Jack Higgins (17 page)

When I went up to Desforge's room, I found Gudrid and Ilana waiting for me, Desforge pacing up and down restlessly, the inevitable glass in his hand.

He swung round as I walked in. “Where in the hell have you been?”

“Down to the jetty to check on that schooner of Da Gama's. It's gone, taking them all with it presumably. They must be raving mad. There are icebergs all over the place out there.”

“You've got it all wrong, Joe,” Desforge said. “You'd better sit down and hear what Gudrid has to say.”

“I had a word with the night clerk,” Gudrid began. “It seems Mrs. Kelso had a telephone call at eleven o'clock. The girl says it was a man and the conversation was in English. Later, Mrs. Kelso phoned down and asked if there was a map available covering the area of the Frederiksborg—Sandvig road. One was sent up to her.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, the night porter was putting out kitchen refuse just before midnight when he saw Mr. Vogel and Mr. Stratton come into the yard with a third man he didn't know. They took one of the Land-Rovers from the
garage, but he didn't think anything of that as they are hired out regularly to hotel guests. As he was going back into the kitchen, Mrs. Kelso came out of the back door and joined them. He said that Mr. Vogel kissed her, then they all got into the Land-Rover and drove away together.”

“She's certainly an expert at changing sides,” Ilana said bitterly.

“Still think they've gone off on the schooner, Joe?” Desforge demanded.

“No, I suppose it's pretty obvious what they're up to,” I said. “They can reach Sandvig by road in six hours. I know that because I've done it myself. In fact with luck on their side, they could be there by five or five-thirty.”

“Is there a telephone?” Ilana asked.

Gudrid shook her head. “There's a radio at the trading post, but the factor doesn't live on the premises. He has a farm up on the hill. He opens the post at eight a.m. We could send a message then.”

“About three hours too late,” Desforge said.

Ilana frowned in bewilderment. “But the whole thing is so pointless, can't they see that? Where on earth do they go from Sandvig?”

Which was exactly what I'd been thinking myself and there seemed to be only one obvious solution. “They've probably arranged a rendezvous with the schooner.”

“But what if it doesn't make it?” Desforge said. “You said yourself they must be insane to take her out in this fog.”

“At this stage in the game they don't have much option. And there's always another possibility. The airport at Narssarssuaq. That's only a couple of hours from
Sandvig by motorboat and plenty of fishermen to take them if the price was right. They could have their pick of flights to Europe via Iceland or the other way to Canada or the States.”

“So—it looks as if nothing can stop them.”

I shook my head and what I said next shocked even me. “That isn't quite true. I could be at Sandvig in forty minutes in the Otter remember.”

“In this fog?” Desforge laughed abruptly. “Who are you trying to kid. You can't see more than twenty yards in front of you. You wouldn't even get off the water.”

“Taking off isn't the problem. It's landing at the other end that I don't fancy. I don't know whether you noticed, but one side of the Sandvig fjord consists of a thousand-foot wall of rock.”

Desforge shook his head. “Listen, Joe. I've got a licence—I can fly myself. God knows, I've done enough of it in pictures, but a flight like that is strictly for a nice big studio mock-up with the wind machines howling and the cameras just out there beyond the smoke. People don't do things like that in real life.”

That's all it took. Looking back now, I wonder if he was simply being extremely clever and goading me to do what I'd never seriously intended. If so, he succeeded admirably. I don't know what came over me, but I was suddenly seized by an excitement so intense that it was impossible to handle.

As if he sensed what I was thinking, he said gently, “You'd never make it, Joe.”

“You're probably right,” I said, “but I know one thing. I'm going to have a damned good try.”

Ilana's face was pale, her eyes burning, but I had the door open and was away before she could say anything.

 

I went to my room and changed into flying gear. By the time I was ready to go some of my initial enthusiasm had evaporated, that was true, but I hadn't changed my mind, and gripped by a strange fatalism I went down the back stairs and crossed the yard to the garage.

I dropped my bag into the rear of the Land-Rover and paused. Gudrid's two suitcases were already in and Desforge's Winchester in its worn case. I turned and the three of them stepped out of the shadows.

“Rotten morning,” Desforge said brightly.

“What exactly do you think you're playing at?” I demanded.

Desforge seemed to give the matter due consideration.

