But at least I had food. I opened a can of baked beans and, not bothering to make a fire to heat them, ate them greedily.
Above me a hint of thunder boiled in the low, dark clouds.
With the very last of the day’s light I took from my pocket the photographs of Nicole. I stared into her face, trying and failing to understand her. I tried to remember her as a child, but it was as if a veil had drawn itself between those memories and this moment. I did not know my daughter anymore. I did not understand what strange sea change had been wrought in her by her brother’s death, nor what she had become in the years since. My daughter was a stranger. I put the photographs away. Night fell in a rage of wind and rain. Lightning flickered briefly to the south.
Except for my brother, my whole family was gone to death or to evil, and I was alone. That knowledge made me feel as though I had passed through a dark gateway into a place where hatred ruled and where any life left to me was bleak and profitless. I crouched in the trees like an animal. I was dirty, soaked, tired, bleeding, and very dangerous.
And I had seventy-two hours, in which to teach the Genesis community that they were not above the law. I had seventy-two hours to destroy them, just as they had destroyed my family. I had been so reluctant to face that truth, but now I would ram it down their throats.
I slept with the Australian girl’s legacy of dynamite beside me. I woke long before dawn. I tried to reach Stormchild on the radio, but there was no answer, and I dared not drain the battery by leaving the small set switched on in hope of catching any possible transmissions that David might make. Instead I pulled his rucksack onto my back, picked up the rifle, and started walking.
PART THREE
It took me most of the daylight hours to cross the Isla Tormentos. I was unsure of my way for I was not returning to the limestone workings, but rather trying to reach the farm settlement. I had no map, no compass, and the sun was hidden all day, so I trudged through the unending rain guided only by guess.
Much of my journey was through marshland for I was using the low ground to avoid the eyes of any Genesis sentinel. I pushed through stands of woodland that were so thick with undergrowth they rivaled a tropical rain forest for impenetrability. I waded rain-swollen, peat-colored streams that were rich with trout, and staggered through deep sloughs under the protests of screaming birds. My blistered feet hurt like hell, so that I hobbled rather than walked. Twice, denied the cover of low ground by rising floodwaters, I was forced up onto the hills, and both times I found the fresh tracks of the cross-country motorbikes, evidence that von Rellsteb and his companion had returned this way, proof, if I needed further proof, that they had failed to capture Stormchild.
That failure would be worrying von Rellsteb. He probably believed me to be dead, but that would be no consolation for his fear that Stormchild was sailing north to carry Berenice and her damning tales to the Chilean authorities. With my body left to be found, and the Australian girl still missing somewhere on the island, the last thing von Rellsteb needed was any official interest in the Isla Tormentos and he would be doing everything in his power to intercept Stormchild in the heavy seas off Cape Raper.
It was that supposition which led me to believe the farm settlement would be largely unguarded. If the community believed I was dead and knew Stormchild was at sea, then they would certainly not be guarding their house against an attack from the landward flank. On that assumption I made my plans to make their settlement uninhabitable. Without food and shelter the group would be shattered. I planned to destroy von Rellsteb’s legacy. I would murder his dream. I would finish him as he had tried to finish me, and I no longer cared what risks I ran in that destructive revenge because I had nothing left to live for.
I was not entirely bent on suicide. Before attacking, I planned to wait through the rest of David’s seventy-two hours, in hope of contacting him on the radio. If I succeeded in reaching Stormchild I would persuade David to rescue me when my harrowing of the settlement was finished. I had decided not to tell my brother what I planned, for fear that David would summon the authorities before I succeeded; instead I would merely tell David I was in safe hiding then arrange a rendezvous with him somewhere in the Desolate Straits.
But if I could not reach Stormchild on the radio, then damn the consequences.
Because I had nothing left to live for.
I had reached the protective escarpment that curled about the western flank of the settlement at nightfall. The last few miles were hard going for I had entered a nightmarish landscape of rocks, small gorges, sudden streams and cold black lakes above which the settlement’s crude radio mast acted as a landmark beckoning me on. I approached the crest of the escarpment very cautiously, skirting around a wind-fretted reservoir that was held back by the earthen dam which controlled the water supply. No one challenged my approach. Once, slipping off a wet rock, my right foot dislodged a crashing fall of scree, but there were no guards posted on the high ground to hear the shattering landslide splash into the lake.
By dusk I had found a hiding place. It was a deep crevice beneath the rocky peak on which the radio mast had been built. The crevice was a crack in the rock eighteen inches high and four feet deep. Six people could have hidden in its black shadows and from its eastern lip I could stare straight down the steep escarpment, across the vegetable plots, to Genesis community. I made myself at home in my refuge by spreading out the groundsheet, unrolling the sleeping bag, and stowing my precious food and explosives deep in the dry heart of the rock. I then crept down to the reservoir and had a skimpy wash in its icy water. I had no razor, so my incipient beard, bristly and uncomfortable, had to stay.
Back in my aerie I made a supper of cold baked beans and corned beef as I searched the bay with my half binocular. Neither the catamaran nor the sloop were there, only the decrepit fishing vessel, which suggested the faster yachts had indeed gone north to search for Stormchild. They would be having a lively time of it, for the wind was whipping over my rock and shrieking an eldritch sound in the guy ropes of the radio mast, while the landscape beneath me was being beaten by a cold, wind-blasted rain that kept the Genesis community indoors. Just before darkness I saw two of the gray-dressed women hurry with sacks to one of the outhouses, but I saw no one else.
Darkness came and I watched the dim candle lights flicker in the windows of the big house until, one by one, they disappeared and the settlement was swallowed into the wild Patagonian night. After the last light had disappeared I tried to reach Stormchild by radio. I counted the seconds, and once every minute for an hour and a quarter I switched on the small set and sent an identifying message, but I heard nothing in reply. It could have been that David and Stormchild were too far away, or perhaps the hills of the island were blocking my signal, or maybe the radio was not working. I finally abandoned my efforts and, sheltered from the relentless rain by the tons of rock above me, I tried to sleep, but the best I could manage was a shivering night of intermittent and hallucinatory dozes. I was filled with misery. My feet were in agony, but I dared not take off my boots in case I could not pull them on again over my blistered, bleeding feet.
An hour before dawn I finally abandoned any pretense of sleep and once again tried to radio David, and once again I failed to reach him. I went back to the eastern side of my rock, and, as the gray light seeped into the bowl of the mountains, I watched the settlement stir. A wisp of smoke showed at a chimney. The rain still fell and the wind gusted to make the damp landscape a place of cold misery. I shivered, yet in truth I was so damp and so cold that by now I had almost ceased to notice any further discomfort. During the night my socks had become soaked with blood that now seeped over the edge of my boots.