By then, we’ll be gone.
When he got back, materials were piling up and he got down to work. Larger branches made for roof—timbers sloping from the tree-trunk, smaller ones went on top of them at right-angles, and two of the tents were spread flat on that framework, with dirt and snow then shovelled over to hold the structure down and also camouflage it. The third tent served as a curtain over the entrance. The job was nearly done before he told them he wanted a smaller hide as well — a dozen yards away and higher up, where it would overlook the approaches to the main one. One pulk-rope slung between two trees and the pulk’s tarpaulin draped over it covered the basics, with the addition of brushwood, forest litter and snow to make it a lot less visible. Both shelters were floored with branches, with sleeping-mats on top. Gus had been cutting most of the wood, with the machete, and he and Isak bringing them along; he’d put his pistol away, as the machete was a fearsome enough weapon and Isak was clearly aware of it.
With both bivvies made and floored, the pulk was lifted into the big one and unpacked. There was some clearing up to do around the site, and camouflage to be checked from all angles. Then they crowded into the larger bivvy — where Sophie had now set up the stove — and she handed out mugs of tea. Ollie had checked that no light from the stove showed outside, as long as the curtain was covering the entrance.
‘Does Isak get any tea?’
They’d pushed him to the back, against the earth wall. Chin down on his chest, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Ollie was in the entrance with the shotgun. Having thought about it, he nodded. ‘Yes, give him some.’ Emerging from other thoughts, and looking round at them all. ‘Well done, folks.’
Sophie smiled at him. ‘The same to you, Ollie.’
‘I second that.’ Gus nodded. ‘We going to ask this revolting little fink some questions now?’
‘Well. Let’s get some priorities settled first. Essentials such as — well, yes, we’ll keep him alive, because (a) he’s got some answers for us, I hope, (b) if we can take him out with us, on the hoof, he may be useful as a witness to all this business, when the dust settles. Right?’
Gus nodded.
‘Second — well, obviously we’ve got to find a way out of this. To Karasjok or Kautokeino, or to a telephone or radio-telephone if either’s closer. Which I suppose it would be. But we’ll decide tomorrow on tactics for our withdrawal. The basic question’s whether we can move in daylight or have to wait for darkness tomorrow. Weather conditions — and reconnaissance by me at first light — will give us that answer. So the next thing — arrangements for tonight. Incidentally, whatever we decide tomorrow, we can only spend one night here. I don’t think there’s a chance they could find us tonight, but tomorrow’s another matter… Anyway — Gus and I will take alternate watches, two hours on and two off. No disrespect to you, Carl, but we’re on a war footing now — which is my racket, more or less, and I suspect it may be more up Gus’s street than yours. OK?’
‘If that’s how you want it.‘
Ollie had already jumped to certain obvious conclusions, about Gus Stenberg. He went on, ‘The guy on watch will occupy the smaller bivvy, and Isak can doss down in there. It covers the approaches to this one, and as we can’t trust this little sod now it kills two birds with one stone. Does this make sense to the CIA?’
Stenberg looked surprised. ‘I guess it’d make sense to anyone.’
‘Any questions or ideas?’
Sophie said, ‘If we have to get away by night, taking Isak will not be easy. Even in daylight, really.’
‘True. But when we’ve de-briefed him he may decide he’s better off with us than with his friends. They weren’t concerned for him when they fired those charges, were they.’
‘I don’t know. He was quick enough. The intention may have been for him to get away.’
Sutherland sighed, shaking his head as he glanced at Isak. His old pal… Ollie looked from him to his ‘assistant’… ‘How about some enlightenment from you, Gus. For starters, what about that gun you’re carrying?’
‘Beretta, nine-millimetre.’
‘Shorter-barrelled than that, I’d have sworn.’
‘You’d’ve sworn right. In a sense.’ Stenberg pulled it out and handed it to him. ‘Watch out, it’s loaded… No, you’re thinking of the parabellum, aren’t you? This is the Model 84, nine-millimetre short. Easier to tuck in an armpit.’
He passed it back. ‘Why would a student of anthropology need such an item in his armpit?’
