The Land God Gave to Cain (6 page)

It was almost six when Farrow drove up in a battered sports car. “Jump in,” he shouted. “Got to get you vaccinated. Otherwise it's all fixed.”

We woke up a doctor friend of his and half an hour later I had got my certificate of vaccination, had cleared Customs and Immigration and was back at the freight office. I signed the “blood-chit” that absolved the Company of responsibility for my death in the event of a crash, and then Farrow left me there and I hung about for another twenty minutes, waiting for take-off. There was no turning back now. I was committed to the flight and because of that I no longer felt nervous.

Shortly before seven the crew assembled and I walked with them across the tarmac to a big four-engined plane parked on the apron opposite the office. Inside, it was a dim-lit steel shell with, the freight piled down the centre, strapped down to ring bolts in the floor. “Not very comfortable, I'm afraid,” Farrow said, “but we don't cater for passengers.” He gave my shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Toilet's aft if you want it.” The door of the fuselage slammed shut and he followed his crew for'ard to the flight deck. I was alone then.

We took off just after seven, and though I had never flown before I could sense what was happening—the sound of the engines being run up one by one on test at the runway-end and then the solid roar of all four together and the drag of the airscrews as we began to move, the dim-lit fuselage rocking and vibrating around me. Suddenly it was quieter and I knew we had left the ground.

The exhilaration of the take-off gradually faded into the monotony of the flight as we drove smoothly on, hour after hour. I dozed a little and now and then Farrow or one of his crew came aft. Shortly after ten the navigator brought me sandwiches and hot coffee. An hour and a half later we landed at Keflavik in Iceland and I clambered stiffly out, blinking my eyes in the cold sunlight.

The airport was a featureless expanse, the buildings' modern utilitarian blocks without character. The whole place had the crisp, cold, lifeless air of outer space. But the cafeteria in the main building yielded eggs and bacon and hot coffee, and the echoing hall was full of transit passengers passing the time by sending postcards and buying Icelandic souvenirs from counters gay with northern colours. We had over an hour there in the warmth whilst the plane was refuelled and a quick check made on one of the engines which was running rough. They found nothing wrong with the engine and by twelve-thirty I was back in the hollow roar of the fuselage and we were taking off on the last lap.

We flew high to clear a storm belt off the Greenland coast and it was cold. I dozed fitfully, the monotony only broken by an occasional cup of coffee, the lunch pack and brief talks with the crew as they came aft. It was nine-twenty by my watch when the flight engineer finally roused me. “Skipper says if you want to take a look at Labrador from the air you'd better come up for'ard right away. We'll be landing in fifteen minutes.”

I followed him through the door to the flight deck. To my surprise it was daylight and, because I could see out, the long, cold hours spent huddled amongst the freight in the fuselage were suddenly forgotten. Not that there was anything to see … just the grey of cloud through the windshield and Farrow's head outlined against it. The wireless operator gripped my arm as I passed, pulling me down towards him. “I've radioed the Tower to have Ledder meet you,” he shouted in my ear. “Okay?”

“Thanks.”

Farrow half turned his head and indicated the flight engineer's seat beside him. “Going down now.” He jerked his thumb downwards. The engines were already throttled back. “We'll come out of the cloud at eight thousand.” He tapped the altimeter dial where the pointer was dropping slowly. And he added, “You'll have plenty of time to talk to Ledder. Another engine check. Port outer packed up a while back.” He nodded towards the left-hand wing-tip where it wavered gently in the turbulent cloud mist. The outboard engine was lifeless, the propeller feathering slowly. “We'll be there the night. Get away sometime to-morrow—I hope.”

I wanted to ask him whether we'd get down all right, but nobody seemed worried that we were flying on only three engines and I sat down and said nothing, staring ahead through the windshield, waiting for the moment when I should get my first glimpse of Labrador. And because there was nothing to see, I found myself thinking of my father. Had his flying duties ever taken him to Labrador or was I now doing the thing he'd wanted to do all his life? I was thinking of the books and the map, wondering what it was that had fascinated him about this country; and then abruptly the veil was swept away from in front of my eyes and there was Labrador.

