Timothy Culver - Power Play

Toward what? Toward some destination and purpose of Wellington’s, or toward Peking?

Lunch in Stockholm, a heavy meal that lay undigested in her stomach for hours afterward. She craved sleep, but she was afraid to go to sleep in the terminal — even if a place could be found for a non-VIP — for fear she would wake up and find Bradford gone again, this time for good.

But she couldn’t seem to sleep in any of the planes. Bradford took cat-naps or longer snoozes during the flights, but Evelyn’s nerves seemed rubbed raw the entire time she was aboard an airplane, German woman or not.

The time in Copenhagen, when they arrived, was three-thirty in the afternoon. Evelyn, out of a morbid desire to know just how badly she was faring, had set her watch back to Eastern Standard Time, and it was now nine-thirty in the morning, and she still hadn’t slept.

The contact at the Copenhagen terminal was a young lady dressed as a stewardess, though it was impossible to tell what airline she was supposed to represent. She handed over the inevitable envelope to Bradford with a plastic stewardessy smile — Evelyn bitterly resented the smile; it made her feel old — and this time the tickets were for an Icelandic Airlines flight to Reykjavik. In Iceland. Leaving at quarter past five, meaning another delay, this one of almost two hours.

There was no possible meal to eat during this layover, not by anybody’s watch. Bradford found some English-language newspapers and magazines for sale, laid in a supply, and the two of them sat down together unobtrusively on a bench. And now at last Evelyn did get some sleep, fitful and troubled, with her head on Bradford’s shoulder.

They were traveling, it seemed, in every possible direction. East from Washington to Paris, then north from Paris to Stockholm, then south again from Stockholm to Copenhagen, and now west from Copenhagen to Reykjavik. Was there a purpose for all this? And if there was, was it Wellington’s purpose or Peking’s?

The flight to Reykjavik took three hours. She had no idea how many time zones they were re-crossing now, she only knew that the short winter period of day was already ended this far north, and that when they circled down over Iceland her watch read shortly after 2:00 P.M. Which meant it was probably five or six o’clock here, and already night.

Because of the nap she’d managed to take in the Copenhagen terminal, it now belatedly became possible for her to think about her situation and to realize what she should have done. Either in Stockholm or Copenhagen she should have slipped away from Bradford — briefly, the risk would have been worth it — and phoned Edward Lockridge in Paris, telling him where she was and what she knew of the situation, and asking him to pass the word on to Wellington, just in case all of this was not his doing.

But it had to be his doing, didn’t it? She went over and over the meager evidence she had, clutching at straws because straws were the only things available to her, and the plane circled down over Iceland in darkness.

She would make the phone call from here, from Reykjavik. Surely there would be another delay, before yet another flight. Where to this time, Shannon, Ireland? Lisbon? Labrador? Wherever it would be, she’d call Edward from here and tell him about it, and at the next stop Wellington could either manage to confirm that this was another of his operations or — if it wasn’t (she prayed it was) — he could arrange for their rescue.

Except that it didn’t work that way. They got off the plane, into bitter cold, and walked with the rest of the passengers toward the brightly lit terminal building. But suddenly a man in some sort of brown military overcoat, brown leather boots, brown officer’s hat, stepped forward with the by-now-familiar two finger salute to hat brim and said, “Mr. Curtis? Miss Curtis?”

Evelyn would have said no again, though this time she knew who was meant, but Bradford said, “Yes?”

“This way, please.”

A jeeplike vehicle was parked nearby. That is, the front looked like a jeep, but the vehicle was larger, enclosed, and had four doors. It was to this that the man in the brown uniform led them; he held the door open while they got into the back seat, and shut it again behind them.

Evelyn moved in a state of helplessness and fear. It would do no good to shout now, to try for rescue; the wind was blowing, the other passengers were already moving away, there was a great feeling of emptiness and silence all around them. If these were not Wellington’s people — oh, let them be! — they didn’t yet know she was opposed to them. She should remain silent, and hope for a better opportunity.

The brown-uniformed man slid behind the wheel and drove them out around the tail of the plane they’d just debarked from and off across an expanse of open concrete. Lights defining the borders of runways and taxiways made an abstract pattern all around, and in their episodic glow she could see low mounds of snow that had been cleared away to the sides.

A plane was ahead, a medium-sized two-engine jet. She recognized it as the sort of plane owned by large American corporations, a business jet with a speed and range only slightly under those of the large commercial airliners. This one was painted gray — it would be hard to see against a cloudy sky — and except for its required identification numbers on the wings it bore no inscriptions.

The driver stopped beside the plane and immediately stepped out and opened the rear door, saying, “If you will, please.”

They got out, Bradford eagerly, Evelyn reluctantly, and the side door of the plane was just opening. A metal set of stairs was lowered, and the driver took Bradford’s arm — in a helpful way, not a menacing way — and escorted him up the stairs and into the plane. Evelyn followed — let this be Wellington, she was thinking, let this be Wellington — and another brown-uniformed man pulled up the steps and shut the door behind her.

The first man, the one who had driven them here, was saying to Bradford, “We’ll take off almost at once, sir. It will be a fairly long flight, with one, stop-over at Prince Rupert for refueling. For security reasons, I’m afraid you won’t be able to leave the plane there.”

“I understand perfectly,” Bradford said. He seemed very happy.

“We’ve arranged things as pleasantly as we possibly can,” the man said. The other man, having shut the door, had departed toward the front of the plane. “As you can see, this is your sitting room or lounge.”

It looked, Evelyn thought, like the living room of a mobile home, though she had never actually been inside a mobile home. But the clean functionalism of the built-in sofas and tables evoked the comparison, as though the room had been put together by a man whose primary job was designing diner interiors.

“Now, this way — Mrs. Canby?”

She looked at him, surprised. “Yes?”

“This will interest you,” he said. “The galley. You’ll be able to prepare meals for your grandfather and yourself in the course of the trip. We’ve tried to give you as broad a stock of foodstuffs as we could, in the circumstances.”

The galley was off a narrow corridor which ran toward the tail of the plane from the lounge. On the other side of the corridor, through a brushed chrome door, was what the man called “the latrine.” And at the end of the corridor was a fairly narrow room containing two single beds, one against either side wall, with a vaguely Danish-modern dresser at the rear.

The man said, “You can arrange your sleeping accommodations however you wish. The one sofa in the lounge converts very readily to a comfortable bed.”

The floor jerked beneath Evelyn’s feet, and she put a hand out to the sloping side wall to brace herself. The wall vibrated beneath her palm, and she said, “We’re moving!”