The Land God gave to Cain

CHAPTER TWO

I had forgotten to get anything to read and for a time I just sat there, watching the backs of the houses until London began to thin out and the green fields showed beyond the factory buildings. I was thinking about my mother and our parting and the way she had referred again to Labrador. She hadn’t mentioned the message my father had picked up. She wasn’t worried that the lives of those two men might be at stake. It was Labrador itself that was on her mind, which struck me as odd. And then I began thinking about my father again, wishing I had known him better. If I had known him better, I might have understood what it was about Labrador that had so fascinated him.

And then I got out the log books and looked through them again. It wasn’t difficult to see why the authorities and the ‘experts’ had decided to disregard the message. The books were such a mess. And yet, running through them, was this thread of the Labrador expedition.

My training as an engineer had taught me to break every problem down to its essentials, and before I knew what I was doing, I had got out pencil and paper and was jotting down every reference in the log books that could conceivably have a bearing on Briffe’s expedition. Disentangled from all the jottings and drawings and scraps of other messages, the thread became stronger and more lucid. It told a definite story, though it was necessary to read between the lines to get at it, for it soon became clear to me that my father seldom took down anything verbatim; a single line of comment or a brief note to give him the gist of the transmission was all he bothered about. This was not surprising since the forming of legible characters had always been a labour to him. Indeed, there were several jottings that it was quite impossible for me to decipher.

In all I found I had isolated seventy-three references. Twelve of these were unintelligible and seven I finally discarded as having no bearing on the subject. From the remaining fifty-four I was able, with the help of a little guess-work, to build up some sort of picture of what had happened. Briffe had presumably started out on his survey sometime around end-July for the first reference to a location occurred on August 10. The note simply said A2 — where’s that? Three days later there was a reference to — Minipi River area: and on August 15 my father had noted: Moved to A3. Then followed B1, B2 and B3. Clearly these were code names for the areas under survey and as Al would have been the first, my father must have been picking up Ledder’s reports almost from the start. There was no indication of the purpose of Briffe’s expedition — whether he was prospecting for gold or uranium or just a base metal like iron ore. He might simply be making a general survey, but this seemed unlikely since he was working for a mining company and was coding his areas and reports. The fact that the location code was dropped in later reports suggested negative results. This happened, not only in the case of A2, but in several other cases as well. Thus A3 later became Mouni Rapids and B2 near old H.B. Post. Against the reference to Mouni Rapids my father had written — Winokapau! The right direction.

By September 9, the expedition had reached Area Cl. This was later referred to as Disappointment, and later still it became obvious that it was the name of a lake. These scraps of information were all apparently gleaned from the same source — VO6AZ. And always at the same time — 2200 hours. An entry for August 3 appeared to be the first reference to the expedition. It simply said: Interesting — some sort of code. The next day’s entry read. 2200. VO6AZ again. Survey report? And he had scrawled in pencil: EMPLOYED BY THE McGOVERN MINING AND EXPLORATION COMPANY OF MONTREAL?

And on the top of the next page, again in pencil: KEEP WATCH 20 METRE BAND 10 P.M. Later in August was an entry 2200 — VO6AZ. Code again! Why can’t he report in clear?

And a note on the following page: BRIFFE, BRIFFE, BRIFFE. WHO IS BRIFFE? 75 METRE PHONE. NET FREQUENCY 3.780 kcs. WATCH 2000. But this was so fantastically scrawled over that I had difficulty in deciphering it. Two pages further on I found the name Laroche mentioned for the first time. He had written it in capitals, heavily underlining it and putting a question mark at the end, and had added a note: QUERY LEDDER.

Isolated from all the nonsense and doodles which disfigured pages of his log books, my father’s notes confirmed what I already knew — that he had been picking up messages from Simon Ledder at Goose Bay to the McGovern Mining Company in Montreal and that these were daily reports in some sort of code passing on information received from Briffe at 2000 hours from somewhere in Labrador. I found one half-obliterated entry which appeared to read: 3.780 — nothing, nothing, nothing — always nothing. It suggested that my father was also keeping regular watch on Briffe’s transmitting frequency. But I could only pick out for certain one entry a day at 2200 hours, until September 14. That was the day of the crash, and from then on the pattern changed and the entries became more frequent, the comments fuller.

