‘I know.’
‘Ah. Yeah…’
Remembering — he’d told him — he’d been here before… But until the driver had broken in with that comment he’d been thinking about Mary, wondering whether he was right in his belief that she wanted out, or whether she might only have been reacting to his own edginess. He wouldn’t have wanted to be running out on her, or hurting her. Remembering the exciting times, near-idyllic hours; and that not so long ago they’d had thoughts of making the idyll permanent.
‘Here we go…’
Left from the main road — it was the E6, also known as the Arctic Highway — and then winding over a snowbound track, snow banked high on either side, groves of leafless birch skeletal and gloomy as the vehicle’s lights swept over them… It was all familiar, from way back. Then the driver had swung left again, running down a straight length of track to where it ended at the officers’ mess, a grey-painted two-storey building with a few pairs of skis dug into a snowbank outside it. Ollie slung his bergen over one shoulder and picked up his holdall, went up the steps and pushed into the hallway thinking, Home, sweet home…
The mess itself, to the left off the hall, was deserted, but tea had been set ready on a side-table — tea, etceteras, bread and a toaster — so obviously there’d be some forms of life around before long. He went through to the back and found the mess manager, a sergeant, in his office.
‘You’re in the Red House, sir. If you know where that is?’
‘Yeah.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘Unless they’ve moved it.’
‘Fifty metres, first building on the right, red-painted. There’s a bed for you in room three, you’ll find. But I’ll give you a hand with your gear, shall I?’
‘No, hell—’
‘Other thing is, would you telephone Captain Ellworthy? You could use this phone… ’
‘Right.’
He hadn’t seen Tam Ellworthy in years. But he was commanding HQ Company, the sergeant told him while he was getting through to that extension for him, then pushing the phone to him across the desk… ‘Hold on, sir. Captain Lyle, just booked in…’
‘That you, Tam?’
‘Ollie, you old bastard!’
‘Half a day late, aren’t I? Crabs were late getting off the ground, then we had four fucking hours stuck at Gardermoen—’
‘Better late than never. Look, I’ll see you down there about half-six, OK?’
‘Fine. But one thing, somewhat vital — anything fixed for my onward transportation to Alta, d’you know?’
‘All laid on. Norwegian Army truck. We’ll ship you over to them — transport from the mess at 0600 — bit early, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, it’s six hundred k’s, isn’t it. Anyway, early night, that means.’
‘Fat chance of that.’ Ellworthy laughed. ‘Several of your former chums, including me, are keenly anticipating an evening of Old Lang Syne. No early bed for you, my lad!’
‘Bloody hell…’ He changed the subject. ‘One other point, though. Skis — they told me in London you’d—’
‘I’ve got them for you — the new GRP variety, too, absolutely brand new. All you have to do is sign on the dotted line and make sure we get ’em back. Look, I’ll come to the Red House at six-thirty, I’ll bring them then and we can go on up to the mess from there, OK?’
Ollie treated himself to tea, toast and honey in the deserted mess before lumping his gear down to the Red House. He’d had very little to eat all day, except breakfast at Lyneham before takeoff and the standard box of snacks on the aircraft. Then, down at the Red House — which was more of a shack than a house — he’d showered and changed and reorganised his gear for the next day’s long drive north, and was reading a paperback when Tam Ellworthy showed up. He was the same age, roughly, as Ollie — which meant thirty, thirty-one — tall, fair, prematurely balding. They’d joined the corps at about the same time and served together as subalterns, consequently had numerous friends in common from those days of yore and a lot of gossip to catch up on.
The white GRP cross-country skis were a vast improvement on the old wooden kind which until very recently had been the standard issue, known to all Royal Marines as ‘pusser’s planks’. The cost of these new ones was justified, Ellworthy explained, by the high incidence of breakage they’d always had before. Ollie adjusted the bindings to fit his own Lundhags ski-march boots, while Tam sat on the bed and talked and one or two other Red House residents looked in to say hello.
‘Speaking of old chums, Ollie, we had some SB characters through here last week. Not part of the brigade deployment, a special team en route to some place further north, some demonstration for the Norwegians. Guy in charge called Brabant?’
