I didn’t say anything. I wanted to see if his mind would follow the track that mine had followed.
He was looking back through that last log book. ‘All these drawings of lions. I wonder if Laroche knows anything about that Lake of the Lion. Could that message have finished — a rock shaped like a lion? Here’s a drawing that shows a lion set into a rock. And another here.’ He looked up at me. ‘You said something about a map of Labrador over his desk. Was Lake of the Lion marked on it?’
‘He’d pencilled it in, yes,’ I said and explained how it had been enclosed in a rough circle covering the area between the Attikonak and the Hamilton.
He nodded. ‘And C2 was in that area.’ He was toying with the bug key and he suddenly slapped his hand on the desk. ‘Hell! No harm in telling them. Where’s your plane going on to?’
‘Montreal.’ I waited now, holding my breath.
‘Okay. The Company offices are there.’ He hesitated a moment longer, frowning and shaking his head. ‘It’s crazy,’ he muttered. ‘But you never know. There’s crazy enough things happen all the time up here in the North.’ He pulled the paper on which he had been writing closer to the key, read it through and then reached over to the transmitter. The pilot light glowed red and there was a faint hum as the set warmed up. And then he put the earphones on and hitched his chair closer to the desk. A moment later and his thumb was tapping at the key and I heard the buzz of his morse signal as he began to send.
I lit a cigarette. I felt suddenly exhausted. But at the same time I was relaxed. I had achieved something, at any rate. I had persuaded a man who had been hostile at first to take action. But it was all to be done over again at Montreal — the story of how my father had died, the explanations. All to be told again, over and over again perhaps. I wondered whether it was worth it, conscious of the size of the country out there in the darkness beyond the airport — the wildness and the emptiness of it. They’d both be dead by now surely. They couldn’t possibly have survived a whole week. But it was a chance, and because of my father and because of something in my blood, I knew I had to go on with it.
‘Well, that’s that, I guess.’ Ledder switched off the transmitter and pulled his earphones off. That’s what I told them.’ He handed me the slip of paper on which he’d pencilled his message. ‘It’s up to the Company now.’ He seemed relieved.
Possibility G2STO picked up transmission Briffe should not be ignored, I read. Urgently advise you see Ferguson’s son … I looked across at him. ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I said.
He seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘I’m only doing what I think right,’ he murmured. ‘There’s an outside chance, and I think they ought to take it.’
‘The authorities don’t think so. They think my father was mad.’ And I told him then about the expert’s report. I’d nothing to lose now the message was sent.
But he only smiled. ‘Maybe I can understand him better than they can. They’re a queer lot, radio operators,’ he added, and the smile extended to his eyes.
‘And it’s technically possible?’ I asked. ‘He could have picked up that message?’
‘Sure he could.’ And he added, ‘It would be freak reception, of course. But if a message was transmitted, then he could certainly have picked it up. Look.’ And he drew a little diagram for me, showing that, however faint the signal was, the waves would still rebound from the ionosphere to the earth and back again to the ionosphere. ‘They’d travel like that all the way round the earth, and if your aerial happened to be set up at one of the points of rebound, then it would be possible to pick up the transmission, even if it were six thousand miles away. It’s just one of those things.’
‘And the transmitter was with Briffe in the aircraft when it crashed?’
‘Yes. But the plane sank and they didn’t salvage anything. Laroche came out with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.’
Possible, but not probable! And always there seemed to be the blank wall of Laroche to block any credence being given to my father’s message. ‘You’ll see I’ve asked them to meet you at Dorval Airport and I’ve given them your flight number,’ he said. ‘I’ve also asked them to confirm through D.O.T. Communications. I don’t expect we’ll get a reply tonight, but it should come through fairly early in the morning.’
I nodded. He couldn’t have done more. And at that moment his wife called down the stairs to say that Mrs Karnak had gone and she’d made some fresh coffee for us.
We went up then, and over coffee in the bright warmth of their living-room, he gave me the first detailed account of Briffe’s disappearance. He told it, of course, from the point of view of a man whose contact with the outside world was exclusively by radio. Like my father, he was confined to scraps of information plucked from the ether, to news broadcasts and messages from planes flying to search. But he was much closer to it. He had even met the men who figured in the disaster — Briffe twice, Laroche once, and he knew a good deal about Bill Baird from talks with his brother, Tim, the Company’s base manager.
On September 12, Briffe had called for an air lift from Area Cl, which was Lake Disappointment, up to C2, on the banks of the Attikonak River. This request was made in the course of his usual daily report. He had completed the survey at Disappointment. ‘Aptly named was how he described it.’ Ledder smiled. And then he went on to explain that the survey party consisted of five men and the procedure in making the hop forward to the next area was always the same — three of the five men, Sagon, Hatch and Blanchard, would go forward as an advance party to establish the new camp, together with as much of the stores as the floatplane would carry and one canoe; Briffe and Baird would move up on the second flight with the transmitter, the other canoe and the rest of the stores.
This was the procedure adopted on September 14, and Ledder was now more or less amplifying my father’s notes for me. The air lift was actually called for September 13, but the weather had been bad and Laroche had decided to wait. However, the following day it was better and he took off early in the morning. Ledder had actually seen the little Beaver floatplane scudding a broad arrow out across the still waters of the bay, had watched it take off, circle and disappear into the haze beyond Happy Valley, headed west. He was off duty that day and after about an hour he tuned in on the 75-metre band. But Briffe didn’t come through until 1133. Laroche had arrived, but thick fog had closed in on the camp and was preventing take off for C2. The delay in transmission had been due to condensation on the terminals of the hand generator.
He immediately reported the delay in the flight to Montreal. It was apparently the normal procedure for either himself or his wife to keep a radio watch and report regularly to Montreal whenever a supply flight was made or the party were being air lifted to a new location. He reported again at 1230, Briffe having come through with the news that the fog had lifted and the Beaver had taken off with the advance party.
After that he heard nothing from Briffe until 1500 hours when the survey party leader came through with the information that the Beaver had not returned and the fog had clamped down again. It was Ledder’s report of this information to Montreal that my father had picked up. ‘I began to get worried then,’ Ledder said. ‘We had started picking up reports of a storm belt moving in from the Atlantic and things didn’t look so good. I asked Briffe to report every hour.’
At 1600 Briffe came through again. The fog had cleared, but the Beaver had still not returned. And then, at 1700, Briffe reported the plane safely back. Laroche had come down on a lake about ten miles short of C2 just before the fog closed in and had taken off again as soon as it had lifted. The advance party were now at C2 and Briffe’s only concern was to get himself and Baird and the rest of the equipment up there before nightfall. ‘I told him,’ Ledder said, ‘that I didn’t think it a good idea on account of the weather. He then asked me for a met. forecast.’ He was turning over the pages of his log which he had brought up with him. ‘Here you are.’ He passed it across to me. Weather worsening rapidly. Ceiling 1,000, visibility 500, heavy rain. Expect airfield close down here shortly. In-coming flights already warned and west-bound trans-Atlantic traffic grounded Keflavik. Rain will turn to snow over Labrador plateau. Winds tonight easterly 20 knots plus. Tomorrow reaching 40 knots; rain, sleet or snow on high ground Visibility nil at times.