Athabasca (23 page)

Willoughby muttered a curse. "I believe you're right," he said slowly. "I really do. And we haven't a shred of hard evidence against them."

"No way you could dream up a charge and haul them in for preventive detention?" asked Dermott hopefully.

"None."

"I wish you could," said Dermott. "I'd sleep happier for the rest of the night. As it is, I don't intend to sleep at all. I've got a slight aversion to being murdered in bed."

Brady nearly choked on his drink. "And what the hell does that mean?"

"Just that I think an attempt will soon be made to murder me. And Donald. And you."

Brady looked as though he might explode, but remained speechless. Dermott addressed him with some acerbity.

"Whenever you spoke down there in the foyer just now, you were tightening another screw in your own coffin lid." He turned to Willoughby. "Could you spare a guard for Mr. Shore's house tonight?"

"Of course, but why?"

"Simple. Mr. Brady unfortunately made it clear that he wanted copies of fingerprints found on the stolen truck. Brinckman and Jorgensen know that we've asked your people for what could be damning prints from your Edmonton H.Q. They'll discover, if they haven't already, that the copies of their own prints which we took earlier are in the safe in Mr. Shore's house."

"What good would it do them to get the copies?" Brady asked edgily. "The originals are at police H.Q. in Edmonton."

"How far d'you think this rot has spread?" said Dermott. "The originals may still be there, but they won't be much help once they've been through a shredding machine."

"Where's the problem?" asked Willoughby. "We just print 'em out again."

"On what grounds? Suspicion? Just one moderately competent lawyer, and the town would be looking for a new police chief. They'd refuse point-blank. What could you do then?"

"Point out to them -- which is the case -- that it's a condition of employment at Sanmobil,"

"So you'd have mass resignations on your hands. Then what?"

Willoughby didn't answer. Mackenzie broke in, "You said I was the other grave digger?"

"Yes. You said the kidnappers must have been tipped off from Sanmobil as to when to expect Reynolds' bus. You were right, of course. But Brinckman and Jorgensen must have thought you meant it was they who gave the tip. They may even think we can trace the call to them, even though outgoing calls from the plant aren't normally tapped."

"Well, I'm sorry." Mackenzie shifted uneasily.

"Too bad. The damage has been done. And it wouldn't have helped to reproach you and Mr. Brady in public."

The phone rang. Dermott, the nearest, picked it up, listened briefly and said: "One moment. I think the person you should talk to is Mr. Shore. He's right here with us."

He handed the phone over and listened impassively to Shore's half of the conversation, which consisted almost entirely of muttered expletives. The phone rest settled as he replaced the receiver, so badly was his hand shaking. His face had gone white.

"They've shot Grigson," he gasped.

"Who's Grigson?" snapped Brady.

"Sanmobil's president. That's all."

Thirteen

The police doctor, a young man named Saunders, straightened and looked down at the unconscious man on the pile of blankets. "He'll be all right, eventually, but that's all I can do for him now. He needs the services of an orthopedic surgeon."

"How long will it be before I can question him?" Brady asked.

"With the sedative I've given him, it'll be several hours before he comes around."

"Couldn't that damned sedative have waited a little?"

Dr. Saunders looked at Brady with a marked lack of enthusiasm. "I hope, for your sake, you never have your shoulder and upper arm shattered, the bone structure completely fragmented. Mr. Grigson was in agony. And even had he been conscious, I wouldn't have let you question him."

Brady muttered something about medical dictators, then looked at Shore and said testily, "What the hell was Grigson doing here anyway?"

"Dammit, Brady, he's more right to be here than you and I and the rest of us put together." Shore sounded shocked and angry. "Sanmobil is the dream-come-true of one man and one only, and he's lying there before you. Took him nine years to turn his dream into reality, and he had to fight all the way. He's the president. Do you understand that -- the president?"

Mackenzie said pacifically, "When did he arrive?"