“Let's just say we're tired of the tedium of everyday life.”

“You must be raving mad, all of you,” I began and Ilana simply brushed past me and climbed into the Land-Rover.

 

I borrowed a dinghy with an outboard motor and checked my run from the end of the slipway out there into the fjord. It was all clear and when I returned, Desforge had the engine warming up for me.

I strapped myself into the pilot's seat and turned to look at the two girls.

“Better close your eyes tight. This is going to be pretty hair-raising.”

That was the understatement of the age. To plunge
headlong into that grey wall was probably the most psychologically terrifying thing I'd ever done in my life, but I held on, giving her full throttle, lifting her at the earliest possible moment.

Twenty seconds later we climbed out of the fog and turned south.

 

It was certainly a spectacular flight. The fog covered the sea below like smoke in a valley, and to the east the peaks of the coastal range pushed through it majestically, an unforgettable sight.

“It doesn't look too good, does it?” Desforge said and strangely enough there was a smile on his face and his eyes sparkled.

“It's what things are like at Sandvig that matters,” I told him grimly.

“Worried?” There was a kind of challenge in his voice.

“To be absolutely precise, frightened to death. If conditions are anything like this at the other end, you'd all better start praying.”

Gudrid turned pale and gripped the arm of her seat tightly. Ilana offered her a cigarette and said brightly, “He also likes to pull the wings off flies.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said and concentrated on my flying.

There was a kind of perverse comfort in having managed to transfer a little of my own fear onto someone else and for the next half hour I simply sat there, trimming the controls when necessary in a sort of reflex action, thinking about the whole strange business.

From Vogel's point of view, the strength of his plan had been its essential simplicity, but that had also constituted its greatest weakness. A few careful steps across the tightrope and he would have been home and dry. Unfortunately for him there were two things he hadn't reckoned with—my own existence and Sarah Kelso's treachery.

Which made me think of Arnie and for a moment I saw him again, lying there behind the couch, blood on the wall. The most stupid and senseless part of the whole affair. Poor Arnie. What was it he had said?
Take whatever is going because you can never count on tomorrow.
Perhaps he'd had something there after all.

I came back to myself with a start as Desforge gripped my arm and when I looked down, I could see the fog ending abruptly as if someone had sliced it neatly across with a knife and we flew into heavy drenching rain, the sea clear beyond.

From then on the whole thing was a bit of an anticlimax. Certainly visibility in the fjord when we reached it was considerably reduced by the heavy rain, and a tracer of mist obscured Rasmussen's farm up on the hill, but the landing presented no difficulty at all.

I swung in a wide circle, chose a course parallel with the great rock face on the other side of the fjord and two hundred yards away from it, and put the Otter down.

“S
o, here we are then,” I said as we drifted to a halt.

I could have sworn there was an expression of disappointment on Desforge's face, but he forced a grin. “Rotten third act, Joe. Anticlimax.”

I turned and glanced at the women. “Okay back there?”

Gudrid had colour in her cheeks again and Ilana smiled, “As ever was.”

I started to light a cigarette and Desforge held up his hand. “I thought I heard something.”

I opened the window and rain drifted in and we sat there in silence, the only noise the occasional slap of a small wave against the floats. Desforge told Ilana to pass him the Winchester and he started to unfasten the straps on the gun case as I leaned out of the window.

There was the muffled put-put of a small outboard
motor somewhere near at hand and then a voice called in Danish and I relaxed. A small dinghy coasted out of the rain, Bergsson the trading post factor sitting in the stern. He cut the motor and drifted in beside the float.

He grinned up, his beard spangled with tiny beads of moisture. “Morning, Joe, you're lucky. Half an hour ago the fjord was choked with fog, then the rain came in and cleared it all away.”

“It was pretty bad when we left Frederiksborg,” I said.

Gudrid leaned forward. “Good morning, Mr. Bergsson. How is my grandfather?”

“Fine, Miss Rasmussen. I was with him last on the day before yesterday.”

He was obviously astonished to see her, but before he could carry on I said quickly, “And not since then? Wasn't there some mail for him on the boat yesterday afternoon?”

“I wouldn't know,” he said. “The boat was delayed by fog and didn't get in till late last night, so I haven't got around to sorting out the mail yet. It's still in the bag at the store.”

