Isvik Page 11

  ‘Well?’

  He shook his head, suddenly reaching for his drink and swallowing it in one quick gulp. He stared at the empty glass for a moment. I think he would have liked another, but instead he pulled himself slowly to his feet.

  Ward had also risen, the two of them facing each other. ‘You mention in your book that some time after the capitulation at Port Stanley, Gómez was given the job of testing an aircraft for its long-range capabilities, flying it out of that Argentine base at the bottom of Tierra del Fuego. You suggest he was secretly testing it for work on the Antarctic land mass, flying it south over the pack ice. How far south? Do you know where?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As far as the Ice Shelf?’

  ‘No sé.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been entirely secret since you say it was reported in the papers. You even have a picture of him taken on his return. It was a German plane, a Fokker I believe?’

  ‘Si.’

  There was a moment’s silence, the two of them standing there and the restaurant quite still now. ‘We’ll be stopping off in Lima,’ Ward said. ‘If Gómez is not at the address you have given me I shall presume it is because you’ve been in touch with him, so don’t phone him. Okay?’ And he added, ‘I will not, of course, mention our meeting here in Mexico City.’

  The other nodded and turned towards the door. But then he paused, a look almost of malice. ‘If you go to Cajamarca you should know el Niño is running.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘El Niño is the counter-equatorial current.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Every six or seven years it overruns the Humboldt.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then … per’aps you will see.’ He smiled, adding, ‘When el Niño run the fishermen don’t earn nothing because fish like the cold of the north-flowing Humboldt, not the warmth of the Equatorial, and with no fish, the birds die.’

  ‘How do you know what’s happening down there in Peru? Have you been there again?’

  ‘No. It is in the papers. The birds are dying.’

  ‘And how’s that concern us?’

  ‘I am never on the Pacific coast in el Niño year,’ Rodriguez said, still smiling, ‘but if the rains of the Amazon slip across the Cordilleras you will maybe have a bad flight to Cajamarca. ¡Buen viaje!’ he added, not bothering now to hid his malice as he turned quickly to the door and made his escape.

  Ward knocked back the rest of his tequila and called for the cuenta. ‘Time we got some sleep. The next few days could be a wee bit hectic.’

  All the way back to the hotel he sat hunched and silent in the rear of the taxi, his eyes closed. He only spoke once, and then he was merely voicing his thoughts aloud. ‘That aircraft was fitted with long-range tanks. He could have got to the South Pole and back. Or he could have flown it around in the wastes of ice where Shackleton lost the Endurance. Nobody would see him there.’ And he added, ‘Ah wonder how much Iris knows?’

  I failed to follow his train of thought, my mind still on the meeting with Rodriguez. ‘You really think he was blackmailing the man?’

  He looked at me then, a quick flick of the eyes. ‘Of course. And not just Gómez. A book like that, it’s a great temptation fur a journalist who knows so much he’s scared to go on livin’ in his own country.’

  I said something about the political climate in the Argentine having changed since the Falklands War. I thought I knew that much about the country. I suppose I had read it somewhere. But he laughed and shook his head.

  ‘That’s a very naïve assessment. Nothin’ has changed. Not really. The Argentines are still ethnically the same, the population still predominantly Italian, most of them havin’ their roots in the south of Italy and in Sicily. The Camorra and the Mafia are part of their heritage, violence in their blood.’

  I started to argue with him, but all he said was, ‘Leopards don’t change their spots just because the fashion in political leadership alters. And remember, the Junta that decided on the invasion of the Malvinas, at least tae of them, were of Italian extraction. They’re finished, of course, now, but there will be others – others that are lyin’ low fur the moment. Rodriguez knows that. Probably knows who they are. That’s why he’s scared to remain in Buenos Aires.’

  He relapsed into silence then, and because my mind was still trying to grapple with the politics of a country I knew very little about, I failed to ask him whether Gómez had made that flight on his own or if he had had a crew with him.

