I nodded.
“Bad business.” He shook his head, sucking in air between his teeth. “Briffe was a nice guy. Did you ever meet him?”
“No,” I said.
“French-Canadian, but a fine guy. A throw-back to the voyageurs.” He stared at his desk. “It’s tough on his daughter.” He looked up at me suddenly. “You reckon there’s hope?” he asked. And when I didn’t answer, he said, “There’s talk about a transmission having been picked up in England.” His eyes were fixed on mine. “You know anything about that?”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said.
I suppose he sensed that I didn’t want to talk about it, for he just nodded and looked away towards the window which gave on to a drab view of sand and gravel and huts. “Well, Paule’s lucky, I guess, to have one of them come out alive.”
He meant the pilot presumably and I asked him if he knew where Laroche was now.
“Why, here of course.” He seemed surprised.
“You mean he’s here in Seven Islands?”
“Sure. He and Paule Briffe …” The phone on his desk rang and he picked it up. “Harry West? Oh, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed. “A gas car, you say? Hell!” He made a note on his pad. “Okay, I’ll have Ken Burke take over at Two-two-four. No, I’ll arrange for him to be flown up.” He slammed the receiver down. “The damn’ fool got his foot crushed by a gas car. You’d think after six months up the line he’d know how to handle a speeder.”
The door swung open and a big hustling man came in. He had a tanned face and his calf-length boots were all caked with mud. “Here’s Bill now.” My hand was gripped in a hard fist as Staffen introduced us. “I was telling him how Briffe was a real voyageur type.”
“Sure was. Knew the North like city folk know their own backyard.” Bill Lands was looking at me, mild blue eyes in a dust-streaked face summing me up. “Okay,” he said abruptly. “Let’s go across to my office, shall we? Mr. McGovern should be about through now, I guess.” He gave an off-hand nod to Staffen, and as we went out through the door, he said, “I’ve sent for Bert Laroche, by the way.”
“For Laroche—why?”
He gave me a flat, hard look. “If a man’s going to be called a liar, it better be to his face.” He left it at that and led me down a concrete path to another hut. “Ever meet McGovern?” He tossed the question at me over his shoulder.
“No,” I said. “I’m from England.”
He laughed. “You don’t have to tell me that.” At the door of the hut he paused and faced me. “I think, maybe, I’d better warn you. Mac’s tough. Spent most of his life in the North-West Territories. He reckons this about the damnedest thing he ever struck.” He strode ahead of me into his office and waved me to a seat across the desk from him. “So do I, if it comes to that. Smoke?” He tossed a pack of American cigarettes into my lap. “Bert’s flown me thousands of miles. We’ve been in on this thing from the start, since back in forty-seven when they decided to establish a permanent survey base at Burnt Creek and really go to work on this iron ore project.” He took the pack from me and lit himself a cigarette. “Bert’s a fine guy.”
I didn’t say anything. It was McGovern I’d come to see.
“And there’s Paule, too,” he added. “That’s Briffe’s daughter. How do you think she’s going to feel when she learns why you’re here?” He was leaning back, looking at me through eyes half-closed against the smoke of the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, and I could feel him holding himself in. “Did Alex tell you about Bert and Paule?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. “They were planning to be married this fall.” He stared at me and I knew he was hating me and wishing I were dead. But whether for the sake of his friend or because of the girl I didn’t know. And then he said, “Paule works right here in this office—has done ever since her father took this job with McGovern and they moved down from Burnt Creek.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth and leaned forward. “What happens when she hears about this? Her father was all the world to her. She grew up in the North, camping and trekking and canoeing with him through the bush like a boy. He was her hero. And now he’s dead. Why raise false hopes?”
“But supposing he isn’t dead?”
“Bert was there. He says he’s dead.” He was jabbing the cigarette at me. “Leave it at that, why can’t you?”
He was against me. And I knew then that they’d all be against me. I was an outsider and they’d close their ranks.… “Anyway, I just don’t believe it,” he was saying, leaning back and stubbing out his cigarette. “If Bert says they’re dead, then they’re dead and that’s all there is to it. It’s not his fault he was the only one got out. It happens that way sometimes.” And he added, “He’s one of the finest bush fliers in the North. I remember one time, back in forty-nine: we were flying out of Fort Chimo and the weather clamped right down …”
He was interrupted by the slam of a door in the corridor outside and a harsh voice saying, “I agree. No point in hanging on to those concessions.”
“That’s Mac now.” Lands rose from his chair and went to the door. “We’re in here, Mac.”
“Fine, Bill. I’ll be right with you.” And then the voice added, “Well, there it is. Sorry it didn’t work out.”
Bill Lands turded away from the door and he came across to where I was sitting. “I’ve read the reports,” he said. “I know what they say about your father.” His hand gripped my shoulder. “But he’s dead and nobody can hurt him. These others, they’re alive.” He was staring at me hard, and then he added, “Don’t crucify Paule just to try and prove a point.”
