High Stand

by Hammond Innes

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  He went out, shutting the door behind him, and I sat there, wondering about him and about what advice I was going to give him now that I’d stumbled on his hideout. I had been cold standing in the Gully, but I had my anorak on and the walk up to the camp had warmed me. With the door shut the cookhouse was already beginning to get the chill off it as the gas flared under the kettle.

  He was gone longer than I had expected and the kettle was just beginning to whistle when the door burst open and he came in, a paper in his hand, his face quite white, his eyes staring. ‘Did you leave this? I found it under the door. Did you slip it there?’

  I stared at him, wondering what the hell he was talking about, why he was so upset. ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Who then? Tony? Where would he have got it?’

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked.

  ‘Miriam.’ He slammed the door shut, coming across to the table, leaning over me. ‘You sure you didn’t s-slip it under the door?’ He held an envelope out to me. That’s her writing, isn’t it?’

  It was addressed: Tom Halliday, Ice Cold Mine, via Haines Junction, Yukon, Canada. ‘You know her writing better than I do,’ I muttered, knowing it was hers and wondering how it had got there. Tony couldn’t have put it there,’ I said. ‘I’d have seen him.’ And I told him my movements.

  ‘Who then?’ His voice trembled, a note of panic almost.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked.

  He hesitated. Then suddenly he thrust it at me. ‘They’ve got her, the bloody scheming bastards. They’ve got her hidden up somewhere, and now…’ His voice was breaking, his face screwed up, on the edge of tears. ‘Read it,’ he cried. ‘You read it. Then tell me what I ought to do. My God! I never thought …’ And he suddenly collapsed on to the bench beside me and buried his face in his hands.

  The kettle had been whistling urgently and he got up again, slowly. ‘If it wasn’t you slipped it under the door, and it wasn’t Tony - who? Do you think that sound I heard…?’ But he shook his head. ‘I’d have seen anybody - anybody as close as that.’ I don’t think he expected me to answer; he was really asking himself the questions as he reached for the tea tin, turned off the gas and poured water into the pot, his movements those of a man in a daze. ‘Sugar?’

  I shook my head, staring down at the envelope, the letter underneath it a scribbled scrawl in a neat sloped hand. It was Miriam’s writing all right:

  Darling - I was picked up in Vancouver and brought here by boat almost a fortnight ago, just as I thought I had found you a backer for your Stone Slide project. Enclosed is my wedding ring as proof I am held here, surety apparently that you will carry out instructions already given you. ‘More personal reminders’ of my presence here could follow if they don’t hear from you soon. I don’t know who these people are or what their purpose is, but for God’s sake do what it is they want and get me out of here. You are mixed up in something you didn’t tell me about and I am very, very frightened. Love — M.

  A steaming mug of tea had appeared at my elbow and I drank it gratefully, the scalding liquid almost burning my mouth as I read that wretched little note through again, still finding it almost unbelievable. And it didn’t sound like Miriam. ‘Where’s the ring? She says she enclosed a ring.’ He held it out to me, a platinum circle that gleamed dully in the light from the dirty window, the pattern so worn it was almost smooth. Probably it had been dictated to her, the last part anyway. ‘Is she right?’ I asked. ‘About you being mixed up in something? You said something about being in trouble.’

  ‘Did I?’ He had sat himself down beside me. ‘What do I do now? What the hell do I do?’ He was talking to himself again.

  ‘You’d better tell me what it’s all about,’ I said, still staring down at the letter, wondering how it had got here, where it had come from. Where had she written it? They’d taken her there by boat, she said. But almost anywhere on the Canadian coast could be a boat journey. And who were they? ‘Well?’ I asked.

  He shook his head, not saying anything.

  ‘You’re in trouble and you don’t know what to do. How the hell can I help you if I don’t know what the trouble is?’ His hands were trembling, his eyes wide and staring blankly. He had put on a thick polo-necked sweater, but he was still shivering, his body seemingly stricken with ague, his mind gone into some sort of limbo of its own.