  It was only later, when I was lying in my bed, with the neon lights of a bar across the road flickering on the curtains and music blaring, that I remembered Ward standing in the saloon of the Cutty Sark and asking Iris Sunderby who she had in mind as navigator, who the man was who had convinced her he had also seen a ship locked in the ice of the Weddell Sea. I had thought at the time she had been referring to an officer on some survey vessel, the British Antarctic Survey’s supply ship perhaps, or else a pelagic fisherman or whaler, even an Antarctic explorer. But now it came back to me. She had said, A man I’m convinced has actually seen what my husband saw. Those had been her words, and if she was being exact, they would mean that he had seen the icebound vessel from the air, exactly as Sunderby had seen it.

  I lay there for a long time thinking about that, the loud insistence of the Mexican music from across the way drumming in my ears and gradually merging into the crashing ice of layering floes as my mind drifted into a fantasy of trekking with Iris Sunderby towards the dim outline of an icicle-festooned ghost of a ship, the man at the helm towering like a giant question mark over my jet-lagged brain. Had Charles Sunderby imagined it, or had he really seen the figure of a man standing frozen at the wheel?

  I woke in a daze, the music replaced by the roar of traffic and the sunrise showing like a great red orange through a gap in the buildings opposite. There was no wind, the air crystal clear. I was too excited at being in such a strange city on the other side of the world for there to be any question of going back to sleep again. I got up, dressed and went for a walk, my limbs lethargic with the altitude, my brain sluggish after the disturbed night. The shops were opening and I browsed for a while in one that sold books as well as newspapers and magazines, but I failed to find the American edition of Rodriguez’s book. Instead, I came away with an old copy of Prescott’s Conquest of Peru. It was dusty and the spine was broken, but at least it was in English. Even so, it cost me rather more of my American dollars than I expected.

  By then the sun was risen above the tops of the buildings and it was hot. I walked slowly back to the hotel. No sign of Ward, so I had breakfast, then rang his room. First time I tried his phone was engaged. When I finally got through to him he said very brusquely, ‘Don’t phone again. Order a taxi fur ten-forty-five and hold it till Ah come down. Ah’m waitin’ fur a call.’

  ‘It’s getting late,’ I said.

  ‘Ah know, but this call is important. Anyway, they’ll not take off on time.’

  It was almost eleven before he appeared, looking as though he hadn’t slept at all. ‘Taxi there? Good. Make sure it doesn’t go off.’ He dumped his overnight bag with mine and I went out to tell the driver we were just coming. When I got back he was at the cashier’s desk settling the bill. It was in US dollars, not Mexican pesetas. ‘And there is also’, the clerk said, ‘two hundred and seventy-nine dollars owing for your calls, señor.’

  Ward paid with American traveller’s cheques and we hurried out to the taxi. ‘Aeropuerto.’ He flopped into his seat.

  ‘That was quite a telephone bill,’ I said as we moved off.

  ‘International calls are expensive.’ He closed his eyes.

  ‘London? Or were you phoning Lima?’

  I don’t know whether he was asleep or not, but he didn’t answer. He was equally uncommunicative when we reached the airport. His guess that the flight would be delayed proved correct. Security, they said. Apparently there had been a bomb scare recently. The transit baggage ha
d not been loaded and customs officials and police were insisting on all cases being opened and everything laid out on the floor. It all took time and it was past midday before we finally got away.

  Ward ordered vodka, drank it straight and went to sleep with ¿Muerto O Vivo? open on his lap. The meal came. He waved it away and went back to sleep. We had just passed over a gaggle of eighteen-thousand-foot volcanoes, great slag heaps of ash with gaping vents pointed at the clear blue bowl of the heavens, when he finally shifted in his seat and leaned across me to look out of the window, blinking his eyes. ‘Know where Ah’d like to be goin’? The Galapagos.’ He nodded his head towards a white line of distant cloud far out over the starb’d wing tip. ‘Out there. Can’t be more than a thousand miles. Mebbe Ah’ll dae that when Ah’ve extricated mesel’ from the Southern Ocean an’ all that ice.’

  He picked up his book again, opened it at the marker and settled himself in his seat. He was back, playing the Glasgow boy and wearing his tourist hat like a hired costume. The stewardess came down the aisle, a big-breasted young woman exuding a strong odour of perspiration. He ordered another vodka and turned to me. ‘What about ye? Horse’s Neck?’

  I nodded.

