Moller looked up. Moller's chess partner looked up. The Inuk said:
'They're usually better looking. And younger.'
Edie swallowed the knot gathering in her throat. 'Go find yourself a fuck, Little Man, I need fifteen minutes with your friend.'
The Inuk man let out a contemptuous snort.
'Sweetheart, it looks like you need one more than me.'
It wasn't often that Edie resorted to brute force, but sometimes there was just no alternative. This was one of those times. Swiping the Inuk man's queen from the board and grabbing his hair, she thrust the chess piece firmly up his nose. He gave a sharp cry and winced. A bubble of blood oozed out then grew into a thin trickle.
'With you, I can see a fuck isn't likely to take more than a few seconds,' she said. 'So for the remaining fourteen minutes, you and your whore will just have to make polite conversation.'
The man stood, bowed over his nose, and shuffled away.
Moller gave her an admiring look.
She introduced herself as Maggie Kiglatuk, using her mother's name.
'I'm going to need a plane.'
'Where to?' Moller wiped his hand across his mouth. He looked oddly perky all of a sudden. Edie got the sense that he needed the business.
'Qaanaaq.'
His face fell. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. 'Air Greenland fly up once a week. You can buy a ticket at the airport.'
'No, I need a charter.'
She knew enough about the scheduled flights to realize that she didn't have the money for a one-way ticket, let alone a return. Besides, she didn't want to appear on any passenger lists. Her plans had just got more complicated. She wanted to check on the Russians up in the north, hoping they were the same two who had flown into Autisaq on Moller's plane, perhaps even the same two who had flown over Craig the day Andy Taylor disappeared. 'There'd be eight of us, and we'd need picking up on Ellesmere.' She was about to say Autisaq, then stopped herself. It was better that she kept as much of her true identity to herself as possible. At Kuujuaq. Could you do that?'
Moller considered a moment. 'Don't you people usually travel over the ice?'
She'd anticipated this.
'It'll be mostly elders, going to see relatives. The ice across Smith Sound is really rough. Besides, the government is paying.'
Moller suddenly looked extremely interested.
'We don't usually fly over to Canada north of Baffin because the katabatic winds can be tricky. It wouldn't be cheap, you understand, but we've done it before. My associate, Hans, he's Inuk, like you, he can fly a midge through a tornado.'
'Well, if you've done it before . . .' This was going better than she'd anticipated.
'We've taken scientists, you know, those kind of folk.' He craned about, searching for someone, then pointed to a man sitting at the bar. 'You want to meet Hans, I'll call him over.'
Edie squinted through the cigarette smoke until she recognized the pilot who had brought the two Russian men into Autisaq several weeks back. The odds on the Russians in Qanaaq being the same men who had gone hunting with Sammy had just shortened considerably.
'Not now,' she said. She was pretty sure he hadn't seen her in Autisaq, but she didn't want to take any chances at this moment. 'I'd need to check out your credentials first.'
Moller opened his pack of cigarettes and offered them to Edie before taking one himself.
'Sit down, Maggie, be friendly.'
Edie sat.
'Licences, permissions, we got those.'
'I was thinking more by way of a trial run. Next time you're going up to Qaanaaq, I could come along, check it out.'
Moller looked sceptical.
'Our elders are very precious to us.'
Moller nodded, took another drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out on the table.
'What the hell,' he said, finally. 'Be outside Egede's church at five.' He checked his watch. 'Seven hours from now. We're doing a cargo drop, you can tag along. If the weather is as good as the forecast says we'll be in Qaanaaq tomorrow afternoon.'
Back out in the street, Edie found a phone kiosk, went in and rang Derek Palliser's number, surprised at how glad she was to hear his voice. It was a short conversation. She told him she was going up to Qaanaaq, he asked her why and she said she couldn't say. He didn't like it but she wasn't ready to tell him what she suspected until she was more certain. Pride, most likely.
