Athabasca

Eight

Ferguson, the pilot, was unhappy and with good reason. Throughout the flight he was in more or less continuous touch with the operations center in Prudhoe Bay, and knew that the weather ahead was dangerous. The wind was gusting at 40 miles per hour. Flying snow had cut ground visibility to a few feet, and the thickness of the drifting surface snow storm was estimated at sixty feet or even more ― less than ideal circumstances for landing a fast jet in darkness.

Ferguson had every modern navigational and landing aid, but although he could make a hands-off touchdown if he had to, he preferred to see terra firma before he put his wheels down on it. One factor in Ferguson's favor was that he was a profound pessimist. His three passengers well knew that he was not given to endangering his own life, let alone those of other people on board, and would have turned back had the risks been too great.

Brady, who had been wakened from a deep sleep and was in a sour mood, spoke scarcely a word on the way north. Mackenzie and Dermott, aware that the flight might be their last opportunity for some time, spent most of the trip asleep.

The landing, with much advancing and retarding of the throttles, was a heavy, bouncing one, but nonetheless safely accomplished. Visibility was down to twenty feet, and Ferguson crept cautiously forward until he picked up the lights of a vehicle. When the cabin door was opened, freezing snow whirled in, and Brady lost no time in making his customary elephantine dash for the shelter of the waiting minibus. At the wheel was Tim Houston, lieutenant to the invalided Bronowski.

"Evening, Mr. Brady." Houston wore no welcoming smile. "Filthy night. I won't ask if you had a good flight because I'm sure you didn't. Afraid you haven't had too much sleep since you came to the northwest."

"I'm exhausted." Brady didn't mention that he'd had six hours' sleep before leaving Fort McMurray. "What's the word about John Finlayson?"

"None. We've examined every building, every pump house, every last shack within a mile of the Operations Center. We thought there was a remote chance that he'd gone across to the ARCO Center, but they searched and found nothing."

"What's your feeling?"

"He's dead. He must be." Houston shook his head. "If he isn't ― or wasn't ― under cover, he couldn't have lasted a quarter of the time he's been missing. What makes that even more certain is that he didn't take his outdoor furs with him. Without furs? Ten minutes, if that."

"The FBI or police come up with anything?"

"Zero. Conditions are bad, Mr. Brady."

"I can see that." Brady spoke with feeling and shivered. "I suppose you'll have to wait for daylight before you can carry out a proper search?"

"Tomorrow will be too late. Even now it's too late. Anyway, even if he is around, the chances are we won't find him. We might not find him until warmer weather comes and the snow goes.','

"Drifting, you mean?" This was Mackenzie. ~

"Yes. He could be in a gully or by the roadside ― our roads are built five feet high on gravel ― and he could be lying at the bottom of a ditch with not even a mound to show where he is." Houston gave a shrug.

"What a way to die," Mackenzie said.

"I'm accepting the fact that he is gone," Houston said, "and though it sounds callous, maybe, it's not such a bad way to go. Perhaps the easiest way to go. No suffering. You just go to sleep and never wake up again."

Dermott said, "You make it sound almost pleasant. How's Bronowski?"

"No fracture. Heavy contusions. Dr. Blake reckons the concussion is only slight. He was stirring and seeming to make an effort to surface when I left the camp."

"No further progress in that direction?"

"Nothing. Very much doubt whether there will be either. Sam was the only person who could have told us anything or identified his assailant. It's a thousand to one that he was attacked from behind and never caught a glimpse of his attacker. If he had, the attacker would probably have silenced him for keeps. After you've killed two people, what's a third?"

"The same people, you reckon?"

Houston stared. "It's too much of a coincidence to be different people, Mr. Brady." "

"I suppose. This Telex from Edmonton?"

Houston scratched his head. "Told us to close down the line for a week. Says they're going to check in forty-eight hours."

"And in your own company code, you said?" Dermott asked him.