  He gave the order and we returned to our books. I had become totally absorbed in William Prescott’s account of the Inca civilisation, which had been destroyed by the greed of Pizarro’s Conquistadores. It was a fascinating glimpse of a people who in the sixteenth century had never seen a wheel or a sea-going ship, had never faced an armoured knight on horseback or the fire power of crossbows and guns, but whose roads and lines of communication through the incredible terrain of the Andes, whose methods of agriculture by irrigation and whose whole political set-up, so close to what we know as Communism, was in some ways more advanced than that of their conquerors.

  The drinks came and Ward sat back, watching me out of the corner of his eye. ‘When ye’ve finished absorbin’ Prescott Ah guess ye’ll know as much about Peru as most Peruvians. Probably more.’ And he added, ‘This will be the first time Ah’ve visited the country, but havin’ read Prescott myself Ah don’t think Ah’m goin’ to like the Spaniards and what they and the mestizos have done to it.’ And then he said suddenly, ‘That phone call Ah was waitin’ fur – it was from the hotel Iris had given me as her address in Lima. They say she pulled out three days ago.’

  ‘Then why are we stopping off in Lima?’ I asked him.

  ‘You don’t have to. You can go straight on to Punta Arenas if you’d prefer.’

  ‘But you’re stopping off?’

  ‘Yes. She didn’t fly on into Chile. Ah checked with both Lan Chile and UC Ladeco. Also Aero Peru. In any case, she had a hire car delivered to the hotel. The assistant manager said when she left she was drivin’ it herself.’

  My thoughts of the night came back to me. ‘You think she’s gone up to Cajamarca?’

  ‘Well, she’s certainly not drivin’ herself all the way down through Chile to Punta Arenas. That’s well over three thousand miles and God knows what the roads are like south of Valparaíso, if there are any. It’s all mountains and deep-cut fjords.’ He smiled at me. ‘So ye’ve reached the same conclusion as Ah have, that Mario Ángel Gómez is the navigator she referred to as the man who can lead her to that icebound ship. Ah doubt there’s anybody else has had the sort of opportunity he’s had for flyin’ around at will in that part of the Antarctic’

  ‘There are bases,’ I said, ‘Half a dozen countries have survey and exploration establishments around the fringes of the Antarctic land mass.’

  He nodded. ‘But they fly set pattern routes on direct lines from their southern supply points to their Antarctic bases. Ah had a look at the Royal Geographical Society’s latest maps, some of the charts, too. None of the supply routes go close to the point where Sunderby’s aircraft ditched. And Ah had a word on the phone with a Cambridge don they put me on to – he was somethin’ to dae with the Scott Polar Institute, and he confirmed that supply aircraft would not normally be overflying the area we’re interested in.’

  The fact that Sunderby’s plane was en route for the American base at McMurdo made no difference except that the operational word was ‘normally’. ‘There were tae things that were not normal about that flight. In the first place, the plane made an emergency landin’ at Port Stanley to have an electrical fault put right. That’s how Sunderby came to be on the flight. Secondly, he was a glaciologist and it may well be that he persuaded the pilot to swin’ away to the east. It would only call fur a small diversion from the direct route from Stanley to McMurdo Sound to give him a glimpse of the Ice Shelf and the area where Shackleton’s Endurance was beset and finally sunk.’

  His point was that the Americans did not normally fly supplies out of the Falklands. I asked him what Gómez’s point of departure had been and he replied, ‘Ushuaia, accordin’ to Rodriguez. That’s the Argentine base in the south-west of Tierra del Fuego, on the Beagle Channel. Not ideal, Ah’m told, but that may have been part of the test.’

  ‘You say he was refuelled. He must have had some sort of a flight plan.’

  Ward was silent for a moment. ‘He was testin’ a plane. It had probably been modified fur work in Antarctica. The Argentinians have a short strip airbase in the north of the Antarctic Peninsula. Visecomodorio Marambio Ah think it’s called.’ He spoke hesitantly as though trying to work it out for himself. ‘Maybe he flew the final stage from there. And he must have been testin’ in part fur flight refuellin’ because Rodriguez says in his book he was refuelled somewhere over the Bellingshausen Sea, which is a long way west of the area where Sunderby lost his life.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ I asked. ‘That as soon as he was refuelled he took the opportunity of seeing if he could locate the remains of that American plane?’