Mike Brabant was a Special Boat Squadron lieutenant with whom Ollie had served in the Falklands. He was sorry he’d missed seeing him. ‘How many — I mean, who else?’
‘A WO2 by name of Beale—’
‘Tony Beale!’
‘— and six Marines. Demo team, they were calling themselves.’
Tony Beale, then a colour sergeant, had been one of a party who’d gone into mainland Argentina to castrate Exocet missiles, during the Falklands fracas. Then they’d been ashore on East Falkland for about the last week of it, and last year Ollie had had the newly promoted warrant officer — sergeant major, warrant officer 2nd class — with him on another enterprise, elsewhere. He’d have enjoyed a reunion with old Tony: being out of it now, and having no idea when if ever there’d be another chance to meet… He and Ellworthy were walking over to the mess by this time. Snow lying deep, wind cutting enough to draw blood. Tam said, ‘I suppose you know the whole brigade’s out here this year?’
Ollie nodded. ‘For Anchor Express.’
Two Commandos — the other was in southern Norway at present but would move north later — together with the various supporting and specialist units which made up the full strength of 3 Commando Brigade RM, had deployed for this three-month stint that would culminate in Exercise ‘Anchor Express’ involving twenty thousand NATO troops — including six thousand US Marines, two Norwegian brigades and the Ace Mobile Force, a brigade representative of all NATO countries and currently including the British 1 Para, Italian Alpinis, Canadians…
‘We were all damn sorry to hear you’d got careless, Ollie. You were lucky to come out of it, weren’t you?’
Pushing in through the outer door, he nodded. ‘Could’ve been a lot worse.’
‘Like terminal… Anyway, I’m glad you have this other job prospect. It’s nice to think that if one did have to go outside—’
‘Ah, Captain Lyle, sir…’
The mess manager. Ollie stopped. ‘Yes, Sergeant Hoyle.’
‘I was just going to send a message down — telephone from a Major Grayling RM at COMNON, sir. He asked would you call him back, please. Here’s his number.’
‘Thanks.’ He took the bar-chit with a number pencilled on it. ‘I suppose I’d better use your office again.’
‘Telephone’s on the bar.’ Ellworthy pushed the door open. ‘Quiet enough, this early. But what’s a Royal Marine officer doing at COMNON, I wonder?’
It was a reasonable question, since COMNON was a Norwegian national HQ, not a NATO command. Although the Norwegian general there would put on a NATO hat once any emergency broke out and Norwegian forces were committed to NATO control. Ollie explained, ‘Exchange posting, I was told, connected with oil-platform security. But he’s also my contact if need one.’
The bar was at the far end of the long, narrow room. Portraits of Norwegian royals stared down from the walls. Ollie was through to Grayling quite quickly.
‘Lyle here. At Elvegardsmoen. I had a message to call you back.’
Grayling must have been eating something. ‘Ah, Lyle. Yes, right.’ He’d swallowed. ‘Fine. Good trip, was it?’
‘Not really. Just as usual.‘ He waited, and Grayling said — more clearly now — ‘I have some information for you, Lyle. It’s not at all pleasant,
I’m sorry to say. But you’d better let Sutherland know about it, when you get up there. In confidence — we don’t want headlines… When will you be joining him, incidentally?’
‘Tomorrow. Probably quite late, some time in the evening.’
There was a pause while Grayling digested this, probably made a note of it. Then he began, ‘This report emanates from Helsinki. Source as yet unidentified but vouched for by responsible authority in Oslo. It’s to the effect that twelve days ago a Finn security patrol, a team of three men briefed to investigate the stories of Lapp unrest, just vanished. Nobody had any way of knowing where they were or had been, or what they’d been doing; they could have been anywhere in Finnish Lappland — which as you don’t need telling is a hell of a big wilderness. These chaps should’ve reported in to their base at certain intervals, and they didn’t. Their leader was a vanrikki — that’s Finnish for second lieutenant — and despite the junior rank he was a very experienced operator, half Lapp, commissioned from the ranks. But — coming to the nasty bit — they’ve now been found. Somewhere in the depths of nowhere, central Finland. They were naked and they’d been stabbed, clean stab wounds into the hearts. Frozen like boards, of course, but set up in some kind of ritualistic fashion on the site of what was — repeat was, hundreds of years ago — a Lapp sacrificial site.’
