ICEBOUND By Dean Koontz

At last Pete said, “If only we’d been able to dig out ten of the bombs.”

“But we weren’t.” Harry picked up the microphone. “Let’s see if the Russians have any good news.”

Gunvald found nothing incriminating in the lockers that belonged to Pete Johnson and Claude Jobert.

Five suspects. No sinister discoveries. No clues.

He got up from the wooden crate and went to the far end of the room. At that distance form the violated lockers—although distance itself didin’t make him any less guilty—he felt that he could ifll and light his pipe. He needed the pipe to calm him and to help him think. Soon the air was filled with the rich aroma of cherry-flavored tobacco.

He closed the eyes and leaned against the wall and thought about the numerous items that he had taken from the lockers. At a glance he had seen nothing outré in those personal effects. But it was possible that the clues, if any existed, would be subtle. He might discover them only on reflection. Therefore, he carefully recalled each of the things that he had found in the lockers, and he held it before his mind’s eye, searching for some anomaly that he might have overlooked when he’d had the real object in his hand.

Roger Breskin.

Franz Fischer.

George Lin.

Claude Jobert.

Pete Johnson.

Nothing.

If one of those men was mentally unbalanced, a potential killer, then he was damned clever. He had hidden his madness so well that no sign of it could be found even in his most personal, private effects.

Frustrated, Gunval emptied his pipe into a sand-filled waste can, put the pipe in his vest pocket, and returned to the lockers. The floor was littered with the precious detritus of five lives. As he gathered up the articles and put them back where he had found them, his guilt gave way to shame at the violation of privacy that he had committed, even though it had been necessitated by the events of the day.

And then he saw the envelope. Ten by twelve inches. About one inch thick. At the very bottom of the locker, against the back wall.

In his haste, he had overlooked it, largely because it was a shade of gray similar to that of the metal against which it stood and because it was in the lowest part of the locker, at foot level, tucked back at the rear of the twelve-inch-high space under the lowest shelf. Indeed, he was surprised that he’d noticed it even now. The instant he spotted the envelope, he was overcome by a vivid premonition that it contained the damaging evidence for which he had been searching.

It was stuck firmly to the locker wall. When he tore it free, he saw that six loops of electrician’s tape had held it fast, so it had been placed there with considerable deliberation, in hope of keeping it a secret even if the locker was violated.

The flap was held shut only by a metal clasp, and Gunvald opened it. The envelope contained only a spiral-bound notebook with what appeared to be newspaper and magazine clippings interlarded among the pages.

Reluctantly but without hesitation, Gunvald opened the notebook and began to page through it. The contents hit him with tremendous force, shocked him as he had never imagined that he could be shocked. Hideous stuff. Page after page of it. He knew at once that the man who had compiled this collection, if not a raving maniac, was at least a seriously disturbed and dangerous individual.

He closed the book, yanked the chain to turn out the light at the back of the room, and hurriedly pulled on his coat and outer boots. Kicking through snowdrifts, head tucked down to protect his face from a savage wind filled with flaying specks of ice, he ran back to the telecommunications hut, frantic to let Harry know what he had found.

“Ice overhead. One hundred feet.”

Gorov left the command pad and stood behind the technician who was reading the surface Fathometer.

“Ice overhead. One hundred twenty feet.”

“How can it be receding?” Gorov frowned, reluctant to believe the proof provided by the very technology that he had always trusted. “By now the iceberg’s turned its narrow profile to us, so we can’t have passed under even half its length. There’s still a huge, long mountain hanging over us.”

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