"Where hat ye your dinner, Lord Randal, my son?

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they Where hat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?" imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

And burbled as it came!

sunset. Do you have this islet marked on your charts? Of course, Elder Torkes. I will show you its location immediately after dinner. Lars had one hand on her thigh under the table and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Had his father tipped him off as he had her? As well as the entry in my log which verifies the position. You keep a log? Of a certainty, Elder Torkes. The Harbor Master is most insistent on such details which are, in my view, an integral part of responsible seamanship. Farther down the table, an officer nodded his head in agreement. Torkes returned to his meal. What is this delicious fish, Harbor Master? Killashandra asked, indicating the smacker. Ah, that is one of the island delicacies, Guildmember, and Olav launched into an amusing description of the habits of the tropical behemoth and the dangers of capturing it. In his tale he managed to touch on the strength and bravery of smacker fishermen and their dedication to an unenviable task. Much of the smacker catch went to feed the Mainland. With such innocuous tidbits and discourse, the meal finished. Immediately upon rising from the table, Elder Torkes told Lars Dahl that now was the time to show him the islet. We can call up the information right here, Olav said, going to the elaborate sideboard of the dining room. One section of its flat surface immediately transformed to display a terminal while the island seascape above slid to one side exposing a large screen. Killashandra, watching Torkes obliquely, saw him stiffen until Olav merely gestured for Lars Dahl to retrieve what documents he needed. Within a moment, a small-scale chart of the entire Archipelago dominated the screen. Lars tapped keys and the chart dissolved to a larger-scale one of Angel Island, then flowed left toward Bar Island, slightly upward, and in another adjustment, magnified the chosen islet, complete with its protecting reefs, quite isolated from other blobs of polly-treed islands. Here, Elder Torkes, is where I discovered the Guild-member. Fortunately, whoever abandoned her left her where there is a good fresh spring. He now magnified the islet so that its topographical features were apparent. Id a bit of a shelter on the height, Killashandra said. Here, Lars agreed and pointed. And mercifully I was high enough there to be minolta digital camera battery out of reach of the hurricane tides just barely I fished in this lagoon, and swam, there, too, because the larger things couldnt pass over the reef. But, as you can see, gentlemen, I could not even have swum to an occupied island for help! One of Torkess officers noted the longitude and latitude of the islet. Just thinking about it again distresses me. Killashandra turned to Olav. That was a magnificent dinner to he served so soon after a hurricane, Harbor Master. And it was such a pleasure, for me especially, and she graciously gestured, to have so much variety to choose from and enjoy. Now, I would like to retire. Guildmember, there is much to discuss We can discuss it just as easily in the morning, Elder Torkes. It has been a long and exhausting day for me, remember. We left Bar Island with the injured at dawn and its now midnight. She turned from the Elder now to Olav. I am quartered tonight in the Residence? This way. Olav and Lars immediately escorted her to the inner wall where a lift door slid aside. Let me assure you that this is the only way into the living section of the Residence. This will be guarded well tonight. He peremptorily gestured for the guard to be posted. Elder Torkes, this is the first time that we have been privileged to entertain members of the Council, Teradia said, her deep voice tinged with awe as she took Torkess arm and began to lead him back to the reception room. Olav bowed over Killashandras hand, smiling as he came erect and gestured her into the lift. The door slid shut on Killashandra and Lars and, with an exaggerated sigh of relief, Killashandra leaned against him. He made a quick sign with his hand, his eyes busy on the ceiling pane. I am totally exhausted, Captain Dahl. So, Torkes had had the area monitored. That would make it exceedingly awkward for her and Lars. The lift made a brief, noiseless descent and then the door slid open to a scene that caught her breath. The wide window gave onto moonlit harbor. An aureole of bright light illuminating the ancient stratovolcano as a second moon rose behind it. Of one accord, they stood for a long moment in appreciation of the beauty. As Lars led her down to the short corridor toward two doors at its end, he glanced at the chrono on his wrist. Killashandra had time to notice the grin on his face before all the lights went

