The Blackbird

Twenty-Four

“This is close enough,” Grofield said, and stopped the skimobile.

Sitting behind him, arms wrapped around him again, the girl said, “What do we do now?”

“Walk the rest of the way,” he said.

They had repacked the skimobile, leaving more room for Vivian in back, and then Grofield had driven back out onto the lake and traveled about halfway across toward the lodge before making a sharp left and heading toward the shore. They’d had to make brief intermittent use of the flashlight, there being no longer any star-shine at all to guide themselves by. The last few stars were winking out far above the lodge, apparently being covered by a cloud mass moving down from the north. The breeze had sharpened a bit, but was not yet a real wind. Grofield’s cheeks were numb, though, and his fingers were aching again despite the thicker gloves. He wasn’t sure if that meant it was getting colder out or if it was just the result of his continued exposure.

In any case, with sparing use of the flashlight they’d guided themselves to shore and had then traveled over the dunes in a great half circle around the lodge, until the buildings were between them and the lake. And now Grofield had stopped, a good distance from the buildings, but close enough to see their lights. From this side, the red smudge of embers could be seen where the burned-out dormitory had once stood.

Grofield and Vivian got up from the skimobile and Grofield said, “We won’t take anything but the guns and the flashlight. We’ll need that to follow our tracks back here again.”

“If we live,” she said.

“I intend to live,” he told her. “After all the things I’ve been involved in in my life, to be killed up here in the back of nowhere in the middle of somebody else’s stupid squabble would be too ridiculous to contemplate. I’m not going to get killed because I refuse to be made a fool of. Come on.”

It was slow work, walking through the soft snow, but warming. When Grofield heard Vivian panting beside him, he slowed his pace a little. Two minutes one way or the other wouldn’t make that much difference.

The slower pace helped her, and she got her breath back enough to say, “Shouldn’t you tell me your plan now? How will I know what to do when we get there?”

“Your job is to point,” Grofield told her. “We are going to snoop around over there until we find your four Americans.”

“Do you think they’ll tell you where the canisters are because you’re another American? How will you be able to talk to them without being caught?”

“All in good time,” Grofield said. “Don’t talk, it wastes breath.”

“But I want to know,” she said.

“Besides,” he said, “we’re getting too close. They might have outside guards.”

“In weather like this?”

“Hush.”

She hushed, and they moved in silence toward the buildings. Directly ahead was the lodge, with the remaining dormitory on an angle back to its left. That was the building Grofield had been briefly imprisoned in. Symmetrically to the right of the lodge was the smoldering remnant of the other dormitory, and beyond that the storage building from which Grofield had stolen the skimobile. The three remaining buildings all contained lit windows, so all would be occupied by the invaders, whoever they were.

There were no outside floodlights, an unexpected blessing in a place like this. Or maybe not so unexpected, given the climate. There would rarely be anything outside to look at except snow.

Still, light-spill from the windows did give some illumination to the snow outside, so the closer they got to the buildings the slower Grofield moved. He was beginning to wish he was dressed like Finnish ski troops, in white uniform and white skis. Of course, Vivian dressed like that could be a little startling, nothing showing except the black face, the Cheshire Cat as done by Eartha Kitt.

She said, “What are you chuckling about?”

“A mental image,” he said.

“You’re weird,” she said.

“You must be right,” Grofield said, “or I wouldn’t be here at all. Now hush.”

“Mm.” One syllable, but full of muted mutiny.

Grofield was moving now at an oblique angle, toward the dormitory building on the left. Of the fifteen or so windows along the side, no more than five were lit. But if a guard were on duty to watch the outside, he wouldn’t be in a lit room, he’d sit in darkness, so he would be able to see out without the window mirroring the room behind him. It was the dark windows he had to be wary of, not the lit ones.

He stopped a dozen yards from the building and crouched in the snow, pulling Vivian down beside him. He whispered, “We’re going into that building there. It’s a long hall inside, with rooms on both sides. Like a hotel. There’s an exit door at each end, and we’re going to the nearest one. We’re going to go around in a curve and try to keep away from any light shining out. You’ll follow me, and if I stop, you stop. If I drop to the ground, you drop. And be silent.”

“All right.”

“And if I turn around and start running, you do the same.”

“Don’t worry. What if you start shooting?”

“Guess,” he whispered. “Come on.”

They moved forward again, Grofield in the lead, and came around slowly to the end of the dormitory building. There were no windows on either end, just the doors, with small panes of glass showing the lit hallway inside. They reached the door without being seen and Grofield looked through the glass. The hall was empty. He tried the door and it was unlocked, and he and Vivian slipped quickly inside.

“Flashlight,” he whispered.

She removed a glove, took the flashlight from her pocket, put the glove in the pocket.

He nodded at the first door on the right. “Stand to the side of that door,” he whispered. “When I open it, stick your arm over and shine the light in. But don’t get in the doorway.”

“All right.”

She got in position, and nodded that she was ready. He held the machine gun in his right hand and reached forward to the doorknob with his left. He shoved the door open and the light shone in and the room was empty.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Now the other side.”

The same thing on the other side, the flashlight shone on an empty room.

They worked their way down the hall that way. About half the room doors were open, and they could be more quickly checked. Three were locked from the outside and Grofield kicked the doors in. And when they were done they had found no one, the building was except for themselves completely empty.

Grofield stood frowning in the corridor when they were done checking the place out. “They must have a smaller force than I thought,” he said. “All concentrated in the main building.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We go over there. But we be careful about it.”

