five knots. This was the trap he’d been hoping to avoid, one he’d warned Vasili about: Thicker ice meant slower speed and thus more time for the ice to form in the waters ahead of them.
He switched on the overhead lights, but the fog swallowed the beams and reflected the energy back, blinding him. He shut them off.
“We need a spotter,” he said.
Before he could call the crew, the boat slammed something head-on. The nose of the boat pitched upward and their momentum died, as if they’d run aground.
Petrov cut the throttle.
In utter silence he waited. Finally the boat began to move, sliding backward a foot at a time and then settling once again. He breathed a sigh of relief. But he dared not touch the throttles.
“We cannot stop here,” Vasili said.
A crewman popped his head into the control room from the lower deck. “We’re leaking, Captain,” the man said. “Starboard, forward.”
“How bad?” Petrov asked him.
“I think I can seal it,” the crewman said. “But we don’t want any more of that.”
“Wake the others,” Petrov said. “Get them into their survival suits. Then do what you can.”
It was a precaution only, and also a bluff meant to calm the fears of the men. But even in their suits, they would not last long in the water.
He turned to Vasili. “Give me your key.”
“I don’t think so,” the broker replied.
“So you will take him, then?” Petrov asked. “If we have to leave the ship?”
Vasili hesitated, then reached under his sweater and pulled out a key that dangled around his neck.
Petrov snatched it and then pushed his way outside.
The fog hung in the air, cutting at his face like shards of suspended glass. Not a breath of wind could be felt, and with the engines shut down the silence was complete.
He looked around. A thick layer of frost covered the deck while daggers of ice hung from the bridge and the ladder and the rail. Every surface, every line, every inch of the vessel had become encrusted in ice.
The ship looked dead already.
Vasili came out a moment later, bundled from head to toe, but still too stupid to put his survival suit on. “Why did you stop?”
“So we don’t rip the boat apart.”
“But we can’t stay here,” Vasili replied.
Of course they couldn’t, but they could no longer risk moving in the dark. The fog made it impossible to see the danger, and impatience would destroy them. But to some extent they seemed to be in luck. The fog was beginning to lift. In addition, the thin light of the approaching dawn had begun to illuminate things. This far north, the sun would never get off the horizon, but the light would grow quickly. Petrov hoped it would show them a way out.
And yet, even then something seemed wrong. The sky was darkest ahead of him. It should have been just the opposite; the brighter light should have been out in front of them. It had to be some illusion of the fog, but it seemed as if the sun were coming up in the wrong place.
Before he could come to terms with this, something heavy bumped the boat and pushed it to the side.
“What was that?” Vasili asked.
The slight impact could have been an iceberg moving on the current. But as he looked over the side, Petrov saw that the waters remained dead calm; the ice wasn’t moving.
“Alexander,” Vasili said.
Petrov ignored him and moved toward the bow. The fog had thinned considerably. Replacing it was a sight Petrov could hardly fathom: a field of solid white. Unbroken ice that stretched to the horizon in every direction.
“My God,” he whispered.
The ice was clearly impenetrable, but the truth was more damning than that. The sun had finally begun to peek its face over the horizon, not ahead of them and to the left as it should have been, but behind them and to the right.
Even Vasili realized the mistake.
“You’ve taken us the wrong way,” he shouted. “We’ve been sailing to the north all night!”
Petrov reeled from the error. Relying on a magnetic compass was tricky around the poles, but he was no amateur. And yet somehow they’d spent hours tracking toward the danger, into the thickening ice pack instead of away from it.
“How could this …,” he began.
“You goddamned fool,” Vasili cursed him. “You’ve driven us to hell.”
Petrov’s legs almost buckled from the realization, but urgency pushed him on. He glanced toward the stern. The ice there had not yet formed into a solid