She got him up to upon her backe,

entirely. And he owed a great deal more than that to the sadeyed little Greek. It had been Louki's idea that they first move upvalley from Margaritha, to give Andrea time to recover the explosives from old Leri's hut, and to make certain there was no immediate hue and cry and pursuitthey could have fought a rearguard action up through the olive groves, until they had lost themselves in the foothills of Kostos: it was he who had guided them back past Margaritha when they had doubled on their tracks, had halted them opposite the village while he and Panayis had slipped wraith-like through the lifting twilight, picked up outdoor clothes for themselves, and, on the return journey, slipped into the Abteilung garage, torn away the coil ignitions of the German command car and truckthe only transport in Margarithaand smashed their distributors for good measure; it was Louki who bad led them by a sunken ditch right up to the roadblock guard post at the mouth of the valleyft had been almost ludicrously simple to disarm the sentries, only one of whom bad been awakeand, finally, it was Louki who bad insisted that they walk down the muddy centre of the valley track till they came to the metalled road, less than two miles from the town itself. A hundred yards down this they had branched off to the left across a long, sloping field of lava that left no trace behind, arrived in the carob copse just on sunrise. And it had worked. All these carefully engineered pointers, pointers that not even the most sceptical could have ignored and denied, had worked magnificently. Miller and Andrea, who had shared the forenoon watch, had seen the Navarone garrison spending long hours making the most intensive house-to-house search of the town. That should make it doubly, trebly safe for them the following day, Mallory reckoned: it was unlikely that the search would be repeated, still more unlikely that, if it were, it would be carried out with a fraction of the same enthusiasm. Louki had done his work welL Mallory turned his head to look at him. The little man was still asleepwedged on the slope behind a couple of tree-trunks, he hadn't stirred for five hours. Still dead tired himself, his legs aching and eyes smarting with sleeplessness, Mallory could not find ft in him to grudge Louki a moment of his rest. He'd earned it alland he'd been awake all through the previous night. So had Panayis, but Panayis was already awakening, Mallory saw, pushing the long, black hair out of his eyes: awake, rather, for his transition from sleep to full awareness fuji digital camera a330 was immediate, as fleeting and as complete as a cat's. A dangerous man, Mallory knew, a desperate man, almost, and a bitter enemy, but he knew nothing of Panayis, nothing at all. He doubted if he ever would. Farther up the slope, almost in the centre of the grove, Andrea had built a high platform of broken branches and twigs against a couple of carob poles maybe five feet apart, gradually filling up the space between slope and trees until he had a platform four feet in width, as nearly level as he could make it. Andy Stevens lay on this, still on his stretcher, still conscious. As far as Mallory could tell, Stevens hadn't closed his eyes since they had been marched away by Turzig from their cave in the mountains. He seemed to have passed beyond the need for sleep, or had crushed all desire for it. The stench from the gangrenous leg was nauseating, appalling, poisoned all the air around. Mallory and Miller had had a look at the leg shortly after their arrival in the copse, uncovered it, examined it, smiled at one another, tied it up again and assured Stevens that the wound was closing. Below the knee, the leg bad turned almost completely black. Mallory lifted his binoculars to have another look at the town, but lowered them almost at once as someone came sliding down the slope, touched him on the arm. It was Panayis, upset, anxious, almost angry looking. He gesticulated towards the westering sun. "The time, Captain Mallory?" He spoke in Greek his voice low, sibilant, urgentan inevitable voice, Mallory thought, for the lean, dark mysteriousness of the man. "What is the time?" he repeated. "Half-past two, or thereabouts." Mallory lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. "You are concerned, Panayis. Why?" "You should have wakened me. You should have wakened me hours ago!" He was angry, Mallory decided. "It is my turn to keep watch." "But you had no sleep last night," Mallory pointed out reasonably. "It just didn't seem fair" "It is my turn to keep watch, I tell you!" Panayis insisted stubbornly. "Very well, then. If you insist." Mallory knew the high fierce pride of the islanders too well to attempt to argue. "Heaven only knows what we would have done without Louki and yourself.. . . I'li stay and keep you company for a while." "Ah, so that is why you let me sleep on!" There was no disguising the hurt in the eyes, the voice. "You do not trust Panayis" "Oh, for heaven's sake!"

For it I beguile Eleanor our Queen,

roof, was no more than a shapeless blur in the opposite corner of the stone-flagged room. Andrea smiled to himself, without mirth. Taken prisoner again, and for the second time that dayand with the same ease and surprise that gave no chance at all of resistance: Completely unsuspecting, they had been captured in an upper room, seconds after Casey had finished talking to Cairo. The patrol had known exactly where to find themand with their leader's assurance that it was all over, with his gloating explanation of the part Panayis had played, the unexpectedness, the success of the coup was all too easy to understand. And it was difficult not to believe his assurance that neither Mallory nor Miller had a chance. But the thought of ultimate defeat never occurred to Andrea. His gaze left Casey Brown, wandered round the room, took in what he could see of the stone walls and floor, the hooks, the ventilation ducts, the heavy grille door. A dungeon, a torture dungeon, one would have thought, but Andrea had seen such places before. A castle, they called this place, but it was really only an old keep, no more than a manor house built round the crenelated towers. And the long-dead Franldsh nobles who had built these keeps had lived well. No dungeon this, Andrea knew, but simply the larder where they had hung their meat and game, and done without windows and light for the sake of . . . The light! Andrea twisted round, looked at the smoking oil lamp, his eyes narrowing. "Louki!" he called softly. The little Greek turned round to look at him. "Can you reach the lamp?" "I think so. . . . Yes, I can." "Take the glass off," Andrea whispered. "Use a clothit will be hot. Then wrap it in the cloth, hit it on the floorgently. The glass is thickyou can cut me loose in a minute or two." Louki stared at him for an uncomprehending moment, then nodded in understanding. He shuffled across the floorhis legs were still boundreached out, then halted his hand abruptly, only inches from the glass. The peremptory, metallic clang had been only feet away, and he raised his head slowly to see what had caused it. He could have stretched out his hand, touched the barrel of the Mauser that protruded threateningly through the bars of the grille door. Again the guard rattled the rifle angrily between the bars, shouted something he didn't understand. "Leave it alone, Louki," Andrea said quietly. His lumix tz3 digital camera australia voice was tranquil, unshadowed by disappointment "Come back here. Our Mend outside is not too pleased." Obediently Louki moved back, heard the guttural voice again, rapid and alarmed this time, the rattle as the guard withdrew his rifle quickly from the bars of the door, the urgent pounding of his feet on the flagstones outside as he raced up the passage. "What's the matter with our little friend?" Casey Brown was as lugubrious, as weary as ever. "He seems upset." "He is upset." Andrea smiled. "He's just realised that Louki's hands are untied." "Well, why doesn't he tie them up again?" "Slow in the head he may be, but he is no fool," Andrea explained. "This could be a trap and he's gone for his friends." Almost at once they heard a thud, like the closing of a distant door, the sound of more than one pair of feet running down the passage, the tinny rattling of keys on a ring, the rasp of a key against the lock, a sharp click, the squeal of rusty hinges and then two soldiers were in the room, dark and menacing with their jackboots and ready guns. Two or three seconds elapsed while they looked round them, accustoming their eyes to the gloom, then the man nearest the door spoke. "A terrible thing, boss, nothin' short of deplorable! Leave 'em alone for a couple of minutes and see what happens? The whole damn' bunch tied up like Houdini on an off night!" There was a brief, incredulous silence, then all three were sitting upright, staring at them. Brown recovered first. "High time, too," he complained. "Thought you were never going to get here." "What he means is that he thought we were never going to see you again," Andrea said quietly. "Neither did I. But here you are, safe and sound." "Yes," Mallory nodded. "Thanks to Dusty and his nasty suspicious mind that cottoned on to Panayis while all the rest of us were asleep." "Where is he?" Louki asked. "Panayis?" Miller waved a negligent hand. "We left him behindhe met with a sorta accident." He was across at the other side of the room now, carefully cutting the cords that pinioned Brown's injured leg, whistling tunelessly as he sawed away with his sheath knife. Mallory, too, was busy, slicing through Andrea's bonds, explaining rapidly what had happened, listening to the big Greek's equally concise account of what had befallen the