"They didn't give a damn about letting us see it was an inside job. Damned arrogance. And the Telex was addressed to Mr. Black. Only someone working on the pipeline would know that he was up here. He spends nearly all his time in Anchorage."

Dermott said, "How's Black taking this?"

"Difficult to say. Bit of a cold fish ― not much given to showing his feelings. I know how I'd feel in his shoes. He's the general manager, Alaska, and the buck stops with him."

Houston was doing Black a degree less than justice. When they arrived/at his office in the Operations Center, he had a distinctly unhappy and distraut air about him. He said, "Good of you to come, Mr. Brady. Must have been a highly unpleasant trip ― and in the middle of a winter's night." He turned to a tall tanned man with iron-gray hair. This is Mr. Morrison. FBI."

Morrison shook hands with all three. "Know of you, of course, Mr. Brady. I'll bet you don't get too much of this sort of thing out in the Gulf States."

"Never. Don't get any of this damnable snow and cold either. Mr. Houston here tells me that you're all up against a blank wall. Finlayson'&just vanished."

Morrison said, "We were hoping that a fresh mind might be of use."

"I'm afraid your hopes are misplaced. I leave detection to the professionals. I'm merely, as are my colleagues here, a sabotage investigator, although in this case it's clear that sabotage and crimes of violence have a common ground. You've had Mr. Finlayson's office fingerprinted, of course."

"From top to bottom. Hundreds of prints, and not one seems to be of any use. No prints there that shouldn't have been there."

"You mean that the owners of those prints all had regular and legitimate access to the office?"

Morrison nodded. "Just that."

Brady scowled. "And since we're convinced that this character is someone working on the pipeline, any one of those fingerprints might be his."

Mackenzie asked the FBI man, "Any sign of the weapon used on Bronowski?"

"Nothing. Dr. Blake believes the blow was administered by the butt of a gun."

Dermott asked, "Where's the doctor?"

"In the sick bay, with Bronowski, who's just recovered consciousness. He's still dazed and incoherent, but it seems he'll be okay."

"Can we see the two of them?"

"I don't know," Black said. "The doctor, certainly. I don't know whether he'll allow you to talk to Bronowski."

"He can't be all that bad if he's conscious," said Dermott. 'It's a matter of urgency. He's the only person who might be able to give us a clue about what happened to Finlayson."

When they arrived in the sick bay, Bronowski was speaking coherently enough to Dr. Blake. He was very pale, the right hand side of his head had been shaved, and a huge bandage, stretching from the top of his skull to the lobe of the ear, covered the right temple. Dermott looked at the doctor, a tall, swarthy man with an almost cadaverous face and a hooked nose.

"How's the patient?"

"Coming on. The wound's not too bad. He's just been soundly stunned, which is apt to addle anyone's brains a bit. Headache for a couple of days."

"A couple of brief questions for Bronowski."

"Well, brief." Dr. Blake nodded at Dermott's companions,

Dermott asked, "Did you see the guy who knocked you down?"

"See him?" Bronowski exclaimed. "Didn't even hear him. First thing I knew of anything was when I woke up in this bed here."

"Did you know Finlayson was missing?"

"No. How long's he been gone?"

"Some hours. Must have gone missing before you were clobbered. Did you see him at all? Speak to him?"

"I did. I was working on those reports you asked me to get for you. He asked about the conversation I had with you, then left." Bronowski thought about it. "That was the last I saw of him." He looked at Black. "Those papers I was working on. Are they still on the table?"

"I saw them."

"Can you have them put back in the safe, please? They're confidential."

"I'll do that," Black said.

Dermott asked,"May I see you a minute, doctor?"

"You're seeing me now." The doctor looked quizzically at Dermott down his long nose.

Dermott smiled heavily. "Do you want me to discuss my chilblains and gout in public?"

In the consulting room Dr. Blake said, "You look in pretty good shape to me."

"Advancing years is all. Have you been up to Pump Station Four?"

"Ah, so it's that business! What stopped you discussing it out there?"

"Because I'm naturally cagey, distrustful and suspicious."

