Bear Island

by Alistair MacLean

  I reached for my own rug, draped it round my shoulders in Navaho style, picked up the Olympus manifesto again and continued to read. The next two pages were largely a hyperbolic expansion of what had gone before, with the writer—I assumed it was Heissman—harping on at nauseating length on the twin themes of the supreme artistic merit of the production and the necessity for absolute secrecy. After this self-adulatory exercise, the writer got down to facts.

  ‘After long consideration, and the close examination and subsequent rejection of a very considerable number of possible alternatives, we finally decided upon Bear Island as the location for this project. We are aware that all of you, and this includes the entire crew of the Morning Rose from Captain Imrie downwards, believed that we were heading for a destination in the neighbourhood of the Lofoten Islands off Northern Norway and it was not exactly, shall we say, through fortuitous circumstances, that this rumour was gaining some currency in certain quarters in London immediately prior to our departure. We make no apologies for what may superficially appear to be an unwarranted deception, for it was essential to our purposes and the maintenance of secrecy that this subterfuge be adopted.

  ‘For the following brief description of Bear Island we are indebted to the Royal Geographical Society of Oslo, who have also furnished us with a translation.’ That was a relief, just as long as the translator wasn’t Heissman I might be able to get it on the first reading. ‘This information, it is perhaps superfluous to add, was obtained for us through the good offices of a third party entirely unconnected with Olympus Productions, a noted ornithologist who must remain entirely incognito. It may be mentioned in the passing that the Norwegian government has given us permission to film on the island. We understand that it is their understanding that we propose to make a wild life documentary: such an understanding, far less a commitment, was not obtained from us.’

  I wondered about that last bit—not the cleverer-than-thou smugness of it, that was clearly inseparable from everything Heissman wrote—but the fact that he should say it at all. Heissman, clearly, was not a man much given to hiding his own brilliance—the phrase ‘low cunning’ would not have occurred to him—under a bushel but equally he wasn’t a man who would permit this particular type of self-gratification to lead him into danger. Almost certainly if the Norwegians did find out they had been deluded there would be nothing in international law they could do about it— Olympus wouldn’t have overlooked anything so obvious—other than ban the completed film from their country, and as Norway could hardly be regarded as a major market this would cause few sleepless nights. On the other hand, it would be effective in stilling any qualms of conscience— true, this was the world of the cinema but Heissman would be unlikely to overlook even the most remote possibility—that might have arisen had the project been denied even this superficial official blessing, and the very fact that they were being made privy to the secret inner workings of Olympus would tend to bind both cast and crew closer to the company, for it is an almost universal law of nature that mankind, which is still in the painful process of growing up, dearly loves its little closed and/or secret societies, whether those be the most remote Masonic Lodge in Saskatchewan or White’s of St James’s, and tends to form an intense personal attachment and loyalty to other members of that group while presenting a united front to the world of the unfortunates beyond their doors. I did not overlook the possibility that there might be another, and conceivably sinister, interpretation of Heissman’s confidential frankness but as it was now into the early hours of the morning I didn’t particularly feel like seeking it out.

  ‘Bear Island,’ the résumé began. ‘One of the Svalbard group, of which Spitzbergen is much the largest. This group remained neutral and unclaimed until the beginning of the twentieth century when, because of its very considerable investments in the exploitation of mineral resources and the establishment of whaling operations, Norway requested sovereignty of the area, placing her petition before the Conference’—they didn’t specify what conference—’ at Christiania (Oslo) in 1910, 1912 and again in 1914. On each occasion Russian objections prevented ratification of the proposals. However, in 1919 the Allied Supreme Council granted Norway sovereignty, formal possession being taken on August 14th, 1925.’

  Having established the ownership beyond all doubt the report proceeded: ‘The (Bear) island, 74° 28’N., 19° 13’E., lies some 260 miles N.N.W. of North Cape, Norway, and some 140 miles south of Spitzbergen and may be regarded as the meeting point of the Norwegian, Greenland and Barents Seas. In terms of distance from its nearest neighbours, this is the most isolated island in the Arctic.’

