Special Dynamic

by Special Dynamic (retail) (epub)

  A lowering sky, and darkening. More snow coming, maybe. There’d been a drop in temperature since about dawn, but it had been rising again since then.

  About ten kilometres from the border there was another frozen river to be crossed. Then a long uphill stretch… Ollie thinking about Carl Sutherland in this new image — the professor as a hireling like himself, here not to revise his famous book but as a paid agent sent with his paid student-assistant to snout out intelligence for — well, for the CIA, presumably. No matter what Jarvis had said or even what he’d believed, it wasn’t easy to think of any other organisation — except maybe the KGB — who’d recruit a distinguished academic as a field agent.

  It was annoying to have been told so little — in fact to have been misled — when one’s own background had been made public knowledge.

  He’d been looking up, ahead and to his left, at that moment, up at a shoulder of the mountain, and he was seeing a human figure…

  A man — standing, leaning on ski-poles, looking down at them as they passed below him. A skier — alone, and as immobile as a statue. The others had seen him too — in that empty waste of snow, the high, bare hillside it would have been hard not to — and they were stopping. Ollie kept on, closing up to Sophie, who’d reached the pulk and swung its end round so that it was broadside-on to the slope. Gus came down to them, snow lifting in a sort of bow-wave round his ankles as he demonstrated his own rather eccentric telemark-style stopping technique. Not bad either, considering how little control one had, with the loose-heeled cross-country bindings; he was a better skier than Sutherland, anyway. Sutherland was with Isak, and waving up at the watcher on the hillside, shouting to him in Norwegian, Isak meanwhile standing like a dummy as if he knew it was pointless, that there’d be no reaction from the stranger. Sutherland gave up too now, and he and Isak came over to join the others.

  ‘Isak says’ — Carl spoke jerkily, short of breath — ‘says it can’t be one of the people we’re looking for. Not out here on his own and with no reindeer. He says we ought to keep going, the siida could be on the move and we shouldn’t hang around.’

  ‘That’s a new one, isn’t it? That they’d be on the move, we’d have to chase after them?’

  The professor shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose if they’d found the grazing grounds already occupied they’d have to find some other place. There’s another big range beyond the Lemmenjoki, right?’

  Sophie pointed up at the hillside. ‘He’s gone.’

  The shoulder of the mountain gleamed white, bare and empty. From this distance and angle no ski-tracks were visible, you’d think there’d never been a living soul on that glistening expanse.

  Gus said, ‘Could at least have waved back at you, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Sutherland shrugged. ‘In Kautokeino they weren’t exactly friendly, were they? And that guy’s most likely a Sami, and we’re tourists, non—Samis — so what the hell, he wasn’t blowing kisses… Move on now, shall we?’

  It was a convenient time to swap places with Sutherland, taking over the right-hand tow-line. Ollie pulled the headover up over his mouth and pushed off, traversing down to that position. Picking up the rope: getting on with the routine of this trek, but inside his skull grappling with a new and disturbing idea, a feeling that they were being led, directed, by some external agency. It had been started by the sight of that skier just standing, watching them: a herdsman herding…

  The way to get rid of this unpleasant impression was to think it out, translate what was no more than a feeling into logic, measure it against logic. If they were being led into a trap, for instance — well, the siida would be the bait. Would have been — and they’d jumped at it, swallowed the hook. Isak would have baited the trap with this siida story in his meeting with Sutherland after the dinner party in Karasjok. Having established what the Americans wanted to know about, what they’d come all the way to the Arctic for, he’d have dreamt up this fictional source of information, maybe after first discussing the project with others, late that night or in the morning.

  (Moving on now. The gradient was still upward but it wouldn’t be for much longer, there’d be a downhill section before the really hard work began.)

  Examining the new scenario, hoping to find items that wouldn’t fit… Basic premise being the false trail laid by Isak yesterday. That made sense only too well, in the context of this scenario: if someone was thought to have disappeared in Norway, why would a search or investigation be mounted in Finland?