"I went up with Finlayson." Blake made a grimace at the memory. "Place was a ghastly mess. So were the two murdered men."

"They were all that," Dermott agreed. "Did you carry out an autopsy on them?"

There was a pause. "Have you the right to be asking me these questions?"

Dermott nodded. "I think so, Doctor. We're all interested injustice. I'm trying to find out who killed those two men. May be three, by now, if Finlayson stays missing."

"Very well," Blake said. "I carried out an autopsy. It was fairly perfunctory, I admit. When men have been shot through the forehead, it's pointless to try to establish the possibility that they died of heart failure instead. Although, mind you, from the mangled state of their bodies, it's clear that the blast effect of the explosion would in itself have been enough to kill them."

"The bullets were still lodged in the head?"

"They were and are. A low-velocity pistol. I know they'll have to be recovered, but that's a job for the police surgeon, not for me."

"Did you search them?"

Blake lifted a saturnine eyebrow. "My dear fellow, I'm a doctor, not a detective. Why should I search them? I did see that one had some papers in an inside coat pocket, but I didn't examine them. That was all."

"No gun? No holster?"

"I can testify to that. I had to remove coat and shirt. Nothing of that nature."

"One last question," Dermott said. "Did you notice the index finger on the same man's right hand?"

"Fractured just below the knuckle bone? Odd sort of break in a way, but it could have resulted from a variety of causes. Don't forget the blast flung both of them heavily against some machinery."

"Thank you for your patience." Dermott made for the door, then turned. "The dead men are still at Pump Station Four?"

"No. We brought them back here. I understand their families want them buried in Anchorage, and that they'll be flown down there tomorrow."

Dermott looked around Finlayson's office and said to Black, "Anything been altered since Bronowski was discovered here?"

"You'd have to ask Mr. Morrison. At the time, I was across seeing my opposite number in ARCO and didn't get here for twenty minutes."

The FBI man said, "Some things have been touched, naturally. My men had to when they were carrying out their fingerprinting."

Mackenzie nodded to the buff folders on Finlayson's desk. "Are those the reports on the security men? The ones that Bronowski said he was studying when he was clobbered?"

Black looked at Houston, and the security man said, "Yes."

"There were fingerprints, too." Mackenzie raised an eyebrow.

"Those will be in the safe," Houston said.

"We'd like to see those and the records," Dermott said. "In fact, we'd like to see everything in that safe."

Black intervened. "But that's' where all our company confidential information is kept."

"That's precisely why we'd like to examine it."

Black compressed his lips. "That's a very large order, Mr. Dermott."

"If our hands are to be tied, we might as well go back to Houston. Or have you something to hide?"

"I consider that remark offensive."

"I don't." Brady had spoken from the depths of the only armchair in the room. "If you have something to hide, we'd like to know what it is. If you haven't, open up your safe. You may be the senior man in Alaska, but the people in London are the ones that matter, and they've promised me we would be afforded every co-operation. You are showing distinct signs of lack of co-operation. I must say that gives me food for thought."

Black's lips were very pale now. "That could be construed as a veiled threat, Mr. Brady."

"Construe it any damned way you like. We've been through this up here once before. And John Finlayson has gone on a walk-about or somewhere even less attractive. Co-operate or we leave ― and leave you with the task of explaining to London the reason for your secretiveness."

"I am not being secretive. In the best interests of the company ― "

"The best interest of your company is to keep that oil flowing and head off these killers. If you don't let us examine that safe, we can only conclude that for some reason you choose to obstruct the best interest of your company." Brady poured himself a daiquiri as if to indicate that his part of the discussion was over.

Black surrendered. "Very well." The lips had now thinned almost to nothing. "Under protest and under, I may say, duress, I agree to what I regard as an outrageous request. The keys are in Mr. Finlayson's desk. I will bid you good night."

"One moment." Dermott didn't sound any more friendly than Black. "Do you have records of all your employees on the pipeline?"

