Ice Brothers (71 page)

At first Paul thought that the jerky movements of Hans meant that he was panicking, but his completely unpredictable course made him almost an impossible target. The pilot of the Lightning clearly was becoming more and more angry as his frustrations continued. In an effort to follow the intricate maneuvers of the ski plane he forced the big fighter into aerial acrobatics which almost made him lose control. When he should have been slowing almost to landing speed, he poured on the power and banked so sharply that his plane flipped onto its back and did a complete barrel roll, narrowly missing a mountain peak before it straightened out. Hans used the seconds the Lightning lost to head north along the coast, just skimming the ice pack, and dodging into every cove and mountain notch. The Lightning circled high over him before catching a glimpse of the little plane as it hopped over a long granite point that extended into the sea. With its wings and engine screaming it dived, missed again, and began circling Hans, a procedure that enabled him to keep his prey in sight but made shooting him almost impossible. As the men of the
Arluk
watched, the two planes disappeared between two snow-covered mountain peaks. There was an instant of silence, followed by the sound of a sharp explosion in the distance. A bubble of yellow flame rose from the notch between the mountains.

“Well, he finally got the bastard!” Flags said, and a ragged cheer came from the men of the
Arluk
. Before it died, they were astonished to see the ski plane reappear. It waggled its wings before scooting over the ridge of mountains to its base. There was no sign of the Lightning except a plume of black smoke in the distance.

“Now how the hell did that happen?” Flags asked.

It seemed obvious to Paul that the rage of the Lightning pilot had caused him to dive too fast to pull out, or had blinded him to the sides of the canyons around which the ski plane was ducking.

“The guy flying that Lightning must have been one of the pilots my brother trained,” he said in disgust. “Damn it, we're getting to be a whole nation of fuck-ups.” Perhaps that was no joke. Paul was beginning to fear that the Germans really could not be beaten, even when they were hopelessly outclassed. And the escape of the ski plane meant that it would still be there to observe Nathan's ground troops when they finally started toward its base.

When Nathan returned to the ship, they sent a message to GreenPat, explaining the debacle. GreenPat merely acknowledged the information, but at dawn the next day a PBY showed up. The big sea plane was slow enough to float astern of a light plane while she gunned it down, but not fast enough to catch it. At the first sight of the PBY, the ski plane disappeared over the ice floe.

After that the ski plane gave up its regular dawn patrol, and GreenPat soon tired of sending planes to try to catch it. On bright moonlight nights, though, Paul could still hear the drone of the little engine, and on one cloudy dawn he caught a glimpse of it just before the last rays of sunlight died on the horizon.

Nathan and Paul felt that no supplies could be moved toward Supportup until Peomeenie returned, presumably with some information about the location of the ski plane's hidden base. The whole operation would have to start with the Lightnings' putting an end to Hans on the ground. Nathan guessed that after that at least a week would be needed to move his men and supplies up and make all the necessary preparations for the final attack.

Paul had hoped that Peomeenie would return within two weeks, but by mid-December there was still no sign of him. Brit kept saying that Eskimos never hurry and that even an additional two weeks of delay would be nothing to worry about, but Paul and Nathan began to wonder what they could do if Peomeenie and his companion just never came back. Maybe the Germans had taken them prisoner or had shot them. It was all very well for an Eskimo hunter to boast that he could walk like a ghost through a wolf pack without being detected, but the Germans were beginning to seem to Paul as though they had magical powers of their own. Nothing was going right. Why should he expect one lone Eskimo and a woman to handle people who had captured all of Europe?

Nathan looked for more Eskimo men who could start another scouting expedition, but none was interested. They all apparently assumed that Peomeenie would return sooner or later in all probability, and if he did not, there was small enthusiasm for following in his footsteps. Nathan began trying to learn enough about Eskimo methods of travel to undertake the journey himself.