  There followed a long and for me highly uninteresting account of the island’s history which seemed to consist mainly of interminable squabbles between Norwegians, Germans and Russians over whaling and mining rights—although I was mildly intrigued to learn that as recently as the twenties there had been as many as a hundred and eighty Norwegians working the coal mines at Tunheim in the north-east of the island—I would have imagined that even the polar bears, after whom the island was named, would have given this desolation as wide a berth as possible. The mines, it seemed, had been closed down following a geological survey which showed that the purity and thickness of the seams were not sufficient to make it a profitable proposition. The island, however, was not entirely uninhabited even today: it appeared that the Norwegian Government maintained a meteorological and radio station at Tunheim.

  Then came articles on the natural resources, vegetation and animal life, all of which I took as read. The references to the climate, however, which might be expected to concern us all, I found much more intriguing and highly discouraging. ‘The meeting of the Gulf Stream and the Polar Drift,’ it read, ‘makes for extremely poor weather conditions, with large rainfall and dense fogs. The average summer temperature rises to not more than five degrees above freezing. Not until mid-July do the lakes become ice-free and the snow melts. The midnight sun lasts for 106 days from April 30th to August 13th: the sun remains below the horizon from November 7th to February 4th.’ This last item made our presence there, this late in the year, very odd indeed as Otto couldn’t expect more than a few hours of daylight at the most: perhaps the script called for the whole story to be shot in darkness.

  ‘Physically and geologically,’ it went on, ‘Bear Island is triangular in shape with its apex to the south, being approximately twelve miles long on its north-south axis, in width varying from ten miles in the north to two miles in the south at the point where the southernmost peninsula begins. Generally speaking the north and west consist of a fairly flat plateau at an elevation of about a hundred feet, while the south and east are mountainous, the two main complexes being the Misery Fell group in the east and the Antarcticfjell and its associated mountains, the Alfredfjell, Harbergfjell and Fuglefjell in the extreme south-east.

  ‘There are no glaciers. The entire area is covered with a network of shallow lakes, none more than a few yards in depth: those account for about one-tenth of the total area of the island: the remainder of the interior of the island consists largely of icy swamps and loose scree which makes it extremely difficult to traverse.

  ‘The coastline of Bear Island is regarded as perhaps the most inhospitably bleak in the world. This is especially true in the south where the island ends in vertical cliffs, the streams entering the sea by waterfalls. A characteristic feature of this area is the detached pillars of rock that stand in the sea close to the foot of the cliffs, remnants from that distant period when the island was considerably larger than it is now. The melting of the snows and ice in June/July, the powerful tidal streams and the massive erosion undermine those coastal hills so that large masses of rock are constantly falling into the sea. The great polomite cliffs of Hambergfjell drop sheer for over 1400 feet: at their base, projecting from the seas are sharp needles of rock as much as 250 feet high, while the Fuglefjell (Bird Fell) cliffs are almost as high and have at their most southerly point a remarkable ser
ies of high stacks, pinnacles and arches. To the east of this point, between Kapp Bull and Kapp Kolthoff, is a bay surrounded on three sides by vertical cliffs which are nowhere less than 1000 feet high.

  ‘Those cliffs are the finest bird breeding grounds in the Northern Hemisphere.’

  It was all very fine for the birds, I supposed. That was the end of the Geographical Society’s report—or as much of it as the writer had chosen to include—and I was bracing myself for a return to Heissman’s limpid prose when the lee door opened and John Halliday staggered in. Halliday, the unit’s highly competent stills photographer, was a dark, swarthy, taciturn and unsmiling American. Even by his normal cheerless standards Halliday looked uncommonly glum. He caught sight of us and stood there uncertainly, holding the door open.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He made as if to go. ‘I didn’t know—’

  ‘Enter, enter,’ I said. ‘Things are not as they seem. What you see before you is a strictly doctor-patient relationship.’ He closed the door and sat down morosely on the settee that Mary Stuart had so lately occupied. ‘Insomnia?’ I asked. ‘A touch of the mal de mer?’