For were I to bend but my bow,

of yours." "Don't be crazy," I snapped. "I have a gun, Mahler. Believe me, I won't hesitate to use it." "I believe you. I think you would be quite ruthless if the need arose. Oh, I don't doubt you're tough, Doctor, as well as being headstrong, impulsive and not very subtle, but because I rather respect your efficient and selfless handling of an awkward and ugly situation for which you were in no way responsible, I don't want to see you make a complete fool of yourself in public." He lifted his right hand towards the lapel of his coat. "Let me show you something." I jerked the Beretta forward, but the gesture was quite needless. As he pushed his hand under his topcoats, Mahler's gestures were smooth and unhurried, just as smooth and unhurried when he brought his hand out again and passed over to me a leather-covered card. I stepped back a few feet, flipped open the card and glanced down at it. That one glance was enoughor should have been enough. I'd seen these cards scores of times before, but I stared down at this one as if I'd never seen one in my life. This was a completely new factor, it knocked all my preconceived notions on the head, and I needed time, time for reorient a tion, for understanding, for quelling the professional fear that came hard on the heels of that understanding. Then, slowly, I folded the card, pulled down my snow-mask, stepped close to Mahler and pulled his down also. In the harsh glare of the torch, his face was blue and white with the cold, and I could see the jutting of the jaw muscles as he clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering uncontrollably. "Breathe out," I said. He did as I asked, and there was no mistaking it, none at all: the sweet acetone breath of the advanced and untreated diabetic can't possibly be confused with anything else. Wordlessly, I handed him back the card and thrust the automatic into my parka pocket. At last I said quietly: "How long have you had this, Mr Mahler?" "Thirty years." "A pretty advanced condition?" When it came to discussing a man's illness with him, I had little time for the professional reticence of many of my colleagues: besides, the average elderly diabetic had survived to that age simply because he was intelligent about the dietary and medical treatment of his trouble, and usually knew all about it. "My doctor would agree with you." I caught the smile olmpus digital camera sp350 on his face as he pushed his mask up, and there wasn't much humour in it. "So would I." "Twice daily injections?" "Twice," he nodded. "Before breakfast and in the evening." "But don't you carry a hypo and" "Normally," he interrupted. "But not this time. The Gander doctor gave me a jab and as I can usually carry on a few hours overdue without Ul effects I thought I'd wait until we got to London." He tapped his breast pocket. "This card's good anywhere." "Except on the Greenland ice-cap," I said bitterly. "But then I don't suppose you anticipated a stop-over here. What diet were you on?" "High protein, high starch." "Hence the sugar?" I looked down at the white crystals still clenched in my left mitten. "No." He shrugged. "But I know sugar used to be used for the treatment of coma. I thought maybe if I stuffed enough into myself.. . . Well, anyway, you know now why I turned criminal." "Yes, I know now. My apologies for the gun-waving act, Mr Mahler, but you must admit I had every justification. Why in the hell didn't you tell me before now? I am supposed to be a doctor, you know." "I would have had to tell you sooner or later, I suppose. But right now you'd plenty of troubles of your own without worrying about mine also. And I didn't think there would be much chance of your carrying insulin among your medical stores." "We don'twe don't have to. Everybody gets a thorough medical before going on an IGY station, and diabetes hardly develops overnight. . . . You take it all very calmly, I must say, Mr Mahler. Come on, let's get back to the tractor." We reached there inside a minute. I pulled back the canvas screen, and a thick white opaque cloud formed almost immediately as the relatively warm air inside met the far sub-zero arctic air outside. I waved my hand to dispel it, and peered inside. They were all still drinking coffeeit was the one thing we had in plenty. It seemed difficult to realise that we'd been gone only a few minutes. "Hurry up and finish off," I said abruptly. "We're on our way within five minutes. Jackstraw, would you start the engine, please, before she chills right down?" "On our way!" The protest, almost inevitably, came from Mrs Dansby-Gregg. "My dear man, we've hardly stopped. And you