Sophie laughed. ‘Student of Central Intelligence, you mean.’
‘People seem to have this fixation.’ Stenberg shook his head. ‘And while I don’t like to contradict a lady—’
‘Married man, too. How many children, Gus?’
‘As it happens, two.’ Frowning at her… ‘Where did you do your homework, Miss Eriksen?’
‘I did not have to do homework, Daddy. It is just obvious.’
‘Hah.’ He smiled crookedly, with a side glance at Ollie. ‘Just on account I never took a pass at her.’
‘Did you recruit the professor?’
He hesitated. Then shrugged. ‘OK. Between friends… Sure, I dug him out. I was tasked with this enquiry only because I happen to speak Norwegian. Norwegian mother, see. But I’d hardly heard of Lappland, so I had a whole lot of research to do, and one basic source of information was Carl’s book. Then someone said, hey, what about this guy Sutherland, if he’d agree to help what better licence could anyone have to go in there and ask questions?’
Sutherland admitted, ‘My first reaction was to tell them to go to hell. But they offered me a very substantial fee, Ollie.’
‘I imagine they’d have to.’ He shifted his position. After the hiatus in the pass and the rush of subsequent activity he’d been soaking wet, but he seemed to have dried out now. He looked at Stenberg, ‘So the Lapp-lore, reindeer bullshit — clicking toes, blood pancakes, drinking piss—’
‘It’s known in the trade as “pure research”. I admit, until recently the only reindeer I ever heard of had a red nose and answered to the name of Rudolf. But I should tell you one thing — Carl’s motive, taking this on, was not only money. He was at least as concerned to prove his Sami friends are not terrorists.’
‘Shows how wrong a man can be.’ Sutherland threw Isak another glance. ‘Except that’s unfair on Samis generally.’ He nodded. ‘I take it back. One rotten apple, and I had to pick him out, from the entire barrel.’ He switched into Lappish: ‘I would never have believed this, Isak. I trusted you.’
Isa mumbled some answer, without looking up. Carl was asking a question, then… Sophie translated, ‘He said they have kidnapped his niece, as hostage to make him do this.’
She added a moment later: ‘They said they would kill her, if he did not—’
‘Well, my God!’ Sutherland was craning round, in the confined space. ‘You get that bit? That’s what—’
‘Ask him’ — Ollie cut in — ‘Sophie, ask him who he means when he says they kidnapped her.’
She put the question in Lappish. Isak’s head sank lower. As if trying to pull it in tortoise-fashion… She tried again, won another short reply.
‘He says they would kill her, if he named them.’
‘Tell him we’ll try to get her back, that we’re the best chance he has, but we can’t do it without his information.’
Isak had shut his eyes. His mouth stayed shut too. Stenberg growled, ‘He tried to get us killed, damn it, why do we have to be so fucking kind to him?’
Sophie pointed at her ski-poles. ‘This frightened him, before.’
Sutherland came to life as she picked one up. ‘No — Jesus, you can’t—’
‘Carl, she only has to let him think she might.’ Stenberg wasn’t deferring to his professor now, their roles had changed completely. He said, ‘I’ll have the tape-recorder ready to catch this. It’s on the pulk there, Carl, would you pass it over?’
Ollie murmured, ‘Just scare him, Sophie.’
‘What d’you think I am?’
‘Interesting question.’ Stenberg reached out, taking the recorder from Sutherland. ‘I never heard of anyone going around with spears instead of ski-poles.’
‘Then you should have done your research better, Gus.’ She told him, ‘In old books are many drawings of Sami on skis long, long ago, and they have ski-poles different, left and right. They were both poles for skiing but one was a spear and the other a long-bow…’ She showed him. ‘This one is an ordinary pole with a special tip. A woman alone needs some protection.’
‘She ever threaten you with one of those, Ollie?’ Stenberg added, busy with his recorder, ‘Hey, we still have the famous yoik here. The lost chords, you might say…’ The humour was brittle, surface humour, nobody even with a thought of smiling, none of them happy with the moment, minute, hour… Sophie least of all. Resting the point just below Isak’s chin, then pressing so that it buried itself in his sweater. He muttered in Lappish, ‘Kill me, if you like.’