"Yesterday afternoon. Flew in from Europe."

Mackenzie nodded and looked around Reynolds' office. It wasn't a small room, but it was fairly crowded. Apart from himself, Brady, Shore, Dr. Saunders and the unconscious Grigson, there were Willoughby and two young men who had clearly been in the wars during the recent past. One had a bandaged forehead, the other an arm strapped from wrist to elbow. It was to this last person, Steve Dawson, that Mackenzie addressed himself.

"You were in charge of the night shift?"

"Nominally. Tonight there was no night shift. The plant's closed down."

"I know. So how many of you were here tonight -- yourself apart?"

"Just six people." He glanced down at the wounded man. "Mr. Grigson was asleep in his private room along the corridor there. Then there was Hazlitt -- supervisor of the night security shift -- and four security guards deployed around the plant."

"Tell us what happened."

"Well -- I was patrolling, reinforcing the security team, as I had nothing else to do. I saw a light come on here in Mr. Reynolds' room. First I thought it must be Mr. Grigson -- he's a very active, restless person, and an erratic sleeper. Then I got to wondering what he could be doing, because he'd already spent a couple of hours with Mr. Reynolds yesterday.

So, quiet as I could, I came along the passage to Grigson's room.

"The door was closed, but not locked. I went in, and there he was asleep. I woke him, told him there were intruders in the plant, and asked to borrow a gun. I knew he had one, because he used to practice on a little private target range he'd set up here.

"He'd have none of it. He produced his automatic, but kept it himself. He said he'd had it for years and knew how to use it. I couldn't argue with him -- after all, I'm only twenty-eight, and he's crowding seventy.

"Anyway, in here we found a man with the door of that safe open. He'd smashed Corinne's desk open with a fire axe to get at the keys. He was wearing a stocking mask and examining a bunch of keys he had in his hand.

"Mr. Grigson told him to turn around, real slow, and not to try anything, or he'd kill him. Then suddenly came two pistol shots, right close together, from behind, and Mr. Grigson pitched headlong to the floor. He was wearing a white shirt, and blood from his right shoulder and arm was pumping through it. I could see he was hurt real bad.

"I dropped to my knees to help him. The man who'd fired the shots probably figured I was going for Mr. Grigson's gun. Anyway, he fired at me too."

Dawson was breathing quickly, his distress evident. Brady poured him a scotch and handed the glass over. "Take this."

Dawson's smile was wan. "I've never had a drink in my life, sir."

"Maybe you'll never have another," said Brady agreeably. "But you need this one, and we need your story."

Dawson drank, spluttered and coughed. He screwed up his eyes and drank some more. He clearly detested the stuff, but his system didn't, for almost immediately some color began to return to his cheeks. He touched his bandaged forearm.

"Looks worse than it is. The bullet just grazed me, wrist all the way to elbow, but very superficial. Stung, more than anything. One of the masked men forced me to help lug Mr. Grigson to the armory. On the way out I picked up two first-aid kits -- they didn't object. They pushed us into the armory, locked the door and left.

"Then I took off Mr. Grigson's shirt and stanched the wound as best I could. It took a lot of bandages -- there was so much blood coming. I thought he was going to bleed to death."

"He could have," Saunders said with certainty. "No question, your quick action saved his life."

"Glad I was of some use." Dawson shuddered, looked at the doctor and went on, "Then I bandaged my own arm and had a go at the door, but there was no way I could get it open. I looked around and found a box full of detonators, each with a fuse attached. I struck one and dropped it out through one of the ventilation grilles. It went off with quite a bang. I must have let seven or eight of them off before Hazlitt came hammering on the door and asked what the hell was going on. I told him, and he ran off to fetch a duplicate key."

Dawson drank some more, spluttered, but less than before, and put his glass down. "I guess that's about all."

"And more than enough," said Brady with unaccustomed warmth. "A splendid job, son." He looked around the assembled group, then asked sharply, "Where's George?"

