Jack Higgins - East Of Desolation

by East Of Desolation [lit]

  "Very probably."

  "I'll see you later then."

  I started to refuel the Otter by hand from the stacked jerrycans at the top of the slipway and was still there when he took off ten minutes later. I watched him dwindle into the distance, a hand shading my eyes from the evening sun and when I turned, Ilana Eytan was at the top of the slipway.

  "How's the intrepid aviator?"

  I emptied the last jerrycan into the tank, screwed the cap home and climbed down. "Did you have a pleasant trip?"

  "I've known better. We hit some ice on the way in this morning."

  "Any damage?"

  "The decks aren't awash if that's what you mean. Sørensen's taking her into dry-dock tomorrow."

  "Have you seen Jack?"

  She shook her head. "I think he's keeping out of the way."

  There was a question I'd wanted to put to her, something that had been niggling away at the back of my mind. God knows why. She sat on the bollard Arnie had used and I gave her a cigarette.

  "Will you tell me something if I ask it politely enough?"

  "Try me."

  "Why did you come. Why did you really come?"

  She didn't seem particularly surprised. "Have you tried asking Jack?"

  "As a matter of fact I have."

  "And what was the verdict?"

  "He says you're here to make sure of the female lead in his new picture."

  "Well, now, that would seem to make a whole lot of sense to me." Was there a touch of irony in her voice? It was impossible to be sure and she turned up the collar of her sheepskin coat. "I can't really think of anything else that would bring me to a Godforsaken hole like this, can you?"

  "Not offhand, but I could give it some thought."

  "You do that and in the meantime you can give me a hand to transfer my stuff from the Stella. Sørensen thinks I'd be better off in the hotel at the moment."

  She turned without a word and started across the foreshore to the jetty. I stood there watching her go. She climbed to the concrete causeway, turned and looked down at me.

  "Are you coming?"

  "Are you sure you want me?" I said. "I've a feeling this could easily become a habit."

  I caught her right off guard and for a moment, she was as tongue-tied as any young girl on a first date. Her recovery, when it came, was way below her usual acid standard.

  "Don't be an idiot," she said uncertainly, turned and walked away.

  But she knew when I started after her, I could tell by the tilt of her head and the way her shoulders straightened and for some totally inexplicable reason--- or at least that's what I tried to tell myself--- my stomach went hollow with excitement.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Like most small communities in out of the way places Frederiksborg had very little crime, but we still had a policeman, Sergeant Olaf Simonsen, who was responsible for law and order in the town and an area as great as one of the larger English counties.

  He was sitting at the hotel bar when I went in, having a beer with Jack Desforge, a tall, spare Greenlander, his skin weathered by forty Arctic winters to the semblance of puckered leather. Just now he was laughing at something Desforge had said, head thrown back, a quiet, kindly man, married with five daughters and very religious--- a Moravian like most of the locals. And I had seen this same man with a look on his face like the wrath of God as he flushed out a bar full of brawling, drunken fishermen at the Fredericsmut on a Saturday night with the toe of his boot and an iron fist.

  I sat on the stool next to him. "Hello, Olaf, what have you been doing with yourself for the past few days?"

  He shook hands. "I had to go inland--- the other side of the glacier at the head of the Stavanger Fjord."

  "Trouble?"

  "The usual thing--- reindeer hunters at each other's throats."

  "Anyone hurt?"

  "A knifing or two--- nothing serious. I think I've quietened them down. You know Mr. Desforge, of course. He's been making me laugh."

  I looked across at Jack. "Anything I should know?"

  "I've really hit the big time at last," he said. "Some guy turned up at the hotel earlier wanting an interview for the local press. Naturally I gave him one--- I've never turned down free publicity yet."

  "Which paper?"

  He started to laugh again. "That's the whole point."

  I turned to Simonsen. "The Atuagagdliutit?"

  He nodded. "I've just been explaining to Mr. Desforge--- he's now immortalised in the pages of the only newspaper in the world that's published in Eskimo."

  "And if that isn't worth another drink, I don't know what is," Desforge said.

  Simonsen shook his head. "Not for me. I'll have to be off in a moment. I was hoping to catch you tonight, Joe. When I returned there was a memo from headquarters in Godthaab about this plane the Oxford expedition came across. Apparently a Mr. Vogel of the London and Universal Insurance Company approached them with a certificate of search from the Ministry in Copenhagen. I understand they recommended him to see you."

  "That's right." I gave him the whole story, including the substance of the conversation I'd just had with Arnie Fassberg and he listened gravely.

  "I can't say I'm surprised Arnie couldn't find a suitable place to land on skis up there, but if that mist had cleared a little allowing him a good look at Lake Sule he'd have seen that there was ample open water for a floatplane landing."

  "Are you certain about that?"