Signing off, she retraced the route back to Blok 7. The bell in Hans Egede's church was ringing ten as she opened the door of Qila's apartment. Inside, all was quiet except for the soft, muffled sound of breathing coming from one of the bedrooms. A single lamp dimly illuminated the living room and kitchenette. There was hot coffee in the machine and a note beside it with instructions written in misspelled English for sorting out the hot water. In her bedroom she found a newspaper clipping, with a note from Suusaat scrawled on the bottom.
Third standing from the left is Belovsky.
The picture was one of those stiff line-ups you often saw in the papers. Here it consisted of qalunaat men, a couple of dozen by the looks of it, aged mostly in their forties and fifties, grouped in two rows, the front one seated and the others standing behind them.
Beneath the picture was a caption written in what she took to be Danish, with the exception of the English words 'Arctic Hunters' Club' picked out in italics. She counted three in from the left, and saw a tall, square-built man with the neck of a walrus and the eyes of an orca. As a rule, you could divide the qalunaat men (and it was almost always men, though a few brought their wives to go duck hunting whilst they were chasing bear) who came up to the Arctic to hunt into two types: the lean, nostalgic kind and the raging superego. The print quality of the picture was poor, but Edie could tell that Belovsky was one of the latter.
She tiptoed to her room and tried to get some sleep before heading back out to meet Moller. She kept waking, disturbed by the feeling of being so close to some piece of the puzzle that lay just beyond reach. The third or fourth time, she checked her watch, and decided to rise. The sisters were still sleeping. She'd forgotten to turn off the coffee and now helped herself to what little remained. It was as bitter as walrus bile, though it had the desired effect of jolting her awake.
She picked up the photo and was about to slip it into her pack when her eye was drawn to a familiar face. Seated at the extreme right of the picture was a small, balding, slack-jawed man who looked as though he'd made an art form of the business dinner. She zoomed in, squinting for a better look. This fellow sported a brushy moustache, but in every other respect the match was exact. The man she was eyeballing was Felix Wagner.
A harder look only confirmed her suspicions. She knew that Taylor was connected to the Russians via the green plane and that Taylor and Wagner had some connection through Zemmer Energy. The photo proved there was also a link between Wagner and Belovsky. Was it possible the two Russians up in the north were associated with Wagner in some way? Who was Wagner working for, Beloil or Zemmer? And which of these were involved in Wagner's death?
Creeping around so as not to wake her new friends, Edie threw her toothbrush and underwear back into her backpack, picked up the photo, slid it into her pack as well, and went out on the street. The temperature differential between day and night was much more noticeable here in Nuuk, so much further to the south than Autisaq, and Edie quickly grew chilled in the deep grey pre-dawn mist, but she was too anxious about meeting Moller to go back and reorganize her clothes. During one of her many wakeful periods last night, she'd found herself worrying about what she would do when she got to Qaanaaq.
Now, waiting for Moller to arrive, she was anxious that he had tricked her. She decided if Moller hadn't showed up by five fifteen she would start making her way to the airport and would remain there until she found him. Her instincts told her to be very careful. She was heading into danger, but the hunter in her told her she was also closing in.
At almost exactly five, she heard th
e sound of an engine and a battered-looking jeep appeared. As it neared she could just see Moller's white face illuminated in the gloom. The vehicle slowed then came to a stop beside her, Moller threw the door open and she clambered inside. The Inuk pilot, Hans, sat in the back seat. He showed no signs of recognizing her.
'Hey.' She threw him a sympathetic look and got no response.
The airport was deserted, save for a nightwatchman who nodded at Moller and let them through. The jeep bumped across the service area and halted before a tatty- looking office building. Inside was a row of lockers. Moller drew out a key, opened one of the lockers, took out a file and stashed it away in his bag.
She helped them load up some boxes and an hour or so later the green Twin Otter took off with Moller at the controls. Climbing rapidly above low summer clouds, they headed west with the wind, then at twelve hundred metres Moller turned the little plane and they began to edge north along the coast. Once they had left Nuuk behind, Moller pulled down the sun screener, drew out the file he'd removed from his locker, and began making entries into it. Beside him, Hans stared out of the window, lost in thought.