The grimness of it was the thing that struck me—the grimness and the lostness and the emptiness of it. Below us was a great sheet of water running in through a desolate, flat waste, with pale glimpses of sand and a sort of barren, glacier-dredged look about it. But what held my attention was the land ahead where it rose to meet the sky. There were no hills there, no mountain peaks. It rose up from the coastal plain in one black, ruler-straight line, utterly featureless—a remote, bitter plateau that by its very uniformity gave an impression of vastness, of being on the verge of land that stretched away to the Pole.

“There's Goose now.” Farrow was shouting in my ear and pointing. But I didn't see it. My eyes were riveted by the black line of that plateau and I held my breath, strangely stirred as though by some old challenge.

“Sure is a pretty country,” Farrow shouted to me. “You can get lost in there just like that.” And he snapped his fingers. “Nothing but lakes, and every one the same as the next.” He was suddenly grinning. “The land God gave to Cain—that's what Jacques Cartier called it when he first discovered it.”

The land God gave to Cain! The words mingled with my thoughts to trickle through my mind in a cold shiver. How often I was to remember later the aptness of that description!

We were coming in now, the water of Goose Bay rising to meet us, the airfield clearly visible. The flight engineer tapped me on the shoulder and I clambered out of his seat and went back into the dimness of the fuselage. A few moments later we touched down.

When we had come to rest with the engines cut, the navigator came aft and opened the freight door. Daylight entered the fuselage, bringing with it warmth and the smell of rain, and through the open door I looked out across wet tarmac to a line of green-painted, corrugated iron buildings. A man stood waiting on the apron, alone, a tall, dark-featured man in some sort of a plastic raincoat.

I gathered my things together, and then Farrow came down through the fuselage. “I'll fix you up with a room at the T.C.A. Hotel,” he said. “You can get a meal there. The time, by the way, is …” He glanced at his watch. “Five twenty-two. There's four and a half hours difference between Goose and England.” And he added, “There'll be transport to run us down as soon as I'm through with the maintenance people and we've cleared Immigration.” He had moved on to the door by then and I heard a voice say: “Captain Farrow? My name's Simon Ledder. I was told to meet your flight.” It was a slow voice, puzzled and a little resentful.

And then I was at the door and Farrow said, “Well, here you are. Here's the guy you wanted to talk to.” And as I jumped out on to the tarmac he was already walking away with a casual lift of his hand.

“Where will I find you?” I called after him. I didn't want to lose him. The place looked so vast and desolate.

“Don't worry, I won't forget you,” he answered over his shoulder. His crew were waiting for him and when he had caught them up, they all went on together in a bunch. I heard the flight engineer's rather high-pitched laugh, and then they disappeared into the hangar.

“What did you want to see me about?” Ledder's voice was dull and flat and I turned to find him standing close beside me, his hands in his pockets and a bored look on his face.

I'd thought about this meeting all through the monotonous hours of the flight, but now that I was alone with him, I found myself at a loss for words. The references to him in my father's log books had given him an importance in my mind I couldn't reconcile with this morose-looking individual. “Do you recall the name Ferguson?” I asked. “James Finlay Ferguson. He's dead now, but—”

“The expedition of nineteen hundred. Is that what you mean?” There was a sudden flicker of interest in the eyes that peered at me through thick horn-rimmed lenses.

Intuition should have told me that a gap in the past was being bridged for me, but my mind was on Briffe and the things my father had written. “No, Station G2STO,” I said. “It's about those radio contacts you had with him.” But the momentary flicker of interest had vanished from his eyes and his face was blank. “Your call sign is VO6AZ, isn't it?” I asked him.

He nodded, waiting.

“G2STO contacted you three times in the past few weeks. Don't you remember?”

“Sure I do. It was six times to be exact.” His voice sounded weary. And then he added, “What are you, Police or Air Force?”