  ‘Insomnia.’ He chewed dispiritedly on the wad of black tobacco that never seemed to leave his mouth. ‘The mal de mer’s all Sandy’s.’ Sandy, I knew, was his cabin-mate. True, Sandy hadn’t been looking very bright when last I’d seen him in the galley but I’d attributed this to Haggerty’s yearning to eviscerate him: at least it explained why he hadn’t called in to see the Duke after he’d left us.

  ‘Bit under the weather, is he?’

  ‘Very much under the weather. Kind of a funny green colour and sick all over the damned carpet.’ Halliday wrinkled his nose. ‘The smell—’

  ‘Mary.’ I shook her gently and she opened sleep-dulled eyes. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go for a moment.’ She said nothing as I half helped her to a sitting position, just glanced incuriously at Halliday and closed her eyes again.

  ‘I don’t think he’s all that bad,’ Halliday said. ‘Not poisoning or anything like that, I mean. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘No harm to take a look,’ I said. Halliday was probably right: on the other hand Sandy had had the freedom of the galley before Haggerty had caught him and with Sandy’s prehensile and sticky fingers anything was conceivable, including the possibility that his appetite was not quite as bird-like as he claimed. I picked up my medical bag and left.

  As Halliday had said, Sandy was of a rather peculiar greenish shade and he’d obviously been very sick indeed. He was sitting propped up in his bunk, with both forearms wrapped round his middle: he glared at me balefully as I entered.

  ‘Christ, I’m dying,’ he wheezed. He swore briefly, pungently and indiscriminately at life in general and Otto in particular. ‘Why that crazy bastard wants to drag us aboard this bloody old stinking hell-ship—’

  I gave him some sleeping-sedatives and left. I was beginning to find Sandy a rather less than sympathetic character: more importantly, sufferers from aconitine poisoning couldn’t speak, far less indulge in the fluent Billingsgate in which Sandy was clearly so proficient.

  Swaying from side to side and again with her arms stretched out to support herself, Mary Stuart still had her eyes shut: Halliday, dejectedly chewing his wad of tobacco, looked up at me in lackadaisical half-inquiry as if he didn’t much care whether Sandy was alive or dead.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Just the weather.’ I sat down a little way from Mary Stuart and not as much as by a flicker of a closed eyelid did she acknowledge my presence. I shivered involuntarily and drew the steamer rug around me. I said: ‘It’s getting a bit nippy in this saloon. Why don’t you take one of these and kip down here?’

  ‘No thanks. I’d no idea it would be so damn cold here. My blankets and pillow and it’s me for the lounge.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Just as long as Lonnie doesn’t trample all over me with his hobnailed boots in the middle watch.’ It was apparently common knowledge that the liquor in the lounge drew Lonnie like a lodestone. Halliday chewed some more, then nodded at the bottle in Captain Imrie’s wrought-iron stand. ‘You’re a whisky man, Doc. That’s the stuff to warm you up.’

  ‘Agreed. But I’m a very choosy whisky man. What is it?’

  Halliday peered. ‘Black Label.’

  ‘None better. But I’m a malt man myself. You’re cold, you try some. It’s on the house. Stole it from Otto.’

  ‘I’m not much of a one for scotch. Now bourbon—’

  ‘Corrodes the digestive tract. I speak as a medical man. Now, one sip of that stuff there and you’ll swear off those lethal Kentucky brews for ever. Go on. Try it.’

  Halliday looked at the bottle, as if uncertainly. I said to Mary Stuart: ‘How about you? Just a little? You’ve no idea how it warms the cockles.’

