Jack Higgins - East Of Desolation

by East Of Desolation [lit]

I slid forward another yard and stooped so that I could see into the interior of the cabin. They crouched together just behind the pilot's seat. There was a long rent in the padded lining of the cabin and Stratton had his arm well inside.

  Vogel glanced sideways and saw me and for a moment the pleasant bland mask slipped and there was murder in his eyes or something very close to it.

  I waved and said cheerfully, "Have fun, I'm just going for a look round."

  I moved along the ravine quickly until I found a place that gave me easy access to the top. I stood on the ridge and took a bearing with my compass. There was something I wanted to see, something I'd noticed from the air, and it couldn't be very far away.

  I struck off across the plain threading my way between the hummocks, making quite good time so that I found what I was looking for within a quarter of an hour, a saucer-shaped depression about three hundred yards in diameter, a flat field of virgin snow.

  But not quite. The eternal wind soon smoothed the surface up here on the ice-cap, but a ski plane left pretty distinctive traces. I found one or two on the far side of the depression, already partially obliterated so that only an expert would have known what they were. Much more significant was a large patch of oil and I crouched down and covered it quickly.

  As I got up, someone called and as I turned, Vogel came down the slope on the far side of the depression and moved towards me quickly. I rushed to meet him, but he passed me at the halfway mark very fast with a gay cry and kept on going, doing a tremendous stem turn and sliding to a halt in a flurry of snow at the spot where I had found the oil and the ski traces. He paused, removing his goggles to clear the snow from them, glanced about him carelessly, then started towards me.

  His face was bland, his eyes sparkled cheerfully, but he'd seen everything he needed to, I couldn't have been more certain.

  "I enjoyed that." He grinned. "I thought I'd better come after you. Stratton got through it all much more quickly than we'd expected."

  "Did he find anything interesting?"

  "Not really--- did you?"

  There was a nice polite smile on his face as if he really wanted to know, but two could play at that game and I smiled right back at him.

  "I'm afraid not, which doesn't help you very much, does it? I suppose this affair must have cost you quite a packet one way and another."

  He chuckled. "Not to worry. We always adjust to meet changing circumstances. That's the whole basis of the insurance game."

  He pushed off and I watched him go, gliding effortlessly across the snow, a clever dangerous animal. I suppose I should have experienced some kind of fear as I went after him, but I didn't. Instead I was filled with a kind of strange joy and my hands shook excitedly. It was rather like one of those Saturday serials I'd seen as a kid and I couldn't wait to find out what happened in the next instalment.

  .....

  It was almost six in the evening when we reached Lake Sule again and the strain of the day showed on everyone. The return journey had been uneventful and the weather had held, which had been my chief worry. A sudden blizzard up there on top, even the short-lived summer variety, could have proved fatal.

  We loaded up quickly and as I ran the Otter down into the water a cold wind lifted off the ice, churning the surface in a sudden turbulence. Simonsen glanced over his shoulder at the horizon where grey clouds spread across the sky blotting out the sun.

  "Some sort of storm on the way, Joe. We'd better get out of here fast."

  I didn't need any urging. Flying half-blind through a mountain range in rough weather may be some people's version of fun, but it isn't mine. In any case, I'm just not that good a pilot. I turned into the wind, gave her full throttle and got out of there fast.

  .....

  The real trouble came about forty minutes later when we reached the edge of the ice-cap and flew into the mountains. Heavy rain blew in from the sea in a grey curtain and the Otter rocked in the turbulence.

  I found the head of Sandvig fjord and plunged into a cauldron of mist that reduced visibility to three or four hundred yards and was thickening by the minute.

  "What do you think?" Simonsen cried above the roar of the engine.

  "I think we spend the night at Sandvig," I said and went down fast while the going was good.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Olaf Ramussen's farm occupied a commanding position on the crest of a green hill six or seven hundred feet above the village and about a mile further along the fjord. Like most of the homesteads in that part of the country, it was constructed of wood because it was warmer in winter, but in design it was quite unique. The entire length of the house at the front was made up of a hall perhaps seventy feet long and about twenty in height on the old Viking pattern with an enormous stone fireplace.

  The kitchen was at the rear of the hall, half a dozen bedrooms on the first floor opening off a railed balcony. Simonsen and I shared the end one for Rasmussen had received us with his customary hospitality, informing me that Desforge and Ilana had gone up into the hills with one of the shepherds as a guide.

  I was shaving in the cracked mirror above the washstand and Simonsen was lying on the bed waiting his turn for the razor when there was a step on the landing, the door was thrown open and Desforge entered.

  There was a cartridge belt round his waist and with the Winchester under his arm and that wild grey beard he looked like some Corsican brigand down from the hills to rape and plunder or rather, what some Corsican brigand thought he ought to look like.

  "Heh, Joe, baby, this is great!" he cried: "How did it go up there on the roof of the world. Is Mrs. Kelso still solvent?"