  He produced a piece of paper from one of his tunic pockets and passed it across. "See for yourself--- that's an extract from the weekly regional met forecast put out by the Americans from Thule. It indicates that mean temperatures have been higher than usual up there for the time of the year."

  I had a look at the report which confirmed what he had said in slightly more technical language and handed it back. "That seems fair enough to me. They're usually pretty accurate."

  "They have to be." He put the report back in his pocket. "So there's no reason now why you can't make the trip. What about tomorrow?"

  I stalled for time. "What are you--- Vogel's agent or something?"

  He smiled. "I haven't even met him yet. This is official business now, Joe. The powers-that-be have decided I should go along to keep an eye on things generally and compile a preliminary report for the Ministry people in Copenhagen. It's unlikely they'll be able to get anyone out there till next year. In fact if my report is satisfactory, especially when considered in conjunction with the findings of this aviation expert Vogel has with him, they may decide to take it no further."

  I wondered how Vogel was going to like having a policeman breathing down his neck, but only for a moment. I had my own problems. So I had been right all along. It had been waiting for me out there on the icecap for more than a year now and there was no escape. For a brief moment I saw it again in my mind's eyes, silver and blue against the eternal whiteness and a strange fatalism gripped me. I was caught up in a tide of events too strong to fight against and must go with the current and see what happened.

  "I suppose I could manage that. It would mean altering my schedules for the next couple of days, but there isn't anything so desperately important that it can't be postponed."

  "Good--- I think an early start is indicated. Can you be ready for seven a.m.?"

  "Any time you like. Will you see Vogel or shall I?"

  "I'll handle that--- it will give me a chance to meet him."

  "A minor failing of mine," I said. "I like to know everything. That wreck is about ten miles east of Sule. How do we get there?"

  "On skis of course. We'll do it in two or three hours."

  "That's all right for you and me, but what about the others. Maybe they can't ski."

  "Then they must learn," he said simply.

  "And the woman?"

  He shrugged. "All right, the woman we can haul on a light sledge, but the other two will have to ski or go on foot and they'll find it a rough walk, believe me."

  "All right, you'r
e the boss."

  He adjusted his uniform cap to the regulation angle in the mirror behind the bar. "If necessary I'll come back to you later. Where will you be?"

  "I'd thought of having a meal at the Fredericsmut for a change. It's some time since I've been there."

  "The Fredericsmut? You may be in for a lively night, I warn you. There's a Portuguese schooner due."

  I nodded. "I saw her entering the fjord on my way in. Who is it? Anyone I know?"

  "Da Gama." He chuckled grimly. "I'd eat here tonight if I were you."

  He went out and Desforge said, "And who in the hell is this Da Gama--- Frankenstein?"

  "Something like that. He comes in for supplies about once a month and there's always trouble. One of these days he'll kill somebody--- probably has already if the truth's known."

  "Sounds like fun," Desforge said. "I think I'll come with you. I could do with a little action and it'll get me out of the way. I don't want to run into Ilana till I'm good and ready."

  "All right," I said. "I've one or two things to do. I'll be back in fifteen minutes."

  I left him there at the bar, went to the reception desk and phoned through to the airstrip. I explained that I wouldn't be available for the next couple of days, stressing that I was on government business and asked them to contact the people concerned in Godthaab and Søndre to suggest that they either rearrange their schedules or make other arrangements.

  As I had anticipated, there was no particular difficulty and I went up to my room, stripped off my flying gear and had a quick shower. I'd just pulled a heavy Norwegian sweater over my head when there was a knock at the door. I opened it and found Ilana Eytan standing outside.

  "I'm looking for Jack. Any idea where he might be?"

  I lied cheerfully. "Not right now," and then for some perverse reason decided to go further. "I can tell you where he'll be later, though. The Fredericsmut--- that's a place at the end of the main street from here."

  "I'll see him there then."

  I shook my head. "I wouldn't if I were you. Rough fishermen, hard liquor and a roomful of smoke--- not for little girls."

  "In a pig's eye, Joe Martin," she said and went back along the corridor to her room.

  .....

  The Fredericsmut was definitely for the lower orders, the sort of place you'll find in any town in the world from Singapore to Jackson Falls, Wyoming. In this case it was a two-storeyed wooden building with a veranda at the front. What went on upstairs was anybody's guess, but through the swing doors that opened from the veranda was a large square room where you could find good plain food in large quantities, any kind of liquor you cared to name and broadminded women. The one incongruity was a large and shiny juke box that stood by the door and never seemed to stop playing.

  We sat at a table at the back of the room close to the bar and I ordered steak and chips for both of us and a lager for Desforge. The juke box was going full blast surrounded by a crowd of youthful Greenlanders, some of them shaking away to the manner born.

  Jack groaned as if in pain. "Is nothing sacred? I came north looking for polar bear, the eternal struggle of man in an alien land, harpoons and sealskin trousers and what do I get?"