“That's fine,” I said. “When you open up I think you'll find a package addressed to Gudrid care of her grandfather. We can save you a trip.”

“But I don't understand.” He was by now completely bewildered.

“You don't need to. Just turn the boat round and we'll follow you in.”

He gave up, shrugged and went back to the stern of his dinghy. While he busied himself starting the motor I
gave Desforge and Ilana the substance of what had been said.

“What happens when you've got your hands on the sparklers?” Desforge asked.

“We'll borrow Bergsson's old jeep and ride up to Olaf Rasmussen's place and warn him what's in the offing. We should be able to provide some sort of reception committee for Vogel and his friends. Olaf usually has half a dozen Eskimo shepherds around the place and they can revert to the ways of their forefathers awfully fast if anyone starts baring his teeth at them.”

Gudrid shook her head. “But my grandfather will be on his own at the moment, Mr. Martin, surely you haven't forgotten. At this time in the season the shepherds will be away in the hills searching out the sheep, preparing them for the drive down to the valley.” She turned to Ilana. “Four more weeks—five at the most and winter begins and always so quickly that we are caught unawares.”

“All right, so we go up and get him out of there before they arrive.”

I started the engine and Desforge patted the barrel of the Winchester. “I could certainly give them one hell of a surprise with this from the loft of that barn. Hell, they'd be sitting ducks when they drove into the farmyard.”

With a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, the Winchester across his knees and the tousled hair falling across his forehead, the reckless gleam in his eyes, he looked too much like a still from one of his own pictures for comfort.

I said shortly, “Don't be bloody stupid, Jack, we aren't
on Stage 6 now. This is for real. People die, they don't just pick themselves up off the floor at the end and take a vacation till the next script comes along.”

He blazed with anger, hands tightening on the gun. “I wasn't play-acting in the rear turret of that B.29, you limey bastard. Thirty-one trips and then I got a slug through the thigh and that was for real. I got medals, baby. What did they ever give you?”

I could have said that I had medals too, whatever that proved, only in my case I'd been only too anxious to forget the whole stupid senseless business as soon as possible, but I didn't. There wouldn't have been any point. I don't even think he'd have understood what I was trying to say. I had a brief glimpse of Ilana's face out of the corner of my eye, shocked and for some inexplicable reason, frightened and I pushed up the throttle slowly and went after the dinghy.

 

The constraint between Desforge and myself overshadowed everything, diminishing even the excitement of the moment when Bergsson found the package in the mailbag and passed it to Gudrid. She tore off the outer wrapping and disclosed a cardboard shoebox carefully sealed with Scotch tape.

“This is exactly as it was when Arnie gave it to me,” she said.

I took out a clasp knife and cut round the lid quickly. It contained a grey canvas money belt, each separate pouch bulging. I opened one and spilled a couple of the uncut gems into the palm of my hand.

“So that's what they look like?” Desforge said.

I nodded. “Before the experts get to work on them.” I replaced the stones in their pouch, buckled the belt around my waist and turned to Bergsson. “Is it all right if we borrow your jeep?”

“Certainly.” He sensed that something unusual was going on, so much was obvious and added awkwardly, “Look, if there's anything I can do.”

“I don't think so.”

Desforge broke in harshly. “We're wasting time. Let's get out of here.”

He stalked outside and I paused at the door beside Ilana. “What's eating him, for God's sake?”

She looked worried. “I don't know—sometimes he gets like this, nervous and irrational, flaring up into a sudden rage at nothing at all. Perhaps he needs a drink.”

“More likely he's had too many for too long,” I said sourly and went outside.

Desforge was sitting at the wheel of the jeep, the rifle beside him and he glared up at me belligerently. “Any objections?”

“Suit yourself.”

I climbed into the rear seat. Ilana hesitated, obviously torn between us, but Gudrid solved the problem by getting into the passenger seat beside Desforge.

“Well make your mind up,” he said irritably. “Are you coming or aren't you?”

She didn't reply—just got into the rear seat beside me and stared straight in front of her, hands tightly clasped as we drove away.

• • •

The rain was lifting a little now, not too much, but increasing visibility to fifty yards or so as we followed the winding dirt road up the hill. The slope below us dropped steeply to the fjord and was covered by alder scrub with here and there clumps of willow and birch up to ten feet high. On the right-hand side Iceland poppies showed scarlet among lichen covered rocks and there were alpines and saxifrage—even buttercups, so that it might have been the Tyrol on a misty morning after rain.