That age is dead and vanished long ago

judgedlay sprawled round the deep, volcanic crescent of the harbour, a crescent so deep, so embracing, that it was almost a complete circle with only a narrow bottleneck of an entrance to the north-west, a gateway dominated by searchlights and mortar and machine-gun batteries on either side. Less than three miles distant to the north-east from the carob grove, every detail, every street, every building, every caique and launch in the harbour were clearly visible to Mallory and ho studied them over and over again until he knew them by heart: the way the land to the west of the harbour sloped up gently to the olive groves, the dusty streets running down to the water's edge: the way the ground rose more sharply to the south, the streets now running parallel to the water down to the old town: the way the cliffs to the eastcliffs pock-marked by the bombs of Torrance's Liberator Squadron stretched a hundred and fifty sheer feet above the water, then curved dizzily out over and above the harbour, and the great mound of volcanic rock towering above that again, a mound barricaded off from the town below by the high wall that ended flush with the cliff itself: and, finally, the way the twin rows of A.A. guns, the great radar scanners and the barracks of the fortress, squat, narrow-embrasured, built of big blocks of masonry, dominated everything in sightincluding that great, black gash in the rock, below the fantastic overhang of the cliff. Unconsciously, almost, Mallory nodded to himself in slow understanding. This was the fortress that had defied the Allies for eighteen long months, that had dominated the entire naval strategy in the Sporades since the Germans had reached out from the mainland into the isles, that had blocked all naval activity in that 2,000 square mile triangle between the Lerades and the Turkish coast. And now, when he saw it, it all made sense. Impregnable to land attackthe commanding fortress saw to that: impregnable to air attackMallory realised just how suicidal it had been to send out Torrance's squadron against the great guns protected by that jutting cliff, against those bristling rows of anti-aircraft guns: and impregnable to sea attackthe waiting squadrons of the Luftwaffe on Samos saw to that. Jensen had been rightonly a guerrilla sabotage mission stood any chance at all: a remote chance, an all but suicidal chance, but still a chance, and Mallory knew he couldn't ask for more. Thoughtfully he lowered the binoculars and rubbed the back of his hand across aching eyes. At last rapid shooting digital camera he felt he knew exactly what he was up against, was grateful for the knowledge, for the opportunity he'd been given of this long-range reconnaissance, this familiarising of himself with the terrain, the geography of the town. This was probably the one vantage point in the whole island that offered such an opportunity together with concealment and near immunity. No credit to himself, the leader of the mission, he reflected wryly, that they had found such a place: it had been Louki's idea entirely. And he owed a great deal more than that to the sadeyed little Greek. It had been Louki's idea that they first move upvalley from Margaritha, to give Andrea time to recover the explosives from old Leri's hut, and to make certain there was no immediate hue and cry and pursuitthey could have fought a rearguard action up through the olive groves, until they had lost themselves in the foothills of Kostos: it was he who had guided them back past Margaritha when they had doubled on their tracks, had halted them opposite the village while he and Panayis had slipped wraith-like through the lifting twilight, picked up outdoor clothes for themselves, and, on the return journey, slipped into the Abteilung garage, torn away the coil ignitions of the German command car and truckthe only transport in Margarithaand smashed their distributors for good measure; it was Louki who bad led them by a sunken ditch right up to the roadblock guard post at the mouth of the valleyft had been almost ludicrously simple to disarm the sentries, only one of whom bad been awakeand, finally, it was Louki who bad insisted that they walk down the muddy centre of the valley track till they came to the metalled road, less than two miles from the town itself. A hundred yards down this they had branched off to the left across a long, sloping field of lava that left no trace behind, arrived in the carob copse just on sunrise. And it had worked. All these carefully engineered pointers, pointers that not even the most sceptical could have ignored and denied, had worked magnificently. Miller and Andrea, who had shared the forenoon watch, had seen the Navarone garrison spending long hours making the most intensive house-to-house search of the town. That should make it doubly, trebly safe for them the following day, Mallory reckoned: it was unlikely that the search would be repeated, still more unlikely that, if it were, it would be carried out with a fraction of

