Exit Alpha (13 page)

She reached the corner, turned, eyes bright. He looked at her amazed. Her tears were as unexpected as the thunder of a glacier cracking. Pressure couldn’t force them from her. But kindness had.

‘Thank you. Brother.’

He heard her get back in the car and leaned against a bin, exhausted.

He’d been free of women and EXIT for three months. Now this.

He’d had a night.

T
he ridge was near the summit and there was little room to move. They’d rerigged the hang-glider for the sixth time that day and its pilot was ready for another charge into space.

The cameraman looked up from the Arri’s eyepiece to assess the sky. Clouds were closing in but an approaching hole promised sun. ‘Should get five.’

The assistant checked the mag. ‘Two hundred feet.’

They were shooting at twenty-four frames. A foot equalled sixteen frames. Meant they had around two minutes twelve seconds left. It was enough to see the glider against the peaks before it spiralled to the slopes far below.

‘Okay,’ Cain said. ‘We’ll roll till we run out.’

He checked the launch slope and lugged a camera case further out of shot. In the thin air and knee-deep snow, the effort left him out of breath. He left the crew fussing with the miniature camera clamped to an upright of the glider’s trapeze and plodded to the top of the spine.

The chopper was perched on a knoll just down from the ridge, framed against the snowscape of peaks. It was a Hughes 500 turbo hired from the Queenstown base and hadn’t stopped chugging all day. Up here, they didn’t shut down. He pressed the lever on the walkie-talkie. ‘We’re going again in five.’

The pilot opened the egg-shaped cabin’s door and gave a visual thumbs up.

The script was simple. Video: a hang-glider, painted with an aftershave insignia, soaring against snowy mountain peaks. Then super pack shot and slogan. Audio: a rock track.

There were no peaks this majestic in Australia and they couldn’t afford a European shoot. So they shot spots like this in New Zealand. The local production company swore there’d be snow on the Aspirings in November. They were right. It looked like Nepal.

Cain turned back, checked the clouds. They’d got great stuff in the can this morning but now they seemed about to be weathered.

The DOP and assistant were back behind the Arri and the sun was almost in the break. The glider pilot held the nose up, touched his helmet, ready.

‘Standing by,’ the DOP called.

The spine was flooded with crystalline light.

‘Okay for exposure.’

‘Turn over.’

‘Rolling.’

No ‘speed’ call. They weren’t recording sound.

‘And . . . action.’

The madman ran down the slope, avoided ankle-snapping holes and launched himself into space.

They kept rolling until they ran out while he soared against the peaks. Then he was too low, too distant.

The DOP straightened. ‘Good stuff there.’

The assistant fussed with the camera. ‘Gate clear. Mag change.’

Cain pressed the tit and told the chopper, ‘He’s down. Go get him.’

They heard the machine wind up and soon it was slapping overhead. It kissed them with its shadow and did a near vertical down the face. It would take twenty minutes to pack the glider, lash it to a skid and bring it up from the valley floor. While they waited Cain asked the DOP what he’d got, wishing he had a video split.

The slapping sound again. They turned, surprised. The chopper was behind them — hovering high.

Cain grabbed the handset. ‘What’s he up to?’

‘It’s not ours,’ the DOP said.

The thing dropped out of sight to settle on the mound behind the spine.

‘Rich skiers,’ the DOP said. ‘Got more money than sense. They hire these four-blade turboshaft jobs to drop them off up here.’

‘He can’t sit there,’ the grip said. ‘Our lot’ll be back in six minutes.’ The flat New Zealand ‘i’ made it sound like ‘sucks’. ‘I’ll tell him to sod off.’ He struggled up the slope.

Cain followed more slowly, breathing hard. When he reached the crest, he saw a man stumbling toward them from the chopper, leaving deep holes in the snow. The grip met him halfway. The man pointed up at Cain. The grip continued toward the chopper while the man kept coming.