  I put my hand on his arm, gripping it hard. ‘Somebody is holding your wife hostage — who? Do you know?’ I had to shout the question at him again before my words registered, and all he did was shake his head. ‘Why?’ I shouted at him. ‘What do they want you to do?’

  He shook his head again, not answering.

  ‘You said you were in trouble - what trouble?’

  He rounded on me then, his face distorted. ‘Shut up and let me think, can’t you? I got to think. I got to think — what to do.’ And suddenly he was crying, his nerves all gone to hell and his shoulders heaving to the sobs that shook his whole body.

  I picked up the letter, thrusting it under his nose. ‘Read it,’ I said. ‘Read it again. It’s your wife, and she’s in danger. Have you got yourself mixed up in something political — extremists?’

  ‘Political extremists?’ He looked at me, staring wildly and neighing that silly laugh of his.

  Terrorists then?’

  He just stared at me. ‘You d-don’t understand,’ he breathed.

  ‘It’s you that don’t seem able to understand,’ I told him, waving the letter at him. ‘This is Miriam - your wife. She’s in danger, and she’s asking you for help.’

  ‘Later,’ he mumbled. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

  ‘I won’t be here later.’

  ‘Yes you will — I need you.’ He was still mumbling, but his voice had taken on a higher pitch. ‘And M-Miriam — she’ll be all right.’

  ‘Will she? How do you know?’ And once more I asked him what it was they wanted.

  He shook his head, and when I tried to insist, he turned on me, his voice suddenly losing all control as he screamed, ‘You stupid little fornicating bastard, do you think I don’t care? I’m worried sick, so shut up. Shut up, d’you hear, and let me think. Miriam will be all right. I’ll see to that - somehow.’ He said that slowly, getting to his feet and pouring more tea.

  I looked at my watch. It was almost three-thirty. But when I said it was time I started back, he insisted I stayed the night. ‘There’s spare bunks, plenty of food, and I need you, Philip.’ He was pleading now. ‘I really do. I need you. There’s legal matters …’ His voice trailed away as he finished his tea, gulping it down as though he was half dead of thirst. ‘It’s the Cascades, you see. The BC property. That’s what they want.’

  ‘Wolchak?’ I asked.

  ‘Wolchak?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know who it is.’

  ‘He mentioned a man named Mandola.’

  ‘You saw Wolchak, did you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And that’s how you know about Mandola?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mandola’s one of them — but whether he’s the boss man …’ He gave a little shrug. ‘More tea?’

  I shook my head.

  He got up, taking the mugs to the sink. ‘I’ll tell Mac to get across to the main track right away. Tony can let Kevin know you’ll be down tomorrow.’ He had reached up to a line of wall hooks hung with old anoraks and mud-stained overalls and oilskins, taking down a hand transmitter and moving to the door. ‘Won’t be long,’ he said. ‘Works better a few hundred yards away on the trail to the Squaw. We’re a bit blocked here for shortwave transmission into the Gully.’ He shut the door and I was left on my own, wondering whether to stay on with him or go down with Tarasconi. There was still time if I went now. I could be back at the Lodge and phoning the police by six at the latest.

  But would that help Miriam? I picked up that note and read it again, seeing her shut up in some little hut somewhere on the coast of BC, o
r it could be in America, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the State of Washington. If only she had been able to tell us what sort of a boat, how long the passage. As it was, I had nothing to tell the police. Her note would merely alert them to Tom’s presence in the Yukon, and it wasn’t for me, his solicitor, to do that when I knew he was in trouble.

  I got up and went to the door to knock out my pipe. The wind had dropped and it was less cold. I could see him standing in silhouette against a westering gleam of sun where a bench end slipped over the shoulder of the mountain, the walkie-talkie close against his face, the aerial antenna standing like a stalk growing out of his head.

  I refilled my pipe, still uncertain what to do, knowing only that it was Miriam I had to consider, but quite unable to think of anything I could do, except contact the authorities. I saw Tom push the aerial down into the body of the transmitter and start back along the track towards me, and I think at that moment I had almost decided to keep my rendezvous with Tony and get back to the Lodge and a telephone as soon as possible. But then he reached me, his gaunt face drained of colour, a scared look in his eyes. ‘Two men,’ he said. ‘Both with rifles. Mac saw them going down the main track.’

