Greta felt violated. The grotto in the cave had been a secret place, a sweet memory she'd clung to during all the dark years of the war. Now Jurgen's SS ruffians occupied it like lords, their coarse laughter a despoiling sacrilege. It was as if fate was determined to ruin all she held dear. She loathed Jurgen for coming here. Even if he didn't know what had happened on the blankets then perhaps he could guess, and if he guessed it was like an invasion of her deepest privacy, her fondest moment. The memory had become stained.
Owen was wet and shivering: the Germans were using him as a slave. They'd rigged a rope down the chute of water that led to the underground lake and sent him down with small steel buckets, hoisting up his harvest of the mysterious drug organism. The lake was as warm as ever, Owen had reported, but the constant soaking and the exhausting climb left him weary and chilled. Now he'd been allowed a respite to throw his soaked clothes on the hot rocks and wrap himself in a blanket. He looked frustrated and helpless. Sometimes Greta caught him looking at her sadly and she had to look away, not wanting to reveal her own despair.
As she squatted on the banks of the underground river, the biologist's own muscles ached as she sieved the slime into a concentration that would be packed to the surface. Two of the SS men had already departed with a load. Now Jurgen came over and gazed downward at her. His gloom had metamorphosed into nervous excitement now that the work had begun.
"Is this what we want?" he asked. "Is this going to cure the disease?"
She put down her sieve and tiredly rocked back on her heels. "I don't know, Jurgen. Yes, this is what Owen and I found, but who knows if it can be grown in mass quantities? This is such an unusual place, a dark cavern, its water full of unknown microscopic life and chemicals. It may take a long time to duplicate in a laboratory."
"We don't have a long time. We barely have even a short time. That's why it's imperative to start experimenting now, in the submarine. I want to know what's necessary for success before we leave this island. If we have to pump some of this water to propagate this organism, we'll do it."
She wearily wiped her forehead with her arm. "So Germany can unleash your microbe?"
"No! So I can end this war."
She looked up skeptically. "Jurgen, can't you see how insane this is?"
"Why do you insist on seeing me as a monster?"
"Maybe because I'm a captive?" She stood stiffly, her hands at the small of her back. "Maybe because you named this island after the Greek Fate who ends life?"
He scowled.
"Yes, I looked it up."
"Listen, I don't want a captive," he said impatiently. "I want a partner. I wouldn't have had to confine you if you'd exhibited the loyalty and faith of a proper German wife."
"And when have you ever behaved like a proper German husband? When have you ever let love compete with ambition?"
He half raised his hand at that and the SS men looked their way with interest. Then his hand dropped. "For God's sake, let's stop this silly quarreling," he hissed. "Six years of marriage and still you don't know me, still you don't understand me."
"I understand that unless we move cautiously, nothing good can come of this."
He looked impatient. "And that's where you're wrong. Only speed can win success." He considered a moment. "You're right, our motives are more complex than what I revealed in Berlin. But not in the way you think. I told you I had more to reveal about my plans and now is the time, I think. Time to comprehend what we're doing here. Time you learned the true Jurgen Drexler." He turned to the American. "Hart! Come over here!" Then he turned back to Greta. "I'll tell you both, and then you'll understand why we've come back this long, hard way."
The trio moved out of earshot of the remaining three SS men and Drexler stood, thinking about what he was going to say. Their triangle looked bedraggled. Hart was wet, his eyes tired, and Greta and Jurgen were grimy. No one had slept properly in weeks.
"Listen," Drexler finally began. "Do you think I'd be down in this dank asshole of the earth, processing scum, if not for a great purpose? I mean, my God! This is hell, I think!" He waved at the grotto.
"Interesting that you claim to know, Jurgen," Hart said.
Drexler scowled. "Shut up for once, you uneducated buffoon. I'm tired of mockery from a man who has accomplished nothing with his life except the theft of my wife." He let that hang. "Has it penetrated your dim brain yet that I don't need you anymore now that you've led us back into the mountain? That you've become superfluous to our expedition? One more sneering comment and I'll shoot you myself!"
The pilot opened his mouth, then thought better of it.
Drexler took a deep breath. "All right. Good. Now. It's true that when we came to this island the first time, my initial interest was solely in the disease. A tool for German defense, I thought, or at least for research. But then my men got sick and died and it seemed over, at least until we could return."
"So why not leave it be?" she asked.
"I'm coming to that. Will you please listen?" He looked at her with frustration. "We reported what we'd found, of course, but Reich strategists pointed out such a disease was too dangerous for us to use unless our own troops were immune. And then the war began, our victories were stunning, Antarctica was far away, and the matter receded from my mind. But as the Reich's fortunes darkened my thoughts returned to this island. I remembered Greta's excitement after your exploration of this cave and wondered if I'd been too hasty. And then you appeared, Hart! A personal disaster, yes. But also a revelation. An inspiration! Because I realized that in our personal problems was a key to success. Not to destroy, but to end the destruction. To force an armistice to this war."
"Jurgen, the war's ending soon anyway," Hart objected. "Maybe by Christmas."
"That's where you're wrong. That's what you don't understand. Even as we speak Germany is launching a great new offensive in the West that will take the Allies totally by surprise. And this is only the beginning of what our Fuhrer promises. This remarkable new submarine that saved your life is merely one of hundreds being built that will soon reverse the tide of the naval war. The Reich has developed a new kind of airplane with a revolutionary jet engine. And Germany is building rockets capable of reaching America. The war is not nearly finished, Hart. It could go on for years. Years and years. Unless we act. Unless we succeed."
