White Heat (40 page)

    There
was no choice but to try to come in close to Alexandra. South of the Prince of
Wales Icefield she was much more likely to run into icebergs and at this time
of year the freshwater ice was at its most unstable. A large berg had only to
turn over or to shatter and she would find herself in a swell ten metres high.

    At
Alexandra she would have to use the current to drift south, close to the
Ellesmere shore, and save her fuel supplies for the journey into Jones Sound.
She had to pray that the weather would stay clement or that she would run into
a walrus-hunting party off the Ellesmere coast.

    Whichever
way you looked at it, the trip was daunting.

    Further
into the channel the swell stiffened, waving foamy flags as it rose and fell.
The air grew as cold as winter, a bone-dry cold, which meant that, for the time
being at least, there would be no blizzard.

    Looking
out across the sea Edie saw a cluster of empty plastic bottles rafting about on
the swell, remnants of the garbage gyre dumped by the
Arctic Princess.
For a while she followed the drift of trash, noting the turns of the currents,
until finally her eyes reached the horizon and she spotted in the sky above it
a soft darkening, signalling land. It came to her in a fierce flash of longing
then that Ellesmere was somewhere just beyond her vision, and in that moment
nothing was real to her except home and how to reach it.

    Whether
it was a change in the vibration of the water below the launch or something in
the air she could not say, but Edie's hunter's instincts detected a vessel
approaching long before anything came into view. Best case, it was nothing, a
trawler, maybe, or a scientific vessel. Worst case, the Russians. Cranking up
the engine as much as she dared given the ice conditions, she set the launch
due west and locked the wheel.

    By
the time the vessel came into plain sight it was already close: an icebreaker
looming out of the mist like some giant, malevolent whale. The ship's horn
blasted a warning. She thought about increasing the throttle, but conditions
were treacherous. If she hit a floe at speed the launch would peel open like a
tin can. In seconds, she'd find herself head down in the freezing water without
so much as a lifejacket.

    In
the end, she decided there was no point in trying to run away. It was hopeless.
She was like a harp seal in the presence of
a
hungry bear. All she could
do was kill the engine and pray.

    Soon
after, the ship slowed and for a few minutes an odd, thick silence filled the
space between its massive hull and the launch. Her eye was drawn to movement on
deck. She squinted, struggling to get a better look. They were lowering a Zodie
into the water.

    The
livery of the Canadian Coastguard came slowly through the low mist. Her heart
lifted. At least she'd made it as far as Canada without the Russians catching
up with her. The high-pitched pulse of the winch stopped and was replaced by
the sound of an outboard. The yellow outline of the satellite vessel emerged
from the mist.

    As
the craft drew close, the moving shadows devolved into the shapes of six men.
The helmsman cut his engine and for a moment the vessel drifted on the current.
Edie stood motionless on deck. One of the men waved his arms. Another man was
standing beside him now: he appeared to be looking at her through a pair of
binoculars. The first man stretched behind him and brought out a megaphone but
the sound that reached her was that of a fox barking. She raised her hands to
show them she was not armed.

    ‘Are
you alone?'

    She
nodded.

    The
man with the binoculars moved closer to his fellow, who leaned into his
megaphone again.

    'This
is the Canadian Coastguard. We are authorized to board your vessel. If you
resist, we will take measures to prevent you leaving the scene.'

    They
drew alongside and a man threw a rope on deck and motioned for her to secure it
for boarding. The two men and two armed guards jumped on deck. One of the armed
men wound the sheet around a cleat then caught a second rope and tied the two
vessels together.

    The
unarmed man who had spoken through the megaphone started to talk. Edie knew the
words but they didn't seem to get through to her. She noticed that the man's
eyes were two different colours, one hazel, and the other green.

    'Do
you speak English?
NakinngaqpinT
Where do you come from?

    'Autisaq.'

    One
of the armed men did a quick tour of the launch, came back shaking his head.

    'Alone?'
The man with the odd eyes gave Edie a quizzical look and held up one finger.
‘Ui,
husband?'

    She
replied in Inuktitut:
‘Uiggatuk,
no husband.' The man leaned back on his
hips, shot her a puzzled look and repeated what she'd just said, unable to get
his head around it.

    Edie
sighed. 'Look, sailor-man,' she said in English. 'I'm divorced, OK? It's not
unknown. Now, what do you want?'

    One
of the armed men sneezed away a snigger.

    The
man introduced himself as Lieutenant Fisher. 'This launch yours?'

    'It
is now,' she said.

    The two
unarmed men looked at each other. Fisher seemed unconvinced.

    'I
got it from a Greenlander,' she said. This much at least was true.

    'Mind
if I see your papers, ma'am?' Fisher over- enunciated the words, as though
talking to a baby. He'd noticed her jaw and was wondering whether to say
anything about it.

    Edie
said: 'You own a vehicle, mister?' Fisher shrugged and averted his eyes. 'If a
bunch of men with semiautomatic weapons turned up on
your
doorstep
asking you where you got your vehicle, what you gonna say?'

    Fisher
took a large breath and cringed as the freezing air filled his lungs. Clueless,
Edie thought.

    'That
Zodie yours too?'

    'How
d'you think I got over to Qaanaaq?' She wondered if she could ask for a ride,
without arousing anyone's suspicions. A tow would be good. Save time, gas, give
her some protection till she got into home waters.

