CAPTAIN DANIEL GILLESPIE STOOD on the huge gla.s.s-enclosed bridge of the Polar Storm and stared through tinted-lens binoculars at the ice that was building around the eight-thousand-ton research icebreaker's hull. Lean as an aspen tree and p.r.o.ne to moments of anxiety, he studied the ice while plotting a course in his mind for the easiest pa.s.sage to take the Polar Storm. The autumn ice had formed early in the Ross Sea. In some places, it was already two feet thick, with ridges rising to three.

The ship trembled under his feet as its great bulbous bow rammed the ice and then heaved up and over the white surface. Then the weight of the forward part of the ship crushed the pack into piano-size portions that tore at the paint on the hull as they groaned and sc.r.a.ped against the steel plates until they were chopped to small chunks by the ship's huge twelve-foot propellers and were left bobbing in the ship's wake. The process was repeated until they reached a part of the sea a few miles off the continent where the ice pack had been slow to thicken.

The Polar Storm incorporated the capabilities of both an icebreaker and a research vessel. By most maritime standards, she was an old ship, having been launched twenty years earlier, in 1981. She was also considered small alongside most icebreakers. She had an 8,000-ton displacement, a length of 145 feet, and a 27-foot beam. Her facilities supported oceanographic, meteorological, biological, and ice research, and she was capable of breaking through a minimum of three feet of level ice.

Evie Tan, who had joined the Polar Storm when it had stopped at Montevideo in Uruguay on its way to the Antarctic, sat in a chair and wrote in a notebook. A science and technical writer and photographer, Evie had come onboard to do a story for a national science magazine. She was a pet.i.te lady with long, silky black hair, who had been born and raised in the Philippines. She looked over at Captain Gillespie and watched him scan the ice pack ahead before asking him a question.

"Is it your plan to land a team of scientists on the pack to study the sea ice?"

Gillespie lowered his binoculars and nodded. "That's the routine. Sometimes as many as three times an Antarctic day, the glaciologists march out on the ice to take samples and readings for later study in the ship's lab. They also record the physical properties of the ice and seawater as we sail from site to site."

"Anything in particular they're looking for?"

"Joel Rogers, the expedition's chief scientist, can explain it better than I can. The primary goal of the project is to a.s.sess the impact behind the current warming trend that is shrinking the sea ice around the continent."

"Is it a scientific fact the ice is diminishing?" asked Evie.

"During the Antarctic autumn, March into May, the ocean around the continent begins to freeze and ice over. The pack once spread out from the landma.s.s and formed a vast collar twice the size of Australia. But now the sea ice has retreated and is not as thick and extensive as it once was. The winters are simply not as cold as they were in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Because of the warming trend, a pivotal link in the Antarctic sea chain has been disrupted."

"Beginning with the single-cell algae that live on the underside of the ice pack," offered Evie, knowledgeably.

"You've done your homework." Gillespie smiled. "Without the algae to dine on, there would be no krill, the little shrimplike fellows, who in turn provide nourishment for every animal and fish in these southern waters from penguins to whales to phocids."

"By phocids, you mean seals?"

"I do."

Evie gazed out over Ok.u.ma Bay, which divided the great Ross Ice Shelf and the Edward VII Peninsula. "That range of mountains to the south," she said, "what is it called?"

"The Rockefeller Mountains," answered Gillespie. "They're anch.o.r.ed by Mount Frazier on this end and Mount Nilsen on the other."

"They're beautiful," said Evie, admiring the snow-covered peaks that blazed under the bright sun. "May I borrow your binoculars?"

"Certainly."

Evie focused the gla.s.ses on a complex of large buildings set around a large towerlike structure only two miles to the south in a sheltered part of Ok.u.ma Bay. She could distinguish an airfield behind the buildings and a concrete pier leading into the bay. A large cargo ship was moored to the pier, in the process of being unloaded by a high, overhead crane. "Is that a research station there at the base of Mount Frazier?"

Gillespie peered in the direction the binoculars were aimed. "No, it's a mining facility, owned and operated by a big international conglomerate based in Argentina. They're extracting minerals from the sea."

She lowered the binoculars and looked at him. "I didn't think that was economically feasible."

Gillespie shook his head. "From what I've been told by Bob Maris, our resident geologist, they've developed a new process for extracting gold and other precious minerals from seawater."

"Odd I haven't heard about it."

"Their operation is all very secret. This is as close as we can come without one of their security boats coming out and shooing us off. But it's rumored they do it through a new science called nanotechnology."

"Why in such a remote area as Antarctica? Why not on a coast or port city with easy access to transportation?"

"According to Maris, freezing water concentrates the sea brine and forces it into deeper water. The extraction process becomes more efficient when the salt is removed-" The captain broke off and studied the ice pack beyond the bow. "Excuse me, Ms. Tan, but we have an iceberg coming on dead ahead."