"Then by my sooth," King Henrie said,

Quickly!" He had seen Andrea's eyes roll upwards until only the whites showed. "The fool is going to faint! Take him away before he falls on top of us!" Mallory had one fleeting glimpse of the two guards hurrying forwards, of the incredulous contempt on Louki's face, then he ificked a glance at Miller and Brown, caught the lazy droop of the American's eyelid in return, the millimetric inclination of Brown's head. Even as the two guards came up behind Andrea and lifted the flaccid arms across their shoulders, Mallory glanced half-left, saw the nearest sentry less than four feet away now, absorbed in the spectacle of the toppling giant. Easy, dead easythe gun dangling by his side: he could bit him between wind and water before he knew what was happening. . . . Fascinated, Mallory watched Andrea's forearms slipping nervelessly down the shoulders of the supporting guards till his wrists rested loosely beside their necks, palms facing inwards. And then there was the sudden leap of the great shoulder muscles and Mallory had hurled himself convulsively sidewards and back, his shoulder socketing with vicious force into the guard's stomach, inches below the breast-bone: an explosive ouf! of agony, the crash against the wooden walls of the room and Mallory knew the guard would be out of action for some time to come. Even as he dived, Mallory had heard the sickening thud of heads being swept together. Now, as he twisted round on his side, he had a fleeting glimpse of another guard thrashing feebly on the floor under the combined weights of Miller and Brown, and then of Andrea tearing an automatic rifle from the guard who had been standing at his right shoulder: the Schmeisser was cradled in his great hands, lined up on Skoda's chest even before the unconscious man had hit the floor. For one second, maybe two, all movement in the room ceased, every sound sheared off by a knife edge: the silence was abrupt, absolute-and infinitely more clamorous than the clamour that had gone before. No one moved, no one spoke, no one even breathed: the shock, the utter unexpectedness of what had happened held them all in thrall. And then the silence erupted in a staccato crashing of sound, deafening in that confined space. Once, twice, three times, wordlessly, and with great care, Andrea shot Hauptmann Skoda through the heart. The blast of the shells lifted the little man off his feet, smashed him against the wall of the hut, pinned him there for one incredible second, arms outfiung as though nailed against the rough planks cannon g-9 digital camera in spreadeagle crucifixion; and then he eollapsed, fell limply to the ground, a grotesque and broken doll that struck its heedless head against the edge of the bench before coming to rest on its back on the floor. The eyes were still wide open, as cold, as dark, as empty in death as they had been in life. His Schmeisser waving in a gentle arc that covered Turzig and the sergeant, Andrea picked up Skoda's sheath knife, sliced through the ropes that bound Mallory's wrists. "Can you hold this gun, my Captain?" Mallory flexed his stiffened hands once or twice, nodded, took the gun in silence. In three steps Andrea was behind the blind side of the door leading to the anteroom, pressed to the wall, waiting, gesturing to Mallory to move as far back as possible out of the line of sight. Suddenly the door was flung open. Andrea could just see the tip of the rifle barrel projecting beyond it. "Oberleutnant Turzig! Was ist los? Wer schoss . . ." The voice broke off in a coughing grunt of agony as Andrea smashed the sole of his foot against the door. He was round the outside of the door in a moment, caught the man as he fell, pulled him clear of the doorway and peered into the adjacent hut. A brief inspection, then he closed the door, bolted it from the inside. "Nobody else there, my Captain," Andrea reported. "Just the one gaoler, it seems." "Fine! Cut the others loose, will you, Andrea?" He wheeled round towards Louki, smiled at the comical expression on the little man's face, the tentative, spreading, finally ear-to-ear grin that cut through the baffled incredulity. "Where do the men sleep, Loukithe soldiers, I mean?" "In a hut in the middle of the compound, Major. This is the officers' quarters." "Compound? You mean?" "Barbed wire," Louki said succinctly. "Ten feet highand all the way round." "Exits?" "One and one only. Two guards." "Good! Andreaeverybody into the side room. No, not you, Lieutenant. You sit down here." He gestured to the chair behind the big desk. "Somebody's bound to come. Tell him you killed one of ustrying to escape. Then send for the guards at the gate." For a moment Turzig didn't answer. He watched unseeingly as Andrea walked past him, dragging two