‘Wouldn’t help her, Isak.’
The niece, she’d meant. The little eyes were open, like brown marbles staring back at hers. Light from the naptha ring played on the pole’s metal shaft. Gus muttered, ‘Let him feel it.’ She pressed forward fractionally: the eyes closed, and he was trying to press himself backward into the earth wall. Beginning to moan — a thin, keening sound, expressive more of despair than pain. Or fear of pain to come. Sophie spoke fast and shakily in Lappish: it was probably a plea to Isak to give in and talk to them but from its tone and urgency it could as easily have been a prayer to God. She was chalk-white and her hands were trembling, her whole body trembling. Ollie said abruptly, ‘Give me that thing.’ Then as an excuse — it had burst out of him, an erupting need to spare her — ‘He doesn’t believe you’d go through with it.’
‘He’s so right…’
‘He’ll believe me, though.’
He took the pole carefully, sliding up against her, and as soon as she’d let go her hands whipped up to cover her ears, to shut out that sound — which was on a raised note suddenly like a change of gear… But she’d changed her mind, she flopped sideways across Sutherland’s legs, reaching to the tape-recorder, pushing Stenberg’s hands out of the way and pressing the ‘on’ switch and then ‘rewind’. Wanting anything that would drown Isak’s misery, Ollie said, ‘Carl, tell him I’m a ruthless sod, I’ll stop at nothing. Beg him — as his friend, beg him to give us the facts, promise on your personal word we’ll try to save his niece.’ Sutherland began at once in Norwegian, in an imploring tone; he looked as sick as Sophie had. She had her back this way now, and anyway Ollie was keeping his eyes on Isak’s closed ones, muttering under his breath, Come on, you little creep, come on, talk… There was a click from the recorder, humming, then bursting into the tense, dark circle and drowning out Isak’s whine came his own harsh, glottal, drunken slurring of the yoik.
See them come, the nameless, voia voia! / Stealing from the haunts of Rota, woolly ones padding, padding / Then over the high vidda like Spring’s white torrents rushing! / Horde of the nameless flooding to Kautokeino bloody knife!
Sophie had stopped the tape, eyes wide on Isak, who was staring back at her. Her lips moved, as she thought back over the lyrics, working out their meaning. Then she’d whispered, ‘My God…’ and touched the switch again.
Swiftly from the day-side, warriors rushing, rushing / Through the kvener’s forests burning wolf-like, voia voia! / Others floating through merons’ secret ways, voia, nana nana! / While swooping low come eagles, bearing in blood-red talons freedom for Sameätnam!
Now there was a blurr of voia-voias, nana-nanas; hoarse muttering, drunken laughter, heavy boots scraping on bare boards. Sophie switched off the tape. She asked Isak, ‘When?’
‘When the NATO soldiers leave.’
She still stared at him. She looked stunned. She said to Ollie without looking round, ‘You can put the pole down.’
8
After that one straight answer Isak came out of shock enough to clam up again. Her second question, which he declined to answer, had been who was behind the conspiracy inside Norway; he’d stared at her blankly, as if he hadn’t heard. She asked, ‘Who told you to bring us here to be killed?’ and he answered without any hesitation, ‘Those who have Inga.’ And that was it, he wouldn’t elaborate on it or speak again. Ollie had been waiting with a much more urgent and immediate question: who was out there now — what kind, how many?
Because they’d still have the same murderous intentions. If anything, more so, having shown their hand.
Sophie had explained the yoik — first what it meant, the allegorical interpretation in general import, then some of the detail of its phraseology. She’d played it through a second time, and recorded translations of it in both English and Norwegian. Explaining that ‘the nameless’ and ‘woolly ones’ meant bears and by implication Russians; so Russians were to invade in the spring through Finland — kvener meaning Finn, in Lappish — and there’d be simultaneous air and sea assaults or insertions. Merons were Lapps who earned their living from the sea, in old Sami tales wolves were said to ‘burn’ when they were killing — ‘burning’ through a herd of reindeer, for instance — and the reference to ‘spring’s white torrents’ supported the one answer Isak had let slip, that the invasion was to be launched after the Commando brigade and other NATO forces left Norway.