  I nodded. "So it would appear."

  "No question about it." Simonsen swung his legs to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. "It was Kelso all right. There was a ring on his finger with an inscription as indicated by his wife before we examined him, but most important of all was his dental record. That's one thing that can't lie. In fact it's hung more than one murderer before now."

  "You don't need to tell me," Desforge said. "I've played cops on more occasions than I can remember." He turned to me. "You'll fly out in the morning I suppose?"

  "If the weather clears."

  He grinned. "It promises to be quite an evening. I'll see you later."

  I dried my face and got dressed again, wondering what Desforge had meant. There had been a kind of affection in his eyes as if he had been genuinely pleased to see me which was perfectly possible. He was in many ways a desperately lonely man--- I'd always sensed that. On the other hand, if it was an evening's drinking he was after, he'd certainly come to the right place. If any man on earth was likely to drink him under the table it was Olaf Rasmussen.

  I could hear the old man bellowing at someone in the kitchen when I went out on the balcony--- probably some Eskimo woman up from the village to cook for him. A door banged and he passed beneath me, a bottle in each hand and paused at the table in front of the great fireplace.

  Some human beings are different from the day they are born. They have fire in their veins instead of blood and action is the juice of life to them. Olaf Rasmussen was such a man. An Icelander of Danish extraction, he had a master's ticket to both sail and steam and had lived by the sea for the first thirty years of his life, retiring to Sandvig at the age of fifty, ostensibly to raise sheep, but in reality to pursue a lifelong passion for Viking history.

  Standing there in the firelight he could indeed have been one of those early settlers--- Eric the Red himself, perhaps, or Leif the Lucky--- an enormous patriarchal figure with hair to his shoulders and a beard that touched his chest.

  As I started down the stairs he turned and, seeing me, cried out in Danish, "Lucky for me the fog came down."

  We hadn't had much of a chance to talk earlier and he lit a cigar and sprawled in one of the chairs by the fire.

  I said: "I don't need to ask how you've been keeping. If anything, you look younger. What's the secret?"

  "Women, Joe,
" he told me solemnly. "I've finally given them up."

  His face was very serious and I nodded gravely. "Is that so? No more Eskimo women up from the village?"

  "Not more than two or three times a week. I decided it was time I cut it down."

  He roared with laughter, poured himself half a glass of schnapps and swallowed it down. "And you, Joe? What about you? You look different."

  "I can't think why I should."

  "A woman perhaps?" I shook my head and he sighed. "Still the lonely bed. A mistake, boy. Woman was sent to comfort man. It was so ordained by the good Lord."

  I decided to change the subject. "What do you think of Desforge?"

  "An interesting question." He poured himself some more schnapps. "When I was twenty I was first mate on a barque out of Hamburg on the Gold Coast run. We touched at Fernando Po at the height of an outbreak of Yellow Jack." He stared into the fire, lines scoured deeply into his face at the memory of it. "There were bodies everywhere. In the waters of the harbour, in the streets. But the worst sight of all were the faces of those who knew they had it, who knew there was no hope. It was something in the eyes that told you they were already gone. Walking dead, if you like." He shook his head. "It makes me shiver to remember it even now."

  "An interesting story, but what has it got to do with Desforge?"

  "He has the same expression in his eyes, the same look of utter despair. Oh, not all the time. Only when he thinks you aren't watching him."

  Which was quite a thought, but we were unable to take it any further because at that moment Ilana Eytan came down the stairs.

  "Now this one--- this one is a real woman," Rasmussen whispered, emptied his glass and went to meet her. "And how was the hunting?" he asked in English.

  "Nonexistent, but the scenery was magnificent. Well worth the climb." She smiled as I got to my feet. "Hello, Joe."

  Rasmussen looked first at her, then at me and laughed suddenly. "So--- now I understand. Good--- very good. Entertain yourselves my children while I see how the dinner is coming."

  "A remarkable man," she said when he had gone.

  I nodded and gave her a cigarette, more for something to do than anything else. She was wearing her Norwegian sweater and ski pants and looked very small, very attractive and--- dare I admit it?--- very desirable.

  How much of this she read in my eyes I don't know, but she turned away and walked to the end of the hall, staring up at the great oaken beams, at the crossed spears and burnished shields on the wall.

  "Is all this stuff real?"

  I nodded. "The hall itself is only a replica of course, but it's built on the foundations of a Viking homestead a thousand years old."

  "I must say Rasmussen certainly looks as if he belongs."

  "He does," I said.

  There was a heavy and rather awkward silence and she seemed strangely ill at ease.

  "We found the plane all right," I said. "And Kelso. There was a pretty positive identification."

  "Yes, Mrs. Kelso told me that much. We're sharing a room. Did anything else happen?"

  "Vogel and Stratton looked very disappointed and I found a spot not too far away where someone had landed in a ski plane recently."

  She was immediately interested. "Arnie?"

