“Very little. Woods, mountains, lakes.”
“Roads?”
Marba smiled. “All in good time,” he said, and took Grofield’s arm. “We’ll pay for lunch, of course.”
The restaurant was a smallish white clapboard building, converted from a private home. Three bearded men in hunting jackets sat in a corner sharing a bottle of red wine and speaking together in French. There had been ten people in the truck, nine in the back and the driver, and they now spread themselves over three tables, generally segregating themselves by race. There were three Orientals, and they sat at one table. The driver was a Caucasian, possibly an American, and he sat with the two Latin Americans. That left Marba and two other blacks, who took the table beside the window overlooking the side street where the truck was parked. Grofield joined this latter trio, staying close to Marba.
The waitress spoke only French, but it turned out to be a language Marba knew, so there was no trouble. Grofield chose a veal cutlet and asked, “Does your expense account cover wine?”
“I believe so,” Marba said, and ordered.
While waiting for their food, Grofield tried to start a conversation with the other two, but Marba said, “I’m sorry, they don’t speak English.”
Grofield looked at their stolid faces. They were both young and strong-looking, with burly shoulders and thick necks. Bodyguard types, who wouldn’t be expected to communicate with words. “They speak French?”
“No. Nothing but a dialect you wouldn’t have heard of.”
Grofield looked at him. “Would I have heard it on that tape?”
“Tape?” Marba looked blank.
“The one your people played for me.”
“Oh! Grofield, I’ve already assured you we didn’t murder your friend Carlson.”
“Have you listened to the tape?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did you recognize the language?”
“Toward the end, do you mean?”
“While he was killing Carlson, I mean.”
Marba shook his head. “No, it wasn’t familiar to me. But I don’t believe it was an African language. It didn’t seem to be related to any of the African languages I know.”
Grofield looked around the room. “We’ve also got Asians,” he said. “And Latin Americans. And God knows what else.”
Marba smiled. “We could be termed heterogeneous,” he said. “But I will tell you that we played that section of tape for different members of our party, and none of them recognized it. It doesn’t appear to be an Oriental tongue, and it certainly isn’t Spanish or Portuguese or any dialect derived from them, which would eliminate Latin America.”
“You’ve eliminated the whole world,” Grofield said.
“Not entirely. Ah, here comes our wine.”
Grofield waited while the waitress poured wine into their glasses, and when she’d gone away again he said, “What part of the world is left?”
“A few corners,” Marba said, and sipped at the wine, “Quite good,” he said, and put the glass down. “Principally eastern Europe, of course,” he said. “And here comes lunch.”
Sixteen
Twenty minutes after they left Roberval the truck stopped again. Grofield looked up and said, “Lunch again?”
“We change vehicles now,” Marba said. “Come along.”
They all climbed down out of the truck again. Everyone but Marba and Grofield was heavily armed by now, with machine guns slung to their backs and automatics hanging from cartridge belts at their waists. Grofield felt as though he’d been caught up with the advance party of a guerrilla revolution. He said, “You people aren’t here to take Quebec away from Canada, are you?”
Marba looked at him in surprise. “What an idea! Where do you think of such things?”
“How do I know? Maybe you’re tied in with these Quebec Libre people. I’m a stranger here myself.”
Marba smiled and patted his arm. “Don’t fret yourself,” he said. “Territorial expansion is not on our agenda this weekend. Come along.”
Grofield saw now that there was a large frozen lake just past the truck, and on it a medium-size twin-engine plane fixed with skis for landing on ice. He went with the others as they tramped down through the snow and out over the ice toward the plane, all of them except the driver of the truck. When Grofield looked back, the truck was making a U-turn and going away.
He looked around, and there was nothing encouraging to be seen in any direction. Ahead lay the plane, with the blue-white expanse of frozen lake beyond it. On the other three sides the snowbound shore. A few structures were visible a distance away, but none of them looked inhabited.
How had he gotten himself into this? Up in the frozen north without his electric long johns, with Marba and his friends really putting him on ice for the duration. Even if he could slip away from this well-armed bunch, there was nowhere for him to go. And even if he had somewhere to go, there was nothing for him to report to Ken and his bunch. And he knew Ken disliked him enough by now to take any excuse to ship him back to face that robbery rap.
What if he tried to get away from Marba and Ken? There was always the chance that Marba and his people would let it go at that, but Ken wouldn’t. An entire espionage outfit from the United States Government would turn its energies to finding one Alan Grofield, actor/heistman, and however inept they were in their dealings with the Third World it was Grofield’s gloomy conviction they could hold their own against one Grofield.
Not that there was any point thinking about his options and trying to make plans. The fact was, he didn’t have any options, and all his plans had already been made for him by other people. The only thing left for him to do was keep his eyes wide open and try somehow still to be alive on Monday.
The plane’s engines were already turning over as they all clambered aboard. Grofield, totally adapted to the jet age, found it strange to see propellers whirling ahead of the wings, blowing snow into everybody’s face as they boarded. He found himself mistrusting the plane, and visualizing an icy death on some remote snowy mountainside near the Arctic Circle.
The plane was only nominally a passenger job, with hinged bucket seats that could be let down along both sides, so the group sat in two facing rows. There was no heat, and the metal seat was cold even through the overcoat Grofield wore. He tucked his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and gloomily watched everybody breathing steam.
The plane took off almost at once, trundling forever along the ice, going very slowly, almost reluctantly, bumping and trembling and apparently trying to shake itself apart rather than fly, but finally lifting as though the task were more than it could bear. Never had a plane seemed so conscious of its own weight, and that remote snowy mountainside loomed once again in Grofield’s mind.
But once they had climbed to their cruising altitude, the plane settled down and began to behave, sailing along smoothly and matter-of-factly through the sky. Grofield, twisting around to look down past his elbow and out the small side window, saw remote snowy mountainsides down there, and here and there the glint of sunlight reflecting off frozen water. Lakes and snow, and then dark greenery, the Canadian North Woods.
It was louder inside the plane than in a New York City subway car, but Grofield tried to talk anyway, shouting into Marba’s ear, “Do we fly long?”
On the second try he heard Marba’s response: “Less than an hour!” So that wasn’t too bad.
He’d never realized before now just how used he was to carrying a watch. Now he felt lost without it, without being able to compartmentalize his day. He didn’t know how long they’d been in the air, he didn’t know when an hour would be up, how much longer he could expect them to travel, and the result was that everything seemed much slower. He was sure an hour had gone by, and still they droned on through the sky. He was sure an hour and a half had gone by. He was sure two hours had gone by.