  ‘No. The plane’s sunk. Ah don’t think there’s any doubt about that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Ah don’t know.’ His voice had slowed again, little more than a murmur. ‘Ah’m just thinkin’ aloud.’ He turned his head towards me. ‘And Ah saw an angel come down from Heaven, havin’ the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his band. D’ye recognise that?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘You’re quoting from the Bible, are you?’

  ‘The Revelation of St John.’ He smiled. ‘Wonderful stuff. Ye should read it.’ And then, suddenly practical, he said, ‘When ye’ve finished yer drink Ah suggest ye put Prescott away, turn yer light out and try and get some sleep. There should be a car waitin’ fur us at the airport when we get in to Lima. Ye’ve got your international driving licence?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good. Ye’ll be drivin’ when we take it over. It’ll save time. There’s always the chance they’ll query the validity of my own licence –’ He tapped the steel forearm and gloved hand resting on his lap. ‘Foreigners can be a wee bit difficult about it sometimes.’ Somewhat pointedly he closed his own book and tipped his seat right back, preparing himself for sleep. ‘We’ll go to the hotel first. Ah’d like a word with the doorman if they’ve got one. Then we’ll head fur the coast and the Pan-Am Highway, drive right through the night. Okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll drive and sleep in turn. With luck we should be in Cajamarca in time for breakfast.’ And then he switched abruptly from practicalities, quoting in a stage whisper: ‘And I saw a new Heaven and a new earth; for the first Heaven and the first earth were passed away: and there was no more sea.’ He spoke it without a trace of a Scot’s accent. ‘Patmos,’ he murmured. ‘I was there very briefly a couple of years back. There’s a great white fortress of a monastery crowning the top of the island. It was once full of treasures, but all I could think about as I stood on the battlemented roof, looking out over the Aegean, was that a disciple of Christ’s had sat in his cell in a little monastery half-way up the hill recording the extraordinary revelations he had been vouchsafed. Was he mad? The Emperor Domitian condemned him, so he had evidently seemed
so, to a Roman. But it’s great reading.’

  He settled himself more deeply in his seat. ‘Och well, we’ll see whether those lines fit when we reach the top of the pass over the Andes.’ He switched out his overhead light, closed his eyes, and instantly, it seemed, he was asleep.

  When we arrived in Lima it took time to go through the formalities. Again the immigration people questioned him about his occupation, even going so far as to check the word antiquarian in an English-Spanish dictionary. ‘Useful, ye see,’ Ward said as we went through to the baggage claim area. ‘He was so busy worryin’ over what “antiquarian” meant that he hardly glanced at our visas. And yer occupation of wood preservation consultant is not exactly a description he comes across every day.’ He was smiling as we took our place by the baggage conveyor belt.

  When we had finally retrieved all his excess baggage, it took us even longer than in Mexico to clear customs because he insisted on unrolling a big holdall right there on the bench to get at his oilskins. ‘We’ll almost certainly need them at Punta Arenas. Iris said it blows and rains like hell just about every day in the Strait of Magellan. Better get yers out, too. It’s rainin’ up in the mountains accordin’ to that nice immigration laddie. He said he’d heard it on the radio this mornin’. There’s floodin’ too, in places. The Niño factor. Rodriguez was right.’

  We checked all but our oilies, hand baggage and briefcases into the airport lock-ups, and after what he had said about the weather, I was glad to see, when we got to the car desk, that he had laid on a four-wheel-drive land-cruiser. While he was signing the hire and insurance papers, the girl produced a parcel from a cubby-hole at the back. ‘Ees left for you this morning, señor. A courier from the Librerío Universal bring it. There is some extra to pay, plees.’

  He nodded without looking up as she placed it on the counter. ‘Books,’ he said.

  She nodded, asked for our driving licences, then took us outside to where the vehicle was parked in the shade of a tree. ‘It may not be as comfortable as an ordinary saloon,’ Ward said on a note of apology, ‘but buggered if Ah was takin’ any chances in a country like this.’ He pulled open the rear door and tossed the package of books on to the back seat, together with his gear. ‘Ye check the vehicle over while Ah see that we’ve got a manual and all the necessary papers.’