The visitor wasn’t a skier. Apart from the parka, he seemed to be in ordinary clothes and was trying to wade through the drifts with his hands in his pockets. Then he fell and the hands flew forward to save him. He didn’t even have gloves. No ski pants either, or boots.

Cain unzipped his jacket a little so that he could reach for the SIG if he needed it. Cold air poured in on his chest.

At last the man came up to him — shivering, panting, blue.

Cain said, ‘What the hell are you up to? We’re trying to do a shoot here.’

The man gasped — knee-deep in snow. He wasn’t very dangerous. He’d been dumped 3000 metres up. No wonder he couldn’t breathe. ‘Cain?’

It wasn’t the name he was using. He assessed the sodden clothes, the parka, probably borrowed, the pained soft face — said nothing.

The panting man blurted, ‘Dragoons’ chorus.
Patience
. Auber. Laughing song.’ He had an American twang. It was all he could get out.

‘What about it?’

‘Need to talk.’ He fought to breathe.

‘You’ll have to do better.’

The man gasped, ‘Farewell my own. Only octet. Oh God, don’t keep me out here, please.’

‘Credentials?’

‘Company.’

‘Since when do we deal with the Company?’

‘You do now.’

‘Like hell.’

‘Please. My feet are ice blocks.’

‘And I’m in the middle of a shoot. And you’re on our landing spot. So get that crate off it.’

‘When you get back. Motel bar. Okay? I’ll wait.’

‘Okay. Now naff off.’

The man half fell back down the slope. Cain glanced at the clouds, cursed and waded back, trying to invent a plausible explanation for the crew.

They were weathered mid afternoon and it took three trips to ferry back the gear. On the last run, when they dropped out of blowing sleet, Queenstown was golden with late-afternoon sun. He watched the corn-coloured airfield coming closer and thought about the man.

Nine months into his exile things were going well. He’d graduated to medium-budget spots and established himself as worthy of a check-quote. Now this blast from the past. What the hell did the guy want?

In the motel room, he rechecked his shot list, showered, dressed comfortably and headed for the bar. He could use a stiff one and was determined the fellow would buy it.

The man was propped on a stool. He stood up and smiled. ‘Harry Frost.’

‘If you’d stayed up there much longer, you would have been Jack.’

‘Yeah. Pretty dumb of me. Didn’t think I’d be exposed so long. God was it cold!’

‘I’ve been in colder spots.’

‘Name your poison.’

Cain let him pay then walked to one of the tables by the window, knowing the crew would fly-blow the bar the moment they’d checked the gear.

He slumped into the booth, exhausted, sipped his drink and gazed out at the lake. The dying sun tinged the steep cliffs ochre, painting the beautiful scene with light.

‘Great place, this,’ the man said. ‘Good shoot?’

‘We’ll know after the air-to-air stuff tomorrow. So what’s up?’

‘Yes, well.’ The American smiled uncertainly. He wore half-frame spectacles now and looked professorial. ‘It’s about your new assignment. Rhonda said I could look at you.’

‘If you’re CIA, how come you’re in bed with Ron?’

‘It’s a side job.’

‘Our charter vetoes side jobs.’

‘It’s a delicate matter. Would you mind having dinner with me? She said I had to tell you it’s the job you could do chained to a rock.’

Cain smiled.

‘In the restaurant here at seven, then?’

‘Fine.’

The crew were filing in. He excused himself and joined them.

Dinner was pleasant, the local red acceptable, despite the country being better at whites, and the conversation parabolic. Frost talked about the end of the cold war, displaying a mordant sense of humour.

Cain, warmly fuzzed and several glasses in, said, ‘Okay, enough lovemaking. Give.’

‘I’m told you’re what I’m looking for — a highbrow hybrid — a hard man with a renaissance mind.’

‘I mostly provoke less flattering descriptions. But at least I’ve earned my comparisons, not read them.’

‘I believe you. Do you like women?’

‘Generally more than they like themselves.’