Down below, the beginnings of the nautical dawn cracked the horizon. How odd, Edie thought, to have lived your whole life in the south, below the Circle, never to have seen the midnight sun nor lived through the velvety blackness of a polar winter day. You had to feel sorry for southerners, even the Inuit ones. Especially the Inuit ones.
The wind blew up and they found themselves bumping and shaking through a thick band of cloud obscuring the coastline below. The little plane jagged from side to side, plunged, then ballooned upwards once more. Though jumps and falls were no more alarming to Edie than a ride in the skiff across a summer swell, the movement brought on nausea and to distract herself she passed the time replaying scenes from The Gold Rush in her mind.
Before long, in the gaps between the clouds, the great blue crescent of Disko Bay appeared, closed in at its northern rim by Umanak Fiord and to the east by the ice at the mouth of the Kangia glacier. Beyond Kangia the ice field at Sermeq Kujalleq spread out as far as the eye could see.
'Take a good look,' Moller shouted from the front. 'And wave it goodbye. Another twenty years .. .' He drew a hand across his throat.
A little further along they passed a handful of finger fiords, smaller and thinner than those on Ellesmere, and speckled with stands of stunted spruce.
A while later, a ringing in the ears and an empty feeling in the belly alerted Edie to the plane's descent and she realized she must have been asleep; her eyelashes were heavy with tiny flakes of crust, like new ice. Suddenly they were among high, wispy clouds and below them stretched a black basalt coastline. To the east the dark rock gave way to striped gneiss. The sea lay below them, funnelled here and there into fiords and open-mouthed bays. There were no more trees.
As they headed further north the sea grew increasingly flecked with chunks of floating ice. About midday, they passed over the scattered buildings of Thule Airbase just south of Qaanaaq. From here, the coast of Ellesmere was clearly visible across the grey-blue expanse of Smith Sound. A small, sharp wave of panic travelled up Edie's spine. What she was doing was reckless and ill-thought-out. It was clear to her now that Wagner, Taylor, maybe even Joe, seemed to be bit players in some larger game.
Below her, she saw innumerable fragments of something or other caught up in a kind of current, whirling around a central axis.
'Garbage gyre,' shouted Hans, picking up on her interest. 'Cruise-ship junk, most likely.'
The thing looked more like the pictures of galaxies Edie had seen in school textbooks. Or a black hole.
They gradually lost altitude until, at Qaanaaq, the plane passed low over the source of the gyre, a giant hull of a ship in a deep-water harbour. On the quayside knots of camera- wielding qalunaat milled about.
'Like he said, garbage,' observed Moller drily.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
Edie and Hans stood at the entrance to the storage facility building while Moller fiddled with the padlock on the door.
'The boss says you've got family here,' Hans said. 'I was born in Siorapaluk, less than a sleep away.' He was speaking in a kind of Inuktitut that Edie found easier to understand than the native dialect in Nuuk. He said it was Inuktun, the dialect of the polar region.
'What took you down south?'
'I guess I sold out,' Hans said. 'And now I work for this jerk.' He gave her a penetrating stare. 'You're not really here to hire a plane, are you?'
Edie hadn't anticipated this. She began to fumble for an answer, but he said, 'Don't sweat. It's not like I'm going to tell anyone.'
Moller prised off the padlock and threw open the door to reveal a gloomy single room stacked with boxes behind which he had set up a tiny and rudimentary living area with two sleeping bags, an electric heater and a primus stove. While Moller went inside, Hans went to the ATV and started hauling boxes. Edie followed him.
'How did you know?' she hissed.
'On the plane,' he said. 'I could smell your fear.'
Moller reappeared. 'Without wishing to disturb your cosy native get-together, Hans and I have work to do.'
Hans flipped a thumb at his boss, and said in Inuktun, 'He can't understand and it drives him crazy.'
Moller, to Edie: 'Any case, don't you have family to go to?'
She darted a glance at Hans but he gave no sign that he was about to give her away.
'They're out at summer camp,' she lied, then, trying to sound casual: 'I'm gonna hang out in town till they come for me.'
