Ice Station Zebra (21 page)

      "Good God above!" For the first time, Swanson was badly shaken. He stared at the thing on the floor, then at me. "Murdered. You mean he was murdered."
      "Who would have done this?" Hansen said hoarsely. "Who, man, who? And in God's name, why?"
      "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."
      "Did everybody in Zebra know about this monitoring machine?"
      "No. Most of them thought it a device for investigating cosmic rays. Only four people knew what it really was--my brother and the three others who all slept in the hut that housed this machine. Now the hut is destroyed. The free world's most advanced listening post. You wonder why your C.N.O. was so anxious?"
      "Four men?" Swanson looked at me, a faint speculation still in his eye. "Which four men, Dr. Carpenter?"
      "Do you have to ask? Four of the seven men you see lying here, Commander."
      He stared down at the floor, then looked quickly away. He said: "You mentioned that you were convinced even before we left port that something was wrong. Why?"
      "My brother had a top-secret code. We had messages sent by him: he was an expert radio operator. One said that there had been two separate attempts to wreck the monitor. He didn't go into details. Another said that he had been attacked and left unconscious when making a midnight check and finding someone bleeding off the gas from the hydrogen cylinders: without the radio-sonde aerial, the monitor would have been useless. He was lucky, he was out for only a few minutes, as long again and he would have frozen to death. In the circumstances did you expect me to believe that the fire was unconnected with the attempts to sabotage the monitor?"
      "But how would anyone know what it was?" Hansen objected. "Apart from your brother and the other three men, that is?" Like Swanson, he glanced at the floor and, like Swanson, looked as hurriedly away. "For my money, this is the work of a psycho. A madman. A coldly calculating criminal would--well, he wouldn't go in for wholesale murder like this. But a psycho would."
      "Three hours ago," I said, "before you loaded the torpedo into number 3 tube, you checked the manually controlled levers and the warning lights for the tube bow caps. In the one case, you found that the levers had been disconnected in the open position: in the other, you found that the wires had been crossed in a junction box. Do you think that was the work of a psycho? Another psycho?"
      He said nothing. Swanson said, "What can I do to help, Dr. Carpenter?"
      "What are you willing to do, Commander?"
      "I will not hand over command of the _Dolphin_." He smiled, but he wasn't feeling like smiling. "Short of that, I-- and the crew of the _Dolphin_--am at your complete disposal. You name it, Doctor, that's all."
      "This time you believe my story?"
      "This time I believe your story."
      I was pleased about that; I almost believed it myself.
8
      The hut where we'd found all the Zebra survivors huddled together was almost deserted when we got back to it; only Dr. Benson and the two very sick men remained. The hut seemed bigger now, somehow, bigger and colder, and very shabby and untidy, like the remnants of a church rummage sale where the housewives have trained for a couple of months before moving up to battle stations. Pieces of clothing, bedding, frayed and shredded blankets, gloves, plates, cutlery, and dozens of odds and ends of personal possessions lay scattered all over the floor. The sick men had been too sick--and too glad to be on their way--to worry much about taking too many of their various knickknacks out of there. All they had wanted out of there was themselves. I didn't blame them.
      The two unconscious men had their scarred and frost-bitten faces toward us. They were either sleeping or in a coma. But I took no chances. I beckoned to Benson and he came and stood with us in the shelter of the west wall.
      I told Benson what I'd told the commander and Hansen. He had to know. As the man who would be in the most constant and closest contact with the sick men, he had to know. I suppose he must have been pretty astonished and shaken, but he didn't show it. Doctors' faces behave as doctors tell them to; when they come across a patient in a pretty critical state of health, they don't beat their breasts and break into loud lamentations, as this tends to discourage the patient. This now made three men from the _Dolphin's_ crew who knew what the score was--well, half the score, anyway. Three was enough. I only hoped it wasn't too much.
      Thereafter Swanson did the talking; Benson would take it better from him than he would from me. Swanson said, "Where were you thinking of putting the sick men we've sent back aboard?"
      "In the most comfortable places I can find. Officers' quarters, crew's quarters, scattered all over so that no one is upset too mUch. Spread the load, so to speak." He paused. "I didn't know of the latest--um---development at the time. Things are somewhat different now."
      "They are. Half of them in the wardroom, the other half in the crew's mess-- No, the crew's quarters. No reason why they shouldn't be made comfortable. If they wonder at this, you can say it's for ease of medical treatment and that they can all be under constant medical watch, like heart patients in a ward. Get Dr. Jolly behind you in this. He seems a co-operative type. And I've no doubt he'll support you in your next move--that all patients are to be stripped, bathed and provided with clean pajamas. If they're too ill to move, a bed bath. Dr. Carpenter here tells me that prevention of infection is of paramount importance in cases of severe burn injuries."
      "And their clothes?"
      "You catch on more quickly than I did," Swanson grunted. "All their clothes to be taken away and labeled. All contents to be removed and labeled. The clothes, for anyone's information, are to be disinfected and laundered."
      "It might help if I am permitted to know just what we are looking for," Benson suggested.
      Swanson looked at me.
      "God knows," I said. "Anything and everything. One thing certain--you won't find a gun. Be especially careful in labeling gloves--when we get back to Britain, we'll have the experts test them for nitrates from the gun used."
      "If anyone has brought aboard anything bigger than a postage stamp, I'll find it," Benson promised.