Initially he simply gave way to despair as he lay on a musty cotton mattress in a storeroom of the Aurora Australis, confined by the distrust of Sigvald Jansen. Lit by a caged bulb, the steel chamber mercifully prevented much contact with the Norwegian sailors, still furious about their confrontation with the Germans. "Murderer," one muttered at the pilot as he slid food through the doorway. One of the whalers had been killed in the gun battle and two wounded, Hart learned.
For a while the whalers waited grimly for him to exhibit symptoms of the dread new disease he talked wildly about, waited in both anticipation and fear. But no symptoms appeared. So he existed for a while outside of normal time, in a debilitating fog of grief and longing and regret. The sudden loss of Greta and Fritz was torment so great that at first he didn't think he could live, that he would ever again want to live. And yet he did live: numbly, automatically. And slowly— it was as if he was on a rack that was being ratcheted down day by agonizing day— the loss became more bearable. His choices became inevitabilities, never to be reversed, and his defeats a bitter peace. The alternative was madness. And as days turned to weeks— while the whaler finished its interminable season and then slowly steamed home— the hole in his heart began to scab over. The future began to replace the past and determination eclipsed despair. Even if the expedition had become a tragic fiasco— even if he'd been given up for dead— couldn't he get back into Greta's life? That must be his goal.
The Norwegians, who'd been so thirsty for revenge that they gleefully rammed the Boreas and sent the empty flying boat to the ocean's bottom, were puzzled. Was Hart a German spy, deserter, or the refugee he claimed? Nothing he said could be verified. The American claimed to have escaped from a new plague but had no sign of it. He claimed to have found the Bergen but had no proof: in fact, he claimed there was no proof, that the missing ship had mysteriously disappeared from the caldera of a mysterious island, its lagoon empty the last time he flew over. So in the end Jansen simply locked the American away and brooded about the strange clash with the Nazis, keeping Hart confined all the way to Norway. The pilot promised Jansen that a woman, some German biologist, could confirm his strange story, and he even confided to Sigvald his fantasies about reunion and rehabilitation. He would describe to authorities the forbidding island, he said. Then Norwegian scientists could return next year, armed and cautious.
But the pilot's hopes came to nothing.
The American was a diplomatic and legal conundrum and so was confined in Oslo while the Norwegians considered what to do. Hart had not a shred of evidence. And Norway was reluctant to challenge Nazi Germany over such a baffling and, in the context of recent developments, trivial incident. Greta Heinz? Not only did Hart have no address, there was no mention in the German press of her. Nor of the expedition, for that matter, or of the return of the Schwabenland. Had the crippled ship gone down? It was very odd.
Hart pondered. "It's the disease," he suggested. "They want to keep their microbe secret. Their very silence proves what I've been saying."
Of course. And did Hart have papers or passport?
All left on the ship, he explained.
Of course.
As the weeks and months passed, the Germans made no announcement of discovery of a new island and no complaint of a Norwegian whaler interfering with Reich biological sampling. The Norwegians, in turn, saw no reason to reveal to the Germans the survival of the Aurora Australis, the rescue and confinement of Owen Hart, or his report on the fate of the Bergen. The Nazis would learn all that when they returned to the island one day to find a Norwegian flag fluttering in the harbor ahead of them— assuming it even existed.
The pilot was freed in September by the turn of events. Poland had been invaded by Germany, and France and England had declared war. Brought to a hearing room, Hart was informed he was no longer wanted in Norway but had limited options. If he tried to make his claims public, the government would be forced to respond to rumors of a tragic Antarctic confrontation and the logical action would be to try Hart— the only member of the Schwabenland in custody— for the murder of the Norwegian whaler who'd died. Promised silence, however, would enable his release.
"Then let me go back to Germany," Hart pleaded. "I need to learn what happened. I need to find Greta Heinz."
"I'm afraid it's too late for that," a minister said. "The Reich has closed its borders. We've arranged with the American embassy to issue new papers and a ticket out of Norway if you'll sign these forms absolving all parties of liability and agreeing to confidentiality about regrettable incidents in polar waters. We prefer not to complicate our relations with Germany at this time."
Hart asked to be sent to England. He'd look for Greta from there. London absorbed him readily enough in its mammoth anonymity, but contacting expedition members proved impossible. If they were alive they'd been swallowed by the Reich, as remote as if on another planet. The vacuum of information was maddening: it was as if Hart had dreamed the entire voyage. He realized how little he knew about Greta. The sound and smell and touch of her was as vivid as his remembrance of what she looked like, but her past was opaque. He wrote letters, unsigned and with only a London post box as a return address (he assumed the letters would be steamed open and read by the German police), to the Reich Interior, Air Force, Forest, and Hunt ministries. Anything remotely connected to Göring.
Dear Greta. If you can read this, thank God you're alive. So am I, in London. Can you join me?
They were cryptic, he knew. He wasn't a writer and besides, he had no idea if she was alive or dead, married or alone. Had she returned? Did she think him dead? What was her situation? What was her mood? There was no reply. At times he thought the uncertainty would kill him. But of course it didn't kill him, and day simply followed day.
Nothing was getting in and out of Germany that the Nazis didn't wish. Like a hornet's nest being wrapped in ever-deeper layers of paper, the Third Reich was being sealed up. The political exodus of Jews and intellectuals from Germany was increasing and Hart held unrealistic hopes that Greta would materialize in the locomotive steam of a London train station, expelled and ready to make a new life. Aimlessly, gripped in depression, he went to the platforms a few times and threaded through the crowds, looking for her face in an exercise he knew was patently ridiculous. Other avenues proved a dead end. The German embassy had closed. The Red Cross had no record on its refugee lists. His vigil was hopeless, he was told. And yet he had no interest in returning to America and being an ocean away from Germany. No interest in other women. No interest in the larger world.