‘Sacrificial…’
‘No clothes, weapons or any other gear. No tracks either, but there’ve been heavy snowfalls in that region. These Finns were armed and well trained, experienced undercover operators, should’ve been able to look after themselves. A final detail is that the leader hadn’t only been stabbed, he’d also been either speared or shot in the neck, and if it was a bullet it may have been dumdum. The theory is it probably happened before he was stabbed, because stabbing into the heart apparently has some ritual significance — did have, way back — which could explain it having been done after this vanrikki was dead. Sutherland might be able to throw light on that point, from his knowledge of — er — Lappery … But what strikes me hardest is — well, God’s sake, a certain amount of Lapp unrest, agitation — that’s one thing, it’s a nuisance, even potentially destabilising maybe — oh, OK, the bomb on the Tromsø flight, that’s a lot more than a nuisance, but there’s no skill in it, is there, any bloody lunatic, psychopath… No, what I’m trying to say, the thing that gets me, Lyle, is those three Finns are described as having been professionals!’
‘Nothing amateur about whoever greased them, then.’
‘Exactly. Exactly…’
2
He’d been asleep, was awake again now with fragments of dream fading as he checked the time and decided the truck must now be about sixty kilometres north of Narvik. His estimate was confirmed as about right by the truck’s head-lights briefly illuminating a roadsign that said BANDVOLL: and the driver was shifting gear, to cope with a steepening incline. Braced back in his seat against the truck’s lurching, its tyres rumbling like distant drums and the Norwegian driver a dark silhouette stolid and silent on his left; attempts at conversation had petered out somewhere around Storfossen. The driver spoke no English and Ollie had only a dozen words of Norwegian; he’d tried German — his own German being quite good — but that hadn’t got him anywhere either.
Storfossen must have been roughly where he’d fallen asleep. And the lights visible ahead would be the twin towns of Bardu and Setermoen, he guessed. It was a big military area, camps and ranges, with the Bardufoss airfield at the top end, thirty kilometres up the road. The road being the E6, the Arctic Highway, which reached right around the top of Norway and as far as Kirkenes on the Soviet border. Not, thank God, that he’d be in this conveyance for anything like that distance, only for about — well, maybe another five hundred kilometres, to Alta. And that was going to be far enough.
Norwegian Army vehicles didn’t have studded tyres. They used the same ones all year round.
The irritant stirring in the back of his mind now was the thought on which he’d dropped off to sleep last night. No weapon …
Grayling’s story about the murdered Finns had triggered it. Although in fact it was also a point he’d raised in London with the civil servant, Jarvis. Since he was being hired to protect these Yanks, and Jarvis himself had been open to the possibility that something very peculiar might be going on, presumably it could be fixed for him to import a hand-gun?
The Assistant Under Secretary had looked shocked.
‘My dear chap, what on earth for?’
‘If as you suggest there’s a “threat to the stability of the area”, that means trouble of some kind, surely. And if I’m supposed to look after them—’
‘I see …’ A shake of the head, faint smile accompanying it … ‘I very much doubt that the Norwegian authorities would sanction the import of any firearm by a civilian. Of course, if you applied for a hunting licence — but there’s hardly time, is there … In any case, Lyle, I’m sure they aren’t thinking of quite that kind of protection!’
Jarvis wanted a pair of eyes and ears there, nothing else. Jarvis or whoever gave him his orders. Ollie had felt embarrassed for having suggested that he might need to be armed; there’d been a hint of derision in that dismissal, as if Jarvis might have been thinking Christ, now he’s trying to play cowboys … So he’d put it out of mind, and the only weapon he had with him was a knife. Not the traditional Royal Marine Commando fighting knife, the dagger that had never been very useful and wasn’t issued now in any case, but one he’d carried for some years and used in numerous expeditions, a survival knife with a wooden haft and a quarter-inch thick carbon steel blade heavy enough to use for chopping wood. It was in its leather sheath inside his bergen, in the back of the truck with his civvie holdall and the skis — for which he’d also scrounged — in Bootneck terminology ‘proff’d’ — a supply of Swix ski-waxes suitable for all the likely snow conditions.
