Athabasca

by Alistair MacLean

  “How high did she fall from?”

  “Maybe a hundred feet. Maybe more.”

  “Must be dead. We’d better look, all the same. Oh my God! One of the Bradys killed.”

  They went up an incline into the teeth of the wind. On top of the slope the ground was rounded into smooth, gentle humps. The torch-beam, sweeping the snow, revealed nothing.

  “Must have been around here,” said Johnson doubtfully. “Can’t have been much further, or I’d never have seen the body at all. Try over there a bit.”

  They cast a little to their left. Suddenly Cannody, who had been walking on hard-frozen tundra, sunk to his waist in snow. As he exclaimed and struggled to extricate himself from the drift, Johnson called: “Listen, I thought I heard something.”

  They waited, catching only the whine of the wind. Then Johnson heard the sound again—a cry that sounded faint yet close at hand.

  “There it is!” he shouted. “Sure as hell, someone calling. This way!”

  They tried to move eastwards, but both lunged into the deep snow again and realised that a rift in the ground ran in that direction.

  They regained the hard edge of the invisible miniature valley and followed it another twenty steps. Then they heard the cry again, almost beneath them. This time they shouted back and got an answer. A few more steps brought them to the lip of a hole about a yard across that had been punched vertically downwards into the drift. Shining the light down it, they saw a bundle of powder-blue snow-suit.

  “Hey! You! Mrs Brady? Stella?” Carmody called. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” came the muffled answer. “I’m not Mrs Brady or Stella, and I’m not hurt. Just stuck.”

  “Who are you, then?”

  “Corinne Delorme.”

  “Corinne! Heaven’s sakes! John Carmody here. Hold on, and we’ll get you right out of there.” He sent Johnson running to the truck for a shovel and a rope, and in five minutes they had dug and hoisted the girl out. Considering she had been outdoors for more than half an hour, she was in remarkably good shape, mainly because the snow had insulated her and given her complete protection from the wind. But as soon as they got her into the warmth of the truck-cab, reaction set in and she began to shudder uncontrollably.

  Carmody’s first impulse was to drive her to hospital, but then he changed his mind. Something—he could not quite tell what—made him favour a more devious approach. The guys in the helicopter must reckon she was dead: they must think they had another murder on their hands. It was a million-to-one that she had fallen into the drifted-up ravine rather than onto the ground: five yards to either side, and every bone in her body would have been broken. Something might be gained, Carmody thought, if the kidnappers did not realise anyone had survived; therefore he decided to move her away into safe-keeping, at any rate until Brady and his team returned.

  “Know what I want you to do?” Carmody said to Johnson. “Drive Miss Delorme to the isolation unit on the plant. The isolation unit. When you reach the main gates, have her keep down out of sight, on the floor. I don’t want anyone to know where she is. Any bother, say you’re on a special run for Mr Shore, O.K.?”

  Johnson nodded.

  “You hear that, Corinne?” Carmody lifted up her chin. “He’ll take you to a good place at Athabasca. Nice and warm and comfortable. Out of the way, too. I’ll see you back there as soon as I can make it.”

  Shock and reaction had knocked the girl to pieces for the moment, and she could not answer.

  “Go on, then,” Carmody told Johnson. “Drive.”

  12

  It was past midnight and still snowing heavily when Brady arrived back in Fort McMurray, but the lobby of the Peter Pond Hotel was as crowded and bustling with activity as if it had been just after noon. Brady sank wearily into a chair. The flight from Prudhoe Bay had been a grim one: between them Brady, Dermott and Mackenzie had uttered hardly a word.

  A tall, lean man, dark-moustached and heavily tanned, approached. “Mr Brady? My name’s Willoughby. Glad to make your acquaintance, sir, though not in these damnable circumstances.”

  “Ah—the police chief.” Brady smiled without humour. “And rough for you, Mr Willoughby, to have this happen in your territory. I was sorry to hear that one of your men had been killed.”

  “I’m glad to say that report was premature. There was a great deal of confusion around here when we made that phone call to you. The man was shot through the left lung and certainly looked bad, but now the doctor says he has a more than even chance.”

