‘Outside of normal range, yes,’ I said impatiently. ‘Nevertheless, my father was keeping watch. You knew that, and yet down here at the bottom of your report you give it as your opinion that G2STO couldn’t possibly have picked up a transmission from Briffe. And you list your reasons — one of them, that, granted freak reception and the transmission having actually been made, the odds against G2STO choosing that particular moment to listen in are too great. What exactly did you mean by that?’
‘Just what I say,’ he answered sharply. ‘Take all those points together — Briffe transmitting when he’s known to be dead, freak reception and finally the remote chance that your father should be keeping watch at that precise moment. It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘Why not? The odds are against it, I admit, but it’s not impossible.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ he exclaimed irritably. ‘The plane crashed on the evening of the fourteenth. We were on constant watch until the twenty-sixth when the search was abandoned — not only us, but the Air Force, Government stations, and a whole bunch of hams. We picked up nothing. And three days after we ceased watch G2STO reports contact. Suppose Briffe did transmit on the twenty-ninth as he says. To be certain of picking up that transmission he’d have had to be listening on net frequency for three whole days, twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four.’ He shook his head. ‘It just isn’t credible.’
‘My father was paralysed,’ I said. ‘He had nothing else to do.’
He stared at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I guess they didn’t tell us anything about him.’
‘They didn’t tell you then that he died immediately after picking up the transmission?’
‘No. I guess that explains it — why you’re here, I mean. I’d been wondering about that.’
‘That transmission killed him.’
His eyes widened, looking at me curiously. ‘How do you mean?’
I told him then about my father calling out and how he’d somehow struggled to his feet. I told him the whole story, and when I’d finished, he said, ‘I didn’t know about all this.’ His soft, slow voice was shocked, his tone apologetic. ‘They didn’t give any details, not even his name. I been thinking about that over my supper. It was those questions he asked that started me thinking he was nuts. If they’d given me his name I might have understood what he was getting at. As it was those questions just seemed so Goddamned irrelevant.’ He nodded to the report in my hand. ‘Read ‘em. They’re all there. You’ll see what I mean then. You’d have thought he was nuts if they’d come at you out of the blue, so to speak — anybody would.’
I could see his point, for on the second occasion my father had contacted him he’d asked him if Briffe had ever mentioned Lake of the Lion. That was on September 10, and when Ledder had said No and had refused to give him the exact location of Area Cl, he had requested details of the reports or at least the code so that he could follow the progress of the expedition for himself. Finally: He asked me to question Laroche about Lake of the Lion and report his reaction.
‘Why did he want you to question Laroche about the lake?’ I asked. ‘Did he say?’
‘No, he didn’t say. I tell you, they’re damned queer questions, some of them.’
On September 15, the day after the geologists had disappeared, my father had asked him a lot of questions about what had happened and why Briffe had been in such a hurry to reach C2. Had I asked Laroche about Lake of the Lion and what was his reaction? Where was C2? My negative replies seemed to annoy him. On September 23 my father had made contact again, asking for information about Laroche. Could I find out for him whether Canadian geologists still remembered the expedition of 1900 into the Attikonak area? And two days later he had asked about this again. / told him that it was still talked about and added that if he wanted further details he should contact the Department of Mines in Ottawa.
And then there was the final contact in which Ledder had confirmed Briffe’s sending frequency.
I folded the report up and put it down on the desk beside him, conscious that he was watching me, waiting for me to tell him what those questions meant. He expected me to know, and the fact that I didn’t made me feel uncomfortable, so that my throat felt suddenly constricted and my eyes moist. To gain time I asked him about C2. ‘Was it in the Attikonak area?’
He nodded. ‘Sure. The advance party were camped right on the river bank.’ And then he added, ‘What was his interest in the Attikonak River, do you know that? And this Lake of the Lion he asked about?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’ It was a confession that I’d never bothered to get very close to my father. ‘My mother might know,’ I murmured uncomfortably.
He was puzzled now. ‘But those questions make sense to you, don’t they.’
I didn’t know what to say. It came down to this, that Ledder would only be convinced that the message was genuine if I could explain the motive behind my father’s questions, and I didn’t know the motive. That belonged to the map and the books and the relics of the Canadian North, all the secret world I’d never shared. It’s a long story. That was the only reference he’d ever made to it. If only I’d persisted then. With a little patience I could Have dug it out of him.
Ledder had picked up the report and was staring at it. ‘I could kick myself,’ he said, suddenly tossing it down amongst the litter of papers. ‘I’d only to look him up in the book. But I’d lent my copy to somebody in the D.O.T. and I just didn’t bother to go and find him and get it back.’ He had misunderstood my silence. ‘It never occurred to me,’ he added, looking up at me apologetically.
‘What never occurred to you?’ I asked. There was something here that I didn’t understand.
That his name was important,’ he answered.
‘Important? How do you mean?’
‘Well, if I’d known it was James Finlay Ferguson …’ He broke off abruptly, staring at me with a puzzled frown. ‘He was related, wasn’t he?’
‘Related?’ I didn’t know what he was getting at. ‘Related to whom?’
‘Why, to the Ferguson that got killed up in the Attikonak area in 1900.’
I stared at him. So that was it. The expedition of 1900. ‘Was there a Ferguson on that expedition?’ I asked.
‘Sure there was. James Finlay Ferguson.’ He was looking at me as though he thought it was I who was crazy now. ‘You mean you don’t know about it?’
I shook my head, my mind busy searching back through my childhood to things I’d half forgotten — my mother’s fears, my father’s obsession with the country. This was the cause of it all then.
‘But the name?’ He said it almost angrily, as though he were being cheated of something that would add interest to the monotony of life in this distant outpost. ‘And him asking all those questions? You mean it’s just coincidence that the names were the same? Was it just because of that your father was interested?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, it wasn’t that.’ And I added hastily, ‘It’s just that my father never talked about it.’ I, too, felt cheated — cheated because he hadn’t shared the past with me when it belonged to me and was my right.
‘Never talked about it? Why ever not?’ Ledder was leaning forward. ‘Let’s get this straight. Are they related or not — your father and this Ferguson who went into Labrador?’
‘Yes, of course they are,’ I answered. ‘They must be.’ There was no other explanation. It was a pity that my grandmother had died when I was still a child. I would like to have talked to her now.
‘What relationship?’ Ledder was staring up at me. ‘Do you know?’
‘His father, I think.’ It must have been his father for I hadn’t any great uncles.
‘Your grandfather, in fact.’
I nodded. And it would have been grandmother Alexandra who would have given him the names of James Finlay. I was thinking it was strange that my father had been born in the year 1900.