  Two! ‘What did they look like?’ I asked.

  ‘One big, one small. That’s what he said.’

  ‘But you can’t see the main track from your sluice box.’

  ‘He was in the mouth of the Gully checking on a small rock fall. Happens all the time. He saw them quite clearly.’

  ‘Did they see him?’

  ‘No, he’s quite sure they didn’t. They were in a hurry, walking fast.’

  I told him then about the two hunters staying at Lakeside. But when I asked him whether the names Camargo and Lopez meant anything to him he shook his head. ‘Mac’s coming up here now, just as soon as he’s had a word with Tony.’ He said it slowly, almost hesitantly. ‘You can’t be sure,’ he murmured. ‘But if Tony brought them up here…’ And then suddenly he asked me the nationality of the two men staying at the Lodge.

  ‘South American,’ I said.

  We were back in the relative warmth of the cookhouse then and he turned in the act of closing the door, staring at me. ‘How do you know?’ He put the question so reluctantly I had the impression a South American connection was something he didn’t wish to know about.

  ‘Kevin McKie,’ I said. And then I asked him where else he had been in South America besides Peru.

  He shook his head, looking strangely bewildered, so that I had to repeat the question. ‘All over,’ he said. ‘Martina and I, after we were married… You know about Martina, do you?’

  ‘Miriam told me.’

  He nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘She told me after you had disappeared,’ I said.

  ‘So the two of you —’ he shrugged. ‘Oh well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now.’ He turned away, shaking his head and moving towards the table where the letter and its envelope still lay. ‘But to answer your question, we sort of did South America - Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, the old Guianas, Brazil and back through the Argentine, Chile and Bolivia. Quite a trip!’ He was standing there, talking to himself, his mind in a daze and trying to lose himself in the past. ‘She was a bitch, of course. Miriam will have told you that. But, oh boy!’ He gave that neighing laugh. ‘If the devil came to tempt me with a wish, that’s what I’d want - that trip all over again … riding, surfing, all those Indian ruins, up the Urubamba, and the hot nights… Jeez! That woman knew how to do it. But yes, she was a bitch, God rot her!’

  I didn’t press the matter further, knowing I had all evening to question him. But when Mac arrived, and by his description confirmed the identity of the two men, I began to regret my decision to stay. It was too late then, of course. He had found Tony waiting in the quarry below the rock fall and had told him I wouldn’t be going back to Lakeside that night. He had also asked him whether he had seen the hunters or had seen any truck on his way up from the ford. Tony not liking my question, tell me bugger off. Then he drive away.’ All this said with a smile, though his face was otherwise without expression, the tone of his voice quite impassive.

  I have tried several times, while writing this account of what is quite the strangest period of my life, to assess my reactions and behaviour. But all I can say is that it was like being dealt a hand of cards, never knowing what would turn up, only that the joker had to be Miriam. Without her involvement I am quite certain my own actions would have been simple and straightforward. As it was, they appear to have been about as unpredictable as Tom Halliday’s. A legal training had not equipped me to handle matters that did not have a precedent in law. Terrorism, or something akin to it, was quite outside my experience and beyond my ability to handle. I was over six thousand miles from my home base, in a strange country with no real knowledge of either gold or trees. The only thing I think I knew at the time was that Miriam meant more to me than anything else.

  I can’t explain it. I was up there in the Yukon, on what for desolation might be described as the roof of the world, alone with her husband and a North American Indian. I hadn’t had an affair with her. Just that one brief sexual encounter, a few casual meetings, mainly social, a dinner party at their house, that interview in my office, then one letter and one postcard. And yet … all that evening I could see her as clearly as if she were sitting there with us, her glinting Titian hair, the wide eyes that were almost turquoise, the cheekbones and the nose, that mouth - lips that I could still feel.