  "Corduroy trews and the Beatles."

  "Next thing you know one of those outfits in Carnaby Street will be opening up a branch."

  I shook my head. "Just let them try and see what the Royal Greenland Trading Company have to say about it. Maybe they don't have a monopoly any longer, but they still swing a pretty big axe."

  The crowd was building up now--- construction workers looking for a little fun after a twelve-hour day, inshore fishermen, professional hunters, Danes and Icelanders with a few Norwegians thrown in for good luck, and Greenlanders, some looking pure Scandinavian, others a hundred per cent Eskimo and most of them falling somewhere in between.

  "You know when I was a kid my old man was pretty strict with us," Jack said as we sat there waiting for the food to arrive. "He died when I was seven and the family had to split up. I went to live with my Aunt Clara in Wisconsin."

  "Did you get on all right with her?"

  "Couldn't have been better. She started taking me to the movies, something my father never allowed. This was in the silent days mind you. I can remember one old three-reeler I saw, The Spoilers. It's been remade three or four times. The version I saw starred Noah Beery and Milton Sills and they had one hell of a brawl on a set that looked just like this place. Funny how your memory works. I haven't thought of that for years."

  An impudent young Eskimo girl in a black silk dress that was a size too small brought the food, leaning so close to Desforge when she put his plate on the table that her breast was crushed against his shoulder.

  He asked her to bring him a bottle of whisky from the bar and she ogled him shamelessly, fluttering false eyelashes that somehow looked obscene fringing the slanting, almond-shaped eyes. As she moved through the crowd to the bar someone slapped her backside and there was a sudden burst of laughter. She didn't show the slightest objection when a bearded fisherman in an oilskin jacket pulled her close, kissed her, then passed her on to the man next to him.

  "You know there are times when I feel like throwing up," Desforge said. "To think of a once proud people reduced to that."

  "It's unfortunate, but primitive races seem to acquire all the vices of our kind of civilisation," I said, "never its virtues."

  He nodded. "I've seen the same thing back home on Sioux Indian reservations. A great people reduced to putting on a circus act for tourists."

  "There'll be nowhere left soon."

  "I suppose not." There was an expression of settled gloom on his face. The girl brought the bottle and a couple of glasses and he poured himself a large whisky.

  "I've been thinking of doing a little reindeer hunting. I thought it might be a good opportunity while the Stella is in dry-dock."

  "Got any ideas about where to go?"

  "The barman at the hotel suggested Sandvig. It seems there are still a few of the old Viking settlements on view in that region or what's left of them. Sounds as if it would be worth the trip even if the hunting doesn't turn out to be a success."

  "You could do worse," I said. "There's a man down there I'd love you to meet--- Olaf Rasmussen."

  "Rasmussen? Is he anything to do with Gudrid, the chambermaid at the hotel?"

  "Her grandfather. He's about seventy-five, a real old Viking. Has a farm near Sandvig with eight hundred head of sheep, but he spends most of his time on excavation work on the old settlements on his land."

  "Do you think he'd put me up for a few days?"

  "No question of it--- hospitality is his second name. Are you trying to run out on Ilana again by any chance?"

  "No, not this time. I'll take her with me if she'll come. How do I get there?"

  "That's up to you. You could charter Arnie if he's available or you could even squeeze in with us in the morning if you can be on the slipway at seven. We'll be calling at Sandvig on the way."

  "I'd forgotten such a time existed," he said. "Still, it's a thought."

  Just then I noticed Vogel, Ralph Stratton and Sarah Kelso standing just inside the doorway. Vogel saw me in the same moment and said something to the others. He was smiling as they came across.

  "I've had a most interesting chat with Sergeant Simonsen, Mr. Martin. It would seem there is a chance for us after all."

  "That still depends on what we find when we get there," I said as they seated themselves. "Even if a landing is possible on the lake itself, the weather has to be right. Earlier today for example, when Arnie Fassberg was there, there was such a heavy mist that he didn't get a close look at the lake at all."

  "Is that sort of thing usual?" Stratton asked.

  I nodded. "It happens all the time, even in summer. Hail, rain, mist or perhaps a blizzard that seems to sweep in out of nowhere. An hour later the sky is so blue that you can't believe it's real. How's your skiing, by the way?"

  "I was bo
rn and raised in the Austrian Tyrol," Vogel said, "which means I was going to school on skis from the age of five. Mr. Stratton tells me his own experience has been confined to a couple of winter holidays in France, but I'm sure that should prove more than adequate."

  "I'm the odd man out I'm afraid," Sarah Kelso said, "but Sergeant Simonsen seems to think that's no problem."

  "From what I've heard you're going to get the deluxe treatment," Desforge assured her. "You'll arrive in style without a hair out of place. Now what about a drink?"