White Heat (35 page)

    Edie
had seen enough TV cop shows to know she was in some kind of sex club. A few
men, mostly
qalunaat,
were sitting around tables surrounded by
half-clad, mostly native, women. Some were playing cards, others drinking and
talking. The air was thick and acrid with cigarette smoke and Edie could
detect, somewhere beneath it, the tang of marijuana.

    The
bearded
qalunaat
led her over to a table in the corner where a huge,
red-faced blond man in his late fifties was playing chess with a smaller,
younger Inuk.

    'Julia
sent this one. She's foreign.'

    Moller
looked up. Moller's chess partner looked up. The Inuk said:

    'They're
usually better looking. And younger.'

    Edie
swallowed the knot gathering in her throat. 'Go find yourself a fuck, Little
Man, I need fifteen minutes with your friend.'

    The
Inuk man let out a contemptuous snort.

    'Sweetheart,
it looks like you need one more than me.'

    It wasn't
often that Edie resorted to brute force, but sometimes there was just no
alternative. This was one of those times. Swiping the Inuk man's queen from the
board and grabbing his hair, she thrust the chess piece firmly up his nose. He
gave a sharp cry and winced. A bubble of blood oozed out then grew into a thin
trickle.

    'With
you, I can see a fuck isn't likely to take more than a few seconds,' she said.
'So for the remaining fourteen minutes, you and your whore will just have to
make polite conversation.'

    The
man stood, bowed over his nose, and shuffled away.

    Moller
gave her an admiring look.

    She
introduced herself as Maggie Kiglatuk, using her mother's name.

    'I'm
going to need a plane.'

    'Where
to?' Moller wiped his hand across his mouth. He looked oddly perky all of a
sudden. Edie got the sense that he needed the business.

    'Qaanaaq.'

    His
face fell. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. 'Air Greenland fly up
once a week. You can buy a ticket at the airport.'

    'No,
I need a charter.'

    She
knew enough about the scheduled flights to realize that she didn't have the
money for a one-way ticket, let alone a return. Besides, she didn't want to
appear on any passenger lists. Her plans had just got more complicated. She
wanted to check on the Russians up in the north, hoping they were the same two
who had flown into Autisaq on Moller's plane, perhaps even the same two who had
flown over Craig the day Andy Taylor disappeared. 'There'd be eight of us, and
we'd need picking up on Ellesmere.' She was about to say Autisaq, then stopped
herself. It was better that she kept as much of her true identity to herself as
possible. At Kuujuaq. Could you do that?'

    Moller
considered a moment. 'Don't you people usually travel over the ice?'

    She'd
anticipated this.

    'It'll
be mostly elders, going to see relatives. The ice across Smith Sound is really
rough. Besides, the government is paying.'

    Moller
suddenly looked extremely interested.

    'We
don't usually fly over to Canada north of Baffin because the katabatic winds
can be tricky. It wouldn't be cheap, you understand, but we've done it before.
My associate, Hans, he's Inuk, like you, he can fly a midge through a tornado.'

    'Well,
if you've done it before . . .' This was going better than she'd anticipated.

    'We've
taken scientists, you know, those kind of folk.' He craned about, searching for
someone, then pointed to a man sitting at the bar. 'You want to meet Hans, I'll
call him over.'

    Edie
squinted through the cigarette smoke until she recognized the pilot who had
brought the two Russian men into Autisaq several weeks back. The odds on the
Russians in Qanaaq being the same men who had gone hunting with Sammy had just
shortened considerably.

    'Not
now,' she said. She was pretty sure he hadn't seen her in Autisaq, but she
didn't want to take any chances at this moment. 'I'd need to check out your
credentials first.'

    Moller
opened his pack of cigarettes and offered them to Edie before taking one
himself.

    'Sit
down, Maggie, be friendly.'

    Edie
sat.

    'Licences,
permissions, we got those.'

    'I
was thinking more by way of a trial run. Next time you're going up to Qaanaaq,
I could come along, check it out.'

    Moller
looked sceptical.

    'Our
elders are very precious to us.'

    Moller
nodded, took another drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out on the table.

    'What
the hell,' he said, finally. 'Be outside Egede's church at five.' He checked
his watch. 'Seven hours from now. We're doing a cargo drop, you can tag along.
If the weather is as good as the forecast says we'll be in Qaanaaq tomorrow
afternoon.'

    Back
out in the street, Edie found a phone kiosk, went in and rang Derek Palliser's
number, surprised at how glad she was to hear his voice. It was a short
conversation. She told him she was going up to Qaanaaq, he asked her why and
she said she couldn't say. He didn't like it but she wasn't ready to tell him
what she suspected until she was more certain. Pride, most likely.

    Signing
off, she retraced the route back to Blok 7. The bell in Hans Egede's church was
ringing ten as she opened the door of Qila's apartment. Inside, all was quiet
except for the soft, muffled sound of breathing coming from one of the
bedrooms. A single lamp dimly illuminated the living room and kitchenette.
There was hot coffee in the machine and a note beside it with instructions
written in misspelled English for sorting out the hot water. In her bedroom she
found a newspaper clipping, with a note from Suusaat scrawled on the bottom.

    Third
standing from the left is Belovsky.

    The
picture was one of those stiff line-ups you often saw in the papers. Here it
consisted of
qalunaat
men, a couple of dozen by the looks of it, aged
mostly in their forties and fifties, grouped in two rows, the front one seated
and the others standing behind them.