“Good.”

He went down to the door at the end of the corridor, and looked through the glass at the main building. Most of the windows were lit, giving the place a festive air. Yuletide cheer, all that. He stood at the window, watching, and after about a minute he saw a dark shape moving along outside the wall, silhouetted when passing in front of a window, invisible until the next window. He was moving from right to left along the rear of the building, and when he got to the corner, invisible for just a second, he turned around and went back the other way. Meaning there was probably another man walking a post along the side of the building. Grofield squinted in that direction and after a minute saw him. Another dark shape, hunch-shouldered, bulky, moving gloomily along outside the warm windows.

Behind him Vivian said, “Do you see anything?”

“Guards,” Grofield said, and turned to look at her. “They have four outside guards, one on each side of the building. Moving, not stationary.”

“What are we going to do?”

Grofield turned and looked out the window again. He couldn’t see either of the guards at first, but then he picked them both up. “They aren’t happy,” he said. “Unhappy guards are not alert guards. Come here and watch. Can you see them?”

She came, the two of them pressed together at the small window, the fur of her hat brushing the side of his face. “No,” she said.

“Look along the back wall,” he said. “Third lit window from the left. He’s going to pass that in just a second, from left to right. Now!”

“Yes! I see him. If you hadn’t told me, I’d never have found him at all.”

“All right,” Grofield said. “I’m going over there. You keep watching that third window. When the coast is clear I’ll stand so that window’s behind me and I’ll wave my arm over my head. I’ll only do it once, so keep your eyes open.”

“I will.”

“And bring my gun when you come.”

“You aren’t taking it with you?”

“I won’t want noise over there,” he said.

“But just in case—”

“It’ll slow me down,” he said. “You keep watching there. This shouldn’t take longer than ten minutes.”

“All right,” she said.

Grofield walked back down the corridor, stopping off in one of the lit rooms where he’d noticed a lamp on a bedside table. He unplugged the lamp, put it on the floor, stood on it, wrapped the wire around his gloved hand, and yanked the wire loose from the lamp. He wrapped the rest of the wire around his hand, tucked in the end, and left the room.

He continued down the corridor and went out the rear door, the same way he and Vivian had come in. He turned right and walked away from the building far enough so none of the lit windows would betray him, then walked down the length of it to the other end and then back toward the building again until he stood against the corner of it. The lodge was dead ahead, and the door behind which Vivian was waiting was just to his right.

He squinted until he picked up both of the guards, and watched their movements for a while. They had different length beats to walk, the one on the side having much less territory to cover, so they rarely met at the corner, which was good. Grofield waited till one time when they did meet, and then both were going away, their backs to him, and at that point he ran forward, heading for the corner of the lodge, coming in at the angle at which he was least likely to be seen from any window. He moved as fast as he could through the snow, was breathing hard when he reached the lodge wall, and leaned there for a second till he’d caught his breath. Then he moved to the right.

The space between the second and third windows was the widest darkness along the rear wall, a fact he’d noted while watching from inside the dormitory. Grofield went halfway between those two windows and dropped to his knees against the wall. He ducked his head down and crouched into a ball, making himself as small as possible. There he busily unwrapped most of the wire from around his hand, left some, wrapped the other end around his other hand.

He was now in darkness, against a dark wall, a small indistinct lump. The guard would pass by soon, gloomy, thinking about other things, wishing his tour of outside duty was up, and it was unlikely he would even see this low bump of darkness against the wall of the building, much less pay any attention to what he was seeing.

Grofield waited, listening, and it seemed a long time before he heard the plodding thud of the guard’s footsteps coming this way, following the trough he had worn in the snow, out half a dozen feet from the edge of the building, a path he’d apparently chosen because it gave him a chance to walk in the light of the windows.

Grofield listened, not moving, waiting for the first sign of hesitancy in the footsteps, but they came steadily, unenthusiastically on. They slogged on by Grofield, and the instant they were past him Grofield raised his head, looked over his shoulder, and saw the bowed head of the guard, who was walking along with a Bren gun in his hands.

Grofield got to his feet. He could do that silently, but he couldn’t move silently through snow, so the next part had to be fast, and it had to be done before the guard reached the next window’s illumination. Grofield ran forward, his arms up over his head, and as the startled guard was turning around Grofield was on him, bringing his arms down, reversing them, the wire flipping over the guard’s head.

The guard was trying to turn around, trying to aim the Bren gun, trying to keep Grofield from getting behind him, but it was too late. Grofield closed his right hand on the guard’s left shoulder from behind, yanked him around, shoved his knee into the small of the guard’s back, and spread his arms as wide as they would go, which closed the loop of wire around the guard’s throat.

The guard thrashed, gurgling, trying to call out. The Bren gun dropped into the snow, his gloved hands clawed at the wire. He struggled hard enough to knock them both over, and they landed on their sides, but it only relaxed Grofield’s tension on the wire for a second, and then he had it as strong as ever. The guard kept struggling, kicking snow in the air, waving his hands behind his head in a wild attempt to get at Grofield, and Grofield gritted his teeth and held the wire taut.

Slowly the guard’s struggles weakened, but soon it was possible for Grofield to get up onto his knees, force the guard’s body facedown, then kneel on his back and finish the job.

He left the wire where it was, and got to his feet. He was panting, and at first he just stood there and waited for the nerves jumping in his arms and shoulders to calm down. Then he walked over to the trapezoid of illumination from the third window, raised an arm over his head, and waved it.