"No. No! And what if I did! It's none of your business!"
"After that party you have to wonder what his motive is in having you aboard…"
"Good biology." Her voice was flat.
"I know you're a good biologist, but just see him for what he is."
"How dare you!" Her temper was rising. "Who did you kiss to get your berth on the Schwabenland ? You haul this checkered past on board with you, and then act superior and condescending about a scientific mission— "
"A political mission."
"Both."
Hart sighed. She was angry and defensive and he knew he was making a mess of the situation: that he was alienating a woman who fascinated him, pursuing a woman who could only bring trouble.
"Look, I'm sorry. I… I just don't want to see you hurt."
"My friendships are none of your business!"
"Let's drop it."
"I couldn't care less what you think!"
He looked at her hopelessly. "Greta, please, I'm not criticizing you…"
But she was stalking away on the beach. He could see Jürgen waiting, a narrow look of curiosity on his face.
Hart thought Greta would cool down by the time they returned to the launch but she sat in the bow away from him, close to Drexler, leaning close to whisper to the German. Feder grinned at the pilot. Great, Owen thought: his ineptness would be the talk of the ship. He was told by the coxswain to take an oar because some of the German SS troops were staying on the beach to exercise their snow skills. He complied, pulling as hard as he could with his back to the German couple.
They began to fly. The initial reconnaissance was simple, the Dornier Wal the pilots had dubbed Boreas to the west, Passat to the east, each rocketing off the catapult to soar like giant petrels. Hart recognized none of the geography— they were in an unexplored area east of the Weddell Sea, below the Atlantic Ocean and Africa— but he found himself playing a useful role in his advice on icing, weather patterns, the dangerous downdrafts off the mountains, and the importance of careful navigation.
The immensity of Antarctica unexpectedly intimidated the German pilots. Within minutes of their launching the planes seemed swallowed in the wildest, most epic landscape they'd ever seen. Not only was there no town or road or light or landmark, there never had been. In all of human existence they were the first of their species to see this hostile shore.
The flights were mostly in clear, calm weather, not unusual during Antarctica's high summer of December and January. Hart and Feder would often have a chance to accompany them, the pilot working on his own launchings and landings. They began sketching out maps, Feder sometimes giving names that seemed sure to curry favor: the Hitler Range, Mount Göring, Goebbels Glacier, Bismarck Bay. The German pilots seemed particularly interested in anchorages and adjoining bits of snow-free land. Sometimes after they discovered one the Schwabenland worked around the coast to it, threading its way past towering bergs and through patchy pack ice. Hart realized they were looking for a harbor to return to. Drexler used a word he had apparently picked up from Hitler's speeches or writings: Lebensraum, living room.
Heiden's greatest fear was the unpredictable ice. Sometimes pack ice skidded before a breeze one way while the larger, deeper icebergs perversely went the opposite because their underwater bulk was being pushed by ocean currents. The Schwabenland was not a true icebreaker and could make progress only by searching out openings, or leads. The pilots scouted for them.
"Look for a rain squall," Hart told the aviators at one point.
"It's too cold to rain in Antarctica," Kauffman objected.
"It's the reflection of open water on an overcast sky. The ice shines light back up onto the clouds and makes them whiter than they are, but the dark open water throws a patch of shadow. It looks like an approaching storm, but go that way and you'll find a lead or polynya." Thereafter the Germans began making their way through the ice with more confidence.
The most bizarre part of each flight came when the airplanes reached the farthest point of their range. It was then that the mystery of at least some of the crates was solved. Each morning the sailors would load one into a Dornier. Inside were four-foot-long metal stakes with a small flattened oval and engraved swastika at one end. "This will substantiate our claim that we saw these lands before any other nation," Drexler solemnly told the pilots. "Drop them at the far limit of your penetration. They're designed to fall point down and stick into the ice."
Hart could barely restrain himself from laughing out loud at the conceit but he found that as aerial observer it was often his job to drop the damned things. The pilots would signal at the appropriate moment and he'd have to crank open a side hatch to a blast of shrieking air, watching through his goggles as the stakes tumbled until they were lost in ice glare. Afterward he could see no evidence of their existence; he suspected they'd simply been engulfed by the snow. But the pilots didn't care so long as the stakes were gone.
Meanwhile, Greta ignored Owen. Fine, he thought, I'm exhausted from the constant flying anyway. Let Drexler entertain her. Sometimes when returning to the ship in a Dornier he'd spot her in the launch, dragging a net or hauling up water. She'd come in late, wet and cold, and go wordlessly to her laboratory with her samples. She was quieter and more distracted at mealtimes, only summoning the energy to smile wanly at Drexler during his monologues about Greater Germany and a Thousand Year Reich. Fritz had been right: Hart was weary of the speeches. If Jürgen tried any harder, the pilot thought, he'll break a sweat.
CHAPTER TEN
A storm moved in. A pale sky taut as a balloon was invaded by a great scudding fleet of storm clouds and landmarks were devoured. The Schwabenland prudently dropped anchor and waited out the wind, midsummer snow giving a wintry cast to the decks. Ice rasped and clanked by as Heiden brooded on the bridge. The weather provided a welcome respite from flying and Hart seized the opportunity to nap. The hiatus also gave him time to think, however, and it bothered him that he thought so much about Greta.
He scarcely knew her. He wanted to avoid being distracted by her. Yet he couldn't get her out of his mind. He didn't understand it; she had none of the California glamour of Audrey. Half the time the woman simply upset him. Yet he missed her company, the ease of talking with her, the surprise of what she would say— and cursed himself for both missing it and being an ass every time he was around her.
Then New Year's came.
They stayed up late in the officer's mess, drinking toasts to 1939 by candlelight and playing scratchy records, some of them American, on the ship's sole phonograph.
"To Amerika!" a boozy Feder offered.
"To the crucible of history and our Führer!" an equally tipsy Drexler added.
"To peace on earth," Greta said. There was a grunted assent from the males.
"To Antarctica, the last untouched place," said Hart.
He surreptitiously studied Greta's face in the candlelight, trying to keep from making his fascination too obvious. Sometimes she'd glance at him and, seeing him watching her, look uncertainly away. Drexler noticed once and evenly stared at Hart a moment before turning back to fill her glass. The man hung on her like a cloak. And yet she didn't melt into him, Hart noticed, but he could tell the caution frustrated the political officer. She sipped champagne but lacked the gaiety she'd demonstrated at Christmas. She'd seemed subdued since their quarrel on the beach.
The champagne aboard had been cooled for the day in the galley refrigerator. When a bottle emptied Hart decided it was his turn to fetch another. He worked his way in the dark past the steel sideboard and hanging pots and opened the door, leaning into its pool of light to seize a bottle. As he swung around, closing the door with his elbow, the eclipsing illumination showed Greta frozen behind him. The door clicked shut.