Until then no one had noticed that Dermott was missing. Then Mackenzie said, "He slipped out with Carmody some time back. You want me to go find him?"

"Leave him be," said Brady loftily. "I have little doubt our faithful bloodhound is pursuing some spoor of his own."

In fact the bloodhound was pursuing a fancy, not a line. He had taken Carmody aside and whispered in his ear that he urgently wanted to question the girl, Corinne. Where was she?

"In the isolation ward, like I said," Carmody replied. "But I doubt you'll find it on your own. It's way out by itself, near Dragline One. Want me to come with you?"

"Sure. That'd be real kind." Dermott swallowed his disappointment. He wanted to go alone. The instincts at work inside him made him feel uncomfortable. Nothing like this had happened to him in years. But he had better be realistic and accept the offer of guidance.

By then the wind had increased, as it often did late in the night, and was whistling across the flat, open site with a deadly chill. The noise made it almost impossible to talk in the open -- not that anyone in his senses would remain in the open for more than the minimum time.

Carmody had been reunited with his damaged Cherokee. Shouting an excuse into the wind, he got in first at the passenger door and slid across behind the wheel. Dermott heaved his massive frame in close behind him and slammed the door.

Carmody drove steadily across an apparently unmarked plain. The film of drifting snow had obscured the road, and the flat ground all looked the same.

"How the hell do you know which way to go?" Dermott asked.

"Markers -- there." Carmody pointed as a small stumpy, black-and-white post went past, with the number 323 stencilled on it in bold figures. "We're on Highway Three. In a minute we'll turn onto Highway Nine."

Altogether they drove for nearly ten minutes before lights showed up out of the darkness ahead. Dermott was amazed once again at the sheer size of the site: by then they were four or five miles from the administration buildings.

The lights grew to a blaze of several windows, and they pulled up outside a single long hut. As they went through the door the heat hit them like a hammer, as did a smell of disinfectant. Dermott at once began to wrestle his way out of his outdoor clothes. He felt he would stifle if he kept them on for one more second.

They found Corinne propped up on a pile of pillows, looking white but (to Dermott's eye) very sweet in a pair of pea-green pyjamas. Contrary to Carmody's predictions, she was wide awake. She'd been asleep, she said, and had woken up thinking it was already morning.

"What time is it, anyway?" she asked.

"Four o'clock, near enough," Dermott answered. "How d'you feel?"

"Fantastic. Not even a bruise, as far as I can tell."

"That's wonderful. But my, were you lucky!" Dermott began asking routine questions, to which he didn't really want the answers. He wished to hell Carmody would go away someplace and leave him alone with the girl. What he would say to her if that happened, he didn't quite know. All the same it was what he wanted.

"You've given us a real good lead, you know," he said enthusiastically. "Can't say just what it was, but it may be the breakthrough we need. Mr. Brady's delighted..."

His voice tailed off as a heavy rumble suddenly shook the building. "Jesus!" He looked up sharply. "What was that?"

Carmody was gone already, out of the room and down the short passage. Dermott caught up with him at the outside door.

"Helicopter!" Carmody snapped. "Made a low pass right over the building. There he is, burning now." Way out in the blackness a red and a green light converged and then separated again as the aircraft swung around. As the two men stood watching, a pair of car headlamps snapped on from a point about a hundred yards in front of them. The vehicle moved forward, turned and stopped, with its headlights steady on a patch of snow.

"It's a marker!" Carmody cried. "He's gonna land. Quick, get the girl out of here. They must have come for her."

"How in hell do they know she's here?" said Dermott.

"Don't worry about that. Let's get her away." Moving like a sprinter, Carmody slipped back into the building, bundled Corinne up in a cocoon of blankets and carried her out to the Jeep, where he dumped her in the back seat. Dermott lumbered behind him, envying his speed, and hauled himself into the front.