Two days before that Briffe appeared to have called for air transport to move the party forward to C2, for on September 13 occurred an entry: Plane delayed, W bad. B. calling for usual two flights, three in first wave and Baird and himself in second. If C2 NORTH OF Cl THEY ARE GETTING V. NEAR.

The move apparently took place on September 14, but the first flight proved difficult for at 1945 hours he had made this entry: In luck — Contact VO6AZ. Beaver floatplane not back. Scrawled across this were the words TROUBLE and KEEP CONSTANT WATCH ON 75-METRE BAND. And then an hour later at 2045: Fog cleared, but Beaver still missing. VO6AZ was now apparently transmitting to Montreal every hour at 15 minutes to the hour, for the next time entry was for 2145. But nothing had been written against it and the time itself was barely decipherable amongst the mass of little drawings my father had made. In fact, the whole of this last page of the log book was an indescribable mess and it took me a long time to sort it out. The next entry, however, was only half an hour later — 2275: Advance party safe C2. Beaver back. Hellish W. report. B. going … The last part was completely unreadable. But the comment that followed was clear enough: POOR HOLDING DISAPPOINTMENT — THAT THE REASON? BARELY AN HOUR. THE FOOL! WHAT’S DRIVING HIM?

After that the entries were back to 15 minutes to the hour -2245,2345,0045, right on to 0345. They were all blank. There was a sort of finality about those blank entries, and though it was the soft, warm English countryside that slid past the windows of the train, I saw only the cold and fog and the desolate misery of Labrador, the night closing in on the little floatplane and my father sitting up half the night, waiting to find out whether they were safe or not.

The entries in the log book were, of course, for British Summer Time which is four and a half hours ahead of Goose Bay. Briffe’s report that the plane was back must have been made shortly after 5 p.m. so that my father’s reference to ‘barely an hour’ obviously referred to the fact that Briffe was taking off with little more than an hour to go before nightfall.

The train stopped at Swindon and I sat staring down at that last page of the log book. I couldn’t blame the authorities for regarding him as unbalanced. It had taken me almost a quarter of an hour to decipher that one page. I could see my father sitting in his wheelchair with the earphones clamped to his head, waiting and waiting for the news of Briffe’s safety that would never come, and passing the long, slow, silent hours by drawing. He had covered the whole of that page and all the cover of the exercise book with little pencil drawings — lions and fish with faces and canoes, as well as squares and circles, anything that his wandering hand and brain took a fancy to. It was here that he had written — C2-C2-C2… Where the hell is it? and had scrawled the words: LOST AND GONE FOREVER and framed them with the names — Winokapau — Tishinakamau — Attikonak.

As the train started again I picked up the last log book, the one my mother had tried to hide from me. He could have had little sleep that night, for the first entry was for 0800 hours. Ledder failed to make contact. And an hour later — No contact. After that there were entries for every hour, but nothing against them. And by midday he was picking up odd scraps of news commentaries and transmissions from other stations. The word GREENWOOD occurred once. This appeared to be some sort of code word, like MAYDAY, for immediately afterwards there was a note: Air search ordered. There was a reference to bad weather and then, two days later: Nova Scotia Air Rescue base.

But this book, like the last, was a mass of doodles, on the front of the cover, inside and all over that first page, an indication of the long hours he had spent alone, huddled over the receiver. If I hadn’t been so familiar with his writing I don’t think I should ever have been able to decipher it.

I rechecked the entries against the notes I had made, and as I turned the pages the men involved in the disaster were revealed. There was Briffe, the leader of the party, and a man called Baird, and then a third man, the pilot. Ledder keeps calling Laroche. This was on the second page, and two days later he had written the name LAROCHE again in capitals, and underneath: No, it can’t be. I must be mad. Nowhere could I find the names of the three men who had gone up to Area C2 on the first flight, though I did find a further reference to them amongst the jottings from news broadcasts — Advance party evacuated from C2, all three safe.

There were two other entries I thought might have some bearing on the disaster, one of which I could only partly decipher. On September 23 he had written 1705 — Made contact VO6AZ — Query geologists. And then two pages farther on: 1719-VO6AZ. SO THEY HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT… The rest was completely obliterated, though I could read my father’s initials, J.F.F., written for some unknown reason into the middle of the sentence.