I didn't answer that. I thought maybe he'd talk more readily if he believed I had authority to question him. “Can we go somewhere where we can talk?” I said. It was beginning to rain again and an aircraft had started warming up its engines farther along the apron. “There are one or two questions—”

“Questions?” That seemed to touch him off. “I've had nothing but questions about this darned ham for the past few days. G2STO! I'm sick of him. The crazy bastard claims he picked up a transmission from Paul Briffe. That's what you've come about, isn't it?” His manner was openly hostile. “Well, I spent a whole day making out a report on him. The Station Commander here has a copy of it, if you want to see it. I've nothing to add. Nothing at all.”

I was too angry to say anything. To come all this way and find that Ledder was completely unco-operative … it was what I'd feared the moment I had seen him waiting there, sullenly, on the apron.

“Well,” he said, “do you want to see the report?”

I nodded and we began to walk across the tarmac.

“You know about Briffe?” He was looking at me. I think he was puzzled by my silence. “He couldn't have made that transmission.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“How do I know? Why, the man was dead. How the hell can a man who's been dead a week suddenly start sending?”

“You don't
know
he's dead,” I said.

He stopped then. “How do you mean?”

“He's been reported dead. That's all.”

“That's all, you say.” He was peering at me curiously. “What are you getting at?”

“Just that you can't be absolutely certain he didn't transmit,” I told him. “Not unless you were listening in for him on his frequency that day.” I was facing him then. “Were you listening in for him at two o'clock on the twenty-ninth?”

“The time I was given was nine twenty-five.”

“Yes, of course.” That was the four and a half hours difference. “It would have been nine twenty-five here. But you weren't listening for him then, were you?”

He shook his head. “Why should I? The search had been called off three days before, and I'd no reason to think—”

“Then you can't be absolutely certain.”

“I tell you Briffe was dead.” I had touched his professional pride and he said it angrily. “If I thought there'd been a chance of any transmission, I'd have kept constant watch. But there wasn't. He'd been dead since the twentieth.”

Perhaps he wasn't so unlike my father when it came to radio. “You've only the pilot's word for that,” I said.

He stared at me and his face had a startled look. “Are you suggesting … Look, for Chrissake, Laroche is all right.” He was looking at me with sudden suspicion. “You're not the Police. You're not Air Force either. Who are you?”

“My name's Ian Ferguson,” I said. “The crazy bastard you spoke of was my father, and I happen to believe that he did pick up some sort of a transmission.” My words had shocked him and I didn't give him time to recover, but added quickly, “My father made several contacts with you.” I pulled out the sheet of paper with the entries I had isolated. “The first time was on the twenty-third of September, and then again on the twenty-fifth of last month and again on the twenty-sixth. Did he seem crazy to you then?”

“No, but that was before—”

“He was perfectly rational, was he?”

“He asked some odd questions,” he answered evasively.

I hesitated. But this wasn't the moment to find out what those questions were. “Forget for the moment that Briffe has been reported dead,” I said, “and that my father ever picked up this transmission. Cast your mind back to the first time he contacted you. Can you remember what your reaction was?”

“I tell you, he asked some odd questions,” he answered uncomfortably. “Otherwise there was nothing to it, I guess. He was just another ham.”

“Look,” I said, trying to get my own urgency across to him. “My father was a radio operator, like you.” Surely there was some sort of freemasonry between these men whose world was the ether, some sense of brotherhood. “I know he was contacting you on W/T and that all you get is a lot of dots and dashes, but something must come through, some indication—”

“It's not the same as Voice, you know. And he always contacted me on Key—never Voice.”

“Of course he did,” I said angrily. “How else could he contact you? But even so,” I added, “something must come through, surely—some indication of the sort of man he was, his mood, something?”

“I tell you, it was all on Key. If I'd had a QSO—a Voice contact—then maybe …” He gave a little shrug. “To tell you the truth I didn't think much about him—not then.”