‘And I imagine they like you. Now you’ve been partly raised as Muslim so I doubt you object to polygamy.’

He shrugged. ‘In EXIT, we’re stuck with serial monogamy. But I could bow to business demands.’

‘Good, good.’ Frost looked relieved. ‘Now your attitude to ghosts?’

Cain yawned. ‘What’s all this ghost stuff?’

‘Specifically — poltergeists.’

‘If they’re polter they can’t be geists. Contradiction in terms.’

‘Ah, yes. Logical enough. But we know there are four possible forces — electromagnetic, gravitational, nuclear and radioactive. There may be an unknown fifth force. Would you accept that there could be some kind of nervous energy — not quite physical — that can manifest on this level?’

He shrugged. ‘God knows. As we’re on the subject of spooks, you don’t seem to fit the CIA mould.’

‘No. I’m a physiologist. The Company’s reorganising, changing. The new emphasis is going to be transnational threats, economic opportunities. We have to become more scientific, technological, financial.’

‘Or you’ll be out of a job.’

He smiled and sipped his drink. ‘We foresee the day when we’ll be working with the KGB, the GRU or whatever they become. But there’ll still be things we won’t want our new friends to get too far with.’

‘Like poltergeists.’

‘Sounds strange?’

He nodded.

‘No, I’m not Intelligence Division. I’m with Research — a branch called the Phenomena Unit. The USSR was into this early. Vasiliev at the Bekhterev Institute? You know the history?’

‘No.’

‘We have people working on remote viewing. But my group is focused on psychokinesis. The Soviets did a lot of work on that. Now they’re broke and heading for a graft-based kleptocracy. The interest is military, of course. You know how the air force is working on thought-controlled fighters?’

He nodded.

‘And SOFs are looking at what they call synthetic telepathy. A bit more practical are under-the-skin devices which are still a physical and training matter but things are moving that way. Now phenomena are simply a step beyond the limits we know. We’re trying to expand our understanding — discover how it works.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Just so much one can cope with in a day.’

‘And tomorrow’s an early call for me.’

They got up and Frost held out his hand. ‘Thank you for your time. This one’s on me.’ He waved his door-key tag at the waiter.

‘I’d be interested,’ Cain smiled, ‘to see an intangible entity that creates physical phenomena.’

Frost looked at him quizzically. ‘Everyone thinks it’s a laugh until they’re confronted with direct experience. But when they do, they don’t find it funny. You’re a resourceful and dangerous man. But I’ve seen men like you shocked into jelly.’

‘Great. And I’m your new patsy?’

‘You’re it.’

T
he roaring forties buffet three lands, Tasmania’s southwest, New Zealand’s fiordland and southern Patagonia. All are rugged, wild places still, misted in a sense of foreboding. All once were joined. Fossils show biological links. In Tasmania’s museums you can still see a relative of the South American prothylacinus, the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine — mounted and on display. The large marsupial carnivore with striped back and kangaroo-like tail was hunted to extinction by European settlers, as was the indigenous human population.

The inheritors of this terrible past consider themselves overlooked by the mainland and resent jokes about in-breeding. (How do you circumcise a Tasmanian? Punch his sister in the mouth.) But the island state still has one treasure beyond price — a huge wet and wild wilderness — one of the last on earth.

In an almost inaccessible mountain treescape, deep in the southwest, where some still hope a breeding pair of thylacines might survive, a narrow 40-kilometre-long fire trail winds beneath the rainforest canopy. The neglected-looking track is impassable, even to four-wheel-drives. It’s cut by two deep river crossings, with collapsed wooden bridges, and a huge fallen tree. It ends at a rusty set of doors set deep in a rock wall. A faded sign reads: PROSPERITY MINE — CLOSED 1880. KEEP OUT. GROUND SUBJECT TO SUBSIDENCE. None of it explains why fresh tyre tracks reach to the concrete sill beneath the doors.