Moller gestured towards the interior of the unit. 'You want to make yourself useful before you go, put some coffee on.'
The two men returned to the plane. Edie stepped into the shed and took in the interior. Immediately inside the door was a series of hooks on which hung ropes, waterproofs and a harpoon. Below them was a shelf holding a couple of discarded primus stoves and a box of ammo. On the floor resting on a tarp, between an assortment of rusty cans, was an ancient-looking .22, barrel-up and covered with dust. Moller's bag was lying on the table next to a camp bed.
Quickly, she opened it and slid out the file of flight manifests she'd seen on the plane. She flipped through to April, running her fingers down the lists of clients and their bills of lading. Her fingers chased forward through the pages. Then she saw it. 'April 22, Qaanaaq-Craig 0, R. Raskolnikov, P. Petrovich.' The word 'kontanf followed, along with a figure in US dollars. She recognized the two names from the records in Autisaq as the same fake ones used by the two duck hunters who went to Craig with Sammy. It seemed overwhelmingly likely now that the two men digging up graves were the same as those who had passed over Craig the day Andy Taylor disappeared.
The sound of boots came from outside. Scrambling to replace the file back inside the bag, Edie managed to wheel round just as Moller appeared through the door.
'That coffee ready?'
'Make your own coffee. I just remembered my cousin said she might come in early. I have to go.' She was already wondering how to get herself out to the dig site. 'I'll catch the scheduled flight back next week. I'll be in touch about the charter.'
An airport worker gave her a ride into town. Qaanaaq itself was the usual Greenlandic configuration of jauntily painted wooden A frames fixed to the rock substrate. There was a serviceable-looking harbour and what appeared to be a store and a church. Edie was struck only by the number of qalunaat decked out, for the most part, in new and expensive cold weather gear roaming the streets like hungry bears and among them, Inuit.
She walked along with her backpack slung across her shoulder, unnoticed in all the busyness, and after a short while came to the local post office and telecoms centre which served as an information point for tourists and scientists. Conscious that she would pass as neither, she pushed open the door and walked in.
An Inuk man looked up from his desk and greeted her with a quizzical smile, which she met with a relaxed one of her own
.
'I'm working in the ship's laundry,' she began in Inuktitut. 'But I do a little bit of guiding on the side, earn some extra cash.'
'Right,' the man replied in Inuktun, smiling more broadly now. He introduced himself as Erinaq. 'From across the water, aren't you?'
She could see he was already on her side.
'Originally.' Trying to put on her best winning look. 'I need a boat, a bit of fishing equipment.'
His face fell. 'Nothing doing. Every single craft that's not already out is full with tourists. You won't get a boat in Qaanaaq, or not till the Arctic Princess sails in a couple of days.'
She saw him looking at her hands. There was a moment of tension.
He said: 'Look, I may work at a desk, but I'm still Inuk.' He pointed to her hands. 'I know rifle callouses when I see them. Unless you've found a way to shoot laundry clean, I'd bet any money you're a hunter without a permit.'
Edie shrugged: 'And if I am?'
Erinaq's face split into a smile. 'Good luck to you. Ask me, permits are for qalunaat.'
She went down to the quayside where the Arctic Princess was tied up and considered her options. The most sensible one was to make some excuse to return to Nuuk with Moller, and wait till the Russians came back through the city, which, she supposed, they must at some point. She discounted it in a second. Too full of uncertainties. Besides, she was in the mood for confrontation. If Joe had been murdered, she rationalized, and Beloil had something to do with it, it would be easier to confront the Russians here, where they were off guard and, she supposed, unsupported. If she was lucky they would assume she was out fishing or hunting and ignore her. If she wasn't, and they were paranoid, they might suppose she had come to try to stop them digging up graves. Either way, so long as she held her cover, they'd be unlikely to feel threatened by her, a lone woman.
She'd need a boat and a gun. The gun was no problem. She'd already staked out the .22 rifle in Moller's shed. The boat was going to be harder.
White Heat Page 23
