‘Hair of the dog.’ Sutherland had an excuse for anything his Lapp friend did. ‘I dare say he needs it.’
Ollie agreed. It could be hangover that was making the little man so morose. ‘But I’d like to point out something else that’s been bothering me…’ He gave them his thoughts on the false trail Isak had left, the fact no one could have any way of knowing where they were now or that they’d be even farther south by this time tomorrow.
‘Does it matter?’ Sutherland spoke from the back of the tent. ‘Who’s likely to come looking or us?’
Scalding tea burnt Ollie’s throat.
‘Only happens to be a fact that—’ he paused; he’d been about to say that if anything drastic happened to them now, no one would know where it had happened, any more than it was known where those three Finns had been murdered. He’d stopped himself saying it because he didn’t want to worry Sophie. Although she probably wouldn’t be any more easily frightened than anyone else… He finished ‘— that if anyone did want to know where we are, they’d find they’d been misled — to the extent that there’s no way they could, now.’
‘Except Sophie’s people.’ Stenberg reminded her, ‘You called them, didn’t you, before we left Karasjok?’
‘Not exactly.’ She moved, drawing her legs in under her. They were sitting on foam sleeping-mats on top of the groundsheet. ‘I did call, sure, but I spoke to one of the department’s halfwits and he said he would write down that I was at the turisthotell. It made me angry and I did not bother more with him.’
‘Carl’s probably right, anyway.’ Ollie shrugged. ‘Probably nothing to lose sleep over.’
Starting out westward from Jorgastak had certainly been a surprise decision of Isak’s. There didn’t have to be anything sinister in it; it could have been just his dithering, not knowing where to start looking, not trusting his own judgement that the siida would be down in Finland. You didn’t have to be paranoiac about it.
The tent rocked to a gust of wind, the wood fire flaring then dying down again. Have to keep it fairly low, he thought, when we turn in. And one man on watch: he, Stenberg, Sutherland, sharing the dark hours, maybe — for the care of the fire and the chance of wolverines or wolves, whatever, stealing that food… The point about nobody knowing where they were really did not matter, as long as he kept doing the job they’d hired him for — keeping them from frostbite, exposure, avalanches, made sure they only crossed rivers where the ice was thick, and had plenty to eat and drink, didn’t stray and get lost — and about fifty other things most of which he’d forgotten in more recent years of acquiring quite different skills.
It was dark now. Firelight flickered outside the tent, lit the interior of the cooking shack where Isak squatted close to the naptha ring, yellow fingers of heat licking up around the pot. It had to be at least thirty below, out there, but the firelight was cheerful and in this tent the warmth of four bodies in a confined space contributed to some degree of comfort. A hot meal would be even more warming, and then there’d be comfort in the sleeping-bags. He’d annoy them with a lecture, shortly — even if they protested that they knew it all now — about drying damp clothes inside sleeping-bags, boots inside them too in plastic bags, and wet socks and gloves, hats, whatever, inside your clothing — in the armpits was a good place — to dry from the body’s warmth. Every item of clothing had to be dried out, one way or another, every night; if you went out in the morning in a damp shirt it would freeze on you as you crawled out of the tent.
*
The fire was well established and radiating plenty of warmth, melting the snow around it and creating slush farther out. Ollie had given them his talk about drying their gear, and avoiding frostbite, watching each other for the signs of it and how you’d treat it if it occurred. One of the points under the heading of treatment being not to expose it to direct heat like this fire’s.
Stenberg had remarked, dismissively, ‘Common sense is all that is, really.‘ He asked Isak in Norwegian, ‘How about a yoik before bed-time?’
Sophie’s eyes flashed in the firelight: ‘Gus, I warn you—’
‘So do I. Back off the fire a bit, Gus. You’re going into an ice-cold tent from here, and that’s common sense too, OK?’
‘Isak.’
The eyelids lifted slightly: small features mole-like in surrounding fur. Fur hat, fur ear-flaps dangling, stubble blue-black on the little pointed face.
‘Yoik for us, would you?’ Gus made the request in Norwegian; Sophie murmured in English, ‘That is what I am warning him about. I will kill him…’ Isak was blinking, considering the request perhaps, but with his thought-processes somewhat slowed. Gus urged, ‘We were very impressed with the yoik you allowed us to hear last night.’