And there he met with the proud sheriff,

this girl by my side? It could have been her accomplice that had followed me out to the plane earlier in the evening, and it would fit in beautifully with the facts. . . . No, it wouldn't, faints couldn't be faked. But perhaps- "A woman's gun?" I might have spoken my thoughts aloud, so perfectly had she understood. "Perhaps even meor should I say perhaps still me?" Her voice was unnaturally calm. "Goodness only knows I can't blame you. If I were you, I'd suspect everyone too." She pulled the glove and mitten off her left hand, took the gleaming ring off her third finger and passed it across to me. I examined it blankly in the light of my torch, then bent forward as I caught sight of the tiny inscription on the inside of the gold band: "J. W.-M. R. Sept. 28,1958'. I looked up at her and she nodded, her face numb and stricken. "Jimmy and I got engaged two months ago. This was my last flight as a stewardesswe were being married at Christmas." She snatched the ring from me, thrust it back on her finger with a shaking hand and when she turned to me again the tears were brimming over in her eyes. "Now do you trust me?" she sobbed. "Now do you trust me?" For the first time in almost twenty-four hours I acted sensibly -1 closed my mouth tightly and kept it that way. I didn't even bother reviewing her strange behaviour after the crash and in the cabin, I knew instinctively that this accounted for everything: I just sat there silently watching her staring straight ahead, her fists clenched and tears rolling down her cheeks, and when she suddenly crumpled and buried her face in her hands and I reached out and pulled her towards me she made no resistance, just turned, crushed her face into the caribou fur of my parka and cried as if her heart was breaking: and I suppose it was. I suppose, too, that the moment when a man hears that a girl's fiance* has died only that day is the last moment that that man should ever begin to fall in love with her, but I'm afraid that's just how it was. The emotions are no respecters of the niceties, the proprieties and decencies of this life, and, just then, I was clearly aware that mine were stirred as they hadn't been since that dreadful day, four years ago, when my wife, a bride of only three months, had been killed in a car smash and I had given up medicine, returned to my first great love, geology, completed the B.Sc. course that had been interrupted by the outbreak of World War Two and taken to wandering wherever work, new surroundings and an opportunity to forget the past had olympus c-830l digital camera presented themselves. Why, when I gazed down at that small dark head pressed so deeply into the fur of my coat, I should have felt my heart turn over I didn't know. For all her wonderful brown eyes she had no pretensions to beauty and I knew nothing whatsoever about her. Perhaps it was just a natural reaction from my earlier antipathy: perhaps it was pity for her loss, for what I had so cruelly done to her, for having so exposed her to dangerwhoever knew that I knew too much would soon know that she knew it also: or perhaps it was just because she was so defenceless and vulnerable, so ridiculously small and lost in Joss's big parka. And then I caught myself trying to work out the reasons and I gave it up: I hadn't been married long, but long enough to know that the heart has its own reasons which even the acutest mind couldn't begin to suspect. By and by the sobbing subsided and she straightened, hiding from me what must have been a very badly tear-stained face. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "And thank you very much." "My crying shoulder." I patted it with my right hand. "For my friends. The other one's for my patients." "For that, too, but I didn't mean that. Just for not saying how sorry you were for me, or patting me or saying 'Now, now' or anything like that. I -1 couldn't have stood it." She finished wiping her face with the palm of her mitten, looked up at me with brown eyes still swimming in tears and I felt my heart turn over again. "Where do we go from here, Dr Mason?" "Back to the cabin." "I didn't mean that." "I know. What am I to say? I'm completely at a loss. A hundred questions, and never an answer to one of them." "And I don't even know all the questions, yet," she murmured. "It's only five minutes since I even knew that it wasn't an accident." She shook her head incredulously. "Who ever heard of a civilian airliner being forced down at pistol point?" "I did. On the radio, just over a month ago. In Cubasome of Fidel Castro's rebels forced a Viscount to crash land. Only they picked an even worse spot than this -1 think there were only one or two survivors. Maybe that's where our friends back in the cabin got the idea from. I shouldn't be surprised." She wasn't even listening, her mind was already off on another track.

Away! we know that tears are vain,

Mason!" Dimly I realised that it was Jackstraw speaking, that he had my head and shoulders supported in the crook of his arm. His voice was low, but with a peculiarly carrying quality. "Wake up, Dr Mason. Ah, good, good. Easy does it now, Dr Mason." Groggily, Jackstraw's strong arm helping, I levered myself up into an upright sitting position. A brilliant flame of pain lanced like a scalpel through my head, I felt everything blurring once more, consciously, almost violently, shook off the shadows that were creeping in on me again, then looked dazedly up at Jackstraw. I couldn't see very well, I thought for one frightening moment that the vision centre had been damaged when the back of my head had struck against the iron-hard ice-capthe ache there was almost as severe as the one in my foreheadbut I soon discovered that it was only the blood seeping from the cut on my forehead that had frozen and gummed together the lids of my right eye. "No idea who did it, Dr Mason?" Jackstraw wasn't the man to ask stupid questions like 'What happened?" "No idea at all." I struggled to my feet. "Have you?" "Hopeless." I could sense rather than see the shrug in the darkness. "As soon as you stopped, three or four of them came out. I don't know where they went -1 was out to the south rigging up the antenna." "The radio, Jackstraw!" I was beginning to think again. "Where's the radio?" "No worry, Dr Mason, I have it with me," Jackstraw said grimly. "It's here. . . . Any idea whyT "None.. . . Yes, I have." I thrust my hand into the inside pocket of my parka, then looked at Jackstraw in disbelief. "My gunit's still there!" "Nothing else missing?" "No. Spare ammo clip therewait a moment," I said slowly. I hunted around in my parka pocket, but with no success. "A paper -1 took a newspaper cutting from Colonel Harrison's pocketit's gone." "A cutting? What was in it, Dr Mason?" "You're talking to one of the world's prize idiots, Jackstraw." I shook my head in self-reproach, winced as the pain struck again. "I've never even read the damn' thing." "If you had," Jackstraw murmured philosophically, "you'd probably know why it was taken from you." "Butbut what was the point in it?" I asked blankly. "For all they know I might have read it a dozen times." "I think they know you haven't even read it once," Jackstraw said slowly. "If you had, they'd have digital camera protection filter known it by the fact that you would have said or done something they would have expected you to say or do. But because you haven'twell, they know they're still safe. They must have been desperate to take a chance like this. It is a great pity. I do not think, Dr Mason, that you will ever see that paper again." Five minutes later I had washed and bandaged the cut on my foreheadI'd savagely told an inquiring Zagero that I'd walked into a lamp-post and refused to answer all other questionsand set off with Jackstraw in the strengthening light of the newly-risen moon. We were late for our rendezvous, but when I switched the receiver into the antenna I heard Joss's call-up sign come through straight away. I acknowledged, then asked without preamble: "What news from Uplavnik?" "Two things, Dr Mason." Hillcrest had taken the microphone over from Joss, and, even through the distortion of the speaker, his voice sounded strange, with the flat controlled unemotiona-lism of one speaking through a suppressed anger. "Uplavnik has been in touch with HMS Tritonthe carrier coming up the Davis Strait. Triton is in constant communication with the British Admiralty and the Government. Or so I gather. "The answers to your questions are these. Firstly, the passenger list from BOAC in America is not yet through, but it is known from newspaper reports that the following three people were aboard: Marie LeGarde, the musical comedy star, Senator Hoffman Brewster of the United States and a Mrs Phyllis Dansby-Gregg, who appears to be a very prominent London socialite." I wasn't greatly excited over this item of news. Marie LeGarde had never been a suspect. Mrs Dansby-Greggand, by implication, Helene Fleminghad never had more than a faint question mark against their names, and I had already come to the conclusion that it was long odds against the man who was, or purported to be, Senator Brewster being one of the killers. "The second thing is this. The Admiralty cannot or will not say why the plane has been forced down, but I gather there must have been a most vital reason. Uplavnik suggests, on what basis I cannot say, perhaps it is officially inspired, that some person aboard the plane must have been in possession of something of the utmost importance, so important that complete secrecy was vital. Don't ask me what it was. A microfilm, a formula, something, perhaps, only committed to memoryit sounds fanciful, but

