Tearing the paper from the encrypting machine, Gorov swung around in his chair to face the video display terminal. Referring to the encoded version of the message, he carefully typed the same series of numbers and symbols into the communications computer. When that was done, he pressed a special-function key that bore the word DECODE and another labeled PRINTOUT. He did not touch the READOUT tab, because he didn’t want his work displayed on the large overhead screen for the benefit of Timoshenko and the other technicians. After dropping the flimsy yellow sheet from the encrypting machine into a paper shredder, he leaned back in his chair.
No more than a minute passed before the communiqué—now decoded and in its original state—was in his hands. He had come full circle in less than five minutes: The printout contained the same fourteen lines that he had composed on the coder, but it was now in the usual type style of the computer. It looked like any other decoded message received from the Ministry in Moscow, which was precisely what he wanted.
He instructed the computer to erase from its memory banks every detail of what he had just done. With that, the printout was the only evidence that remained of the exercise. Timoshenko would not be able to quiz the computer about any of this after Gorov left the cabin.
He got up and went to the open door. From there he said, “Oh, Lieutenant?”
Timoshenko was pretending to study a logbook. He glanced up. “Yes, sir?”
“In those dispatches you intercepted, the ones having to do with the Edgeway group, there was mention of a transmitter on that drift ice with them.”
Timoshenko nodded. “They’ve got a standard shortwave set, of course. But that isn’t what you’re talking about. There’s also a radio transmitter, a tracking beacon, that puts out a two-second signal ten times every minute.”
“Have you picked it up?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
“Is it a strong signal?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Have you got a bearing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, run another check on it. I’ll be back to you on the intercom in a few minutes,” George said. He returned to the control room for another conversation with Emil Zhukov.
Harry had not yet finished telling Rita how the auxiliary drill had broken down, when she interrupted him. “Hey, where’s Brian?”
He turned to the men who had entered the ice cave behind him. Brian Dougherty was not among them.
Harry frowned. “Where’s Brian? Why isn’t he here?”
“He must be around somewhere. I’ll take a look outside,” Roger Breskin said.
Pete Johnson left with him.
“He probably just went behind one of the hummocks out there,” Fischer said, although he surely knew better than that. “Nothing especially dramatic, I’ll wager. Probably just had to go to the john.
“No,” Harry disagreed.
Rita said, “He would have told someone.”
Out on the icecap, far from the security of Edgeway Station or the inflatable igloos of a temporary camp, no one could afford to be modest even about bladder and bowel habits. When going to the john, they all realized that it was necessary to inform at least one other person as to exactly which hill or pressure ridge would serve as a screen for their toilet. Acutely aware of the vagaries of the icefield and the weather, Brian would have let others know where to start looking if he didn’t make a timely return.
Roger and Pete reappeared in less than two minutes, pulling up their goggles, tugging down their ice-veined snow masks.
“He’s not at the sleds,” Roger said. “Or anywhere else we can see.” His gray eyes, usually expressionless, were troubled.
“Who rode back here with him?” Harry asked.
They looked at one another.
“Claude?”
The Frenchman shook his head. “Not me. I thought he rode with Franz.”
“I rode with Franz,” George Lin said.
Rita was exasperated. Tucking an errant strand or reddish hair back under her hood, she said, “For God’s sake, you mean he was left behind in the confusion?”
“No way. He couldn’t have been,” Harry said.
“Unless that was what he wanted,” George Lin suggested.
Harry was perplexed. “Why should he want to be left behind?”