  Connection here — and a close one — with the three Finns. They’d been looking for the same kind of information, and their corpses had been found somewhere down south. Down there, beyond those mountains.

  *

  They made one more stop before starting the climb into the mountain pass, the High Gap as Carl had said Isak called it, for a snack of biscuits and raisins, chocolate and hot tea. The wind was rising, from the northwest again, and the clouds looked pregnant with snow. He knew that within the next two hours he’d have to find a camp-site, and the best plan seemed to be to get through this pass — which might take about an hour — then ski down to the tree-line on its other side to get into shelter. The others concurred; and in fact he’d assumed command, to all intents and purposes, and subject — with reservations — to Isak’s guidance. Strong reservations, actually, tempered only by the fact that nothing was yet provable… But this was to be only a short rest, just long enough to eat and to gulp down the tea, which had been made early this morning and was contained in their Thermos flasks. They were in shelter here, a tongue of the forest pushing up across the saddle; they’d had a run downhill into this clip, and it was the last down-gradient they’d enjoy until they were through the pass.

  Once they were through it, Isak had told Sutherland, they‘d be on the grazing slopes where he hoped to find the siida, if it hadn’t moved on southward.

  And if it existed, Ollie thought.

  Ahead, as they left the trees’ shelter, their route was an uphill struggle between two mountain massifs and with a westward turn just short of another which from this angle and distance seemed to stand directly across the gap, blocking it and towering over it.

  *

  Isak stopped twice on the way up, and then again for a third time when they were actually inside the pass. Each time he had to be urged on — Ollie yelling, Sutherland interpreting in milder tones and his Lapp friend reluctantly complying. Climbing on, then, and it was hard work — not particularly steep, but seeming to be going on for ever, a long, hard plod with a deadline to it, a need to hurry. Snowstorm threatening, darkness in an hour or not much more — hour and a half, maybe — and he’d want to set up camp before that. Even without Isak’s delaying tactics the timing would have been tight.

  It began to snow when they were about halfway to the bend, and within a minute the tops and upper slopes were hidden. A few minutes later — when Isak stopped again — it was like being in a tunnel roofed with the horizontally-driven snow which the wind was blasting directly into the funnel of the pass. Visibility overhead was nil, wasn’t a lot better any other way; to look back was to be blinded. Isak, his deerskin outer clothing already plastered white, was staring up, and all around: like a man lost, wondering where he was, what he was supposed to do next… Then he’d started forward again, hunched and hurrying, and they were all plodding on — heads down, a too-slow, slogging progress up the soft incline, the pulk heavy on its nylon ropes, snow accumulating on it and adding to its weight.