  She opened her eyes and gave me that oddly expressionless look. ‘No thank you. I hardly ever drink.’ She closed her eyes again.

  ‘The flaw that makes for perfection,’ I said absently, because my mind was on other things. Halliday wouldn’t drink from that bottle, Mary Stuart wouldn’t drink from that bottle, but Halliday seemed to think it was a good idea that I should. Had they both remained in their seats during my absence or had they been busy little bees, one keeping guard against my premature return while the other altered the character of the Black Label with ingredients not necessarily made in Scotland? Why else had Halliday come up to the saloon if not to lure me away? Why hadn’t he gone direct to the lounge with blankets and pillow instead of wandering aimlessly up here to the saloon where he must have known from mealtimes that the temperature was considerably colder than it was down below? Because, of course, before Mary Stuart had made her presence known to me here, she’d seen me through the outer windows and had reported to Halliday that a certain problem had arisen that could only be solved by bringing about my temporary absence from the saloon. Sandy’s sickness had been a convenient coincidence—if it had been a coincidence, I suddenly thought: if Halliday was the person, or was in cahoots with the person who was so handy with poisons, then the introduction of some mildly emetic potion into Sandy’s drink would have involved no more problem than that of opportunity. It all added up.

  I became aware that Halliday was on his feet and was lurching unsteadily in my direction, bottle in one hand and glass in the other: the bottle, I noticed almost mechanically, was about one-third full. He halted, swaying, in front of me and poured a generous measure into the glass, bowed lightly, offered me the glass and smiled. ‘Maybe we’re both on the hide-bound and conservative side, Doc. In the words of the song, I will if you will so will I.’

  I smiled back. ‘Your willingness to experiment does you credit. But no thanks. I told you, I just don’t like the stuff. I’ve tried it. Have you?’

  ‘No, but I—’

  ‘Well, how can you tell, then?’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘You were going to try it anyway. Go on. drink it.’

  Mary Stuart, opened her eyes. ‘Do you always make people drink against their will? Is this what doctors do—force alcohol on those who don’t want it?’

  I felt like scowling and saying, ‘why don’t you shut up?’ but instead I smiled and said: ‘Teetotal objections overruled.’

  ‘So what’s the harm?’ Halliday said. He had the glass to his lips. I stared at him until I remembered I shouldn’t be staring, which was all of a fraction of a second, smiled indulgently, glanced at Mary Stuart whose ever so slightly compressed lips registered no more than a trace of prudish disapproval, then looked back in time to see Halliday lowering his half empty glass.

  ‘Not bad,’ he pronounced. ‘Not bad at all. Kind of a funny taste, though.’

  ‘You could be arrested in Scotland for saying that,’ I said mechanically. The villain had nonchalantly quaffed the hemlock while his accomplice had looked on with indifference. I felt very considerably diminished, a complete and utter idiot: as a detective, my inductive and deductive powers added up to zero. I even felt like
apologizing to them except that they wouldn’t know what I was talking about.

  ‘You may in fact be right, Doc, one could even get to like this stuff.’ Halliday topped up his glass, drunk again, took the bottle across to its wrought-iron rest and resumed his former seat. He sat there silently for perhaps half a minute, finished off the scotch with a couple of swallows and rose abruptly to his feet. ‘With that lot inside me I can even ignore Lonnie’s hob-nails. Good night.’ He hurried from the saloon.

  I looked at the doorway through which he had vanished, my mind thoughtful, my face not. I still didn’t understand why he had come to the saloon in the first place: and what thought had so suddenly occurred to him to precipitate so abruptly a departure? An unprofitable line of thinking to pursue, I couldn’t even find a starting-point to begin theorizing. I looked at Mary Stuart and felt very guilty indeed: murderesses, I knew, came in all shapes, sizes and guises but if they came in this particular guise then I could never trust my judgement again. I wondered what on earth could have led me to entertain so ludicrous a suspicion: I must be even more tired than I thought.