Desforge was driving too fast considering the conditions, but I was damned if I was going to tell him that. I didn't get much of a chance anyway because when we were about halfway up the hill, the hotel Land-Rover came round a bend and rushed towards us at what seemed a terrifying speed in those conditions.

There was a moment when everything seemed to stop, the whole scene frozen like a still picture and then Desforge swung the wheel of the old jeep without even attempting to brake and took the left-hand side of the track as the Land-Rover skidded to a halt. There couldn't have been more than a foot in it as we went by and our offside rear wheel spun wildly, seeking a grip on thin air.

The jeep dipped sideways, spilling me over the edge and I tucked my head into my shoulder and yelled as I hit the dirt and rolled down the slope through the scrub.

As I scrambled to my feet, the jeep roared like an angry lion and regained the road in a shower of dirt and gravel and Desforge braked to a halt. Behind him the Land-Rover was already reversing and Stratton stood up and grabbed the edge of the windscreen, an automatic ready in his hand.

He loosed off a wild shot and I shouted. “For God's sake get moving. Get the women out of here. Make for the farm.”

Desforge had enough sense not to argue and the jeep vanished into the rain as the Land-Rover braked to a halt above me. Stratton shouted something, but I couldn't catch what it was and then he jumped for the slope, landing thirty or forty feet above me in a shower of stones, the automatic ready in his right hand. As the Land-Rover took off after the jeep, I turned and ran for my life, ploughing through the alder head-down as he fired twice.

Branches whipped against my face as I scrambled through a grove of birches and then I stumbled and fell again, turning on my back and going down in the rain, riding a bank of scree in a long breathless slide that ended on a beach right at the edge of the fjord.

I picked myself up and staggered along the shingle, collapsing into the temporary safety of a horseshoe of black rocks. For a moment only as I lay there I might have been a twelve-year-old lying on a Scottish shore on some forgotten morning, my face against the pebbles. And these were the same as they are on most beaches the world over. Typical chalcedony. Translucent red Carnelian, brown and red jasper, banded onyx and agate.

My fingers hooked into them and I lay there, hardly daring to breathe, listening for the sound of his pursuit, but there was nothing. Only the rustle of the wind as it moved down from the mountains pushing the rain before it and the quiet lapping of the water.

• • •

I waited five minutes and then moved along the shore to a point which was, as far as I could judge, directly beneath the farmhouse. I was pretty certain of my ground because at this point a great granite crag jutted from the hillside and I went up one side of it, making much faster time than I would had I stuck to the scrub.

At this height there was still some fog, but it was thinning rapidly now, swirling around me in strange, menacing shapes. My heart was pounding like a trip-hammer and there was blood in my mouth as I heaved myself over a shelf of rock and crouched on top of the crag. There was a grove of willow trees to the rear, the hillside lifting beyond to the south meadow below Rasmussen's farm.

I took a deep breath, pushed myself to my feet and started forward. At the same moment Stratton stood up from behind a boulder on the edge of the crag and said in a perfectly normal tone as if we were good friends who had somehow missed each other, “Ah, there you are, old chap.”

As I started to turn he fired and the bullet shattered my wrist, the mark of a real pro who knows that a dying man might still be able to get a shot off at him, whereas a man with a broken wrist can't.

It's true what they say—when a bullet hits you, you don't feel any real pain, not at first. Only a sort of stunning blow delivered with the force of a blunt instrument swung by a rather large man, but the shock effect on the central nervous system is pretty considerable, driving the breath from your body like a kick in the belly.

I fell down, rolling on my face and fought for air. He
stayed there at the edge, a slight fixed smile on his face. “I've been watching you for quite some time actually. Remarkable view from up here, even allowing for the fog.” He shook his head. “You shouldn't have joined, old chap.”

No shooting from the waist or any of that nonsense. His right hand swung up as he took deliberate aim and I screamed aloud, “Don't be a fool, Stratton, I know where the emeralds are!”

He hesitated fractionally, lowering the automatic and I scrambled to one knee, my left hand clawing into the dirt. As I came up, I let him have a handful right in the face. He ducked, an arm swinging up instinctively, took a short step backwards and went over the edge.