*
The driver made a refuelling stop at Andselv, beside the military airfield, and daylight arrived about an hour later when they were running downhill with an ice-covered gorge on the right and then, ahead soon after on their left, the broad head of Balsfjorden, which the road skirted for about the next twenty kilometres. They were leaving the water now, climbing again, snow deep on both sides of the road, luminous green ice decorating the sheer rock walls. Bits and pieces of the puzzle floating in his thoughts. The comment by Jarvis, for instance, that Lapps were not a warlike people — meaning that they were basically non-violent. Jarvis might re-think this, when he heard about the Finns who’d been slaughtered. Which surely had to be part and parcel of the recent pattern of violence — the aircraft bomb right in this area, and the Murmansk one, the riots in Sweden … But on the subject of that bomb on the flight south from Alta, the Commando’s second-in-command had remarked last night that if he was a terrorist and had been thinking of planting a bomb in some airliner, Alta was one of the two places in the world that he’d have chosen. The other was Kirkenes, close to the Soviet border. Because at neither of those small airports, he’d explained, was there any security at all. Passengers checked-in their own bags, and nobody tallied them against tickets or travellers.
‘So it wouldn’t have to be a resident of Alta who did it.’
‘Right. Could’ve gone there simply because it’s a soft target, no risk to the bomber whatever.’
The next fuelling stop was at Sørkjosen, in mid afternoon. By then he’d eaten all his sandwiches and drunk most of his flask of coffee, the general direction of the highway had become more easterly than north, and the light was fading. The driver had gulped food and drink during the halts for petrol, but he also ate sweets and chocolate most of the time. ‘Langfjorden.’
‘What’s that?’
The driver gestured with his left hand, and repeated ‘Langfjorden’.
They’d passed through a place called Bognelf. Ollie unfolded the map again and shone a pencil torch on it. At least another couple of hours … And he could have flown the whole d
istance in two hours, from Evenes last evening.
The truck sped into Alta, its lights blazing yellowish on the snow-covered road, just before eight-thirty. Using the map again, he was looking out for a road junction, a point where a right turn would lead off southwards, Route 93 into the interior of Lappland and the Finnmark vidda, but before they’d reached it the driver braked, changed gear, swung in towards a line of flagpoles, up a cleared tarmac driveway skirting a flat area of dirty snow and broadening out in front of a long, two-storied building with light flooding out of all its windows. He hadn’t expected the long day’s haul to come to an end so suddenly, but he read the floodlit sign ALTAFJORD TURISTHOTELL and realised this was it.
*
He was taking a shower when the telephone buzzed in the bedroom. He went through, dripping; this would be Sutherland or the other one. He’d asked the blonde girl in reception, when he’d been filling in the registration card, to let the professor know he’d arrived.
He picked up the ‘phone. ‘Lyle here.’
‘Captain Lyle, this is Carl Sutherland. Welcome aboard … And look, we‘re in room 110 and we’d be happy if you‘d join us when you’re ready. There’s no bar, you see.’
‘No bar?’
‘I was sort of prostrated too, when they told me. The truth is they’ll sell wine or beer in the dining-room, and there is a bar — dancing-bar they call it — but for some reason it doesn’t open this evening. So the only place you can get a real drink is right here, room 110.’
He dressed and went along, found room 110, knocked and walked in. They were standing with glasses in their hands, facing him as he entered, and his first sight of them, reality, as always, called for instant mental readjustment, correction of images that had been wide of the mark. Sutherland was the short guy with the balding head and ginger beard, small sloping shoulders, creases in his forehead like contours on a map. Pale eyes glinted as he shook hands. Both Americans studying him, too, of course, all three of them interested to see who’d be with them in the wilderness … ‘Glad to have you on the team, Captain.’
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