  “That’s something.” Brady smiled wanly again.

  Willoughby turned to two other men. “D’you know…?”

  “Those two gentlemen I’ve met,” said Brady. “Mr Brinckman, Sanmobil security chief, and his deputy, Mr Jorgensen. Odd—for a couple of reportedly injured men, you look remarkably fit to me.”

  Brinckman said: “We don’t exactly feel it. Like Mr Willoughby said, things got exaggerated in the heat of the moment. No broken bones, no knife or gun injuries, but they did knock us about a bit.”

  “Pete Johnson—the guy who raised the alarm—will vouch for that,” said Willoughby. “When he got there, Jorgensen was lying on the road, out cold, and Brinckman was wandering round in a daze. He didn’t know if it was last night or last month.”

  Brady turned to another man who had appeared at his side. “Evening, Mr Shore. Morning, rather. The Brady family seem to have disturbed a lot of people’s sleep, I’m afraid.”

  “To hell with that.” Shore was visibly upset. “I helped show Mrs Brady and your daughter round the plant yesterday. That this should happen to her. Just as bad, that this should happen to you when you and your family were virtually our guests and you were trying to help us. A black day and a black eye for Sanmobil.”

  “Maybe not all that black,” said Dermott. “God knows, it must be a traumatic experience to be kidnapped, but I don’t believe any of the four is in immediate danger. We’re not dealing with political fanatics such as you get in Europe or the Mid East. We’re up against hard-headed business men with no personal animosity against their victims: they almost certainly regard them as bargaining counters.” He clasped and unclasped his big hands. “They’re going to make demands, probably outrageous, for the return of the women, and if those demands are met, they’ll honour the bargain. Professional kidnappers usually do. In their own twisted terms, it’s sound business practice and plain commonsense.”

  Brady turned to Willoughby. “We haven’t really heard what happened. I assume you haven’t had time to make wide-ranging enquiries?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “They’ve just vanished into thin air?”

  “Thin air is right. Helicopter, as you heard. They could be a few hundred miles away in any direction by this time.”

  “Any chance of airfield radars having picked up their flight-path?”

  “No, sir. It’s a million to one that they were flying below radar level. Besides, there are more palm trees in Northern Alberta than there are radar stations. Down south, it’s different. We’ve alerted the stations there to keep a watch, but nothing’s been reported so far.”

  “Well—” Brady steepled his fingers, sinking back in his chair. “It might help if we could have a brief chronological account of what happened.”

  “That won’t take long. Jay?”

  Shore said: “Yes. I was the last person to see them, apart from these two”—he pointed at Brinckman and Jorgensen. “They left in one of Sanmobil’s minibuses, with Bill Reynolds driving.”

  Mackenzie cut in: “Were there any phone calls before they left?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Why?”

  “Let me ask another question.” Mackenzie looked at Brinckman. “How did the kidnappers stop your bus?”

  “They had a truck slewed across the road. Blocked it completely.”

  “It couldn’t have been there long. There’s a fair bit of traffic on that road, and drivers wouldn’t take kindly to being held up.
Was there, in fact, any other traffic at the time?”

  “I don’t think so. No.”

  Willoughby said: “Your point, Mr Mackenzie?”

  “Plain as a pikestaff. The kidnappers were tipped off. They knew the precise time when Reynolds’s bus left and when it could be expected at the interception point. Phone or short-wave radio—even a CB would have been enough. Two things are for sure: there was a tip-off, and it came from Sanmobil.”

  “Impossible!” Shore sounded shocked.

  “Nothing else makes sense,” said Brady. “Mackenzie’s right.”

  “Good God!” Shore sounded outraged. “You make Sanmobil sound like a den of thieves.”

  “It’s not a Sunday School,” said Brady heavily.

  Dermott turned back to Brinckman. “So Reynolds pulled up when he saw this truck across the road? Then?”