Excerpts from news broadcasts referring to the search continued until September 26. But on that date, against the time 1300 hours, he had written the one word: Finis. And then later the same day: 1714 — Made contact Ledder. Briffe and Baird both dead. L. safe. And he had added: L–L-L–L-L–IMPOSSIBLE.

Reading all this through as the train ran into Bristol, it was clear that my father had not only followed the story of the whole expedition with great interest, but he had even made direct contact with VO6AZ to clarify certain points. And bearing in mind that he was only making very brief notes for his own personal use and not transcribing messages in detail, it seemed to me there was nothing to indicate that there was anything wrong with his mental state. Some of the comments I didn’t understand and, of course, these, if looked at amongst the jottings and drawings of the muddled pages in which they appeared, would give a different impression. If, however, the so-called experts had bothered to isolate the references to the expedition, as I had done, they would have seen how clear he was about it all.

All the way out to the airport I was thinking about this and how my mother had seen him standing on his two feet and reaching out to the map of Labrador. There must be something in that message. Whether the men were dead or not, I was convinced my father hadn’t imagined it. He’d known it was important. And now all his effort was wasted because I hadn’t had the sense to isolate the relevant passages for the police as I had done on the train.

It was after six when I reached the airport — too late to report to the Company office. I felt sad and depressed, and instead of going to my digs, I turned in at the Airport Bar. The sight of Farrow drinking with a bunch of charter pilots made me think that perhaps there was still something I could do that would convince the authorities. Farrow was the Canadian pilot who had told me about the search for the missing geologists and, flying trans-Atlantic charters, I knew he must land sometimes at Goose Bay.

I thought about it whilst I had my drink, and in the end I went over to the group and asked him if I could have a word with him. ‘It’s about that survey party that was lost,’ I said as he moved down the bar with me.

The search was called off over a week ago. Briffe was dead. Baird, too. Only the pilot got out.’

‘Yes, I know.’ I asked him what he’d have to drink.

‘Fruit juice. I’m flying tomorrow.’ I ordered and when I turned to him again, I saw that he was watching me. He had baby blue eyes in a round, friendly face. But the eyes were shrewd. ‘What’s biting you?’

‘Do you ever land at Goose Bay?’

‘Sure. Every time we do the west-bound flight — unless it damps down.’

‘Do you know a radio operator called Simon Ledder?’

‘Ledder?’ He shook his head. ‘Where’s he work — Control?’

‘I don’t know exactly. His address is care of D.O.T. Communications.’

‘That’s the civilian radio station. D.O.T. stands for Department of Transport. They’re over on the American side.’

The drinks came and I paid, conscious that he was watching me as he sipped his fruit juice, waiting for me to tell him what it was all about. And now that I had him here alone with me, I didn’t know quite how to put it to him. I didn’t want to tell him more than I had to. I didn’t want to risk the look of disbelief that it would inevitably produce. ‘You’re flying tomorrow, you say. Will you be landing at Goose?’

‘Yes. Around twenty-one hundred hours our time.’

‘Will you have a word with Ledder for me — telephone him perhaps?’

‘What about?’

‘Well…’ It was so damned difficult. ‘He’s a ham operator,’ 1 explained, ‘and he was in touch with a British ham on three occasions — Station G2STO. There’s a report, too. Could you ask him to let you have a copy of it?’

‘What’s the report about?’

I hesitated. But he had to know, of course. ‘It’s about Briffe and his party. Ledder was the radio link between the survey party and the mining company they were working for. The authorities have asked him for a report of all his radio contacts with Briffe and also the contacts with G2STO.’

‘How do you know they’ve asked him for a report?’ His voice was suddenly different, the softness gone out of it.

‘Somebody told me,’ I said vaguely. But he was curious now and it made me nervous. ‘I’m sorry to bother you with this, but when I saw you in here I thought perhaps if you could have a word with Ledder …’

‘You could write to him,’ he said. And then, when I didn’t say anything, he added, ‘Hadn’t you better tell me a little more — why you’re so interested in this report, for instance?’

