Hammond Innes - High Stand

The grip on my arm loosened. She was turning, reaching for the door. I saw the fear on her face, had the odd experience of sensing her sudden uncontrollable terror transmitted right through me. Then the beam passed on. Twilight for an instant, then blackness. And in that abrupt dark I felt the barge roll back as it was lifted by an incoming comber, saw the top of it curl and break in a blur of grey foam that burst against the tug, slewing it round, then hit us with a crash, spray spattering the wheelhouse and the man I had kicked in the face falling back down the ladder with a cry, the trapdoor banging shut over his head.

Then we were sliding down the surf-flecked back of the wave, falling into the hollow of it to end up with a jarring crash that jabbed right through my body and shook every part of the barge. We were on rock, and until we lifted to the next breaker, we were grinding our bottom plates against its surface, the din appalling.

I don’t know whether it was because he realized the barge had struck, and that he was in shoaling water among the rocks, or whether it was the sense of being so abruptly exposed, a gap torn in the fog and all three vessels made visible to the shore by the beam of the lighthouse … Whatever it was, there was a sudden rumbling sound as the skipper of the tug put his engines full astern and backed off. Another crash, a splatter of breaking water and then we were lifting, the tug below us and ourselves looking down on it. The lighthouse beam was back, everything lit with blinding clarity, and the tug turning broadside-on to us. And as the beam passed on another light flashed out, this time from seaward.

The cutter was actually in sight. I think I went slightly mad at the sight of the tug hauling off from us and the cutter closing in; I was shouting my head off and doing a little dance. Brian, too — he was making strange war-whoop sounds deep in his throat. And Miriam suddenly burst into tears, clutching hold of me and sobbing, her head bent down as though in prayer, and I heard her say something about stars, and then quite distinctly, ‘If only he hadn’t taken that last snort — his luck was turning.’ Her head was up then and she was looking at Brian with an expression I didn’t understand. It wasn’t exactly hatred, more an accusation … I think if she had had the means she would have killed him then.

It was dawn before we were taken off that barge. By then the fog had disappeared and as the sun rose above the tree-clad mountains of Vancouver Island we were able to see how close we had come to disaster, for in the six hours since we had hit that first rock tide and wind had bumped the barge along the iron-hard coast of Maquinna Point and the southern extremity of Nootka Island until it had found deeper water between Maquinna and Yuquot. By then police and customs had boarded the tug by winch from a helicopter and it was the Gabriello herself that towed the leaking barge clear of the rocks past Friendly Cove and the entrance to Cook’s Channel and into the quiet of the Zuciarte Channel. This took us south and west of Bligh Island to the grey rock of Muchalat Inlet and so up to the pulp mill some eight miles south of Gold River.

That was where we stayed the night, in a motel, and in the morning Cornish came to tell us the customs officers had found no drugs. They had had every log lifted out and been over the barge inch by inch — no trace of cocaine or any other contraband. We were interviewed then, each of us separately, by the police and the customs, and most of the time there was a member of the Federal Drug Enforcement Bureau present. This was at the motel. Statements were taken, not just from us, but also from the captain and crew of the tug, and while the police were chiefly concerned with Tom’s death and Miriam’s account of her kidnapping and long incarceration in the lakeside hut, the customs officers concentrated on our rendezvous with the South American vessel among the islands of the Spider. After hours of searching, then more time interrogating the crew of the tug, I think they found it very frustrating that we hadn’t been able to poke our heads out and see what was going on. What they wanted was confirmation of the nature of the cargo being transferred to the barge and where it had been hidden. ‘You state there was a lot of hammering?’ The question was addressed to me, and when I nodded, the officer asked me where the hammering had been coming from. ‘For’ard, aft, amidships — where?’

‘All over,’ I said. ‘It was loudest aft, of course, but the sound of it was not just confined to our end of the barge.’

He had been one of those on the rummage party when the tug had been stopped the first time, and looking down at my statement, he said, ‘You say here it sounded like wood on wood, as though they were tamping something in between the tree logs.’ He looked up at me. ‘I’m considering, you see, that packages of drugs could have been forced between the logs and then at a later stage — while you people were asleep perhaps — either dumped overboard or loaded into a fishing boat or an inflatable, some inshore craft to be run in to the coast.’

‘We would have heard it,’ I said, and Brian nodded, adding that though he had slept quite heavily at times during the run from the Cascades to the Spider, he had been awake most of the time after that.

‘Wolchak,’ the customs officer said, looking down again at the statement spread out on the oilcloth-covered table still littered with the remains of breakfast. ‘We’ve checked with Bella Bella and the pilot of that Cessna confirms that he flew Wolchak and two other men, one of them answering to your description of the man responsible for Mr Halliday’s death, out to Bella Coola where there was a hire car waiting for them. Bella Coola is the coastal end of the road west out of Williams Lake and police are making enquiries now to see whether they drove on from there to board another plane. There’s an airport at Williams Lake, another at Quesnel, also at Prince George a further eighty miles or so north. In that case he could be in the States now. Alternatively, if he’d doubled back to Namu in a small hire plane he could have organized a boat …’

But I was no longer listening, for the mention of Wolchak had taken my mind back to the scene in the mess room of the Kelsey with the rummage party sitting there talking over their coffee and that American Drug Enforcement officer describing how a man, who was also named Josef Wolchak, had risen to the head of those two mafioso families in Chicago. I was remembering the story of how he had made his first drug run from Columbia to New York. ‘Walking stick,’ I said.

‘What’s that?’

I shook my head. It was impossible, of course, and yet standing there on that hairpin bend, high above the logging camp, it had seemed so extraordinary to have a mobile drilling rig parked on the edge of that cliff. ‘You’ve checked the butt ends of those logs, have you?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged, feeling I was on the verge of making a fool of myself. ‘It’s just an idea.’ And then I asked the American whether they had had time to check if the Josef Wolchak involved in the High Stand selling was the same man his colleague had been talking about on the Kelsey a few days ago.

They were already doing that. ‘I guess he’s the same man all right. That’s why we’re so sure it’s drugs.’ He was looking at Brian then. ‘I know you think those trees are valuable, but they’re peanuts compared with what’s involved if they were a cover for a regular drug run.’ He turned back to me. ‘Walking stick. You said something about walking sticks.’