And you wouldn't disclose all these secrets unless I'm about to be sacrificed, the pilot thought gloomily.
"And so the idea that came to me is to use this microbe not as an instrument of mass murder but of mass salvation. To put an end to this war once and for all. To bring the world to its senses. Because with your antibiotic, Greta, suddenly we're not threatening death. We're offering life."
"What?"
"Look. Even if we could unleash this plague and perfectly protect our own people, Germany's peril would not be over. The other side would still seek to retaliate. There are rumors the Americans are working on a superweapon of their own: some new kind of bomb. German scientists think such a bomb is years away, but who knows? What if we escalated the war and the United States replied in turn? Killing begets killing. That's been the lesson of this century. But what if we offered life? What if we offered the Allies the opportunity to cure a terrible plague, in return for agreeing to an armistice? What if we could achieve a cease-fire on our terms? Yes, peace! By an emergency effort of German doctors and nurses to end a pestilence in Washington or London or Moscow."
The couple looked confused. "But, Jurgen," Greta objected, "how would such a plague get started?"
"By rocket," he answered matter-of-factly. "Or plane or submarine or even truck. We'd have to deliver the spores. The swiftest would be a V-2 air burst at night. Whole cities could be held hostage to the germ, the clock ticking. But no one would have to die if the Allies agreed quickly enough to German help in return for peace. And then the war could end."
"You'd infect a whole city?"
"Yes. And then save it. To end the war, you see. To balance terror with mercy, and thus bring peace. In the final accounting we'll be heroes." He looked at them expectantly.
"But women? Children?" Greta objected. "People will flee, the problems with distributing an antibiotic- "
"Those are details. It will work. It will work! If we make it work. And it begins here, in this cave. So you see, I'm not a monster, Greta. I'm a man of vision. The one man who can clearly see how to end this war on German terms."
She looked at him with dismay.
Hart spoke up. "Well, I quit."
Drexler sighed. "Hart, you can't quit- until I say so." The threat was clear.
"Jurgen," Greta said despairingly, "just let the war end by itself- "
"No! I refuse to be a victim of events when I have the opportunity to direct them. What we have here is a dazzling opportunity, far more dazzling than what we hoped for when we first came to Antarctica. This is what I've been waiting to tell you. This is what I've been waiting to share with you. Will you help?"
Greta studied her husband for a long time. Then, slowly, sadly, she nodded. "I'll do what I have to do, Jurgen."
"Are the charges ready?" Schmidt asked mildly, hunching in the cold wind of the dry valley. His voice was muffled behind the visor of his gas mask.
"Yes, Doctor. It should be quite a show." The SS man was splicing the wires to the detonator.
Schmidt looked sourly at the smoking volcano above them, the vista blurred by the scratched eyepieces of his mask. The plume of ash had made him nervous the whole time they were collecting spores at the upper end of the frozen lake and he wanted to get back to the submarine before the damned woman did: she might become irrational if she knew he was collecting more than a few spores to test the antidote- if she realized they'd come to stockpile the disease as well as the cure. That was not the only reason for his impatience: he hated the outdoors and couldn't wait to get back to the controlled environment of the U-boat. He also hated the clammy rubber of the mask but knew it was all that was keeping him alive until Greta returned with the antidote. The mummified bodies they'd passed in the valley had been warning enough. He dared not breathe a spore.
It was obvious the bacteria were carried to the surface in hot springs, spores drying on the surface and then carried by wind across the island. It might be impossible to permanently shut off the source but it seemed feasible to hide it at least until the end of the war, lest the Allies come here. The Reich had enough spores now to begin mass propagation in laboratories. At the rapid rate of bacterial growth there'd be plenty of plague within weeks. Their flowering would coincide with the readying of the rockets.
Schmidt thought Drexler's elaborate scheme to hold Allied capitals hostage to peace was absurd. Too complicated. Better to kill as many of the enemy as possible while waiting for additional German superweapons to reach the field. War was about killing, not psychology. But Drexler was most energetic when allowed his naive dreams, so the doctor let him prattle. And the question was moot until both disease and cure were in hand. Schmidt was content to leave the final strategy to others: as a man of science he preferred the purity of research.
He longed for a cigarette and wished he could tear off the mask to light one. Well. At least the first step was done. Time to start back home.
"Detonation," he ordered calmly. The soldier twisted the crank.
A boom thundered on the glacier that hung over the end of the valley and a geyser of snow and dirty till erupted into the air, cracks racing away on the ice. Then another and another and another, on and on, some explosions quite high on the frozen snout. Their crack was counterpointed by a deeper rumble of avalanche. A slurry of snow, chunks of ice, and glacial rock debris started down, pushing a billowing white cloud before it.
"Splendid!" The mask made Schmidt look like a gigantic insect. Behind it his eyes glowed as he watched the mantle of the mountain slide down. The SS squad faced away as a shock wave of air hit and staggered them, a momentary blizzard of snow and dust blowing by. Then the avalanche clattered to a stop and it was quiet again, the hot springs covered with a rubble of rocks, dirt, and chunks of ice. Wisps of steam curled upward.
The SS men cheered, the sound muffled behind their masks. The doctor studied their handiwork. There'd be some melt but the terrain was covered enough to discourage others from collecting. The secret was sealed.
"Gentlemen, the Reich now holds a monopoly on the trump card of history," he told them. "Let's take our prize back to the boat."