It was clear that Black was considering some further opposition, and then decided against it. "We do. But very concise. Couldn't call them reports. Mainly, just brief notes of previous jobs held."

"Where are they? Here?"

"No. Only reports on security personnel are kept here, and that's because Bronowski regards this as his base. The rest are kept in Anchorage."

"We'd like to see them. Perhaps you can arrange for them to be made available?"

"I can arrange it."

"I understand from Dr. Blake that you have a flight to Anchorage tomorrow. Is it a big plane?"

"Too big," said Black the accountant. "A 737. Only one available tomorrow., Why?"

"One or more of us might want to hitch a lift," Dermott answered. "We could, among other things, pick up those reports. Seats would be available?"

Black said, "Yes. No more questions, I trust?"

"One. You received this threatening Telex message from Edmonton today telling you to close down the line or else. What do you propose to do?"

"Carry on production, of course." Black tried to smile sardonically, but 'the moment was wrong. "Assuming, of course, that the criminals have been apprehended?"

"Where's the Telex?"

"Bronowski had it. It may be on his person. Or in his desk."

"I'll find it," Dermott said.

"I don't think Bronowski would like you rummaging about his desk."

"He's not here, is he? Besides, he's a security man. He would understand." Dermott shook his head. "I don't think you ever will."

"No," Black said. "Good night." He turned on his heel and left. No one said "good night" to him.

"Well, well." Brady exclaimed. "A friend for life in three minutes flat. Don't know how you do it, George. Pity he acts so suspiciously ― otherwise he'd have made a splendid suspect."

"Badly ruffled feathers," Morrison said. "To put it in a restrained fashion, ruffling other people's feathers is his speciality. A martinet of the first order, they say, but an extraordinarily able man."

Dermott said, "Not, I gather, universally popular. Does he have friends?"

"Professional business contacts, that's all. Socially, nothing. If he has any friends, he hides them well." He tried to conceal a yawn. "My normal bedtime lies well behind me. In the FBI, we try to get to bed by ten P.M. Can I be of any assistance before I go?"

"Two things," Dermott said. "The maintenance crew at Pump Station Four. Fellow called Poulson in charge. Could you have their backgrounds investigated as rigorously as possible?"

"You have a reason for asking?" The FBI man sounded hopeful.

"Nothing really. Just that they happened to be there when the sabotage occurred. I'm clutching at straws. We have damn little else to clutch at." Dermott smiled wryly.

"I think we can do that," Morrison said. "And the other?"

"Dr. Blake tells me that the two dead engineers were brought back here today. Do you know where they were put?"

Morrison knew and told them, said his good nights and left.

Brady said, "I think I shall go and rest lightly in my room. Notify me if the heavens fall in. But not after the first half hour or so. I take it you two are about to indulge your morbid curiosity in viewing the departed."

Dermott and Mackenzie looked down at the two murdered engineers. They had been covered in white sheets. No attempt had been made to clean them up since they last saw them at Pump Station Four. Perhaps it had been impossible. Perhaps no one had had a strong enough stomach for the task. Mackenzie said, "I hope they're going to be sewn up in canvas or something before being taken to Anchorage tomorrow, or their relatives are going to have the screaming heebie-jeebies. Whatever you're looking for, George, look for it quick. I'm not enjoying myself."

Nor was Dermott. Not only was the sight revolting, but the smell was nauseating. He lifted the hand of the man he'd briefly examined before and said, "How would you say that forefinger got that way?"

Mackenzie bent, wrinkled his nose and said, "It sounds crazy, but it could have been broken by a pair of pliers. The trouble is that charring's obliterated any marks that might have been made on the skin."

Dermott went to a wash basin, soaked his handkerchief and cleaned up the charred area as best he could. The black carbon came off surprisingly easily. It didn't leave the skin clean ― the pitting was too deep for that ― but clean enough to permit a closer examination.

