Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘I wouldn’t think so.’ He watched in silence as I lowered the box, pilot light facing the stonework, over the south arm of the pier, secured the rope to a bollard, made it fast round its base and concealed it with a scattering of snow. ‘What’s the range?’

‘Forty miles. It won’t require a quarter of that tonight’

‘And it’s transmitting now?’

‘It’s transmitting now.’

We moved back to the main arm of the pier, brushing footmarks away with our gloves. I said: ‘I wouldn’t think they would have heard us coming back, but no chances. A weather eye, if you please.’

I was down inside the hull of the mock-up sub and had rejoined Conrad inside two minutes. He said: ‘No trouble?’

‘None. The two paints don’t quite match. But you’d never notice it unless you were looking for it.’

We were not greeted like returning heroes. It would not be true to say that our return, or our early return, was greeted with anything like disappointment, but there was definitely an anticlimactic air to it; maybe they had already expended all their sympathies on Heissman, Jungbeck and Goin, who had claimed, predictably enough, that their engine had broken down in the late afternoon. Heissman thanked us properly enough but there was a faint trace of amused condescension to his thanks that would normally have aroused a degree of antagonism in me were it not for the fact that my antagonism towards Heissman was already so total that any deepening of it would have been quite impossible. So Conrad and I contented ourselves with making a show of expressing our relief to find the three voyagers alive while not troubling very much to conceal our chagrin. Conrad especially, was splendid at this: clearly, he had a considerable future as an actor.

The atmosphere in the cabin was almost unbearably funereal. I would have thought that the safe return of five of their company might have been cause for some subdued degree of rejoicing, but it may well have been that the very fact of our being alive only heightened the collective awareness of the dead woman lying in her cubicle. Heissman tried to tell us about the marvellous backgrounds he had found that day and I couldn’t help reflecting that he was going to have a most hellishly difficult job in setting up camera and sound crews within the extraordinarily restrictive confines of the Perleporten tunnel: Heissman desisted when it became clear that no one was listening to him. Otto made a half-hearted attempt to establish some kind of working relationship with me and even went to the length of pressing some scotch upon me, which I accepted without thanks but drank nevertheless. He tried to make some feebly jocular remark about open pores and it being obvious that I didn’t intend venturing forth again that night, and I didn’t tell him, not just yet, that I did indeed intend to venture forth again that night but that as my proposed walk would take me no farther than the jetty it was unlikely that all the open pores in the world would incapacitate me.

I looked at my watch. Another ten minutes, no more. Then we would all go for that little walk, the four directors of Olympus Productions, Lonnie and myself. Just the six of us, no more. The four directors were already there and, given the time Lonnie normally took to regain contact with reality after a prolonged session with the only company left in the world that gave him any solace, it was time that he was here also. I went down the passage and into his cabin.

It was bitterly cold in there because the window was wide open, and it was wide open because that was the way that Lonnie had elected to leave his cubicle, which was quite empty. I picked up a torch that was lying by the rumpled cot and peered out of the window. The snow was still falling and steadily but not so heavily as to obscure the tracks that led away from the window. There were two sets of tracks. Lonnie had been persuaded to leave: not that he would have required much persuasion.

I ignored the curious looks that came my way as I went quickly through the main cabin and headed for the provisions hut. Its door was open but Lonnie was not there either. The only sure sign that he had been there was a half-full bottle of scotch with its screw-top off. So much for Lonnie and his mighty oath taken with his hand on a vat of the choicest malt.

The tracks outside the hut were numerous and confused: it was clear that my chances of isolating and following any particular set of those was minimal. I returned to the cabin and there was no lack of immediate volunteers for the search: Lonnie had never made an unwitting enemy in his life.

It was the Count who found him, inside a minute, face down in a deep drift behind the generator shed. He was already shrouded in white, so he must have been lying there for some time. He was clad in only shirt, pullover, trousers and what appeared to be a pair of ancient carpet slippers. The snow beside his head was stained yellow where the contents – or part of the contents – of yet another bottle, still clutched in his right hand, had been spilt.

We turned him over. If ever a man looked like a dead man it was Lonnie. His skin was ice-cold to the touch, his face the colour of old ivory, his glazed unmoving eyes were open to the falling snow, and there was no rise and fall to his chest, but on the off-chance that there might just be some substance in the old saw that a special providence looks after little children and drunks, I put my ear to his chest and thought I detected a faint and far-off murmur.

We carried him inside and laid him out on his cot. While oil heaters, hot-water bags and heated blankets were being brought in or prepared – apart from the general esteem in which Lonnie was held, everyone seemed almost pathetically eager to contribute to something constructive – I used my stethoscope and established that he did indeed have a heart-beat if such a term could be applied to something as weak and as fluttering as the wings of a wounded captive bird. I thought briefly of a heart stimulant and brandy and dismissed both ideas, both, in his touch-and-go condition, were as likely to kill him off as to have any good effect. So we just concentrated on heating up the frozen and lifeless-seeming body as quickly as possible, while four people continuously massaged ominously white feet and hands to try to restore some measure of circulation.

Fifteen minutes after we’d first found him he was perceptibly breathing again, a shallow and gasping fight for air, but breathing nevertheless. He was now as warm as artificial aids could make him, so I thanked the others and told them they could go: I asked the two Marys to stay behind as nurses, because I couldn’t stay myself: by my watch, I was already ten minutes late.

Lonnie’s eyes moved. No other part of him did, but his eyes moved. After a few moments they focused blearily on me: he was as conscious as he was likely to be for a long time.

‘You bloody old fool!’ I said. It was no way to talk to a man with one foot still halfway through death’s door, but it was the way I felt. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Aha!’ His voice was a far-off whisper.

‘Who took you out of here? Who gave you the drink?’ I was aware that the two Marys had at first stared at me, then at each other, but the time was gone when it mattered what anyone thought.

Lonnie’s lips moved soundlessly a few times. Then his eyes flickered shiftily and he gave a drunken cackle, no more than a faint rasping sound deep in his throat. ‘A kind man,’ he whispered weakly. ‘Very kind man.’

I would have shaken him except for the fact that I would certainly have shaken the life out of him. I restrained myself with a considerable effort and said: ‘What kind man, Lonnie?’

‘Kind man,’ he muttered. ‘Kind man.’ He lifted one thin wrist and beckoned. I bent towards him. ‘Know something?’ His voice was a fading murmur.