As the pair neared the bottom of the crater, they saw the motor launch pulling away from the derelict whaler to meet them for the trip back to the Schwabenland. Suddenly, there was a flash of light and they abruptly halted their descent, watching the whaler's bridge explode. The demolition had begun! Then another explosion, and another. The whaler was being ripped apart, smoke and water spewing skyward. Drexler could feel the sound and pressure in his bones as the energy punched across the volcanic bowl. Then the column of smoke began to dissipate, black caldera water smoothing over the wreck site. The Germans in the boat below cheered.
Suddenly there was a new rumble and Drexler turned to the noise. The explosion had triggered a snow and rock avalanche on the crater wall, he saw, at a point right above Hart's damnable cave. Jürgen couldn't help grinning at the spectacle. A cloud of debris was sliding over the entrance in a great plume of dust, helping to erase bitter memory. The cavern of betrayal was history.
"My God, an awesome detonation," Feder breathed. "I'd no idea we had that much explosive aboard."
"As I told Hart, we Germans like to be thorough." Drexler watched the plume of dust dissipate in the wind. The cave entrance had disappeared. Yes.
Suddenly exhilarated, he began bounding down the slope toward the approaching boat as the geographer clumsily followed, the pair's shoes kicking up gouts of pumice dust.
It was time to look to the future, not to the past.
It was time to comfort Greta.
Fritz was jerked awake by a roar. He'd been sleeping in the cave and was disoriented by darkness; only after a second or two did his eyes swing toward the light of the cave's entrance as the source of the noise. There was a whole series of thuds outside and he staggered toward the cave mouth to see what was going on.
The whaler had erupted in a plume of spray and debris, he saw, fragments still raining down into the lagoon. Groggily, he realized the Schwabenland's motor launch was also in the harbor. For rescue! He lifted an arm to wave.
Then there was a deeper, nearer roar and the lava cave began to tremble. Rocks crashed across the tube entrance and then a sluice of dirt and snow began pouring down to blot out his view. Jesus Christ! Dust billowed in at him and he began to cough. What had the fucking Nazis done now?
The sailor began a stumbling run back into the tube to get away from the avalanche at the entrance, confused by this calamity. Suddenly there was a splintering crack and a huge slab from the ceiling thudded down behind him. Cave-in! The floor shuddered and the air quaked and as more pieces hinged down he was running madly, the noise growing… and then he was swatted down and time stopped. Blackness.
He woke to a hand shaking his shoulder. A voice was saying his name. It seemed a cruel thing to do. He felt not so much pain as leakage, his life force draining away. Why call him back?
"Fritz!"
It was Owen. Still alive? That was something…
"Fritz! What happened?"
The sailor spoke. Or tried to. It came as a croak. He was frustrated that he couldn't do better than a fucking croak. That he wouldn't get back to the ship to surprise Pig-Head.
"What?" The pilot bent closer.
Fritz managed a hoarse whisper. "Get back to her, Owen." He spoke in a swoon of pain. "Don't give up again."
And then the last of him drained away.
Sky. The ice-dotted ocean. As vast and brilliant as the cave had been close and dark. Now Hart was flying in its terrifying emptiness with a leaden cargo of sudden, devastating loss. It seemed he was utterly alone in the world. The cave destroyed, Fritz dead, the ship disappeared, Greta gone. He was too late. As he'd instructed, they'd sailed without him.
The pilot watched the fuel gauge measure the sinking of his hope. At the very end he planned to dive steeply into the sea; the crash would be quicker than frigid water. But he'd hunt until the last drop of petrol. He'd already come so far.
He'd been halfway to the lake when the cave-in occurred, the deeper mountain quaking ominously with a guttural rumble. What in hell? Pondering the mystery, he decided on a quick retreat. When he scrambled back to the chimney it was full of choking dust. Alarmed, he climbed up the shaft to a lava tube suddenly littered with broken rock. He found his little friend at the inner boundary of complete collapse, half buried and bleeding. Great God, why a cave-in then? The timing was monstrously bitter. And as Fritz slipped away Owen spent precious time grieving, giving way to self-pity at life's unfairness. He numbly gathered purpose only by remembering Greta, and then began the long, lonely climb toward the cave's back door, praying that it had not been sealed as well. One by one his lights had died; first the flashlight, then the lantern, and then the candles. He crawled the last hour in utter darkness, guided only by his knowledge that there was a way out and it lay somewhere at the top of this labyrinth of tunnels. Twice he hit dead ends, backtracked, and tried a different tunnel. Three times he almost gave up, lying in the dark with only the sound of his own breathing, drops of meltwater eventually prodding him to climb on. Yet finally he was on the snowy shelf again, dazzled by polar light, blood pounding, the cold an electric shock, taking in great shuddering breaths of frigid air. Groaning at the inexorable drainage of time. How long would they wait?
He'd eventually hiked wearily to the plane, dug it out, unleashed its wings, unwrapped the tarps, and laboriously warmed its engine. He was slow, clumsy, tired, and it took forever. Forever! Always he was conscious of the minutes and hours ticking by, the dying light, the diminishing chances. And yet when he finally brought the engine to a roar, skidding down the snowy plateau and lifting away at last from the cursed island, he still had hope. That he could catch them. That he could reach her.
The crater lagoon was empty, even of the Bergen. So was the sea.
He swung his head in anxious search until his neck ached and saw nothing. He flew over an ocean so lifeless that perhaps he had died, and now was in a cold heaven or endless hell.
He was so damned tired. His head was nodding. His body ached. His heart was a stone of sorrow. How could life be so briefly sweet, and then turn so quickly and frustratingly wrong again? Why had he left her at all?
God, he hated Antarctica.
And then from the corner of his eye he spotted a dark point amid the shards of icy white. As he flew closer he realized it was extruding a tendril of smoke.
He glanced down. The gas gauge was past empty.
And here was a ship.
Realization slowly penetrated. A ship! It was Greta! He'd made it!
Elmer's angel.
He wept as he put Boreas in a long, flat, gliding dive to stretch his fuel, leaning forward, pushing the Dornier by sheer will.
And then as he landed the plane on the sea a final time, clipping the wave tops, he finally saw the name on the hull he was chasing.
It was the Norwegian whaler, the Aurora Australis. Turning slowly toward him.
PART TWO
1939–44
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Pain subsides, but memory just roots deeper. Greta was burned into Hart's brain like the after-dazzle of flash powder: her face framed by fur as she watched icebergs the color of her eyes, her body bathed by lantern light in the womb-like grotto of the cave, her fingers touching his sleeve as she asked him not to leave the ship— not to leave her. And that bright remembrance was shadowed by the darker tumor of Jürgen Drexler. Other mental images were etched by acid and sun fire: the bite of polar wind, the disease-contorted bodies, the tantalizing crack of light that made him crawl for the surface when muscle and will seemed utterly expended, the ominous disappearance of Schwabenland and the Bergen. Antarctica was a song so exquisite and so vile that he could not get it— could not get her— out of his head. And because of that he couldn't forget her, nor replace her, nor move past her. He'd lost her and yet somehow it wasn't over, he knew. It couldn't be over until they met again.