Alistair MacLean - Bear Island

"This is preposterous," Otto said loudly. "Absolutely preposterous."

"Isn't it?" I said. "A pity we can't ask Stryker his opinion about that. Or the opinions of Antonio and Halliday and Moxen and Scott. When your pale ghost looks down from the limbo, Mr. Gerran, and watches you being lowered into a hole in the frozen snow-do you think it will still look preposterous?"

Otto shuddered and reached for the bottle. "Mat in God's name are we going to do?"

"I've no idea," I said. "You heard what I just said to Mr. Goin. I have reverted to the position of employee. I haven't got my shirt on this film as I heard Mr. Goin say to Captain Imrie that you had. I'm afraid this is a decision to arrive at a directorial level-well, the three directors that are still capable of making decisions."

"Would our employee mind telling us what he means?" Goin tried to smile but it didn't come off, his heart wasn't in it.

"Do you want to go ahead with shooting all your scenes up here or don't you? It's up to you. If we all stay here in the cabin permanently, at least half a dozen awake at any given time, looking with all their eyes and listening with all their ears, then the chances are high that we'll all still be in relatively mint condition by the time the twenty-two days are up. On the other hand, of course, that means that you won't get any of your film shot and you'll lose all your investment. It's a problem I wouldn't like to have to face. That's excellent Scotch you have there, Mr. Gerran."

I can see that you appreciate it." Otto would have liked a touch of asperity in his voice but all he managed to do was to sound worried.

"Don't be so mean." I helped myself. "Those are times that try men's souls." I wasn't really listening to Otto, I was barely listening to myself.

Once before, since leaving Wick, on the occasion when the Count had said something about a surfeit of horse-radish, certain words had had the effect of a touch-paper being applied to a train of gunpowder, triggering off a succession of thoughts that came tumbling in one after the other almost faster than my mind could register them, and now the same thing had happened again, only this time the words had been triggered off by something I'd said myself. I became aware that the Count was speaking, presumably to me. I said: "Sorry, mind on other things, you know."

I can see that." The Count was looking at me in a thoughtful fashion.

"All very well to opt out of responsibility, but what would you do?" He smiled. If I were to co-opt you again as a temporary unpaid director."

"Easy," I said, and the answer did come easily-as the result of the past thirty seconds thinking. I'd watch my back and get on with the ruddy film. ",

"So." Otto nodded, and he, the Count, and Goin looked at one another in apparent satisfaction. "But now, this moment, what would you do?"

"When do we have supper?"

"Supper?" Otto blinked. "Oh, about eight, say."

"And it's now five. About to have three hours kip, that's what I'm going to do. And I wouldn't advise anyone to come near me, either for an aspirin or with a knife in their hand, for I'm feeling very nervous indeed."

Smithy cleared his throat. "Would I get clobbered if I asked for an aspirin now? Or something a bit more powerful to make a man sleep? I feel as if my head has been on a butcher's block."

I can have you asleep in ten minutes. Mind you, you'll probably feel a damn sight worse when you wake up."

Impossible. Lead me to the knock-out drops."

Inside my cubicle I gripped the handle of the small square double-plateglazed window and opened it with some difficulty. "Can you do that with yours?"

"You do have things on your mind. No mangers allocated for uninvited guests."

"All the better. Bring a cot in here. You can borrow one from Judith Haynes's room."

"Of course," he said. "There's a spare one there."

Five minutes later, wrapped to the eyes against the bitter cold, the driving snow and that wind that was now howling, not moaning, across the frozen face of the island, Smithy and I stood in the lee of the cabin, by my window which I'd wedged shut against a wad of paper: there was no handle on the outside to pull it open again but I had with me a multitooled Swiss army knife that could pry open just about anything. We looked at the vaguely seen bulk of the cabin, at the bright light-Coleman lamps have an intensely white flame-streaming from one of the windows in the central section and the pale glimmer of smaller lights from a few of the cubicles.

"No night for an honest citizen to be taking a constitutional," Smithy said in my ear. "But how about bumping into one of the less honest ones "Too soon for him or them to be stirring abroad," I said. "For the moment the flame of suspicion burns too high for anyone even to clear his throat at the wrong moment. Later, perhaps. But not now."

We went directly to the provisions store, closed the door behind us and, since the hut was windowless, switched on both our torches. We searched through all the bags, crates, cartons, and packages of food and found nothing untoward.

"What are we supposed to be looking for?" Smithy asked.

"I've no idea. Anything, shall we say, that shouldn't be here."

"A gun? A big black ribbed bottle marked "Deadly Poison?'

"Something like that." I lifted a bottle of Haig from a crate and stuck it in my parka pocket. "Medicinal use only," I explained.

"Of course." Smithy made a farewell sweep of his torch beam round the walls of the hut: the beam steadied on three small highly varnished

boxes on an upper shelf.

"Must be very high grade food in those," Smithy said. "Caviar for Otto, maybe?"

"Spare medical equipment for me. Mainly instruments. No poisons. Guaranteed." I made for the door. "Come on."

"Not checking?"

"No point. Be a bit difficult to hide a submachine gun in one of those."

The boxes were about ten inches by eight.

"OK to have a look, all the same."

"All right." I was a bit impatient. "Hurry it up, though."

Smithy opened the lids of the first two boxes, glanced cursorily at the contents and closed them again. He opened the third box and said: "Broken into your reserves already, I see."

I have not."

"Then somebody has." He handed over the box and I saw the two vacant moulds in the blue felt.

"Somebody has indeed," I said. "A hypodermic and a tube of needles."

Smithy looked at me in silence, took the box, closed the lid and replaced it. He said: I don't think I like this very much."

"Twenty-two days could be a very long time," I said. "Now, if we could only find the stuff that's going to go inside this syringe."

If. You don't think somebody may have borrowed it for his own private use? Somebody on the hard stuff who's bent his own plunger? One of the Three Apostles, for instance? Right background, after all-pop world, film world, just kids."

"No, I don't think that."

"I don't think so either. I wish I did."

We went from there to the fuel hut. Two minutes was sufficient to discover that the fuel hut had nothing to offer us. Neither had the equipment hut although it afforded me two items I wanted, a screwdriver from the toolbox Eddie had used when he was connecting up the generator and a packet of screws. Smithy said: "What do you want those for?"

"For the screwing up of windows," I said. "A door is not the only way you can enter the cubicle of a sleeping man."

"You don't trust an awful lot of people, do you?"

I weep for my lost innocence."

There was no temptation to linger in the tractor shed, not with Stryker lying there, his face ghastly in the reflected wash from the torches, his glazed eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling. We rummaged through toolboxes , examined metal panniers, even went to the length of probing fuel tanks, oil tanks, and radiators: we found nothing.