He was still watching me curiously, waiting for me to explain. And suddenly I knew it was no good. I’d have to tell him the whole story. ‘G2STO was my father,’ I said. And I told him about the wire I had received from my mother and how I’d gone home to find my father dead. I told it all exactly as it had happened to me, but when I came to my discovery of the message from Briffe, he said, ‘From Briffe? But Briffe was dead days before.’

‘I know.’ My voice sounded suddenly weary. ‘That’s what the police told me.’ And then I got out the notes I’d made in the train and handed them to him. ‘But if Briffe was dead, how do you explain that?’

He smoothed the sheet of paper out on the bar top and read it through slowly and carefully.

‘They’re all references from my father’s radio log,’ I said.

He nodded, frowning as he read.

I watched him turn the sheet over. He had reached the final message now. ‘Does it sound as though he was mad?’ I said.

• He didn’t say anything. He had read through the notes now and I watched him turn the sheet over again, staring down at it, still frowning.

‘That’s what the authorities think,’ I added. ‘They’re not going to resume the search. I had a letter from them this morning.’

He still didn’t say anything and I began to wish I hadn’t told him. The men were reported dead. That alone would convince him that my father had imagined it all. And then his blue eyes were looking straight at me. ‘And you think the search should be resumed — is that it?’ he asked.

I nodded.

He stared at me for a moment. ‘Have you got the log books or do the police still hold them?’

‘No, I’ve got them.’ I said it reluctantly because I didn’t want him to see them. But instead of asking for them he began putting a lot of questions to me. And when he had got the whole story out of me, he fell silent again, hunched over the sheet of paper, staring at it. I thought he was reading it through again, but maybe he was just considering the situation, for he suddenly looked across at me. ‘And what you’ve told me is the absolute truth?’ He was leaning slightly forward, watching my face.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And the log books look crazy unless all the contacts are isolated, the way they are here?’ He tapped the sheet of paper.

I nodded. ‘I thought if I could find out a little more about the three direct contacts my father made with Ledder … what Ledder’s reaction to my father was …’

‘The thing that gets me,’ he muttered, ‘is how your father could possibly have picked up this transmission.’ He was frowning and his tone was puzzled. ‘As I recollect it, all Briffe had was a forty-eight set. I’m sure I read that somewhere. Yes, and operated by a hand generator at that. It just doesn’t seem possible.’

He was making the same point that the Flight Lieutenant had made. ‘But surely,’ I said, ‘there must be certain conditions in which he could have picked it up?’

‘Maybe. I wouldn’t know about that. But the old forty-eight set is a transmitter of very limited range -1 do know that.’ He gave a slight shrug. ‘Still, it’s just possible, I suppose. You’d have to check with somebody like this guy Ledder to make certain.’

He had picked up the sheet of paper again, and he stared at 37it for so long that I felt sure he wasn’t going to help me and was only trying to think out how to tell me so. He was my only hope of making effective contact with Ledder. If he wouldn’t help, then there was nobody else I could go to — and I felt I had to settle this thing, one way or the other. If my father had made that message up — well, all right — but I had to know. I had to be absolutely certain for my own peace of mind that those two men really were dead.

And then Farrow put the sheet of paper down and turned to me. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I think you ought to go to Goose and have a word with Ledder yourself.’

I stared at him, unable to believe that I’d heard him correctly. ‘Go to Goose Bay? You mean fly there — myself?’

He half smiled. ‘You won’t get into Goose any other way.’

It was such an incredible suggestion that for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. He couldn’t be serious. ‘All I wanted,’ I murmured, ‘was for you to have a word with him … find out what he thought of my father, whether he considered him sane. You can take those notes and — ‘

‘Look,’ he said. ‘If you’re convinced your father was sane, then these notes’ — he tapped the sheet of paper — ‘all the messages, everything — including that final message — are fact. They happened. And if that’s what you believe, then you must go over there yourself. Apart from the question of whether Briffe’s alive or not, you owe it to your father. If I go to this guy Ledder, he’ll just answer my questions, and that will be that. You might just as well write him a letter for all the good it’ll do.’ And then he added, ‘If you’re really convinced that your father did pick up a transmission from Briffe, then there’s only one thing for you to do — go over there and check for yourself. It’s the only way you’ll get the authorities to take it seriously.’