  And her husband moving constantly, unable to settle, his nerves taut, his face even more haggard and exhausted than when I had first seen him down there in that bowl beyond the Gully. He wouldn’t tell me what he’d got himself mixed up in. He wouldn’t talk about his troubles. He didn’t trust me. I think that was it. There were legal matters, connected he said with the BC property… He needed my advice, but he wouldn’t confide in me. And time was passing.

  We had a meal — bacon, eggs, some tinned beans, a sort of bannock of flour and honey, more mugs of tea. It was after this, after he’d been across to the bunkhouse to ‘freshen up’, that his manner changed, the moroseness seeming to fall away from him. He suddenly became very talkative, his face slightly flushed, his eyes much brighter. I thought perhaps he was a secret drinker, but then he suddenly jumped to his feet, reached into the cupboard above the sink where Mac was doing the washing up and produced a bottle. ‘It’s malt. That’s all I got. I keep it for Kevin. He likes it. I hope you do.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  ‘Me?’ He smiled at me crookedly. ‘I have my own poison. Didn’t Miriam tell you?’ He picked up an undried mug from the draining board, slopped some whisky into it and handed it to me. ‘Glad you came. The girl’s in trouble — my fault. I gave her the names of a few people I know in Vancouver and Victoria, men with money I thought might like a bit of a gold gamble.’ His eyes gleamed almost wickedly. ‘That shock you? Women are sometimes better at that sort of thing… I’ve seen it so often, all over the world, even Muslim women.’ And he added, ‘They must have been keeping tabs on her.

  On you, too. Wolchak probably. And when he told them you were on your way out here - a lawyer… Reckon that’s what got them worried.’

  His words had been strangely disjointed. But not his thoughts. They were quite logical and clear, and they were centred on Tony Tarasconi. ‘I should have known what the little bastard was up to. But I didn’t, did I? I didn’t know he was mixed up in that sort of world, had contacts…’ His mouth clamped shut. ‘God! I’ve been so blind. But how could I guess? I don’t know the man really. He was half the year away in Medicine Hat or wherever, and I was only here occasionally. How would I know who his friends were? There’s South American finance here and there in mines all over the Yukon, Brazilian mainly. When Kevin told me he might have backing it never occurred to me …’

  He sat down suddenly, facing me across the table, talking of an old trail that ran down the east side of Ice Cold
to a ford across the Squaw just above the point where the two creeks met. Tarasconi’s claim was on the far side of the Squaw, a little downstream of the ford. If the two South Americans were at his camp, then we could question them there; otherwise we’d borrow Tarasconi’s pick-up and catch up with them at Lakeside. ‘Then we’ll drive over to White-horse - maybe Jonny will have heard something, otherwise we take the ferry south and fly into the Cascades.’ He had friends, he said, among the floatplane pilots. ‘I’ll scrounge a flight, and when we’ve talked to Thor Olsen … Well, we’ll see. He’s half Finn, half Lap. He looks after the logging camp, a sort of caretaker. His grandfather came over with the reindeer they drove up the Dalton Trail to Dawson in an effort to relieve the famine. That was the first year of the gold rush. He’ll know if anything odd has been happening down around the Halliday Arm. That’s the inlet leads up to the Cascades.’

  By then he had convinced himself that Miriam was being held either at the logging camp or at one of the outlying float-houses. ‘They’re built on logs and towed around,’ he said. ‘Sort of water caravans, but all solid fir and cedar logs.’

  He wouldn’t tell me why he thought she might be there. Every time I broached the subject he would fall silent, a sudden moroseness coming over him, as though a curtain had been clamped down blanking out his mind.

  We turned in shortly after nine with an alarm clock set for three in the morning. He had produced an old sleeping bag for me, but I still kept my clothes on, for the blankets on the bunk opposite his were damp, the air in the accommodation unit little above freezing. But it wasn’t the bitter cold that kept me from sleeping. It was the knowledge that I was involved in something I didn’t understand and going along with a man who not only refused to take me into his confidence, but seemed frightened half out of his wits. I was thinking over the sequence of events since I had caught the CP Air flight to Whitehorse, that note from Miriam running round and round in my head, and then I was woken with the light of a torch in my face and his voice saying, ‘Wake up! The alarm’s just gone.’