It was said very quietly, but grim-faced, so that I caught my breath, staring up at him. And then McGovern’s harsh voice came from beyond the door again: “But don’t expect too much from us on the northern concessions. There’s a bare month before freeze-up—maybe less.” And another voice said, “Okay. Do the best you can, Mac. But we’ve got to know what we hang on to and what we give up.” The outer door slammed, and then McGovern was in the room.
He was a broad, chunky man, hard-jawed and tight-lipped, and the battered face was weathered with a thousand wrinkles. Eyes clear as grey stone pebbles looked me over. “You a ham operator, too?” The voice grated on my nerves, the tone hostile. Or was that my imagination?
“No,” I said. I had risen to my feet, but he didn’t come across to greet me. Instead he went over to the desk, slammed a bulging briefcase on top of it and sat down in Bill Lands’ chair. The briefcase didn’t seem to fit the man any more than his city suit. There was something untamed about him—an impression that was enhanced by the mane of white hair that swept back from his low, broad forehead. It was as though a piece of northern wild had moved into the office, and I think I was scared of him before ever he started to question me.
Bill Lands gave a little cough. “Well, I’ll leave you two to—”
“No, no. You stay here, Bill. I’d like you to’ hear what this young man has to tell us. Has Bert arrived yet?”
“No, but he should be here any minute.”
“Well, pull up a chair. Now then.” McGovern fastened his eyes on me. “I take it you’ve got some new information for us … something that proves Briffe’s still alive?” He phrased it as a question, his shaggy eyebrows lifted and his flinty eyes boring into me. “Well?”
“Not exactly new information, sir,” I said.
“Then what’s this guy Ledder all steamed up about? You saw him at Goose and he radioed a message to our office. You wouldn’t have come all this way without something new for us to go on. What did you tell him?”
My mouth felt dry. McGovern was a type I’d never met before and his domineering personality seemed to bear down on me and crush me. “It wasn’t exactly anything new,” I murmured. “It was just that I convinced him that my father really did pick up a transmission.”
“It doesn’t say that here.” He tugged at the straps of his briefcase and pulled out a message form. “Th
is is how his message reads.” He pushed a pair of steel-rimmed glasses on to his blunt nose. “Possibility G2STO picked up transmission Briffe should not be ignored. Urgently advise you see Ferguson’s son. Why?” he said. “What did you tell him?” He was looking up at me over the top of his glasses. “What made Ledder advise us to have a talk with you?”
“It wasn’t so much what I told him,” I said. “It was more the background I gave him to my father’s reception of Briffe’s message. You see, my father died, virtually as a result of receiving—”
“Yes, we know all about your father’s death,” he cut in. “What I want to know is what you told Ledder that made him radio this message?”
“I merely filled in all the background for him.” I felt at a loss how to break through and explain my father to this man. “It’s not so much the facts,” I said, “as the story behind the reception. If you’d known my father—”
“So there’s nothing new?”
What could I say? He was watching me and it seemed to me that he was challenging me to produce something new. And all the time his eyes remained wide open, not blinking. It disconcerted me and in the end I said nothing. He seemed to relax then and looked away, glancing down at the papers he had spread out on the desk. “Your name’s Ian Ferguson, I believe?”
“Yes.” My voice sounded a stranger to me.
“Well, now, Ferguson, I think I should tell you, before we go any further, that the report of this transmission your father was supposed to have picked up was given immediate and most serious attention, not only by myself, but by the Air Force authorities and others. If we could have found one single radio operator anywhere in the world who could confirm it, the search would have been resumed. But we couldn’t, and when we got the police reports of the full circumstances …” He gave a slight shrug that dismissed my father entirely.
I found my voice then. “If it’s facts and nothing else that interest you,” I said angrily, “then perhaps you’ll appreciate the significance of what I learned at Goose. You say you couldn’t get confirmation of Briffe’s transmission. Of course you couldn’t. Every other operator had given up listening for him. Every operator, that is, except my father. If you’d read Ledder’s report you’d know that my father contacted him again on the twenty-sixth, the day the search was called off, to ask whether there was any other frequency Briffe might use in an emergency. Ledder told him No, and repeated Briffe’s transmitting frequency. Surely that’s proof enough that my father was keeping a constant watch?”
“I see. And you expect me to believe that your father was keeping a twenty-four hour watch for a transmission that he couldn’t possibly expect to receive, and from a man who was dead anyway?” He was looking at me as though to say, If you tell me Yes, then I’ll know your father was crazy. “Well, was he?”
“He had Briffe’s sending frequency,” I said. “He’d nothing else to do and he was obsessed …”
“Was the receiver tuned to that frequency when you got home the evening of the day he died?”
I should have checked that, but I hadn’t. “I don’t know.” I felt angry and helpless. And then footsteps sounded in the passage outside and Bill Lands went to the door. “Here’s Bert now.”
“Tell him to wait,” McGovern said. And then he was looking at me again. “So you believe your father really did pick up a transmission from Briffe? And you’ve come all this way in order to convince us—without a single item of fresh information. Correct?”
