1
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C. December 27, 1967, 2:00 a.m.
The room was brightly lit. Pale blue walls shone white and the black floor tiles shimmered and rippled like water. Paper chains
and tired snowflakes hung from the ceiling and a Christmas tree sat unhappily in the corner, leaning forward but somehow not tipping. In the middle of the room was a flimsy Formica table and, on either side, sat two men, neither of whom wanted to be there.
Jack Miller was relaxed but wary, his eyes alert and clear despite the hour. His clothes well cut. He clenched and unclenched his right fist, which was large and heavy and stiffened with arthritis. The weight of it made the table look flimsier still. He rubbed his knuckles to ease the pain then looked from the blank piece of paper in front of him to the man opposite.
Private Connor Murphy. His face and hands were covered in bandages and the parts of his scalp that showed through were either pink and raw or black and charred. It made you hurt just to look at him, Jack thought. Poor bastard. The nurses said feeding him was like weaning a baby.
“How’s the pain?” Jack asked. Connor shrugged.
“How does it look?” he whispered.
“It looks like goddamn agony,” Jack replied. “Drink?” He took a hip flask from his pocket and waved it at Connor. Connor shook his head. “Guess it wouldn’t be a good idea to mix with your meds. Suppose a smoke’s out of the question too. Mind if I do?”
“Go ahead,” Connor replied. Jack tapped a packet of Lucky Strikes on the table and flicked one up to his mouth. Then he looked at Connor and changed his mind. Replaced the cigarette and dropped the packet back in his pocket.
“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” he said.
“I don’t remember the beginning. I told them already.”
“Why don’t we start somewhere else then? Further back. Another beginning.”
“Another beginning?”
“Sure. Like when you got there. You were there for 12 months before the accident.”
“Not much to tell,” Connor said.
Jack cleared his throat. Not much to tell. They’d insisted he come from New York to D.C. that night to talk to a man who couldn’t remember anything about what they wanted to talk about, and didn’t want to talk about anything he could remember.
“What was it like, so far from home?” Jack asked.
Connor sighed. “White. Land is flat. And the cold. It cuts you.” “Tough posting.”
“Yeah,” Connor muttered, shaking his head, his eyes flicking from one bandaged hand to the other. Jack picked up the pen and held it over the pad. White. He wrote after a few moments of thought. Three lines in. Connor’s eyes rested on the pad. Jack underlined it and put the pen down.
“No night in summer. No day in winter that far north. Must have taken a while to get used to.”
Connor shrugged. “We were mostly underground. In winter we only went out to check the vents. Scrape the ice off. Same for the antennas.”
“And you did . . . construction? Maintenance?” “I did whatever the sergeant said.”
“So you’re running maintenance on the base. Middle of the day and it’s pitch black. No sunset and no dawn. And the job. Long hours. A lot of pressure to get out before the ice moved. No time. No sleep. Must have been hard.”
Connor winced.
“I don’t remember,” he said.
“You’re an outdoors kind of guy, aren’t you? From Wyoming.” Jack smiled. Connor didn’t answer. Jack leaned forward.
“Growing up on a farm. Fixing stuff. Running round outdoors. Long summers. And here you are working under the ice. In the middle of a night that lasts three months. Must have been tough.”
Connor shrugged. “Wyoming gets awful cold in winter too.” “True. And your record is, what’s the word? Exemplary. You know
what exemplary means?”
“Of course I know. I’m not an idiot.”
“Sure, sorry. Listen, we need to understand more about the fire. Two guys dead. Only you left standing. And they suffered something terrible. I mean, you did too. You know how it must have felt, but they
. . . they couldn’t get out. They would have cooked in that room. I can’t imagine it. Don’t want to.”
Connor stared at the table, but his eyes were far away. He coughed.
His body shook.
“I tried to help,” he whispered.
“I thought you couldn’t remember?”
“Look at me,” he held up his hands. “I must have. I must have tried.”
“No one’s blaming you. It was a tough posting. I’m here to help you, help you remember the accident. Help you work things out. Help you adjust.”
Connor sniffed and looked away.
“Bullshit,” he muttered. “You need a scapegoat for your report. You’re not even military, are you? Not in those clothes. Who do you work for?” Jack leaned back in his chair. “I’m here to help you with your recovery. Like they told you. Tell me what you remember,” he said
gently.
“I told you I can’t remember,” he scratched at his arm with a bandaged hand. “Nurse! Can I get a nurse? Nurse! I want some meds. Jesus.”
Jack turned his head. The door opened, a woman came in. She poured a yellow liquid into a paper cup. She was about to lift it for him but he shooed her away and picked it up carefully between his bandaged hands, tipping it gently between his lips. Some of the liquid dribbled onto the white bandage wrapped around his chin.
“I want to sleep now,” Connor said. “I need to sleep. I need to close my eyes.”
2
Langley, Block B
December 27, 4:00 a.m.