I was appalled at the way he was putting the responsibility back on to me. ‘But I just haven’t the money,’ I murmured.

‘I could help you there.’ He was watching me closely all the time. ‘I’m checking out on a west-bound flight at O-seven hundred tomorrow morning. We’ll be into Goose around four-thirty in the afternoon — their time. I might be able to fix it. You’d have about two hours there and I could radio ahead to Control for them to have Ledder meet the plane. Well?’

He meant it. That was the incredible thing. He really meant it. ‘But what about my job?’ I was feeling suddenly scared. ‘I can’t just walk out — ‘

‘You’d be back on Friday.’

‘But…’ It was all so appallingly sudden, and Canada was like another world to me. I’d never been out of England, except once to Belgium. ‘But what about the regulations and — and wouldn’t the extra weight …‘I found I was desperately searching for some sort of excuse.

He asked me then whether I had a British passport. I had, of course, for I’d needed one for my holiday in Bruges and Ghent the previous year, and it was at my lodgings, with the rest of my things. And when he told me that my weight wouldn’t make any difference to the safety margin and that he was good friends with the Customs and Immigration people both here and at Goose, all I could think of to say was, ‘I’ll have to think it over.’

He gripped my arm then, and those baby blue eyes of his were suddenly hard. ‘Either you believe what your father wrote, or you don’t. Which is it?’

The way he put it was almost offensive and I answered hotly, ‘Don’t you understand — that message was the cause of my father’s death.’

‘Okay,’ he said tersely. ‘Then it’s time you faced up to the implications of that message.’

‘How do you mean?’

He relaxed his grip on my arm. ‘See here, boy,’ he said gently, ‘if Briffe really did transmit on September twenty-ninth, then either there’s been some ghastly error or — well, the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.’ His words reminded me of the shocked expression on the Flight Lieutenant’s face when I had suggested the pilot might have made a mistake. ‘Now do you see why you’ve got to go over and talk to Ledder yourself? What that message says’ — and he jabbed his finger at the sheet of paper he had laid on the bar counter — ‘is that Laroche was wrong when he said Briffe and the other guy were dead. And I’m warning you, it’s going to take a lot to persuade the authorities of that.’ He patted my arm gently and the blue eyes were no longer hard, but looked at me sympathetically. ‘Well, it’s up to you now. You’re the only man who’s going to be really convinced about that message — unless they find somebody else picked it up. If you’ve the courage of your convictions…’ And then he added, ‘I just thought you’d better be clear in your mind about what you’re up against.’

It was odd, but now that he’d put it to me so bluntly, I no longer felt out of my depth. I was suddenly sure of myself and what I should do, and without any hesitation I heard myself say, ‘If you can fix it, I’d like to come with you tomorrow.’

‘Okay, boy. If that’s what you’d like.’ He hesitated. ‘You really are sure about this?’

In a sudden mental flash I saw my father as he had been last Christmas when I had been home, sitting up there in his room with the headphones on and his long, thin fingers with the burn marks playing so sensitively over the tuning dials. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m quite sure about it.’

He nodded his head slowly. ‘Queer business,’ he murmured. A perplexed look had come over his face and I wondered whether, now that I had agreed to go — wanted to go — he was going to back down on his offer. But all he said was, ‘Meet me down at our freight office — that’s the end of the block, next to Number One hangar — say, about a quarter before six tomorrow morning. Have your passport with you and an overnight bag. Better pack some warm clothes. You may be cold back in the fuselage. Okay?’

I nodded. ‘But what about the other end?’ I murmured. ‘Surely it isn’t as easy as that to fly somebody into another country?’ It was an automatic reaction. Now that I’d said I’d go the difficulties seemed insuperable.

He laughed and patted my shoulder. ‘Canada isn’t the States, you know. It’s still a Dominion — no fingerprints, no visa. I’ll just have to clear you with Immigration and Customs, that’s all.’ He stared at me a moment as though weighing me up and then he said, ‘Don’t forget about the warm clothes.’ He turned then with a quick nod and walked slowly back to join his group at the other end of the bar.

I stood there, the drink I hadn’t even started clutched in my hand, and a feeling of intense loneliness crept over me.