  "I don't know anyone else on the coast who runs one."

  "So the emeralds Arnie gave me came from the wreck, is that what you are saying?"

  "Something like that. Along with others of course."

  "But how would he know they were there?"

  I'd been giving that question some thought on my own account and had decided that there was only one plausible answer. "Sarah Kelso. She paid him a visit the first night she was in Frederiksborg. I wondered what she was up to at the time."

  "Without Vogel's knowledge?"

  "That's about the size of it. It certainly raises some intriguing possibilities, doesn't it?"

  "What do you intend to do about it?"

  I shrugged. "Why should I do anything? It's all beginning to get far too complicated for a simple soul like me."

  She chuckled. "Oh, what a liar you are. What a terrible liar. I'm really going to have to do something about you."

  "In which capacity? As Ilana Eytan or Myra Grossman?" I said and regretted it instantly.

  The smile faded and there was something very close to pain on her face. "You won't let it alone, will you?"

  I stood there staring at her, filled with self-loathing, trying to find the right words, but I was too late. Behind us Vogel and Stratton came down the stairs with Sarah Kelso and Rasmussen returned from the kitchen a moment later and I started to drown in the sudden outburst of conversation.

  The meal which followed was simple but satisfying. Lentil soup, then steamed cod and a side of mutton. Afterwards there was coffee and brandy and we sat round the fire and talked, mainly about Greenland and the early settlers.

  Rasmussen stood with his back to the fire, a glass in his hand and told them the beautiful and tragic story. Of the discovery of the great islands in the tenth century by Eric the Red, of the thousands of Icelanders and Scandinavians who had settled the land until gradually a climatic deterioration set in making life progressively more difficult until 1410 when the last official boat sailed for home.

  "But what happened then?" Sarah Kelso demanded. "What happened to. those who stayed?"

  Rasmussen shrugged. "No one really knows. The next three hundred years or so are a blank. When the missionaries came here in the eighteenth century they found only the Eskimo."

  "But that's incredible."

  "True, nevertheless."

  There was a slight silence and Stratton said, "Do you think the Norsemen really discovered America or, is the whole thing simply tales for children?"

  He couldn't have chosen a better subject and Rasmussen plunged straight in. "There can be no doubt whatever that the accounts of the Norse voyages contained in the sagas are substantially true. Men sailed from here, from this very fjord. Leif the Lucky, Eric the Red's son was the first." The names rolled from his tongue, echoing from the rafters of the great hall and no one spoke. "He discovered Vinland--- Vinland the Good. Probably the area around Cape Cod in Massachusetts."

  "But only probably," Vogel said. "Isn't it true that most discoveries of so-called Norse relics in America and Canada have been discredited?"

  "Which does not mean that there is no substance in any of them," Rasmussen said. "We read in the sagas that Leif's brother, Thorvald Eiriksson, was killed in a battle with Indians, hit in the armpit by an arrow. The Danish archaeologist, Aage Roussell, excavated the farm at Sandnes up the coast from here which belonged to Thorvald's brother. Among other things he discovered an Indian arrowhead, undoubtedly American and a lump of anthracite coal of the same type that exists in Rhode Island. There is no anthracite in Greenland."

  "Joe was telling me you do a great deal of research into this sort of thing yourself," Desforge said. "Ever come up with anything?"

  "A great many things. The sagas tell us that Thorfinn Karlsefne and his wife, Gudrid the Fair, settled for a while in America at a place called Straumsey--- undoubtedly the Island of Manhattan. A son was born there--- Snorre--- the first white man born in America."

  "And you believe that?" Vogel said.

  "But of course. In later years he settled here at Sandvig. This very hall is built on the ruins of his homestead. I've been excavating for years."

  There was real enthusiasm in his voice and they were all infected by it. "Have you anything we can see?" Vogel asked.

  "Certainly." Rasmussen put down his glass, got up and led the way down to the other end of the hall and they all followed him.

  It wasn't that I had no interest, but I'd seen the lovingly preserved objects that he kept on display, many times and in any case, I felt like some air. I faded into the shadows, opened the door gently and went out into the yard.

  It was about eleven o'clock and at that time of the year it didn't get really dark until somewh
ere after midnight so that there was a sort of harsh luminosity to the rain and the mist that reminded me strongly of a Yorkshire moor at dawn.

  The rain was falling very heavily now, bouncing from the cobbles, and I ran for the shelter of the barn on the far side of the yard. It was a vast, echoing place filled with the pleasant smell of new hay and a ladder led to a loft above.

  It was half-full of hay and at the far end a door swung to-and-fro in the wind, a fine spray of rain drifting in. There was a clear drop of thirty feet or so to the cobbles below and a heavy hook and pulley swung from a wooden hoist. Altogether it was a sort of paradise one had loved to play in as a boy and I resisted a strong impulse to slide down the rope to the ground, and lit a cigarette and stood looking out at the rain, filled with a pleasant nostalgia.