Jack Higgins - East Of Desolation

by East Of Desolation [lit]

  "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" I said, and then the obvious possibility occurred to me. "In pictures maybe?"

  She buttoned up the jacket, examined herself carefully in the mirror and put the comb to her hair again. "I've made a couple."

  "With Jack?" And then I remembered. "Now I've got it. You played the Algerian girl in that last film of his. The film about gun-running."

  "Go to the head of the class," she said brightly and zipped up her suitcase. "What did you think of it?"

  "Wonderful," I said. "I don't know how he keeps it up. After all, he made his first film the year I was born."

  "You make a poor liar," she said calmly. "That film was the original bomb. It sank without trace."

  In spite of her apparent calmness there was a harsh, cutting edge to her voice that left me silent, but in any case she gave me no chance to reply and went out into the corridor leaving me to follow with her suitcase feeling strangely foolish.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As we roared out of the mouth of the Fjord and climbed into the sun, I stamped on the right rudder and swung slowly north, flying parallel to the bold mountainous coast.

  In the distance the ice-cap glinted in the morning sun and Ilana Eytan said, "The only thing I ever knew about Greenland before now was a line in a hymn they used to sing at morning assembly when I was a kid at school. From Greenland's icy mountains... Looking down on that lot I can see what they meant, but it still isn't quite as back of beyond as I expected. That hotel of yours in Frederiksborg even had central heating."

  "Things are changing fast here now," I said. "The population's risen to sixty thousand since the war and the Danish government is putting a lot of money into development.

  "Another thing, it isn't as cold as I thought it would be.

  "It never is in the summer, particularly in the southwest. There's a lot of sheep farming down there, but things are still pretty primitive north of the Arctic Circle. Up around Disko you'll find plenty of Eskimos who still live the way they've always done."

  "And that's where Jack is?"

  I nodded. "Near the village called Narquassit as I last heard. He's been looking for polar bear for the past couple of weeks."

  "That sounds like Jack. How well have you got to know him since he's been up here?"

  "Well enough."

  She laughed abruptly, that strange harsh laugh of hers. "You look like the type he likes to tell his troubles to."

  "And what type would that be?"

  "What he fondly believes to be the rugged man of action. He's played bush pilot himself so many times in pictures over the years that he imagines he knows the real thing when he sees it."

  "And I'm not it?"

  "Nobody's real--- not in Jack's terms. They couldn't be. He can never see beyond a neatly packaged hour and a half script." She lit a cigarette and leaned back in her seat. "I used to love the movies when I was a kid and then something happened. I don't know what it was, but one night when the hero and the girl got together for the final clinch I suddenly wondered what they were going to do for the next forty-three years. When you begin thinking like that the whole house of cards comes tumbling down."

  "Not for Jack," I said. "He's been living in a fantasy world for so long that reality has ceased to exist."

  She turned, the narrow crease between her eyes a warning sign that I failed to nice. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

  Considering the way she'd been talking I was more than a little surprised at her reaction. I shrugged. "He's playing a part right now, isn't he? The rugged adventurer cruising the Greenland coast? He'll spend the day in a dory helping to bait and hook a three-thousand-foot line or he'll go seal hunting among the pack ice in a kayak, but there's always the Stella to return to each night, a hot shower, a six-course dinner and a case of scotch."

  "A neat strip," she said. "They could use you at Metro, but what about your own fantasy life?"

  "I don't follow you."

  "The tough bush pilot act, the flying boots, the fur-lined parka--- the whole bit. Just who are you trying to kid? I wouldn't mind betting you even carry a gun."

  "A.38 Smith and Wesson," I lied. "It's in the map compartment, but I haven't had time to shoot anyone lately."

  I'd managed a nice bright reply, but she was hitting a bit too close for comfort and I think she knew it. For a little while I busied myself unnecessarily with a chart on my knee checking our course.

  About five minutes later we came down through cloud and she gave a sudden exclamation. "Look over there."

  A quarter of a mile away half a dozen three-masted schooners played follow-my-leader, sails full, a sight so lovely that it never failed to catch at the back of my throat.

  "Portuguese," I said. "They've been crossing the Atlantic since before Columbus. After fishing the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in May and June they come up here to complete their catch. They still fish for dories with handlines."

  "It's like something out of another age," she said, and there was genuine wonder in her voice.

  Any further conversation was prevented by one of those sudden and startling changes in the weather for which the Greenland coast, even in summer, is so notorious. One moment a cloudless sky and crystal clear visibility and then, with astonishing rapidity, a cold front swept in from the ice-cap in a curtain of stinging rain and heavy mist.

  It moved towards us in a grey wall and I eased back on the throttle and took the Otto down fast.

  "Is it as bad as it looks?" Ilana Eytan asked calmly.

