that, he thought with a grin. All evening he had not thought of Sylvia, and the memory of her trim figure made the fact that he had been spurned by the fat Danish woman that evening seem funny. As the old general had said, war is hell.

Anxious to leave a port where they were not allowed ashore, the deck force was continuing to unload cargo. As Paul boarded the ship, he saw Nathan standing like a solitary sentry on the flying bridge, a lone figure in a parka outlined against the sky. On impulse he climbed a ladder to speak to him. Absorbed in thought, Nathan did not hear him approach.

“You’re not missing much of a party,” Paul said.

“I’m glad I didn’t go. We copied a message from Green-Pat to the Nanmak . I just decoded it.”

“What’s up?”

Nathan looked and sounded excited. “My God, nobody’s sure what’s going on, but our monitoring stations have picked up all kinds of radio signals on the east coast, all the way from Cape Farewell up to practically the damn North Pole. For days there was complete radio silence, and now there are German signals from seven different sources.”

“What the hell can that mean?” Paul asked.

“The bastards know we’re after them, with planes as well as the Nanmak , so they’re trying to confuse us with decoys, I think.”

“How would they do that?”

“GreenPat isn’t sure. The visibility cleared considerably up there just before the signals came through. Maybe they have a long-range plane circling and sending signals.”

“Maybe,” Paul said. “Do the signals all come at once from different places?”

“Mostly no, but they do sometimes. The Krauts could have dropped recording devices or even floated them from balloons. They could have landed small shore parties all up and down the coast—”

“Or they could have a whole fleet of icebreakers and trawlers up there,” Paul said.

“That’s right. We’ve got three PBY’s patrolling the area right now, but the visibility comes and goes. Paul, if they do have more than one ship up there, wouldn’t we send more ships? Isn’t there a chance that they’d take us off this milk run and send us up there?”

“I guess,” Paul said, and was ashamed of not feeling sufficient enthusiasm. The thought of one heavily armed German icebreaker had been bad enough. How about sailing into a whole fleet of them?

Nathan obviously felt no such hesitancy. “God, I’d like to get into that brawl,” he said. “If they could put me aboard the Nanmak , I could at least fix the radar. I doubt like hell if all those German ships have radar yet. If we had it we might be able to call the planes down on them without even having them sight us.”

“If the weather was good enough for planes,” Paul said. “What did Hansen have to say about all this?”

“Nothing. He just acknowledged the message. He’s trying to keep radio silence as much as possible.”

Paul wondered what Hansen must be feeling as he sat in his well-furnished cabin plotting German radio signals all around him.

“If the weather gives them a break, the planes ought to find what’s going on up there before long,” Nathan said.

Paul was not so sure. If any ship was painted white, she would be difficult for even low-flying planes to see in the ice floe. Certainly the Germans would be smart enough to jam a ship between two big bergs, cover her decks with snow and blur the outline of her guns with large sheets of white canvas. In his own mind he had rehearsed such steps if his ship were ever the quarry.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Paul said, and remembering his errand, went to the lazaret in the stern of the ship. Mowrey always wanted him to hurry, but never more than when he was sent out after booze.

The lazaret was a large storage compartment, the after end of which had been partitioned with heavy wood and a door with a padlock. Inside there were many stacks of cases of whiskey, gin and vodka, each marked with the name of a port. Mowrey himself had supervised the storage of these goods, and the boxes for this port were on top. Paul had planned to ask a couple of deck hands to help him to carry the heavy cases, but it seemed suddenly wrong to ask men to lug liquor to a party which they could not attend. After putting one box of twenty-four bottles of scotch on the deck, he returned to lock the door. For a moment he could not find the padlock, but after locating it between two floorboards, he put it in place, snapped it shut and pocketed the key.

The case of scotch was clearly marked, HAIG & HAIG. As he climbed from the lazaret and picked it up, Flags and one of the seamen laughed somewhat bitterly.

“Good party, sir?” Flags asked.

“If you like Danes fat as whales,” Paul replied with a grin, and shouldering the heavy box, walked to the gangway at the well deck. First Boats and then a dozen seamen solemnly snapped to attention and rendered statuesque salutes as the executive officer with the big box of scotch on his shoulder passed.