The Blackbird

Twenty-Six

Vivian screamed and jumped forward to knock the gun barrel down, but she was too late. She stared in disbelief from the falling bodies to Grofield, shrieking, “Why? What did you do it for?”

“Now nobody knows where the canisters are,” Grofield told her. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” He hurried to the window, unlocked it, pushed it open.

“You murdered them.”

“Do you know how to do a cannonball dive?”

“You murdered them!”

Grofield angrily grabbed her arm and shook her. “Bitch at me later! I’m not going to get killed to give you a chance to nag. Do you know how to do a cannonball dive? You wrap your arms around your legs, bend your knees up—”

“I know how,” she said. She looked and sounded dazed.

“Then do one out the window,” he told her. “Don’t worry, the snow’s soft. Then head for the building we were in before.”

“I can’t believe... ” She was looking at the bodies again.

“God damn it!” Grofield yelled, and picked her up, and threw her out the window. She’d dropped her machine gun when he grabbed her, and he threw that out after her, then threw his own machine gun and jumped.

The snow wasn’t as soft as he’d remembered. It was a tooth-rattling landing, and he got up dazed, barely remembering the fact of urgency, losing for a second or two the circumstances. He knew he was supposed to run, though, and started off through the snow, but then got enough of his brains together to remember the guns. He stopped and looked back, and they were nowhere in sight, they’d sunk into the snow without a trace. He took a step back, and somebody started shooting at him from the window he’d just left, so he turned around and ran the other way again, seeing a vague splash of green bobbing ahead of him. Vivian’s ski pants.

After floundering toward the other building for a while, he stumbled across the path between it and the lodge, and then he could go faster. He caught up with Vivian just as she reached the building, and took her arm. “We’ll go through it,” he said. “It’ll be faster.”

She pulled away from him. “I’ll take my chances on my own,” she said.

“We don’t have time for stupidity, Vivian,” he said, and opened the door and shoved her inside. There was still the odd chatter of gunfire from behind them, but it had to be people shooting at shadows, and when Grofield looked back he couldn’t see anyone yet actually outside the building and pursuing them. It would happen, but that crowd over there would need a couple of minutes to get itself organized.

Grofield went into the building, and she was standing just inside, glaring at him. He said, “I killed them because it was the only way to handle it.”

“You killed them,” she said, “because they were black.”

He stared at her. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Americans have a reputation,” she said. “I see it’s well-earned.”

“Vivian,” he said, “I couldn’t carry those four with me. I couldn’t guard them. I had to shut their mouths before anybody injected them with truth serum.”

“You wouldn’t have killed them if they were white,” she said.

“The hell I wouldn’t. Don’t you realize they would have had to kill me?”

She frowned at him. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You were saving their lives, why should they kill you?”

“Because I’m an American, working at the moment for the government, and I know too damn much about those four. I could blow the whistle on them when we all got back to the States, and nothing would convince them I’d keep my mouth shut. I could have done it the other way, I could have had all six of us jump out the window, and then we’d all run over to here, and at some point one of the four would manage to get behind me, and that would be the end of it. Given the fact that they were up here to peddle instant death for the whole world to anybody with the price, I really doubt they were Boy Scouts.”

“Neither are you,” she said. “It isn’t as though you’re a policeman.”

“You know the background on me,” Grofield reminded her. “They didn’t. All they’d know is I’m the American spy that was brought up here to be put on ice for the weekend. I’d smell like cop to them, I’d smell like all kinds of trouble to them. I did the only thing I could do, I saw to it that nobody would get those canisters, and I protected myself.” He looked through the glass in the door and said, “We’d better argue this out later. Here come the people from eagle country.”

She went willingly with him now, and he led the way down the long hall and out the door at the far end. She got out the flashlight and they followed their own footsteps back toward the skimobile. The trail was faint already, the breeze smoothing it out. Also, the first snowflakes of a new fall were already starting down.

The pursuit was quite a ways behind them, but well-equipped with lights. Looking back, Grofield could see the glare of large lanterns back there and knew the pursuers would be having no trouble following their trail through the snow. As long as they were all on foot, though, it didn’t much matter.

The skimobile was where they’d left it, lightly powdered with new snow. They got aboard and Grofield switched on the engine and headlight and drove them away from there.

They traveled in silence for ten minutes, curving in a great loop around to the right, the lights of the lodge frequently out of sight, and the snowfall gradually increasing in intensity. By the time they came around to the lake again it was a heavy slanting fall, being driven by an ever-strengthening wind. They weren’t all the way across the lake from the lodge this time, Grofield having stopped about halfway around the shore.

He turned around when he got to the edge of the lake and put a snow dune between himself and the lights of the lodge before stopping. Then he and Vivian got off and stretched and she said, “What now?”

“We bed down here,” he said.

“Till when?”

“Till morning.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. Depends. If the storm is over, I’d like to try driving south and see where we come out. If the plane comes back for our shpikee-tikee friends—”

“Shqipenija,” she said.

“That’s what I said. If the plane comes back and takes them away, we can go over there and see if they have a radio. It depends what the circumstances are.” He turned to untie the blankets from the skimobile.

She touched his arm. “Grofield.”

He looked around.

“You may have been right about those four guys,” she said. “Anyway, I believe you about why you did it.”

“I should think so,” he said, and handed her her blanket.