“But I’ve just told you—”
“You’ve told me nothing. Nothing that I didn’t know already.” He pulled a stapled sheaf of papers from his briefcase and after removing two of the pages, he passed the rest across to me. “Now I want you to read these reports through. Read them carefully, and then if there’s anything you can add to them or any new light you can throw on the situation, I’ll be glad to know about it.” He had risen to his feet. “But,” he added, “I think you should understand this. The man waiting outside is Bert Laroche, the pilot of the floatplane that crashed, and he says Briffe is dead.”
“I’m not interested in what Laroche says.” My voice sounded a little wild. “All I know is that my father—”
“You’re calling Bert Laroche a liar. You’re doing more than that. You’re accusing him—”
“I don’t care,” I cried. “I’m not concerned with Laroche.”
“No,” he said. “Why should you be? You never met the guy and you don’t understand his world.” He was staring at me coldly.
“It’s Briffe I’m concerned about,” I murmured.
“Yeah?” His tone had contempt in it. “You never met him either, or the other guy—Baird. They mean nothing to you, any of them. All you’re concerned about is your father, and for his sake you’re prepared to make a lot of trouble and smear a decent man with the mud of your accusations.” He had come round the desk and was standing over me, and now his hand reached out and gripped hold of my shoulder, stilling my protest. “You read those reports. Read them carefully. And just remember that, afterwards, you’re going to meet Laroche, and anything you have to say will be said in his presence.” He was staring down at me, the eyes stony and unblinking. “Just remember, too, that his story says your father couldn’t have picked up a transmission from Briffe on the twenty-ninth. Okay?” He nodded to Bill Lands and the two of them went out.
His greeting to Laroche outside in the passage was in a softer tone, and then the door closed and I was alone. The voices faded and the walls of the office closed in around me, unfamiliar and hostile—isolating me. Was it only two days since I’d run into Farrow in the Airport Bar? It seemed so long ago, and England so far away. I was beginning to wish I’d never come to Canada.
Automatically I started to look through the papers. It was all there—a summary of the notes my father had made in his log books, my statement to the police, the description of the room and his radio equipment, technical information about the possibility of R/T reception at that range, Ledder’s report, everything. And then I came to the psychiatrist’s reports: It is not unusual for physical frustration to lead to mental unbalance, and in those conditions a morbid interest in some disaster or human drama may result in the subject having delusions that attribute to himself an active, even prominent role, in the events that fill his mind. This occurs particularly where the subject is overmuch alone. In certain unusual cases such mental unbalance can give rise to extraordinary physical effort, and in the case under review …
I flung the sheaf of papers on to the desk. How could they be so stupid? But then I realised it wasn’t their fault so much as my own. If I could have told them about that earlier expedition, they might have understood my father’s obsession with the country. All those questions that had puzzled Ledder.… I couldn’t blame them really. They hadn’t meant anything to me until Ledder told me what had happened to my grandfather. Even now I didn’t understand all the references.
I got out the list of jottings I’d made from his log books and went through them again, and the name Laroche stared me in the face. Why had my father been so interested in Laroche? Why was his reaction important? I picked up the sheaf of papers McGovern had given me and searched through it again. There was a list of all the radio stations—service, civilian and amateur—that had been contacted, and three solid pages of reports from pilots flying the search. But the one thing I wanted wasn’t there and I guessed that the pages McGovern had detached before giving it all to me were those containing Laroche’s statement.
I sat back then, wondering what Laroche would be like and whether his story would help me to decide what I ought to do now. McGovern wasn’t going to do anything—of that I was certain. But if Laroche had been able to satisfy Briffe’s daughter that her father was dead.… I didn’t know what to think. Maybe Lands was right. Maybe I should just leave it at that and go home.
The door behind me opened and McGovern came in. “Well?” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Have you read it
all through?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I didn’t find Laroche’s statement.”
“No. He’ll tell you what happened himself.” He came and stood over me. “But before I call him in, I want to know whether there is any material fact that’s been omitted from these reports. If there is, then let’s have it right now, whilst we’re alone.”
I looked up at him and the hard grey eyes were watching me out of the leathery face. His hostility was self-evident, and I was conscious of the limitations of my background. I hadn’t been brought up to deal with men like this. “It depends what you call material facts,” I said uncertainly. “That psychiatrists’ report—it’s based on the supposition that my father was simply a spectator, that he wasn’t involved at all. They didn’t have all the facts.”
“How do you mean?”
“They didn’t know his background, and without that the questions he asked Ledder and many of the jottings he made couldn’t possibly make sense to them.”
“Go on,” he said.
I hesitated, wondering how to put it when I knew so little. “Did you know there was an expedition into the Attikonak area in nineteen hundred?” I asked.
“Yes.” And it seemed to me his tone was suddenly guarded.
“Well, it appears that the leader of that expedition was my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather?” He was staring at me and it was obvious that the revelation meant something to him, had come as a shock.
“Now perhaps you’ll understand why my father was so interested in anything to do with Labrador,” I said. “It explains all those questions he asked Ledder—questions that the psychiatrists couldn’t understand. And because they couldn’t understand them, they thought he was mad.”
The Land God Gave to Cain Page 8