  “It was all so quick. There were two men lying in the road. One was face-down and very still, as if he were hurt real bad. The other was moving—he’d both hands clutching at the small of his back and was rolling from side to side. He seemed to be in agony. Two other men came running towards us—well, hardly running, more staggering. One was limping badly, and he had an arm stuck inside his mackinaw jacket as if he was trying to support it. Both of them had a hand up in front of their faces, covering their eyes.”

  Dermott said: “Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Not at all. It was dark, and we had our headlights on. It seemed natural they should shield their eyes from the glare.”

  There was a pause. Then Brinckman went on: “Well—this guy with the damaged arm—as I thought—came weaving up to my side of the bus. I grabbed the first-aid box and jumped out. I slipped on the ice, and by the time I had my balance I saw the man had dropped his hand and was wearing a stocking mask. Then I saw his left arm coming up. It was almost a blur, but I could see he had some kind of a sap in his hand. I had no time to react.” He fingered his forehead gingerly. “That’s all, I guess.”

  Dermott crossed to him and examined the contusion on the side of his forehead. “Nasty. Could have been worse, though. An inch or so further back and you’d likely have had a fractured temple. Looks as if your friend was using lead shot. A leather cosh wouldn’t have done that.”

  Brinckman stared at him in an odd fashion. “Lead, you reckon?”

  “I should think so.” Dermott turned to Jorgensen. “I take it you hadn’t much better luck?”

  “At least I wasn’t blackjacked. I just thought my jaw had been broken. The other guy was either a heavyweight champion, or he was clutching something heavy in his fist. I couldn’t see. He jerked open Mr Reynolds’s door, flung in some kind of smoke-bomb, then banged the door shut again.”

  “Tear gas,” said Willoughby. “You can see his eyes are still inflamed.”

  “I got out,” Jorgensen went on. “I waved my gun around, but it might have been a water pistol, the use it was. I was blind. Next thing I remember, Pete Johnson was trying to shake some sense into us.”

  “So, of course, you don’t know how Reynolds and his passengers made out.” Brady looked round. He was taking over. “Where’s Carmody?”

  “Down at the station,” said Shore. “Still making his report. Pete Johnson’s with him. They’ll be here presently.”

  “Good.” Brady turned back to Brinckman. “The man who attacked you—was he wearing gloves?”

  “I’m not sure.” Brinckman thought and then said: “Once he’d passed out of the beam of the headlights, he was in pretty deep shadow, and, as I said, it all happened so damn quickly. But I don’t think so.”

  “Your man, Mr Jorgensen?”

  “I could see his hand pretty clearly as he threw the tear-gas canister. No—no glove.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen. Mr Willoughby, a few questions if I may.”

  “Go ahead.” Willoughby cleared his throat.

  “This truck the kidnappers used—you say it was stolen?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s been identified?”

  “Belongs to a local garage proprietor. It was known he was off on a couple of days’ hunting trip.”

  “At this time of year?”

  “Your true enthusiast goes hunting any time. At all events, it was seen passing through the streets yesterday afternoon, and we assumed the owner was taking it along for his trip.”

  “Which argues a fairly intimate local knowledge?”

  “Sure, but no help to us.” Willoughby smoothed his dark moustache. “Fort McMurray’s no longer a village.”

  “Have you fingerprinted the truck, inside and out?”

  “Being done now. It’s a long job—there are hundreds of prints.”

  “May we see them?”

  “Of course. I’ll have them Photostatted. But, with respect, Mr Brady, what do you hope to achieve that we, the police, can’t?”

  “You never know.” Brady smiled enigmatically. “Mr Dermott here is an international expert in fingerprinting.”

  “I didn’t know!” Willoughby smiled at Dennott, who smiled back. He hadn’t known either.

  Brady changed his tack. “Any chance of identifying the helicopter from the measurements of the ski-marks that Carmody took?”