The iceberg loomed up from the flat ice pack like a desert plateau covered by a white sheet. Its steep walls rose well more than a hundred feet from the sea. Brilliant white under a pure radiant sun and a clear blue sky, the berg seemed pristine and unblemished by man, animals or rooted plant life. The Polar Storm approached the berg from the west, and Gillespie ordered the helmsman to set the ship's automated control systems on a course around the nearest tip. The helmsman expertly shifted the electronic controls on a broad console and nudged the icebreaker on a seventy-five-degree turn to port, scanning the echo sounder for any underwater spurs that might have protruded from the berg. The icebreaker's stout hull was built to withstand a hard blow from solid ice, but Gillespie saw no reason to cause even the slightest damage to its steel plates.

He skirted the berg from less than three hundred yards, a safe distance but still near enough for the crew and scientists on the outside deck to stare up at the icy cliffs towering above. It was a strange and wonderful sight. Soon the palisades slipped by, as the ship circled the huge ma.s.s and turned into the open pack beyond.

Suddenly, another vessel sailed into view, having been hidden behind the berg. Gillespie was astonished to identify the encroaching ship as a submarine. The undersea craft was sailing through an open lead in the ice and pa.s.sing on a course that took it directly across the icebreaker's great bow from port to starboard.

The helmsman acted before Gillespie's orders issued across the bridge. He sized up the situation, judged the submarine's speed, and threw the icebreaker's big port diesel engine into Full Reverse. It was a wise maneuver, one that might have saved the White Star liner t.i.tanic. Rather than reversing both engines in a futile effort to halt the momentum of the big icebreaker, he kept the starboard engine on Half Ahead. With one propeller thrusting the Polar Storm forward and the other pulling it backward, the ship began turning far more sharply than a simple rudder command. Everyone on the bridge stood mesmerized, as the big bow's direction slowly angled from the sub's hull toward the wake behind its stern.

There was no time for a warning, no time for communications between the two vessels. Gillespie hit the great horn on the icebreaker and shouted over the intercom for the crew and scientists to brace for a collision. There was a cloud of restrained frenzy on the bridge.

"Come on, baby," the helmsman pleaded. "Turn, turn!"

Evie stared enraptured for a few moments before the business and professional side of her mind shifted into gear. She quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed her camera out of its case, checked the settings, and began snapping pictures. Through the range finder she saw no crew on the deck of the submarine, no officers standing in the top of the conning tower. She paused to refocus her lens, when she saw the submarine's bow slip beneath the ice pack as it began to crash dive.

The two ships closed. Gillespie was certain the ma.s.sive reinforced bow of the icebreaker would crush the pressure hull of the submarine. But a sudden burst of speed from the undersea vessel, the quick action of the helmsman, and the ability of the Polar Storm to make sharp turns made the difference between a near miss and tragedy.

Gillespie ran out onto the starboard bridge wing and stared down, fearing the worst. The submarine had barely dipped under the surface when the icebreaker's bow swung over her stern, missing the rudder and propellers by less than the length of an ordinary dining table. Gillespie could not believe the two vessels had not collided. The strange submarine had disappeared with barely a ripple, the icy water slowly swirling in a whorl and then turning smooth, as though the submarine had never been there.

"My G.o.d, that was close!" the helmsman muttered with a thankful sigh.

"A submarine," said Evie in a vague voice, as she lowered her camera. "Where did it come from? What navy did it belong to?"

"I saw no markings," said the helmsman. "It certainly didn't look like any submarine I've ever seen."

The ship's first officer, Jake Bushey, came rushing onto the bridge. "What happened, Captain?"

"A near collision with a submarine."

"A nuclear submarine, here in Marguerite Bay? You must be joking."

"Captain Gillespie isn't joking," said Evie. "I've got a photo record to prove it."

"It wasn't a nuclear sub," said Gillespie slowly.

"She was an old model by the look of her," the helmsman said, gazing at his hands, noticing for the first time that they were shaking.

"Take the bridge," Gillespie ordered Bushey. "Keep us on a course toward that ice ridge a mile off the starboard bow. We'll drop the scientists there. I'll be in my cabin."

Evie and Jake Bushey both caught the distant, puzzled expression on the captain's face. They watched as he dropped down a companionway to the pa.s.sageway on the deck below. Gillespie opened the door to his cabin and stepped inside. He was a man born to the sea and a lover of sea history. Shelves stretching around the bulkheads of his cabin were filled with books about the sea. His eyes wandered over the t.i.tles and stopped at an old ship's recognition book.

He sat in a comfortable leather chair and turned the pages, stopping at a photo in the middle of the book. There it was, a picture of the identical vessel that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The photo showed a large submarine cruising on the surface not far from a rocky coastline. The caption underneath read,

Only known photo of the U-2015, one of two XXI Electro Boats to see operational service during World War II. A fast vessel that could stay submerged for indefinite periods of time and cruise nearly halfway around the world before surfacing for fuel.

The caption went on to say that the U-2015 had been last reported off the coast of Denmark and had vanished somewhere in the Atlantic and was officially listed as Fate Unknown.

Gillespie could not believe what his eyes told him. It seemed impossible, but he knew it to be true. The strange, unmarked vessel the Polar Storm had nearly sent to the icy bottom of the bay was a n.a.z.i U-boat from a war that had ended fifty-six years before.