  "It isn't good if that's what you mean."

  I didn't need to look at my chart. In this kind of flying anything can happen and usually does. You only survive by knowing your boltholes and I ran for mine as fast as I could.

  We skimmed the shoulder of a mountain and plunged into the fjord beyond as the first grey strands of mist curled along the tips of the wings. A final burst of power to level out in the descent and we dropped into the calm water with a splash. Mist closed in around us and I opened the side window and peered out as we taxied forward.

  The tip of an old stone pier suddenly pushed out of the mist and I brought the Otter round, keeping well over to the right. A few moments later we saw the other end of the pier and the shore and I dropped the wheels beneath the floats and taxied up on to a narrow shingle beach. I turned off the mast switch and silence enveloped us.

  "Where are we?" she asked.

  "A disused whaling station--- Argamash. Like to take a look round?"

  "Why not. How long will we be here?"

  "Depends on the weather. One hour--- two at the most. It'll disappear as unexpectedly as it came."

  When I opened the door and jumped down she followed me so quickly that I didn't get the chance to offer her a hand down. It was color than Frederiksborg, but still surprisingly mild considering we were twenty miles inside the Arctic Circle and she looked about her with obvious interest.

  "Can we explore?"

  "If you like."

  We followed the beach and scrambled up an old concrete slipway that brought us to the shore-end of the pier. The mountain lifted above us shrouded in mist and the broken shell of the old whale-oil processing factory and the ruins of forty or fifty cottages crouched together at its foot.

  It started to rain slightly as we walked along what had once been the main street and she pushed her hands into her pockets and laughed, a strange excitement in her voice.

  "Now this I like--- always have done since I was a kid. Walking in the rain with the mist closing in."

  "And keeping out the world," I said. "I know the feeling."

  She turned and looked at me in some surprise, then laughed suddenly, but this time it lacked its usual harsh edge. She had changed. It was difficult to decide exactly how--- just a general softening up, I suppose, but for the moment at any rate, she had become a different person.

  "Welcome to the club. You said this was once a whaling station?"

  I nodded. "Abandoned towards the
end of the last century."

  "What happened?"

  "They simply ran out of whale in commercial quantities." I shrugged. "Most years there were four or five hundred ships up here. They overfished, that was the trouble, just like the buffalo--- hunted to extinction."

  There was a small ruined church at the end of the street, a cemetery behind it enclosed by a broken wall and we went inside and paused at the first lichen covered headstone.

  "Angus McClaren--- died 1830," she said aloud. "A Scot."

  I nodded. "That was a bad year in whaling history. The pack ice didn't break up as early as usual and nineteen British whalers were caught in it out there. They say there were more than a thousand men on the ice at one time.

  She moved on reading the half-obliterated names aloud as she passed slowly among the graves. She paused at one stone, a slight frown on her face, then dropped to one knee end rubbed the green moss away with a gloved hand.

  A Star of David appeared, carved with the same loving care that had distinguished the ornate Celtic crosses on the other stones and like them, the inscription was in English.

  "Aaron Isaacs," she said as if to herself, her voice little more than a whisper. "Bosun--- Sea Queen out of Liverpool. Killed by a whale at sea--- 27th July, 1863."

  She knelt there staring at the inscription, a hand on the stone itself, sadness on her face and finding me standing over her, rose to her feet looking strangely embarrassed for a girl who normally seemed so cast-iron, and for the first time I wondered just how deep that surface toughness went.

  She heaved herself up on top of a square stone tomb and sat on the edge, legs dangling. "I forgot my cigarettes. Can you oblige?"

  I produced my old silver cigarette case and passed it up. She helped herself and paused before returning it, a slight frown on her face as she examined the lid.

  "What's the crest?"

  "Fleet Air Arm."

  "Is that where you learned to fly?" I nodded and she shook her head. "The worst bit of casting I've seen in years. You're no more a bush pilot than my Uncle Max."

  "Should I be flattered or otherwise?"

  "Depends how you look at it. He's something in the City--- a partner in one of the merchant banking houses I think. Some kind of finance anyway."

  I smiled. "We don't all look like Humphrey Bogart you know or Jack Desforge for that matter."

  "All right," she said. "Let's do it the hard way. Why Greenland? There must be other places."

  "Simple--- I can earn twice as much here in the four months of the summer season as I could in twelve months anywhere else."

  "And that's important?"

  "It is to me. I want to buy another couple of planes."

  "That sounds ambitious for a start. To what end?"

  "If I could start my own outfit in Newfoundland and Labrador I'd be a rich man inside five or six years."

  "You sound pretty certain about that."

  "I should be--- I had eighteen months of it over there working for someone else, then six months freelancing. The way Canada's expanding she'll be the richest country in the world inside twenty-five years, take my word for it."

