The Blackbird

Sixteen

Twenty minutes after they left Roberval the truck stopped again. Grofield looked up and said, “Lunch again?”

“We change vehicles now,” Marba said. “Come along.”

They all climbed down out of the truck again. Everyone but Marba and Grofield was heavily armed by now, with machine guns slung to their backs and automatics hanging from cartridge belts at their waists. Grofield felt as though he’d been caught up with the advance party of a guerrilla revolution. He said, “You people aren’t here to take Quebec away from Canada, are you?”

Marba looked at him in surprise. “What an idea! Where do you think of such things?”

“How do I know? Maybe you’re tied in with these Quebec Libre people. I’m a stranger here myself.”

Marba smiled and patted his arm. “Don’t fret yourself,” he said. “Territorial expansion is not on our agenda this weekend. Come along.”

Grofield saw now that there was a large frozen lake just past the truck, and on it a medium-size twin-engine plane fixed with skis for landing on ice. He went with the others as they tramped down through the snow and out over the ice toward the plane, all of them except the driver of the truck. When Grofield looked back, the truck was making a U-turn and going away.

He looked around, and there was nothing encouraging to be seen in any direction. Ahead lay the plane, with the blue-white expanse of frozen lake beyond it. On the other three sides the snowbound shore. A few structures were visible a distance away, but none of them looked inhabited.

How had he gotten himself into this? Up in the frozen north without his electric long johns, with Marba and his friends really putting him on ice for the duration. Even if he could slip away from this well-armed bunch, there was nowhere for him to go. And even if he had somewhere to go, there was nothing for him to report to Ken and his bunch. And he knew Ken disliked him enough by now to take any excuse to ship him back to face that robbery rap.

What if he tried to get away from Marba and Ken? There was always the chance that Marba and his people would let it go at that, but Ken wouldn’t. An entire espionage outfit from the United States Government would turn its energies to finding one Alan Grofield, actor/heistman, and however inept they were in their dealings with the Third World it was Grofield’s gloomy conviction they could hold their own against one Grofield.

Not that there was any point thinking about his options and trying to make plans. The fact was, he didn’t have any options, and all his plans had already been made for him by other people. The only thing left for him to do was keep his eyes wide open and try somehow still to be alive on Monday.

The plane’s engines were already turning over as they all clambered aboard. Grofield, totally adapted to the jet age, found it strange to see propellers whirling ahead of the wings, blowing snow into everybody’s face as they boarded. He found himself mistrusting the plane, and visualizing an icy death on some remote snowy mountainside near the Arctic Circle.

The plane was only nominally a passenger job, with hinged bucket seats that could be let down along both sides, so the group sat in two facing rows. There was no heat, and the metal seat was cold even through the overcoat Grofield wore. He tucked his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and gloomily watched everybody breathing steam.

The plane took off almost at once, trundling forever along the ice, going very slowly, almost reluctantly, bumping and trembling and apparently trying to shake itself apart rather than fly, but finally lifting as though the task were more than it could bear. Never had a plane seemed so conscious of its own weight, and that remote snowy mountainside loomed once again in Grofield’s mind.

But once they had climbed to their cruising altitude, the plane settled down and began to behave, sailing along smoothly and matter-of-factly through the sky. Grofield, twisting around to look down past his elbow and out the small side window, saw remote snowy mountainsides down there, and here and there the glint of sunlight reflecting off frozen water. Lakes and snow, and then dark greenery, the Canadian North Woods.

It was louder inside the plane than in a New York City subway car, but Grofield tried to talk anyway, shouting into Marba’s ear, “Do we fly long?”

On the second try he heard Marba’s response: “Less than an hour!” So that wasn’t too bad.

He’d never realized before now just how used he was to carrying a watch. Now he felt lost without it, without being able to compartmentalize his day. He didn’t know how long they’d been in the air, he didn’t know when an hour would be up, how much longer he could expect them to travel, and the result was that everything seemed much slower. He was sure an hour had gone by, and still they droned on through the sky. He was sure an hour and a half had gone by. He was sure two hours had gone by.

He didn’t want to ask Marba. He wasn’t sure why, but it just didn’t seem to him that he wanted to ask Marba what time it was, or how long had they been in the air, or how much longer now till they landed. It would in some way be a confession of weakness, and therefore it had to be avoided.

But he came very close to asking anyway, eventually reaching the point where he decided to count slowly to a hundred, and if the plane hadn’t started to land by then he would ask. So he began counting, in his head, and he was at three hundred twenty-seven when the plane abruptly banked to the right, tilting Grofield’s side of the plane down and making him jump, startled.

Everyone else jumped too, and then all grinned sheepishly at one another, the expressions strangely at variance with all the artillery they wore draped all over themselves. Grofield looked away from the contrast and out the window again, and way below there was another frozen lake, with what looked like rough wooden buildings clustered together beside it. And smoke coming from two or three chimneys.

The plane circled once, dropping gradually, sliding down an invisible spiral chute, and then came straight in toward the lake, now seeming to be going far too fast, the surrounding mountains rushing by, covered with snow and pine trees. They hit badly, jokingly, the plane creaking and groaning in protest, as though someone had tossed a fifty-pound sack of potatoes on a porch glider. Then they swerved a little, but the pilot got things under control again and they rolled with relative smoothness across the lake to an easy stop.

The silence seemed to be full of humming, when the engines switched off. Grofield yawned to pop his ears and the humming changed in tone but remained present. He said, “I don’t think much of your air force.”

Marba smiled. “We have to make do with what the major powers leave us,” he said. He got to his feet, and Grofield got up with him.

There was no one outside the plane to greet them. It couldn’t be later than three o’clock, but the sun was a red ball low in the clear sky, and lights shone in the buildings on shore. They looked warm and cozy and comfortable, and Grofield happily joined the others scrunching across the snow-covered ice toward them. He said to Marba, “What is this place?”

“Once a logging camp, I believe,” Marba said. “More recently a private hunting lodge. At the moment, it has been loaned to us.”

“By whom?”

“A sympathizer,” Marba said, and offered his cool smile again.

“I like how you answer all my questions,” Grofield said.

“Of course. I hide nothing from you.”

The sound of engines made Grofield look back, and damn if the plane wasn’t turning around. Grofield watched and it trundled away across the ice, apparently planning to get into position to take off into the wind. He said, “That’s going away too?”

“It will return for us,” Marba said, and took Grofield’s elbow. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm.”