  They were close to the bend westward — where he’d been hoping conditions might be easier, with some partial shelter — when there was the crash of the first explosion overhead. He didn’t think of it as that, to start with; his first thought was of a snow-boom preceding an avalanche. Then he saw Isak drop the tow-line, clamber clumsily around and start back, back the way they’d come. Knees bent, skis apart, a crouched, ape-like figure passing within a yard of Stenberg, ignoring his shout: he was skii
ng directly into the direction of the storm. There was a second boom then: and that was no snow-slope breaking up, it had clearly been a detonation, explosive, with that distinctive crack to it… All this had happened in the space of five or six seconds, and by this time he’d guessed at explosive charges intended to start an avalanche, trapping and drowning them here. And Isak had been expecting it. He shouted at the others, ‘Back! Come on!’ and heard a third explosion somewhere high above their heads in that white vagueness where the driving snow completely hid the mountain’s overhang. Isak had vanished — not difficult, visibility that way being only a few yards — but he’d been waiting for this to start, ready to cut and run, save his own life. Sutherland had snatched up the tow-line that he’d dropped; there was a deep rumbling sound overhead, louder than the wind’s racket now, the growing thunder of an avalanche. They’d heard that shout and they were moving the right way, but not fast enough. He shouted, ‘Follow Isak’s tracks!’ Then to Sophie, who was suddenly beside him, to take the lead: ‘Keep to the left of Isak’s track and we’ll use you as marker!’ And it would give her a better chance… He hoped. The noise was still growing, a mounting roar; and maybe it was behind, more than overhead. It was hard to know, the snow was enclosing, disorientating. All moving now, quite fast and in the right direction, Sophie well ahead skiing straight into the wind and blizzard. But she’d have her hands free for keeping her goggles clear and she’d give the rest of them — or anyway Sutherland, in the lead position — a mark to follow. From behind it sounded as if the whole mountain was breaking up, crumbling down to fill the pass, rock maybe as well as snow. Please God, behind… Whoever it was up there, they might have misjudged the timing; and they still couldn’t see into the pass, couldn’t know they hadn’t been successful — hadn’t yet… Sophie was a phantom slaloming to and fro across their front, which was clever of her. Noise deafening, a full-blooded roaring as the fall gathered speed and weight. Ollie was on this closer side to it and Gus was out to his left, Sutherland having wisely moved up ahead of the pulk since it was slower on its thin runners, in this soft stuff, than they were on skis. If the avalanche was going to hit them it would come from behind, he thought, it would fill the section of pass immediately below the main fall, then spread both ways, spilling through; and the main fall would be where they most likely would have been if Isak hadn’t delayed them as he had. But if it was coming, Ollie knew he’d be the first it would overrun. He pulled the headover up higher, remembering an avalanche-survival lecture and something about covering your mouth and nose. When you were in it you were suppose to make swimming motions, to clear an air-space in which you might be able to breathe for long enough to fight your way out; also, before it had you submerged, you were supposed to get rid of your skis and poles which otherwise would lever your body around, breaking limbs…

  Crouched into the whipping snow, head down because if you faced right into it you couldn’t see anything at all, head down like that and squinting up through crusted goggles — having to wipe them every few seconds — he had Gus in sight on his left at about maximum visibility range, and glimpses of Sutherland stooped almost double, skis wide… He’d have Sophie in sight as she wove to and fro across Isak’s track. The pulk’s weight was a jerky tugging as it tried to veer this way and that, he and Gus alternatively checking it: and then a truly weird sensation was possessing him, a feeling that despite his forward motion, the battering of wind and snow from the front, he was skiing backwards.

  Surface snow from behind, overtaking him…

  Rising round him as it overtook, deepening, piling on itself — the spill from the avalanche, as he’d anticipated. But the noise back there was lessening, had begun to drop just in the last few seconds. He let the nylon rope pay out, because the onrush of snow from behind was slowing him — although he was still moving forward… Coming out of it! He’d been expecting to be hit from behind by a solid wall of snow six or ten feet high, travelling fast enough to knock him down, bury him as he turned over and over in it — you were supposed to spit, when you came to rest, as a way of finding which way up you’d ended — but this had been just a small residue, the end of the spill from the main fall, which must now have finished, because the noise had stopped completely, the wind had taken over again, its howl having been drowned out for a while; and he was picking up speed, coiling in some lost metres of towrope as he caught up on the pulk. He had a glimpse of Stenberg — his first sight of any of the others for several minutes — but he couldn’t see the pulk yet. Thinking about those explosions — the probability that whoever set them off would still be up there, but blinded in the blizzard, not knowing he’d failed… Feeling the weight of the pulk like a big fish fighting on a line — and a figure suddenly in sight and rushing closer, swerving across his own front to the left, Ollie swerving the other way because of the pulk, the line. Two other figures then. Stemming hard to slow himself, passing the pulk which was slewing around all over the place, nobody controlling it now, seeing that that shape was Sutherland and the reason he‘d swung across had been to avoid crashing into Sophie — who was stopped, had Isak in front of her — on his knees with his arms above his head. Scraping to a stop beside them he caught the end of her shout, ‘— tried to knife me!’

