He didn’t want to ask Marba. He wasn’t sure why, but it just didn’t seem to him that he wanted to ask Marba what time it was, or how long had they been in the air, or how much longer now till they landed. It would in some way be a confession of weakness, and therefore it had to be avoided.
But he came very close to asking anyway, eventually reaching the point where he decided to count slowly to a hundred, and if the plane hadn’t started to land by then he would ask. So he began counting, in his head, and he was at three hundred twenty-seven when the plane abruptly banked to the right, tilting Grofield’s side of the plane down and making him jump, startled.
Everyone else jumped too, and then all grinned sheepishly at one another, the expressions strangely at variance with all the artillery they wore draped all over themselves. Grofield looked away from the contrast and out the window again, and way below there was another frozen lake, with what looked like rough wooden buildings clustered together beside it. And smoke coming from two or three chimneys.
The plane circled once, dropping gradually, sliding down an invisible spiral chute, and then came straight in toward the lake, now seeming to be going far too fast, the surrounding mountains rushing by, covered with snow and pine trees. They hit badly, jokingly, the plane creaking and groaning in protest, as though someone had tossed a fifty-pound sack of potatoes on a porch glider. Then they swerved a little, but the pilot got things under control again and they rolled with relative smoothness across the lake to an easy stop.
The silence seemed to be full of humming, when the engines switched off. Grofield yawned to pop his ears and the humming changed in tone but remained present. He said, “I don’t think much of your air force.”
Marba smiled. “We have to make do with what the major powers leave us,” he said. He got to his feet, and Grofield got up with him.
There was no one outside the plane to greet them. It couldn’t be later than three o’clock, but the sun was a red ball low in the clear sky, and lights shone in the buildings on shore. They looked warm and cozy and comfortable, and Grofield happily joined the others scrunching across the snow-covered ice toward them. He said to Marba, “What is this place?”
“Once a logging camp, I believe,” Marba said. “More recently a private hunting lodge. At the moment, it has been loaned to us.”
“By whom?”
“A sympathizer,” Marba said, and offered his cool smile again.
“I like how you answer all my questions,” Grofield said.
“Of course. I hide nothing from you.”
The sound of engines made Grofield look back, and damn if the plane wasn’t turning around. Grofield watched and it trundled away across the ice, apparently planning to get into position to take off into the wind. He said, “That’s going away too?”
“It will return for us,” Marba said, and took Grofield’s elbow. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm.”
Seventeen
It was a long rustic room with a high cathedral ceiling and with blazing fireplaces at both ends. Moose heads and color panoramas of mountain lakes decorated the walls, and fur rugs were scattered here and there on the floor and furniture. Multiracial groups of men were clustered, standing and seated, around the two fireplaces, leaving the center of the room, into which Grofield and the others now came, unpopulated.
Some people turned their heads when the door opened and the new group came in, but then they returned to their hot drinks and quiet conversations. All except one short and very fat man in a maroon uniform with gold piping and many, many medals clinking together on the chest and a long sword hanging down from his left side, who came trundling over from the fireplace to the right, arms outstretched for a bear hug. “Grofield!” he shouted, in melodramatic Spanish-accented enthusiasm. “The man who saved my life!” A few others turned to watch, attracted by the shout, while the fat man rushed up and embraced Grofield, burying his face in Grofield’s chest, wafting upward the aromas of food and brandy and perspiration.
“Hello, General,” Grofield said, struggling to keep his balance. Apparently the General didn’t remember that the only other time he and Grofield had been in each other’s area they hadn’t exactly become fast friends. That had been on the General’s yacht, and the General had been spending his days in bed, recuperating from a bullet in the chest.
But if the General now wanted to believe that Grofield was a long-lost buddy, it was perfectly all right. No harm done. So Grofield said, “It’s good to see you again, General. All recovered?”
“Of course!” the General cried, releasing Grofield and stepping back to pound himself on the chest. “Can a pig kill General Pozos? Nonsense!” He spied Marba then, beside Grofield, and shouted, “You know this man! Didn’t I send him to you in Puerto Rico?”
“You certainly did,” Marba said. “And he was a pleasure to watch.”
The General lowered his head and stared meaningfully at Marba through his eyebrows. In a completely different tone he said, “We must talk.”
“No doubt,” Marba said drily.
“Your Colonel is a very stubborn man.”
“I agree,” Marba said. “But I don’t believe we should discuss business in front of our friend Grofield.”
“Don’t mind me,” Grofield said.
The General looked at Grofield. The happy reunion was over, and the General’s eyes were cold and impatient. “You will go now,” he said.
Marba said, “I’ll have someone show you to your room.” He turned to one of the black men who’d come in with them and spoke to him in what sounded like the same language he and Vivian Kamdela had used together in the hansom cab. The other man nodded, and gestured to Grofield to come with him.
“See you later, General,” Grofield said.
The General nodded brusquely, impatient for Grofield to be gone.
Grofield followed the black man away from there. They crossed the room and went through a doorway into a library lined with books and warmed by another huge fireplace. A few people sat around reading books, and didn’t glance up as Grofield and his guide passed through.
The library was followed by a hall, which was followed by a door to the outside world. Feet had worn a path in the snow, a long, parabolic curve to a neighboring low building. The entrance was at one end of the building, and the interior was a long hall lined with doors. It looked like a fifth-rate motel, with wall partitions of cheap plasterboard, a floor of black linoleum apparently laid directly on plywood, and a ceiling of blank wooden panels. A row of fluorescent lights gave illumination.
The doors even had numbers on them, starting with 123 on Grofield’s left and 124 on his right. The numbers declined as he and the black man walked down the hall, and it was number 108 that the black man finally opened, gesturing to Grofield to go in. Grofield did, and the door was closed behind him. He turned around, surprised, and heard a padlock being snapped shut.
Oh, nice. After all he’d gone through to avoid prison, now look.
He heard receding footsteps, creaking and squeaking on the linoleum-and-plywood, and waited a full minute before trying the door. Then it opened, very slightly, and caught with a little clink sound. Grofield pushed experimentally, not very hard, and nodded to himself. It was a hasp lock, at about the height of his waist, held with a padlock. That sort of arrangement would be no better than the wood into which the screws had been driven to hold the hasp lock pieces on, and judging from the general tone of the construction around here that wood was unlikely to be too awfully good.