    Beneath
the picture was a caption written in what she took to be Danish, with the
exception of the English words 'Arctic Hunters' Club' picked out in italics.
She counted three in from the left, and saw a tall, square-built man with the
neck of a walrus and the eyes of an orca. As a rule, you could divide the
qalunaat
men (and it was almost always men, though a few brought their
wives to go duck hunting whilst they were chasing bear) who came up to the
Arctic to hunt into two types: the lean, nostalgic kind and the raging
superego. The print quality of the picture was poor, but Edie could tell that
Belovsky was one of the latter.

    She
tiptoed to her room and tried to get some sleep before heading back out to meet
Moller. She kept waking, disturbed by the feeling of being so close to some
piece of the puzzle that lay just beyond reach. The third or fourth time, she
checked her watch, and decided to rise. The sisters were still sleeping. She'd
forgotten to turn off the coffee and now helped herself to what little
remained. It was as bitter as walrus bile, though it had the desired effect of
jolting her awake.

    She
picked up the photo and was about to slip it into her pack when her eye was
drawn to a familiar face. Seated at the extreme right of the picture was a
small, balding, slack-jawed man who looked as though he'd made an art form of
the business dinner. She zoomed in, squinting for a better look. This fellow
sported a brushy moustache, but in every other respect the match was exact. The
man she was eyeballing was Felix Wagner.

    A
harder look only confirmed her suspicions. She knew that Taylor was connected
to the Russians via the green plane and that Taylor and Wagner had some
connection through Zemmer Energy. The photo proved there was also a link
between Wagner and Belovsky. Was it possible the two Russians up in the north were
associated with Wagner in some way? Who was Wagner working for, Beloil or
Zemmer? And which of these were involved in Wagner's death?

    Creeping
around so as not to wake her new friends, Edie threw her toothbrush and
underwear back into her backpack, picked up the photo, slid it into her pack as
well, and went out on the street. The temperature differential between day and
night was much more noticeable here in Nuuk, so much further to the south than
Autisaq, and Edie quickly grew chilled in the deep grey pre-dawn mist, but she
was too anxious about meeting Moller to go back and reorganize her clothes.
During one of her many wakeful periods last night, she'd found herself worrying
about what she would do when she got to Qaanaaq.

    Now,
waiting for Moller to arrive, she was anxious that he had tricked her. She
decided if Moller hadn't showed up by five fifteen she would start making her
way to the airport and would remain there until she found him. Her instincts
told her to be very careful. She was heading into danger, but the hunter in her
told her she was also closing in.

    At
almost exactly five, she heard the sound of an engine and a battered-looking
jeep appeared. As it neared she could just see Moller's white face illuminated
in the gloom. The vehicle slowed then came to a stop beside her, Moller threw
the door open and she clambered inside. The Inuk pilot, Hans, sat in the back
seat. He showed no signs of recognizing her.

    'Hey.'
She threw him a sympathetic look and got no response.

    The airport
was deserted, save for a nightwatchman who nodded at Moller and let them
through. The jeep bumped across the service area and halted before a tatty-
looking office building. Inside was a row of lockers. Moller drew out a key,
opened one of the lockers, took out a file and stashed it away in his bag.

    She
helped them load up some boxes and an hour or so later the green Twin Otter
took off with Moller at the controls. Climbing rapidly above low summer clouds,
they headed west with the wind, then at twelve hundred metres Moller turned the
little plane and they began to edge north along the coast. Once they had left
Nuuk behind, Moller pulled down the sun screener, drew out the file he'd
removed from his locker, and began making entries into it. Beside him, Hans
stared out of the window, lost in thought.

    Down
below, the beginnings of the nautical dawn cracked the horizon. How odd, Edie
thought, to have lived your whole life in the south, below the Circle, never to
have seen the midnight sun nor lived through the velvety blackness of a polar
winter day. You had to feel sorry for southerners, even the Inuit ones.
Especially the Inuit ones.

    The
wind blew up and they found themselves bumping and shaking through a thick band
of cloud obscuring the coastline below. The little plane jagged from side to
side, plunged, then ballooned upwards once more. Though jumps and falls were no
more alarming to Edie than a ride in the skiff across a summer swell, the
movement brought on nausea and to distract herself she passed the time
replaying scenes from
The Gold Rush
in her mind.

    Before
long, in the gaps between the clouds, the great blue crescent of Disko Bay
appeared, closed in at its northern rim by Umanak Fiord and to the east by the
ice at the mouth of the Kangia glacier. Beyond Kangia the ice field at Sermeq
Kujalleq spread out as far as the eye could see.

    'Take
a good look,' Moller shouted from the front. 'And wave it goodbye. Another
twenty years .. .' He drew a hand across his throat.

    A
little further along they passed a handful of finger fiords, smaller and
thinner than those on Ellesmere, and speckled with stands of stunted spruce.

    A
while later, a ringing in the ears and an empty feeling in the belly alerted
Edie to the plane's descent and she realized she must have been asleep; her
eyelashes were heavy with tiny flakes of crust, like new ice. Suddenly they
were among high, wispy clouds and below them stretched a black basalt
coastline. To the east the dark rock gave way to striped gneiss. The sea lay
below them, funnelled here and there into fiords and open-mouthed bays. There
were no more trees.

    As
they headed further north the sea grew increasingly flecked with chunks of
floating ice. About midday, they passed over the scattered buildings of Thule
Airbase just south of Qaanaaq. From here, the coast of Ellesmere was clearly
visible across the grey-blue expanse of Smith Sound. A small, sharp wave of
panic travelled up Edie's spine. What she was doing was reckless and
ill-thought-out. It was clear to her now that Wagner, Taylor, maybe even Joe,
seemed to be bit players in some larger game.