The dark eyes shifted to Sutherland. ‘I yoiked last night? Of what did I yoik?’
‘To be truthful, I couldn’t say.’ Sutherland admitted apologetically, ‘As you know, my knowledge of the Sami language is sadly limited. I enjoyed the melody, the whole sound, but the actual meaning — well, a word or two here and there, maybe—’
‘What yoik was it I sang?‘
He was asking Sophie. His mind would be a blank, of course, he’d have no memory of having sung at all… Gus was telling Ollie, ‘Wants to know what he sang about. If you could call that singing, and as if anyone could have the faintest notion.’
Sophie told Isak regretfully that she’d gone up to bed before the yoiking started. If only she’d known such a treat was likely to be offered, she’d have stayed, of course.
‘Was it the song of Nilas?’
‘May have been.’ Sutherland nodded. ‘May well have been.’
‘This one…’
Isak’s neck began to swell like a bullfrog’s. In the flickering half-light and under the stubble his deepening colour wasn’t noticeable, but the sound as he began to squeeze it out was similar to last night’s.
Voia voia, nana nana, very gentle, very loving, very clever / Voia voia, nana nana, big and lovely, best girl in the country…
‘That one, was it?’
Sutherland shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
He began another verse…
Voia voia, nana nana, Birru Baergalak, now I’ll kill all Nilas’ reindeer / Satan’s false Elle’s rotten trousers; still are many, many like her…
He’d stopped again. ‘Uh?’
‘No, I’m sure that wasn’t it.’
Gus asked Sophie, ‘Are you sure you translated it right?’
‘Certain. Of course, you need some understanding—’
‘I’d say so… But incidentally, what does voia voia nana nana mean?’
‘Nothing at all.’
A nod: ‘That’s what I figured.’
Isak said, ‘The reindeer yoik, it may have been. This one again is very old.’
Splendid reindeer, springing, springing, / Voia voia voia, nana nana nana/ Reindeer springing like the windstorm / Voia voia voia, nana nana nana / Finest horns among all reindeer …
Sutherland said into the sudden, hard—breathing silence, ‘No, it wasn’t that one either. Quite different sound, I’d say.’
A strong gust of wind, with snow in it, made the fire roar up, flames licking at the screen of logs. Ollie moved the kettle back slightly with his boot; they were feeding the kettle periodically with clean snow. Isak, after a few moments’ frowning concentration, told Sutherland, ‘There is another old reindeer song. If I’d thought of it I might have sung this one to you.’ He began to swell again, hit the note he wanted and then the harsh gutturals came again:
Silken coated, silken coated, voia voia voia, nana nana nana / Running like the sunbeams, voia voia voia, nana nana nana / Small calves lowing, voia voia voia, nana nana nana / Rushing… Rushing…
His voice tailed away as if the pressure in his lungs had failed. Carl was shaking his head. Sophie translated the lyrics and added, ‘Gus, say yes, this is it — or the next one, please, so we don’t ave to be tortured all night?’ Gus murmu
red, ‘Doubt if it’d stop him now. He’s beginning to enjoy himself.’
‘If he is, he is the only one who—’
‘Hey, look here!’ Sutherland slapped his knee. ‘Just remembered — Gus put last night’s show on tape!’ He turned to Isak. ‘Want to hear yourself, Isak — the way Gus here taped it?’
‘You recorded my yoik?’
Ollie broke in: ‘Sorry to interrupt, Carl, but I suggest it’s time we all hit the sack. To stay fit we need sleep, and we must all stay fit — OK?’
Sophie murmured, ‘Heavens, yes, look at the time…’
Gus was joining in, supporting the proposal in Norwegian. Isak said flatly, ignoring him, ‘I should like to hear it.’
‘Oh, please not…’
‘Actually I wiped the tape,’ Gus said in Norwegian. ‘Sorry. Just remembered. The acoustics in that room were hopeless, really… Maybe you’d let me record you some other time, Isak. I’d like that reindeer song, for instance — well, both of them.’