"No pliers," Mackenzie said. "To break the bone, pliers would have had to close right into the flesh and would have been bound to leave saw-tooth marks. No saw-tooth marks, so no pliers. But I agree with you. I'm sure that bone was deliberately broken."

Dermott rubbed some carbon off the charred clothing and smeared it on the cleaned area so that it did not look as if it had been wiped. He opened the jacket and slid his hand into the inside pocket: it came out empty. Mackenzie said, "The papers and cards have taken wing and flown. With assistance, of course."

"Indeed. Could have been Poulson or one of his pals. Could have been Bronowski when he was out there yesterday. Could have been the kindly healer himself."

"Blake? He does look like a first cousin of Dracula," Mackenzie said.

Dermott raised the damp handkerchief again and started to clear the area around the bullet in the forehead. He peered closely at the wound and said to Mackenzie, "Can you see what I imagine I see?"

Mackenzie stooped low and peered closely. Still stooped, he said softly, "With the hawk eyes of my youth gone forever, I could do with a powerful magnifying glass." He straightened. "What I imagine I see is the brown scorch marks of burned powder."

As before, Dermott smeared some carbon back on the cleaned area. "Funny ― my imagination runs the same way. This guy was shot at point blank range. The scenario reads that it was a very close thing indeed. The killer had a gun on this engineer and was probably searching him. What he didn't know was that the engineer not only had a gun of his own, but had it out. However it was, he must have seen it just in time and shot to kill ― there could have been no time to indulge in any fancier gunwork. The engineer's gun hand must have gone into muscular spasm ― irreversible contraction; not unknown at the time of violent death. To free the gun, the killer had to wrench it so violently that he snapped the trigger finger. Don't you think that fits in with the peculiar angle at which the finger was broken?"

"I think you have it. It fits, anyway." Mackenzie frowned. "There's only one thing I see wrong with your scenario. Why should the killer take the gun in the first place? He had a gun of his own."

"Sure he had, but he couldn't use it anymore," Dermott said. "More accurately, he couldn't afford to keep it anymore. Having seen no exit holes at the back of the head he knew he had left two bullets in the region of two occiputs, and that the police could match up the bullets with the gun he was carrying. Which meant he would have to get rid of it. Which meant that he would be gunless, at least temporarily. So he took the engineer's gun. My guess is that he will have got rid of both guns by this time, and he's almost certainly got another weapon by now. In these United States ― and don't forget Alaska is the United States ― getting hold of a hand gun is extremely simple."

Mackenzie said slowly, "It all fits. We may well be up against a professional killer."

"We may well be up against a psychopath."

Mackenzie shivered. "My Scottish Highland ancestry. Some ill-mannered lout has just walked all over my grave. Let's take counsel with the boss. Counsel and something else. If I know our worthy employer, he'll already have had half the.contents of the jet's bar brought to his room."

"And you want his ideas?"

"I want some of those contents."

Mackenzie had exaggerated somewhat. Ferguson hadn't brought across more than a tenth of the plane's stock, but even that represented a goodly amount. Mackenzie had already had his first scotch and was on his second. He looked at Brady, propped up in bed in a pair of shocking heliotrope pyjamas, which served only to accentuate his massive girth, and said, "Well, what do you make of George's theory?"

"I believe in the facts and I also believe in the theory, for the adequate reason that I see no alternative to it." Brady contemplated his fingernails. "I also believe we're up against a trained, ruthless and intelligent killer. I don't doubt that he might be a psychopath on the loose. In fact, there may be two psychopaths ― an even more unpleasant prospect. The trouble is, George, I don't see how this advances us much. We don't know when this nut will hit again. What can we do to prevent it?"

"We can scare him," Dermott answered, "that's what we can do. I'll bet he's already worried by the fact that we're raking in fingerprints and records all over the shop. Let's try to worry him a little more. I'll go down to Anchorage tomorrow while you and Mackenzie stay here and do some work." Dermott sipped his scotch. "It should be a change for at least one of you."

"I could be deeply wounded," Brady said, "but slings and arrows from an ungrateful staff are nothing new to me. What, precisely, do you have in mind?"