One night when Nathan came aboard to report the progress of his efforts ashore and to help Flags with any radio traffic, his tall, stooped body was identifiable amongst six Eskimos he brought with him only by its shape and size. He had on the whole native Greenlander outfit: sealskin parka with hood, sealskin blouse with the fur turned in, polar bear pants with a dark slice of fox fur or otter in the crotch, and
kamiks
, the soft sealskin boots with geometric designs around the top. He even had Eskimo mittens with slits to permit him to poke out two fingers to bait hooks and Eskimo sun glasses—a strip of polished driftwood with two slits instead of lenses.

“Call me Nathan of the North,” he said as he climbed from the whaleboat to the well deck.

“How about Lawrence of Greenland?” Paul asked.

“Hell no. I'm Green of Greenland. Greenberg of Greenland.”

“You'll need to leave long diaries. Don't leave out all your sexual exploits with the natives.”

There was a look on Nathan's face then, just a momentary flinch before he said, “I don't think I'm exactly in Guns's class yet.” He then began talking seriously about going to Supportup himself with three natives if Peomeenie didn't show up soon.

After discussing that and drinking many cups of coffee in his cabin, Paul said, “Where did you get Eskie clothes big enough to fit you, anyway?”

“Brit had some of the women make them up.”

So Brit is really taking care of him, Paul thought … dammit, was he always going to be jealous of every woman he knew?

“They look good,” he said. “Have you got those Eskies so they can shoot yet?”

Dismissing Nathan as soon as possible, Paul stood watching the boat take him back to the shore. Since Nathan had been spending most of his time working with the natives at the settlement with Brit as his interpreter, a close relationship between them was inevitable. Perhaps it was almost as inevitable that Brit should see nothing wrong in teaching Nathan the native custom of laughing together without guilt. If Nathan became a willing student of Eskimo philosophy, who could blame him?

I could, Paul thought, and was surprised at his own intensity.

“Lesson one: don't take the skipper's girl,” Mowrey had said to him once long ago at Godhavn. Perhaps it was time to give Nathan a lesson in such elementary seamanship, a more basic kind of philosophy than anything he would learn from Brit or the Eskimos.

The strange thing was, Paul could not imagine having such a conversation with Nathan. His gaunt face with the deep-set eyes was somehow above or beyond such simplicisms. He would look hurt or give Paul a glance of that smoldering anger he usually kept for the Germans. It would be impossible for Nathan to have a lighthearted affair, even in Greenland with Brit, Paul suspected. Nathan would be torn by guilt over infidelity to a wife he never talked about and who, Paul supposed, was giving him some kind of trouble. He would feel more guilt about taking his skipper's girl—no, Nathan was not the man for a carefree fling with anyone.

But was he a man who could turn Brit down on a December night in Greenland? Perhaps. Paul found himself hoping so, but the possibility seemed less and less likely the more he thought about it. A good commanding officer, he reminded himself grimly, never asks a man to do anything he can't do himself.

If he had any sense, Paul told himself, he would dismiss his suspicions, or convictions, as a bad joke. What Nathan and Brit did was their own business, wasn't it? Certainly Brit had gone out of her way to avoid making any promises to him. To let a woman with a kind of free-floating Eskimo heart disrupt his relationship with his executive officer just before attacking the Germans would be ridiculous. Definitely, if he had any sense he would forget the whole thing.

The trouble was, in this area Paul did not seem to have much sense. Since Nathan was now spending most of his time ashore, Paul's duty clearly was to remain aboard the ship. Brit never visited him. Perhaps she had felt herself unwanted aboard the trawler, and she had no boat since the Danish launch had been taken for the use of the men guarding the prisoners. Still, if she had wanted to see Paul, she could have sent out a message with the crew of the whaleboat.

The more Paul brooded about it, the more it seemed that Nathan's request to train the Eskimos ashore had been rather clever. Now that he was living in Swanson's house, the sauna and the big feather bed would always be handy. Nathan was probably teaching Brit to shoot all kinds of guns, and her new release of hatred for the Germans was probably mixing with love for her new tutor in her inimitably explosive ways.

Damn him, Paul thought, god
damn
him … Which made Paul feel rotten, but it was the sum of his emotions when he woke up late at night in his narrow solitary bunk after dreaming that he only had to move his hand an inch to touch Brit's smooth warm skin.