Jack poured himself a cup of coffee and glanced around the Deputy Director’s office. It was the same as he remembered, only this time more of a mess. Files were stacked on bookcases and piled up on cabinets. They’d gathered on the desk too, as if they wanted to leave only the smallest square of work space. On the wall was the obligatory army photograph that all the Agency seniors had to prove they’d actually fired a gun at someone once. Jack knew half the people in the photo. He’d been in the same platoon in the war, and he knew the man sitting behind the desk: Paul Coty, 20 years older and a lot more than
20 pounds heavier than he was in the picture.
“What do you think?” Coty said. “You believe him?”
“He’s lying,” Jack replied, adding enough milk to cool the coffee and draining it in one swallow.
“How do you know?”
“Two reasons. Firstly, he’s the only one left alive and secondly, he’s the only one left alive.”
“Ha. Don’t be cute. You’re too old,” Coty said.
“I spend most of each day listening to people tell lies. A lot of the time they don’t even know they’re lies. They’re just telling me the things they want to be true. In their head it’s the same thing. No one starts with the truth when they’re talking to a psychiatrist. He’s no different. The question is: Why is he lying. You got a plan of the base?” Jack asked. “I’d like to see the layout.”
Coty nodded, opened one of the files and cleared some space on the desk. He unfolded it carefully, like a linen tablecloth, flattening out the creases.
“Big site,” Jack said, flicking old cigarette ash off the paper and frowning as it left a charcoal smudge.
“Average,” Coty replied. “The military has got bigger bases in West Germany. And in the Pacific.”
“But those aren’t underground, must be over twenty miles of tunnels.”
“Sounds about right. They started digging summer of ’59. Moved in before winter and kept digging right up till ’66 when they figured out the ice was too unstable.”
“When did they put the reactor in?” “About a year in.”
“Project Iceworm,” Jack read the text stamped on the side. “Who comes up with these names? Our boy with the burns on his hands and face was just low-level engineering and maintenance, right?”
“That’s right. Not missile crew or research.”
“Huh,” Jack said, rubbing his chin. “These sections here the living quarters?” His stubby fore-finger hovered over the plan. Coty nodded.
“And it happened here?” Jack said, pointing to the section labelled “generator” that was close to the center of the network of tunnels.
“That’s where they found the bodies. He was outside in the tunnel. Only the three of them were left. Everyone else had been evacuated.
You’ve got the mess hall over there. Recreation rooms here. Showers, chapel, theater, whatever else they put in to keep themselves comfort- able. Same as any regular base.”
“But under the ice,” Jack said. “Exactly.”
“Ice that moves.” “Yeah.”
“You’d think they’d have known.”
“They did. They thought they had an acceptable level of tolerance.
But no one’s ever done anything like this before,” Coty said.
Jack frowned and rubbed his knuckles.
“An acceptable level of tolerance. I think my wife used to write me something like that on our anniversary. I’m surprised they managed to keep it a secret.”
Coty looked at him sardonically.
“Ok, I’m surprised they managed to keep it a secret for so long,” Jack added. Coty drummed his fingers on his desk. Then said:
“They did a whole public relations piece when they built the place, research on the ice core. They were doing research. NCO called Owen Stiglitz ran the program. He’s one of your bodies. They also had short and long-range ballistic missiles ready for deployment over Russia. The movement of the ice stopped all that. The tunnels weren’t stable. You want to go in for another round with Connor? I need to brief the Chief at midday.”
“The man’s had his morphine, he’s out for a few hours.”
“Don’t leave it too long before you go back to him. If he’s not up by 9 a.m. then get the nurse to give him something to bring him round. Here, take these.” He took a stack of files off his desk and passed them to Jack. “Flight logs in and out of the base going back 12 months. Radio transmissions and weather reports. Photographs of the fire damage. The accident report. And pictures of Connor, Stiglitz, and the other victim. Guy called Henry Carvell. It’s all we could pull together on short notice. I’ll give you detailed backgrounds once they come in.”
Jack took the files. “Where am I staying?”
“The Willard. But you’re not going there yet. I’ve got you a room here. In the basement. I’m keeping this out of sight.”
Excerpted provided by Pegasus Books from THE DARK THAT DOESN'T SLEEP by Simon Mockler. Copyright © 2023
In this chilling novel—introducing an exciting new talent in thriller-writing—a psychiatrist is tasked with unraveling a mystery at a top-secret military base.
Winter 1967.
An arctic storm traps three soldiers at a secret American military base located under the ice in Greenland. When the rescue team finally reaches them, two of the soldiers have died in what seems to be an accidental fire and the third, Private Connor Murphy, is left severely burned—with no memory of the previous seven days.
New York psychiatrist—and occasional FBI consultant—Jack Miller is tasked with uncovering Murphy’s memories. Carrying his own scars from World War II, Miller feels a kinship with the badly disfigured young soldier and patiently works to help him recall the events of that deadly storm.
However, the FBI wants Miller to do more than just uncover the missing memories. They also tell him that one of the three soldiers was a Soviet spy—and he needs to figure out who. As Miller delves into the personal background of the other two soldiers, and the history of the isolated base, he quickly realizes that nothing is as it seems.
Thriller [Pegasus Books, On Sale: June 6, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781639364251 / ]
Simon Mockler studied Modern Languages at Cambridge University. The Dark that Doesn’t Sleep will be his first novel published in the United States.
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