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

about everything except the desperate, urgent need for speed. Just before the plane had turned round to the east again and so out of the line of our blinded vision, it had seemed to dip and at the same instant two powerful lights stabbed out into the darkness, the one lancing straight ahead, a narrow powerful beam glittering and gleaming with millions of sparkling diamond points of flame as the ice-crystals in the air flashed across its path, the other, a broader fan of light, pointing downwards and only slightly ahead, its oval outline flitting across the frozen snow like some flickering will o' the wisp. I grabbed Jackstraw's arm and put my head close to his. "He's going to land! He's looking for a place to put down. Get the dogs, harness them up." We had a tractor, but heaven only knew how long it would have taken to start it on a night like this. "I'll give you a hand as soon as I can." He nodded, turned and was lost to sight in a moment. I turned too, cursed as my face collided with the slatted sides of the instrument shelter, then jumped for the hatch, sliding down to the floor of the cabin on back and arms without bothering to use the steps. Joss, already completely clad in his furs but with the hood of his parka hanging over his shoulders, was just emerging from the food and fuel tunnel which led off from the other end of the cabin, his arms loaded with equipment. "Grab all the warm clothing you can find, Joss," I told him quickly. I was trying to think as quickly and coherently as I was talking, to figure out everything that we might require, but it wasn't easy, that intense cold numbed the mind almost as much as it did the body. "Sleeping-bags, blankets, spare coats, shirts, it doesn't matter whose they are. Shove them into a couple of gunny sacks." "You think they're going to land, sir?" Curiosity, anticipation, horroreach struggled for supremacy in the thin, dark intelligent face. "You really think so?" "I think they're going to try. What have you got there?" "Fire bombs, a couple of Pyrenes." He dumped them by the stove. "Hope they're not solid." "Good boy. And a couple of the tractor extinguishersthe Nu-Swifts, G-1000,1 think." A great help these little things are going to be, I thought, if several thousand gallons of petrol decide to go up in flames. "Fire axes, crowbars, canes, the homing spoolfor heaven's sake don't forget the hojning spooland the searchlight battery. Be sure and wrap that up well." "Bandages?" "No need. Seventy degrees of frost digital camera review samsung digimax will freeze blood and seal a wound quicker than any bandage. But bring the morphia kit. Any water in these two buckets?" "Full. But more ice than water." "Put them on the stoveand don't forget to turn out the stove and both the lights before you leave." Incongruously enough, we who could survive in the Arctic only by virtue of fire, feared it above all else. "Pile the rest of the stuff up by the instrument shelter." I found Jackstraw, working only by the feeble light of his torch, outside the lean-to drift-walled shelter that we had built for the dogs from empty packing cases and an old tractor tarpaulin. He appeared to be fighting a losing battle in the centre of a milling pack of snarling yelping dogs, but the appearance was illusion only: already he had four of the dogs off the tethering cable and the sledge tracelines snapped into their harness. "How's it coming?" I shouted. "Easy." I could almost see the crinkling grin behind the snow-mask. "I caught most of them asleep, and Balto is a great helphe's in a very bad temper at being woken up." Balto was Jackstraw's lead doga huge, 90-pound, half-wolf, half-Siberian, direct descendant of, and named for the famous dog that had trekked with Amundsen, and who later, in the terrible winter of '25, his sledge-driver blind behind him, had led his team through driving blizzards and far sub-zero cold to bring the life-giving anti-toxin into the diphtheria-stricken town of Nome, Alaska. Jackstraw's Balto was another such: powerful, intelligent, fiercely loyal to his master- although not above baring his wolfs fangs as he made a token pass at him from time to time -and, above all, like all good lead dogs, a ruthless disciplinarian with his team-mates. He was exercising that disciplinary authority nowsnarling, pushing and none-too-gently nipping the recalcitrant and the slow-coaches, quelling insubordination in its earliest infancy. "I'll leave you to it, then. I'll get the searchlight." I made off towards the mound of snow that loomed high to the westward of the cabin, broke step and listened. There was no sound to be heard, nothing but the low-pitched moan of the wind on the ice-cap, the eternal rattling of the anemometer cups. I turned back to Jackstraw, my face bent against the knifing wind. "The planehave you heard the plane, Jackstraw?