"Drastically narrowing the range of suspects is what I have in mind. All very simple, really. This is a close-knit community here in Prudhoe Bay. They more or less live out of each other's pockets. Everyone's movements must be known to at least a handful of other people, probably a great deal more. Check on everybody and find out who has a definite alibi for being here on the morning the engineers were being killed out in the mountains. If two or more people, say, can honestly tell you that X was here at the time of the crime, you can strike X off the suspects list. At the end of the day we'll know; how many suspects we have. Not even a handful, I bet. I wouldn't be surprised if there were none at all. Remember that Pump Station Four is a hundred and forty miles away, and the only feasible way of getting there is by helicopter. One would have to have the time and opportunity and the ability to fly a helicopter to get there, and there would be no hope of taking a chopper without someone noticing. I think you'll find it all very straightforward.

"Less straightforward is the next inquiry ― who was in Anchorage on the day that the original phone message was sent from there to Sanmobil? There must have been quite a few. Don't forget they go on holiday every three or four weeks and, almost without exception, they go to Fairbanks or Anchorage. It will be more difficult to establish alibis. You won't find many people who have witnesses as to their whereabouts at 6 A.M. of a black winter morning in Alaska.

"In this case, though, we're more concerned about those who are not in the clear than those who are. I'll bring back a photostat of the prints they've taken. We should be able to get the doubtfuls' fingerprints without too much trouble and, with luck, match one set up with the phone booth's set. I don't know how this sounds to you, but it seems quite straightforward to me."

"And to me," said Brady. "I think Don and I can manage that little chore without too much difficulty. Don't forget, though, that there's a fairly large community of people down at Valdez."

"As you're my boss," Dermott said, "I'll refrain from giving you a withering stare. Who in Valdez is going to fly a round trip of thirteen hundred miles during a winter night, stopping occasionally for fuel and so giving his identity away? And who's going to fly or helicopter the sixteen hundred miles round trip to clobber Bronowski and very possibly do away with Finlayson, especially as he would be immediately recognized as a stranger the moment he set foot in this area?"

Mackenzie said, "He has a point, you must admit. In fact, two points."

Dermott went on, "And don't tell me they could have come from one of the pumping stations. They don't have helicopters."

"I didn't say anything of the sort." Brady sounded aggrieved. "All right, we'll go along with the assumption that it's Prudhoe Bay or nothing. But what if we turn up zero?"

"Then it will be your turn to come up with the next bright idea."

"Hard day," Brady said. "You for bed?"

"Yes. I had intended to look at those records and prints tonight, but the prints aren't going to be of any use to me until I return from Anchorage. Reports can wait, too. I'll just hunt up that Edmonton Telex and take it down to the Anchorage police and see if they can help me." He stood up. "By the way, has it occurred to you that you yourself may be in danger tonight?"

"Me!" It was as if Dermott had suggested some unthinkable form of lese-majeste. Then a look of vague apprehension crept into Brady's face.

"It may not be just your family who are at risk," Dermott persisted. "Why should these people bother about kidnapping when they could achieve their ends by putting a bullet in your back ― which is not, if I may say so without offense, a very easy target to miss? How are you to know there isn't a homicidal maniac in the room next door to you?"

"Good God!" Brady drank deeply from his daiquiri. Then he sat back and smiled. "At last, action! Donald, get the Smith and Wesson from my case." He took the gun, thrust it deep under his pillow and said, almost hopefully, "Don't you think you two are at risk also?"

"Sure," Mackenzie said, "but not nearly as much as you. No Jim Brady, no Brady Enterprises. You're the legend. Without either of us, you could still function quite efficiently. This homicidal maniac doesn't strike me as the type who would go for a couple of lieutenants while the captain is around."

"Good night, then," Dermott said. "Don't forget to lock your door as Boon as we're gone."

"Don't worry. You're armed, right?"

"Of course. But we don't think we'll be needing any weapons."