Алистер Маклин - Athabasca

“Any markings on the chopper, identification?” Carmody asked.

“Nothing – it was just like a big black shadow against the sky. Couldn’t even tell the colour exactly but it looked off-white. Pair of small fins near the tail too.”

“And then what happened? Where did the person fall?”

“A woman, it was: she screamed. Someplace over there.” Johnson pointed. “Not too far.”

“How high did she fall from?”

“Maybe a hundred feet. Maybe more.”

“Must be dead. We’d better look, all the same. Oh my God! One of the Bradys killed.”

They went up an incline into the teeth of the wind. On top of the slope the ground was rounded into smooth, gentle humps. The torch-beam, sweeping the snow, revealed nothing.

“Must have been around here,” said Johnson doubtfully. “Can’t have been much further, or I’d never have seen the body at all. Try over there a bit.”

They cast a little to their left. Suddenly Cannody, who had been walking on hard-frozen tundra, sunk to his waist in snow. As he exclaimed and struggled to extricate himself from the drift, Johnson called: “Listen, I thought I heard something.”

They waited, catching only the whine of the wind. Then Johnson heard the sound again – a cry that sounded faint yet close at hand.

“There it is!” he shouted. “Sure as hell, someone calling. This way!”

They tried to move eastwards, but both lunged into the deep snow again and realised that a rift in the ground ran in that direction.

They regained the hard edge of the invisible miniature valley and followed it another twenty steps. Then they heard the cry again, almost beneath them. This time they shouted back and got an answer. A few more steps brought them to the lip of a hole about a yard across that had been punched vertically downwards into the drift. Shining the light down it, they saw a bundle of powder-blue snow-suit.

“Hey! You! Mrs Brady? Stella?” Carmody called. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” came the muffled answer. “I’m not Mrs Brady or Stella, and I’m not hurt. Just stuck.”

“Who are you, then?”

“Corinne Delorme.”

“Corinne! Heaven’s sakes! John Carmody here. Hold on, and we’ll get you right out of there.” He sent Johnson running to the truck for a shovel and a rope, and in five minutes they had dug and hoisted the girl out. Considering she had been outdoors for more than half an hour, she was in remarkably good shape, mainly because the snow had insulated her and given her complete protection from the wind. But as soon as they got her into the warmth of the truck-cab, reaction set in and she began to shudder uncontrollably.

Carmody’s first impulse was to drive her to hospital, but then he changed his mind. Something – he could not quite tell what – made him favour a more devious approach. The guys in the helicopter must reckon she was dead: they must think they had another murder on their hands. It was a million-to-one that she had fallen into the drifted-up ravine rather than onto the ground: five yards to either side, and every bone in her body would have been broken. Something might be gained, Carmody thought, if the kidnappers did not realise anyone had survived; therefore he decided to move her away into safe-keeping, at any rate until Brady and his team returned.

“Know what I want you to do?” Carmody said to Johnson. “Drive Miss Delorme to the isolation unit on the plant. The isolation unit. When you reach the main gates, have her keep down out of sight, on the floor. I don’t want anyone to know where she is. Any bother, say you’re on a special run for Mr Shore, O.K.?”

Johnson nodded.

“You hear that, Corinne?” Carmody lifted up her chin. “He’ll take you to a good place at Athabasca. Nice and warm and comfortable. Out of the way, too. I’ll see you back there as soon as I can make it.”

Shock and reaction had knocked the girl to pieces for the moment, and she could not answer.

“Go on, then,” Carmody told Johnson. “Drive.”

It was past midnight and still snowing heavily when Brady arrived back in Fort McMurray, but the lobby of the Peter Pond Hotel was as crowded and bustling with activity as if it had been just after noon. Brady sank wearily into a chair. The flight from Prudhoe Bay had been a grim one: between them Brady, Dermott and Mackenzie had uttered hardly a word.

A tall, lean man, dark-moustached and heavily tanned, approached. “Mr Brady? My name’s Willoughby. Glad to make your acquaintance, sir, though not in these damnable circumstances.”

“Ah – the police chief.” Brady smiled without humour. “And rough for you, Mr Willoughby, to have this happen in your territory. I was sorry to hear that one of your men had been killed.”

“I’m glad to say that report was premature. There was a great deal of confusion around here when we made that phone call to you. The man was shot through the left lung and certainly looked bad, but now the doctor says he has a more than even chance.”

“That’s something.” Brady smiled wanly again.

Willoughby turned to two other men. “D’you know…?”

“Those two gentlemen I’ve met,” said Brady. “Mr Brinckman, Sanmobil security chief, and his deputy, Mr Jorgensen. Odd – for a couple of reportedly injured men, you look remarkably fit to me.”

Brinckman said: “We don’t exactly feel it. Like Mr Willoughby said, things got exaggerated in the heat of the moment. No broken bones, no knife or gun injuries, but they did knock us about a bit.”

“Pete Johnson – the guy who raised the alarm – will vouch for that,” said Willoughby. “When he got there, Jorgensen was lying on the road, out cold, and Brinckman was wandering round in a daze. He didn’t know if it was last night or last month.”

Brady turned to another man who had appeared at his side. “Evening, Mr Shore. Morning, rather. The Brady family seem to have disturbed a lot of people’s sleep, I’m afraid.”

“To hell with that.” Shore was visibly upset. “I helped show Mrs Brady and your daughter round the plant yesterday. That this should happen to her. Just as bad, that this should happen to you when you and your family were virtually our guests and you were trying to help us. A black day and a black eye for Sanmobil.”

“Maybe not all that black,” said Dermott. “God knows, it must be a traumatic experience to be kidnapped, but I don’t believe any of the four is in immediate danger. We’re not dealing with political fanatics such as you get in Europe or the Mid East. We’re up against hard-headed business men with no personal animosity against their victims: they almost certainly regard them as bargaining counters.” He clasped and unclasped his big hands. “They’re going to make demands, probably outrageous, for the return of the women, and if those demands are met, they’ll honour the bargain. Professional kidnappers usually do. In their own twisted terms, it’s sound business practice and plain commonsense.”

Brady turned to Willoughby. “We haven’t really heard what happened. I assume you haven’t had time to make wide-ranging enquiries?”

“Afraid not.”

“They’ve just vanished into thin air?”

“Thin air is right. Helicopter, as you heard. They could be a few hundred miles away in any direction by this time.”

“Any chance of airfield radars having picked up their flight-path?”

“No, sir. It’s a million to one that they were flying below radar level. Besides, there are more palm trees in Northern Alberta than there are radar stations. Down south, it’s different. We’ve alerted the stations there to keep a watch, but nothing’s been reported so far.”

“Well–” Brady steepled his fingers, sinking back in his chair. “It might help if we could have a brief chronological account of what happened.”