He told Ollie afterwards in their tent, sipping hot cocoa, ‘Difficult to imagine anyone wanting that sound on tape or any other way. Jesus… But last night’s performance wasn‘t entirely without interest, huh?’
‘It had its moments.’
‘Would anyone believe it, if you told it straight?’
‘If they’d been here, seen the people, they might… But thinking about it, I’d say Isak was as pissed last night as I’ve ever seen anyone. So it’s not surprising he’s been acting strangely today, when you think about it.’
‘I don’t know.’ Stenberg blew on his cocoa. ‘Carl’s worried too. Actually admitted it — and he’s not a man to admit anything’s wrong until his nose is really in it.’ He drank some, noisily. Then: ‘D’you get this feeling we might be on one of those wild goose chases, Ollie?’
He’d opened his bergen and was pulling out the shotgun’s barrels. Then the stock; hooking them together, then delving in the bag for the fore-end and snapping it on. He opened the gun, jerked it shut again. He’d wiped it dry of oil before they’d left Karasjok; he’d have acquired some non-freeze lubricant from his hosts at Elvegardsmoen if he’d thought of it when he was there, but he hadn’t, and ordinary light oil would have frozen, locked it solid, so the answer had to be no oil at all. He said — about Isak — ‘Could be something to do with his niece, some family problem that’s driving him to drink, I mean it doesn’t have to be anything that need bother us in terms of our own objective. He wouldn’t have dragged us down here just for the hell of it, after all.’
Two cartridges went into the pocket, two others into the gun’s chambers.
‘I’ll wake you in two hours, Gus.’
‘Preferably not by letting that thing go off.’
He was taking the first two-hour watch, then he’d get four hours’ sleep while Gus and then Sutherland took their turns. Logic told him there wasn’t any need to have a man on watch, but instinct contradicted logic; he knew that if he’d forced himself to turn in now he wouldn’t have slept, he’d have lain awake in his sleeping-bag and kept a listening watch all night.
He threw some birch branches on the fire. It was green wood and soaking wet, but the fire was well enough established, you could just about have burnt water on it. He’d backed into the cooking shelter, with a folded sleeping-mat to serve as a cushion on top of the pulk; he was sitting with the mug of cocoa on the pulk beside him and the gun across his knees when Isak slouched into the firelight, back from relieving himself out there in the dark.
Isak saw the gun, and stopped. Motionless on his short legs in their reindeer-hide gaiters: staring at the weapon as if it threatened him. Ollie pointed at the store of meat above his head, then out at the darkness, making a pantomime of shooting at some animal. Isak didn’t get the message, still stood there staring, so Ollie called, ‘Carl? Tell Isak I have this gun only in case animals come to steal our rations, would you?’
Sutherland made the required statement in Norwegian, and Isak relaxed, turning towards Carl’s tent. Ollie added, ‘Better remind him to shake the snow off before he joins you in there.’
‘You’re like a dog with a bone, Ollie.’
That comment had come from Gus, in the end tent. Isak was beating snow off his furs; then he’d ducked in. Probably would have done that anyway, Ollie guessed; and his final glance had been just as hostile, taking in both the gun and Ollie. Maybe one shouldn’t tell a Lapp how to handle conditions in which his people had survived well enough for several thousand years.
Sophie, he thought, Sophie… Hearing her ask him again, Do you think I would just let you say goodbye?
*
Carl was stirring a saucepan of porridge over the wood fire while water heated for coffee and eggs on the naptha ring behind him. The eggs would be hard-boiled, for ease of handling. By the time they’d eaten breakfast, packed the gear and completed a few other tasks such as refilling water-bottles with melted snow, it would probably be light enough to get on the move. Ollie was impatient for it; they’d all been complaining of stiffness, muscles aching from yesterday’s hard work, and he’d been ashamed to discover how unfit he was after the recent months of inaction.
Sophie caught him doing some loosening-up exercises, outside the radius of firelight. She’d come from the blind side, having been out there for her own purposes.
‘Is your back all right, Ollie?’
‘Perfect. When a fracture mends, it’s mended.’
‘So why did you have to leave your Royal Marines?’