    Fisher
peered at the name painted on Zodie's side.
'Arctic Princess?'

    'That's
me,' she said.

    Fisher
clocked that he'd got a case on his hands and swallowed hard. 'ID?'

    Edie
gestured towards her pack and Fisher motioned for his friend to collect it,
giving her passport the once over.

    'You
need to let customs know you bought the boat,' Fisher said, searching for the
appropriate tone of authority.

    He
began to wave the armed men back onto the satellite vessel.

    'Before
you go,' she said, 'any chance of a tow and a Tylenol?'

    She
waited while Fisher spoke into a radio mike. A moment later he reappeared.

    'Ma'am,
we're going to have to ask you to step on board.'

    An
hour later Edie found herself sitting on a plastic chair bolted to the
wheelhouse deck, dressed in an oversized track- suit borrowed from ship's
supplies, her hands drawn tight with plastic cuffs, doing her best to avoid
answering Captain Paul Jonson's questions. Some painkillers they'd given her
had reduced her discomfort but made her feel spacey.

    'What
happened here?' Jonson was saying. 'In my experience, you people don't steal.'

    'It
was more like borrowing,' she said, playing dumb.

    
You
people.
If she was lucky, this Jonson fellow would treat her like a child,
rap her on the wrists and let her go. Confiscate the launch maybe, but then
he'd have to take her home. Worst case: a trip back to Greenland and straight
into the waiting arms of the Russians. One thing Edie knew, if she was going to
be any good to Joe, she needed to stay out of jail.

    A
flash of pain bit through the analgesic; she lifted her hands to stroke the
painful spot.

    'I'll
have the medic look at that,' Jonson said, then, gesturing at the burn marks
left by the Russians' rope around her wrists, signalled for the guard to remove
the cuffs. 'And those. I guess we were a little hard on you, eh?'

    She
made a point of rubbing the sore part of her wrists and grimacing, wanting
Jonson to feel her pain. He was OK, she thought, rough-looking on the surface,
filthy nails and a scraggly beard like a moulting musk ox, but there was a nub
of civilization somewhere further in.

    'Honest
truth, Miss Kiglatuk, I don't give a bear's ass about the Zodie. Cruise ships
have no place up here, you ask me. But when there's a complaint, you know,
there are procedures.'

    She'd
explained her presence in Greenland as a desire to visit her
great-great-great-grandfather's grave. The way she'd woven the story, she'd
heard the rumours that a couple of Russian guys might be digging up her
ancestor's body. An Inuk couldn't let anyone do that. The shame, the misfortune
it would bring, no
qalunaat
could fully comprehend the horror of it. So
she'd taken it upon herself to fly to Qaanaaq to try to stop them, she said.
Someone - she didn't volunteer Moller's name - had offered her a free ride back
to Nuuk in their plane, then reneged, leaving her with no money and no other
choice than to try to get home on her own. She'd sensed then Jonson had some
sympathy for her, and made a note to play on it.

    'If
all this happened in Canada, we'd have been able to smooth it over,' he said.
'We can get you back to Autisaq, but I'm afraid you'll be under lock and key
while you're with us and the authorities will be waiting for you on shore.' He
shot her a sympathetic look. 'It's the best I can do.'

    After
the sod hut, the holding cell on board the Canadian Coastguard icebreaker
Stefansson
seemed pretty fancy. There were clean sheets on the bed, a flush
toilet and a sink with hot and cold water. The ship's medic made a brief
appearance, inspected Edie's jaw and wrists and gave her some strong painkillers.

    At
six the guard brought a plate heaped with barbecue ribs and some sweet thing,
none of which she could eat. Not long after, he returned to take away the tray
and to ask her if there was anything else she needed and when she requested a
pen and paper he reappeared with a reporter's notebook and a pencil,
apologizing. For some reason he didn't really understand, he said, detainees
weren't allowed pens.

    She
had planned to spend the remainder of the evening trying to piece together all
the information she'd gathered about the Russians, but the painkillers made her
first woozy then brought on an exhaustion so deep there was nothing she could
do but give in to it. But the sleep didn't last for long, and was replaced by
flashbacks and morbid thoughts. She woke with a head full of questions. What
was Felix Wagner's connection with Belovsky? Could he have been working for
Zemmer and Beloil without either of them knowing at first? Did the Russians
find out? What were the salty stones the Russians were looking for among the
graves at Qaanaaq? Were there other meteorites, other astroblemes? And if the
astrobleme signalled the presence of gas or oil, could it be that salt was the
third marker, the roadsign, along with the diaries and the stone? Joe had got
in the middle of all this, somehow. Perhaps he was only witness to Andy
Taylor's murder, or maybe there was some greater involvement. Edie didn't yet
know. Of one thing she was sure, though. Everything came back to a single
overriding question: if someone
had
killed Joe Inukpuk - and she felt in
her bones that someone had - then who was it? If she could find out why her
stepson was killed, she was sure the answer would lead her to the killer.

    A
shrieking sound put an end to her thoughts. Somewhere beneath her, the ship's
engines thumped and churned and a dreadful squealing and thudding issued from
somewhere at the ship's fore. They were pushing through the floe. Edie went to
the door and peered through the peep portal. A thin light shone down the corridor,
illuminating the empty space. She turned back towards the cell.

    I
need to be home, she thought. I need to talk to Derek Palliser and Mike Nungaq.