  She shook her head. "It still doesn't fit," she said, and obviously decided to try another tack. "You look the sort of man who invariably has a good woman somewhere around in his life. What does she think about all this?"

  "I haven't heard from that front lately," I said. "The last despatch was from her lawyers and distinctly cool."

  "What did she want--- money?"

  I shook my head. "She could buy me those two planes and never notice it. No, she just wants her freedom. I'm expecting the good word any day now."

  "You don't sound in any great pain."

  "Dust and ashes a long, long time ago." I grinned. "Look, I'll put you out of your misery. Joe Martin, in three easy lessons. I did a degree in business administration at the London School of Economics and learned to fly with the University Air squadron. I had to do a couple of years National Service when I finished, so I decided I might as well get something out of it and took a short service commission as a pilot with the old Fleet Air Arm. My wife was an actress when I first met her. Bit parts with the Bristol Old Vic. All very real and earnest."

  "When did you get married?"

  "When I came out of the service. Like your Uncle Max, I took a job in the City, in my case Public Relations."

  "Didn't it work out?"

  "Very well indeed by normal standards." I frowned, trying to get the facts straight in my mind. It all seemed so unreal when you talked about it like this. "There were other things that went wrong. Someone discovered that Amy could sing and before we knew where we were she was making records. From then on it was one long programme of one-night stands and tours, personal appearances--- that sort of thing."

  "And you saw less and less of each other. An old story in show business."

  "There seems to be a sort of gradual corruption about success--- especially that kind. When you find that you can earn a thousand pounds a week, it's a short step to deciding there must be something wrong in a husband who can't make a tenth of that sum."

  "So you decided to cut loose."

  "There was a morning when I walked into my office, took one look at the desk and the pile of mail waiting for me and walked right out again. I spent my last thousand pounds on a conversion course and took a commercial pilot's licence."

  "And here you are. Joe Martin--- fly anywhere--- do anything. Gun-running our speciality." She shook her head. "The dream of every bowler-hatted clerk travelling each day on the City line. When do you move on to Pago Pago?"

  "That comes next year," I said. "But why should you have all the fun? Let's see what we can find out about Ilana Eytan. A Hebrew name as I remember, so for a start you're Jewish."

  It was like a match on dry grass and she flared up at once. "Israeli--- I'm a sabra--- Israeli born and bred."

  It was there, of course, the chip the size of a Californian Redwood and explained a great deal. I quickly smoothed her ruffled feathers. "The most beautiful soldiers in the world, Israeli girls. Were you everyone?"

  "Naturally--- everyone must serve. My father is a lecturer in Ancient Languages at the University of Tel Aviv, but he saw active service in the Sinai campaign in 1956 and he was well into his fifties."

  "What about this film business?"

  "I did some theatre in Israel which led to a small film part, then someone offered me work in Italy. I played bit parts in several films there. That's where I met Jack. He was on location for a war picture. He not only took the lead--- he also directed. Most of the money was his own too."

  "And he gave you a part?"

  "A small one, but I was the only woman in the picture so the critics had to say something."

  "And then Hollywood?"

  "Old hat. These days you do better in Europe."

  Suddenly the mist dissolved like a magic curtain and behind her, the mountain reared up into a sky that seemed bluer than ever.

  "Time to go," I said, and held up my hands to catch her as she jumped down.

  She looked up at the mountain. "Has it got a name?"

  "Agsaussat," I said. "An Eskimo word. It means big with child."

  She laughed harshly. "Well, that's Freudian if you like," she said, and turned and led the way out through the gap in the wall.

  Just like that she had changed again, back into the tough, brittle young woman I had first encountered in the dining room of the hotel at Frederiksborg, safe behind a hard protective shell that could only be penetrated if she wished, and I felt strangely depressed as I followed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Off the southern tip of Disko we came across another two Portuguese schooners moving along nicely in a light breeze, followed by a fleet of fourteen-foot dories, their yellow and green sails vivid in the bright sunlight.

  We drifted across the rocky spine of the island and dropped into the channel beyond that separates it from the mainland. I took the Otter do
wn, losing height rapidly and a few moments later found what I was looking for.

  Narquassit was typical of most Eskimo fishing villages on that part of the coast. There were perhaps fifteen or sixteen gaily painted wooden houses strung out along the edge of the shore and two or three whaleboats and a dozen kayaks had been beached just above the high water mark.

  The Stella was anchored about fifty yards offshore, a slim and graceful looking ninety-foot diesel motor yacht, her steel hull painted dazzling white with a scarlet trim. When I banked, turning into the wind for my landing, someone came out of the wheelhouse and stood at the bridge rail looking up at us.