  Willoughby shook his head. “It was a good idea to record them, but no—the chances of identifying any one machine from its ski-prints are extremely remote, because there will almost certainly be dozens of its particular type around. This is helicopter country, Mr Brady, like Alaska. Here in Northern Alberta our communications are still very primitive. We have no divided highways—freeways—in this part of the world. In fact, north of Edmonton there only two paved roads that reach up north. Between them—nothing. Apart from ourselves, and Peace River and Fort Chipewyan, there are no commercial airports in an area of 200,000 square miles.”

  “So,” Brady nodded. “You use choppers.”

  “The preferred form of transport at all times. In winter, the only form.”

  “It’s a good bet that an intensive air search wouldn’t have a hope in hell of locating the getaway machine?”

  “None. I’ve made a bit of a study of kidnapping, and I can answer you best by a comparison. The world’s most kidnap-happy place is Sardinia. It’s a kind of national pastime there. Whenever a millionaire is snatched, all the resources of the law and the Italian armed forces are brought into play. The Navy blockades harbours and virtually every fishing village on the coast. The Army sets up road-blocks, and specially-trained troops sweep the hills. The Air Force carries out exhaustive reconnaissance by plane and helicopter. In all the years these searches have been carried out, they’ve never yet located a single kidnapper’s hideout. Alberta is twenty-seven times larger than Sardinia. Our resources are a fraction of theirs. Answer your question?”

  “One begins to feel the first faint twinges of despair. But tell me, Mr Willoughby: if you had four kidnapped people on your hands, where would you hide them?”

  “Edmonton or Calgary.”

  “But those are towns. Surely…”

  “Cities, yes—and the population of each must be crowding half a million. The captives wouldn’t be hidden—they’d be lost.”

  “Well.” Brady pulled himself up in his chair. He looked weary. “Okay. I suppose we have to wait word from the kidnappers before we make a move. You two gentlemen—” he turned to Brinckman and Jorgensen—“I don’t think we need keep you any longer. Thank you for your co-operation.”

  The two security men said their goodnights and left. Brady hoisted himself to his feet. “No sign of Carmody yet? Let’s go and make ourselves more comfortable while we wait for him. The desk will no doubt inform us when he arrives. This way, gentlemen.”

  Once in the privacy of his own room, armed with a fresh drink, Brady seemed suddenly to shake off his exhaustion.

  “O.K., George,” he said briskly. “You’ve been holding out on us. Why?”

  “In what way?”

  “Don’t pussy-foot.
You said you were more concerned about the demands the crooks are going to make than about my family. You love my family. Now what did you mean?”

  “The first demand will be that you, Don and I take off for Houston. They must be convinced we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.

  “The second demand will be a ransom message. To keep things within reasonable bounds they can hardly ask for more than a couple of million dollars. But that would be peanuts compared with the stakes our friends are playing for.

  “Third, the greater stakes. Obviously, they’ll demand a fortune to cease their harassment of both Prudhoe Bay’s and Sanmobil’s oil supplies, and the increasing destruction of their equipment. That’s where they hold all the aces: as we’ve seen, both systems are embarrassingly vulnerable to attack. For as long as the criminals’ identity remains undiscovered, they can keep on destroying both systems piecemeal.

  “Their price will be high. I imagine they’ll base it on the development cost of the two systems—that’s ten billion for starters—plus the daily revenue, which is the cost of over two million-barrels a day. Five per cent of the total? Ten? Depends what the market will bear. One thing’s for sure: if they demand too much and price themselves out of the market, the oil companies are going to cut their losses and run, leaving the insurance companies to hold the baby—and it will surely be the most expensive baby in insurance history.”

  Brady said querulously: “Why didn’t you bring this up downstairs?”

  “I have an aversion to talking too much in crowded hotel foyers.” Dermott leant towards Jay Shore. “Did your Edmonton office send the fingerprints we asked for?”

  “I have them in the safe at home.”

  “Good.” Dermott nodded approval; but Willoughby was curious: “What prints?”

  Shore hesitated until he received an all-but-imperceptible nod from Dermott, and said: “Mr Brady and his men seem pretty well convinced that we have at Sanmobil one or more subversives actively aiding and abetting the men trying to destroy us. Mr Dermott particularly suspects our security staff and all those who have access to our safe.”