He went straight to his company;

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they With his spindle and twine, he oft lookt behind imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

Soon told five hundred pound.

ask why I'm being excused?" Marie LeGarde asked suddenly. "You?" I said shortly. My eyes didn't move from Solly. "Marie LeGarde? Don't be so damned silly!" "The choice of words and tone of voice leave a lot to be desired." Her voice was soft and warm, though still shaky. "But I've never had a greater compliment. All the same, I insist on being searched: I don't want to be the one under a cloud if the guns don't turn up." And the guns didn't turn up. Joss finished searching the men, Margaret Ross the womenMrs Dansby-Gregg under icy protestand neither found anything. Joss looked at me, his face empty of all expression. "Get their luggage," I said harshly. "The small cases they're taking with them. We'll try these." "You're wasting your time, Dr Mason," Nick Corazzini said quietly. To any characters smart enough to guess that you were going to frisk them, the next move would stick out a mile. A child could guess it. You might find those guns you talk about hidden on the tractor or the sledges or buried under a couple of inches of snow, ready to be picked up whenever required, but you won't find them in our grips. A thousand to one, in dollars, that you don't." "Maybe you're right," I said slowly. "On the other hand, if I were one of the killers and did have a gun in my casewell, that's exactly the way I'd talk too." "As you said to Miss LeGarde just now, don't be so damned silly!" He jumped to his feet, walked over to a corner of the cabin under the watchful eyes of Jackstraw and myself, picked up a handful of small cases and dumped them on the floor before me, his own nearest me. "Where are you going to start? There's mine, that's the Reverend's robe case, this"he picked it up and looked at the initials'this is the Senator's brief-case. I don't know whose the last is." "Mine," Mrs Dansby-Gregg said coldly. Corazzini grinned. "Ah, the Balenciaga. Well, Doc, who" He broke off, straightened slowly, and gazed up through the skylight. "Whatwhat the devil is happening up there?" "Don't try to pull any fast stuff, Corazzini," I said quickly. "Jackstraw's gun" "The hell with Jackstraw's gun!" he snapped impatiently. "Have a look for yourself." I motioned him out of the way and had a look. Two seconds later I had thrust my automatic into Joss's hand and was on my way up top. The airliner was a blazing torch in the darkness of the night. Even at that distance of half a mile and against the light wind, I sony digital cameras at circuit city could clearly hear the fierce roaring and crackling of the flames -not flames, rather, but one great solid column of fire that seemed to spring from the wings and centre of the fuselage and reach up clear and smokeless and sparkless two hundred feet into the night sky, brushing its blood-red stain across the snow for hundreds of yards around, transforming the rest of the still ice-sheathed fuselage into a vast effulgent diamond, a million constantly shifting points of refracted white and red and blue and green that glittered and gleamed with an eye-dazzling scintillating brilliance that no jewels on earth could have matched. It was a fantastically beautiful spectacle, but I'd had time to watch it for barely ten seconds when the dazzling coloured irradiation turned into a blaze of white, the central flame leapt up to twice, almost three times its original height and, two or three seconds later, the roar of the exploding petrol tanks came at me across the frozen stillness of the ice-cap. Almost at once the flames seemed to collapse in upon themselves and the perimeter of the blood-red circle of snow shrank almost to vanishing point, but I waited to see no more. I dropped down into the cabin, pulling the hatch shut behind me, and looked at Jackstraw. "Any chance at all of accounting for the presence of our various friends here during the past half-hour?" "I'm afraid not, Dr Mason. Everyone was on the move all the time, finishing off the tractor body or bringing up the stores and petrol drums and lashing them on the sledge." He glanced up through the skylight. "The plane, wasn't it?" " 'Was' is right." I glanced at the stewardess. "My apologies, Miss Ross. You did hear somebody out there." "You meanyou mean it wasn't an accident?" Zagero asked. There's a fair chance that you know damned well that it wasn't, I thought. Aloud, I said: "It was no accident." "So there goes your evidence, eh?" Corazzini asked. "The pilot and Colonel Harrison, I mean." "No. The nose and tail of the plane are still intact. I don't know what the reason could bebut I'm sure there's a damned good one. And you can put these bags away, Mr Corazzini. We're not, as you say, playing with children or amateurs." There was silence while Corazzini returned the bags, then Joss looked at me quizzically. "Well, that explains one thing at least." "The messed-up