Damn it, he thought, why couldn't I meet a real Danish girl instead of a goddamn white Eskie? The Eskie philosophy may be fine for them, but it can get white men to killing each other if they don't watch out …

Paul spent hours trying to reconcile himself to the probability that Brit of course had included Nathan in her love for all mankind, and then trying to convince himself that Nathan was just “too decent a guy” to do such a thing. He even was able half to convince himself that Brit was “too nice a girl” to take on two American officers from the same ship. Somehow none of this helped much. No matter what she was doing, he was hungry for her. The small icebergs in the fjord and the clouds overhead were beginning to take on the shape of women again. His memories of her love-making kept repeating themselves in his head, making it impossible for him to concentrate on the books about gunnery he was trying to study.

Finally Paul gave up and decided to send Stevens ashore with a note, asking Brit to come to dinner. Worried that she would bring Nathan, he added, “I've learned the Eskimo philosophy from you, but this Eskimo is dying of loneliness. I want to see you alone, if only for a few minutes.”

When the whaleboat returned to the trawler, she was standing between Stevens and Krater in the stern, laughing with them. Dressed in her Eskimo outfit, she jumped lightly to the well deck. Feeling the eyes of his crew on him, Paul shook her hand with curious formality and said, “Thank you for coming out. There are a lot of communications we ought to work out together.”

At least she had the good grace not to laugh at that. She followed him toward his cabin. The quartermaster and Guns were standing near the wheel talking about New Orleans again. They left and stood on the port wing of the bridge as Paul opened the starboard door for Brit. As soon as they got into his tiny cabin, he shut the door and kissed her.

“I thought you didn't want to make love here,” she said a few minutes later.

“The hell with it. But keep as quiet as you can.”

The discipline of trying to maintain silence somehow intensified their passion. He was constantly afraid that someone would knock at the door and hurried. Eskimo-fashion, they did not take off their clothes … When they'd finished, she lay in the bunk staring up at the sword on its brackets while he rearranged his uniform. “You certainly have some fine ideas about working out communications,” she said.

He did not want to, but the damn question came out in spite of his better sense … “Have you been working out communications with Nathan?”

“Don't ask that,” she said, looking startled. “Paul, for God's sake don't make him feel worse than he already feels.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean that he's so full of guilt and sorrow about his wife that—”

“What about his wife?”

“You don't know? He never told you?”

“He never talks about her.”

“That's hard to believe. He never talks to me about anyone else. I thought you two were friends.”

“Should I know about her?”

“Paul, if you care anything about Nathan, you damn well should know. His wife disappeared in Poland. She went back just before the war to try to get her parents out He hopes she's gone into hiding but he believes she's probably in a concentration camp, or dead.”

“Oh, Lord,” Paul said, rubbing his eyes. “I guess I always sensed there was something, but not that.”

“Maybe he was afraid to talk about it. He kind of broke down when he told me.”

“It makes me feel strange—all this time I thought I knew him so well and I didn't know the main thing—”

“He's all right now. There's nothing weak about him.”

“That's for sure. Funny how little you can really know about somebody even when you're all locked up aboard a little ship …”

“Maybe it's just that men don't usually talk about their wives much, even with their best friends. Did you ever discuss yours with him?”

“No. I don't have all that much to discuss.”

There was a short silence.

“How do I stand with you?” he asked finally. “I mean, are you really tied up with Nathan? I don't blame him and I don't blame you, but I should know.”

“Paul, you have me when you have me. We're all blind people here, stumbling around trying to help each other in the dark. No rules apply here. Now, didn't you ask me out for dinner? I can't wait to see what that cook of yours is going to give us.”

Cookie had prepared roast lamb with appropriate fixings. It was good, but Paul didn't feel at all hungry. He thought of Nathan wrapped up with worry about his wife while old Mowrey was hounding him and he was seasick all the time. No wonder his gaunt face had that look of tragedy, even when he smiled.