  She was gripping one ski-pole in both hands with its tip resting on Isak’s chest, roughly where his heart would be. The pole’s tip was actually in the leather of his coat. Sutherland came panting up, gasping for breath, having finally managed to stop himself — by the look of him, probably by falling — and Gus skidded in wildly from the left. Sophie shouted above the wind’s noise, ‘He was stopping — maybe thinking we were dead. If he had his way we would be!’ She jabbed with the pole, and Isak jerked backward. She went on, screeching, ‘I call stop, wait, but he — I catch him, his arm, and he turns with this!’ Her left hand came away from the pole with Isak’s sheathknife in it. Taking it from her, Ollie saw that the ski-pole had a sharp, spear-like tip. And from what she’d just said, she’d disarmed him, for God’s sake… She yelled, ‘He was bringing us here so they could kill us, you know?’

  Sutherland began — high-voiced, very shaken — ‘I think we should hear what he has to—’

  ‘For all they know’ — Ollie shouted him down, taking over, because there was no time to waste — ‘we are dead, and while this storm lasts they’re blind. So now fast, back where we came from — out of the pass — then sharp left, down into the trees. I’ll lead — OK?’

  ‘Check.’ Stenberg showed up as coolly authoritative now too. ‘I’ll take care of Isak, Sophie.’ He had an automatic pistol in his hand; he was giving Isak a close-up of it, under his nose. He told him in Norwegian, ‘Ski two metres in front of me. Get as far away as three, I’ll kill you… Sophie, lend a hand with the pulk?’

  *

  About two kilometres inside the fir-wood he found a place that would do. A big tree had fallen, raising a mound of earth in its roots. The mound would provide a back wall for the bivvy and the slanting trunk could serve as a ridge-pole for the roof. He checked in case a bear might have established a prior claim; there were said to be only three hundred bears left in these parts, but it was the sort of place one of them might have picked in which to make a den for winter hibernation — in which case there’d be an entrance tunnel and also a ventilation hole in the top. Which there was not: so OK…

  There was a lot of work to do now, including timber to be cut, but also he wanted to check that they hadn’t been trailed down to this wood. He told the others what he wanted, while he put his shotgun together, loaded it and filled a pocket with cartridges. ‘You might fix a hot drink, Sophie?’ Isak could be put to work, with supervision. He told Sophie, who was already unlashing the pulk’s cover, ‘When the bivvy’s built we’ll cook inside, but for now you could pick any sheltered spot a bit out of the way, and get the stove going. I’ll be back in about half an hour.’

  He went back, on skis, not over the tracks they’d made coming through but
off to the side of them; taking his time, watching and listening. Then from the edge of the wood, where they’d ski’d down into it, he was looking for tracks other than their own. Or movement out there in the blizzard. The tracks were filling fast, would have disappeared in an hour, and by that time it’d be dark anyway.

  Out there, somewhere, were people who’d tried to murder them and might be under the impression that they’d succeeded. They’d get down into the snow-filled pass when they could — now, or at first light tomorrow — to probe for bodies, he guessed… Could be ‘they’, or just one individual: one pair of hands would have been enough to detonate three charges. This was the sort of question Isak was going to answer before long: how many men, what kind, who gave orders? One thing for sure was that they weren’t to be under-rated: they’d made a mess of their ambush, but they’d have been blinded by the snowstorm, which would have been a lot worse up on the top than it had been down in the pass, and it was a reasonably safe bet that they were the same people — or the same kind of people — who’d murdered three well-armed Finnish soldiers.

  Which made statements about Lapps not being a martial people look pretty silly.

  He waited for five or ten minutes, thinking it out, and deciding that they might have got down from the top quickly enough to pick up the tracks leaving the pass, but that the odds were strongly against it; and, more importantly, that if they’d been coming, they’d have been here now.

  They’d come eventually. There’d be no tracks to follow, but common sense would tell them that anyone in this situation would have got away downhill and to the nearest cover. Once they’d realised there were no bodies in the snow or the rubble in the pass, that would be their conclusion.