Early April, or even the end of March.
Getting this to Grayling was the first essential. A secondary problem might be to convince him and his NATO seniors that the yoik meant anything at all or was to be taken seriously. Even here and now, to people who’d only by sheer luck survived an attempt to murder them, it took some effort to accept it.
Sophie gave up her efforts with Isak. She said, ‘We have what we came for, don’t we? A thousand times bigger than we thought?’
Meaning that she and whoever she worked for in Oslo had expected nothing more than domestic troubles, localised Sami agitation — by Sami individuals of the Isak type — that could have been dealt with politically or at worst in the courts.
‘Only thing is’ — Stenberg stated the obvious — ‘the knowledge is useless until we can get it back.’
It might have been nearer the mark, Ollie thought, to have said unless we can get it back. Those three Finns had surely been slaughtered to safeguard the same secrets — and they’d been professionals. You could bet, too, they’d have had more than a shotgun, a pistol and a pair of sharpened ski-poles.
Make a break for it alone?
Leave these people bivvied up somewhere, come back for them later, preferably with strong support?
It would have to be Finnish support. You couldn’t think of bringing NATO personnel across the border.
He was looking at Sophie while these ideas were running through his mind; she returned his stare enquiringly, as if she thought he had something he was about to say to her and was waiting for it. Her eyes — greyish, and so expressive he thought with practice he’d be able to read her thoughts through them — held his almost mesmerically, until he looked away: thinking that those people out there — who’d be holed-up like this, he guessed, waiting for daylight just like this — were probably Soviets, and if they were you could guess they’d be Spetsnazi, since those were their behind-the-lines specialists.
And come to think of it, the killing of the three Finns might well have been a Spetsnaz job. Set up to look like some ancient Sami ritual.
So forget about leaving her here.
‘Let’s decide what’s our best route out.’ He unfolded his map, and the others shifted closer, crowding in so they could see it too, by the light of his pencil torch. The map was captioned JOINT OPERATIONS GRAPHIC (GROUND), with the note Users are urged to refer corrections of this graphic to Commanding General, US Army Topographic Command, Washington, DC 20315. He’d bought this one, also some sheets covering the adjoining areas, in a shop in Alta, and it occurred to him that a Spetsna
z team in a bivvy or snow-hole not far away might at this moment be studying an identical ‘graphic’… He said, ‘We’re here, look. And here’s Jorgastak, where we left the Volkswagen. Not all that far, straight up the river instead of the circular route Isak led us.’
Stenberg rubbed the bridge of his thin nose. ‘Won’t they have Jorgastak staked out?‘
‘I would, in their shoes. I’d aim to stop us long before we got anything like that far, in fact, but for a longstop’ — he nodded — ‘sure… But what we really need is a telephone or radio-telephone, the VW’s not important. We could make for this place — here, Angeli.’ He pointed it out, a dot labelled with that name on the Finnish side of the Anarjokka, not far north of where they‘d crossed the river when they’d come south out of Norway. There were several other settlements marked, to the east of Angeli, along a dotted line which according to the map’s legend indicated a cart-track. Obviously, the enemy might have the approaches to all those places covered too, if their manpower allowed it; but he didn’t mention this possibility. He said, ‘One place or another there’ll be either R/T or a landline, must be. Then we might be lucky and get transport up the Finnish side — this is a road, of sorts — so we’d stay clear of Jorgastak.’
Stenberg said, ‘Or get them to send a chopper for us.’
Ollie asked Sutherland, ‘What d’you think, Carl?’
The professor’s beard wagged, and the light of the naptha flame glittered in his pale eyes. ‘Your department. I’ll go along with whatever you decide.’
‘Right. So we’ll make for Angeli. They may try to stop us — will do, if they guess we‘re on the loose — but if we’re lucky they just might be digging for our bodies in that pass. If we get a clear run through we’ll do it in a day, easily. Or in a night if we find we can’t move by day. Nights being three times as long as days we could take our time and make sure no one breaks his neck.’
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