‘I didn’t have to, I chose to. It’s a long story, though.’ A connecting thought hit him then for the first time, and surprisingly. He told her, ‘Until a few days ago I was wishing I hadn’t left them. But you know, now I’m glad I did?’
‘Then I am glad for you.’
He put an arm round her shoulders, round a lot of bulky clothing. ‘Don’t you want to ask why I’m glad about it?’
‘No. I don’t have to.’
Near the fire, Isak was using his sheathknife to cut strips of hard, salted meat for chewing along the way. Ollie joined Sutherland. He asked him, ‘Have you thought any more what the trouble might have been between Isak and his pal on the scooter?’
‘I can’t say I have, Ollie.’
‘Well, I have, and none of it adds up. For instance — well, look at what we’re supposed to accept… These two Lapps meet — by chance, right? — about a hundred k’s from anywhere except the nearest snowdrift. The one on the scooter says, “Your friends aren’t in this area, they moved down into Finland. And by the way, half Karasjok’s screwing your niece blind.” So Isak takes a swipe at him and then comes back an tells us “Now we go thataway…”.’
Sutherland wasn’t amused. ‘We haven’t the least idea what might have been said about the girl, do we?’
Stenberg, who’d joined them, put in, ‘Don’t even know she was mentioned.’
‘So, Ollie,’ Sutherland, crouching, waxing his skis, sounded irritable, ‘whatever trouble there was between those two doesn’t necessarily bear on our business at all. Why don’t we simply accept that Isak has some personal problems — OK, very likely concerning his niece, after all that’s what he said — which don’t happen to be any of our business — and just fucking well forget it?’
‘Except,’ Stenberg murmured, ‘that if Ollie’s saying he wouldn’t trust our little friend further than he could piss against a storm-force wind, I don’t believe I’d disagree with him.’
‘So what options do we have?’ Sutherland stood up. ‘Except we either take advantage of what he’s offering us, or we pack up and go home without a damn thing to show for a hell of a lot of effort and expense?’
‘Carl, I don’t think we’re actually in dispute.’ Stenberg rested one hand on his professor’s shoulder. ‘We considered the options before we started, didn’t we? We took the decision, and I don’t think anyone’s arguing against it — only saying Isak needs watching, maybe — but clearly we have to see this through.
’
‘Why?’
They both looked at Ollie. Daylight growing overhead, throwing the wooded hill behind them into silhouette. It had seemed a moment ago as if Sutherland had been inviting his assistant to make a decision for him, whether to go on or turn back. Stenberg demanded, ‘What d’you mean, why?’
‘I’m interested in your motivation. OK — the book, research, I know … But Gus just said, We have to see this through. You’re the writer, Carl, he’s not, he’s only your assistant — right?’
Isak had called out in Lappish, and Sophie was answering him. Sutherland, who’d finished the waxing job, turned towards them, in profile against the dawn. Stenberg answered Ollie’s question: ‘We undertook to get to the basics of this business. Carl being known to the Sami, we felt confident we would. And nobody likes to promise and not deliver, do they?’
Stenberg had told him in Kautokeino that Washington was footing all the bills, but he hadn’t admitted that the Pentagon’s or the CIA’s or NATO’s thirst for intelligence from this Northern flank had been the reason for mounting the expedition. The impression until now had been that Sutherland had planned a research trip, and they’d decided to buy a stake in it, but from what Gus had just said it seemed likely they’d actually recruited Sutherland for this reconnaissance.
7
They crossed the Anarjokka about an hour and a half after starting out. Then in Finland, leaving the river behind them, they were traversing what the map showed as a swamp. Except for knowing that in this region the river marked the Norway/Finland border there’d have been no way of telling you’d left NATO territory.
Circling around the base of a hill — half an hour later, beyond the swamp — then turning the curve into an S-bend to pass around another, its twin… Ollie checked the route by compass as they went along, identifying landmarks against features shown on his map — rivers, peaks, and the slopes as indicated by contours. Isak was leading again, Carl on the right, Gus left, Ollie tailing Sophie. Hills around them were of moderate size, but farther away were mountains, one range in particular looming ahead — massive and towering, hunched against dirty-looking sky like an advertisement for some product that washed whiter.
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