White Heat (39 page)

    Sweaty
and weak, she now needed to get back to the hut before the men returned. There,
taking advantage of the softness of the pressed mud floor, she was able to
spear the front legs of the chair and, rocking back and forth, propel herself
back upright into a sitting position. Her jaw pulsed and jammed, as though
someone was using it for ball practice, but at least it was warm inside the hut
and her sweat would not freeze before it had a chance to evaporate.

    It
began to get dark in the hut and though it was still light outside, Edie could
already feel the drop in temperature signalling the approach of what would pass
for twilight. Her knees ached and her jaw was swelling fast and for the first
time she became conscious of a tremendous thirst. There was no sign of the men.
She wondered if they might have just left her there to die.

    A
long time later, she heard voices then the sound of boots on the shale. The
blond came in first.

    'Oh,
it's you,' he said, as though he'd forgotten her.

    She
peeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth, which left both with the feeling
of having been stripped. 'I'm thirsty.'

    The
blond came over and untied her hands. He passed her a beaker of water and as he
did so noticed the swelling of her jaw and the blood on her knees. He shot her
a look, expecting an explanation, but she avoided his gaze.

    'We
get what we want, then we let you go,' he said, anticipating what was going
through her mind. He was lying and he wasn't very good at it. Another reason to
focus on him, Edie thought. His humanity made him vulnerable.

    Skinny
came in then. He saw Edie's face and looked impressed.

    'She
try and escape?' he said, passing the blond his rifle. 'Next time, use this.'

    While
the blond retied her wrists, Skinny swung the bag that was over his shoulder
onto the ground and removed from it a handful of small rocks. The two men
pulled out some equipment and began measuring, chatting away in Russian for a
while. Edie tried to focus on the conversation, listening for familiar words,
sounds. From time to time one of the men raised a rock to his mouth and licked
it. One by one they threw the rocks outside.

    Skinny
started to fix the evening meal. The smells of cooking began to chase out the
odour of damp. When the food was ready, Skinny poured out the contents of the
pan into two bowls and handed one to the blond. The blond took a spoonful then
pushed his plate away. An exchange of what sounded like insults followed, and then
the blond turned to Edie and said in English:

    'My
friend thinks he is Auguste Escoffier.'

    Edie
shrugged.

    'You
try,' the blond said. He moved towards her and lifted the spoon to her mouth.
'Food is terrible, no?' he persisted, determined to recruit her to his cause.

    Edie
moved the food around her mouth. Her head was swimming in pain and her jaw
prevented her from chewing but she wanted to seem obliging. Eventually, she
swallowed. 'A little more salt, perhaps.'

    The
blond laughed. Another exchange of insults followed then Skinny made a sudden
lunge for the frying pan, threw it across the hut and stormed out.

    'Now
my friend thinks he is artist,' said the blond, wearily.

    Not
long afterwards, Skinny swept back in toting a plastic carton. Snatching up the
bowl, he tipped the carton over the remains of the blond's meal.

    
'Soll
,'
he said to Edie. 'You eat now.'

    Edie
bit back the pain in her jaw and put on what passed for a smile.
Soil.
The word had come up again and again when the two men had been licking the
rocks. They were looking for a salty stone.

    'I've
just lost my appetite,' she said.

    Later,
the blond loosened her ties so she could wash and see to her bodily functions.
He was setting about retying her wrists when a clattering came from outside.
The sound of Skinny shouting sent the blond scuttling out to investigate. For a
moment chaos seemed to break out and there was wild shouting followed by
gunshots. A while later, the blond appeared at the entrance to the hut. He
seemed exhilarated and out of breath.

    'Bear.'
He walked around to the back of the chair and resumed tying Edie's hands. 'He
ran away.' Then, chuckling to himself, 'Don't get any ideas. For you, it won't
work.'

    A long
while later, she heard noises of the two men settling in for the night, then
quiet. Edie's jaw was a walrus in rut, puffed and roaring. Thoughts tumbled
incoherently through her mind only to return to a single source: the ridiculous
optimism of her plan. Sometime in the night, the
puikaktuq
appeared,
momentarily, standing in the doorway. A throb started up in her right eye,
followed by a ringing in the ears. It could be the result of the injury to her
jaw, but she didn't think so. She held her breath, waiting for the ancestors to
begin to speak to her, but nothing came. Then the
puikaktuq
faded and
she was left alone. A terrible bleakness crept over her, a fear that she was
going to die out here and that what she knew would die with her and no one
would ever find out that Joe Inukpuk did not kill himself but had been
murdered.

    At
that thought, fear turned immediately to anger, which gave her a new courage.
She felt for the knot around her wrists with her fingers, tracing the contours
of the rope once, twice and a third time to be sure, then she smiled to
herself. The rope was hemp. Hemp had elasticity, she could work it. Better
still, the blond had tied a square knot. So long as she could find a way to
ease the tension, it would give. She pressed her wrists together
experimentally. Slowly, she began to twist them away from each other, pressing
the flesh until it burned to give her more room to manoeuvre, thinking about
her escape.

    There
was no other way back to the boats except by retracing the path along the
cliffs and she would be visible all the way. Then there was the matter of the
outboard on the Zodie. The men hadn't thought to remove the oars but she could
never out-row them if they chose to come after her in the launch. As for the
larger vessel, she'd need the ignition key to start the engine, unless she
found a way to pull-start it. That might be possible, but she'd only ever
hotwired the kind of small outboards which came attached to skiffs and Zodies.

    She
laid her hands flat against one another as though she were praying and pressed,
repeating the action until she felt the sides of the square knot loosen. Within
minutes she'd prised it open and was untying her feet. There was a flood of
pain as the circulation returned.

    The
wind was coming in from the east now, whipping across the tundra and making it
sing. The moon was rising, part obscured by cloud but she was confident that
she could remember the way back to the boats. The camera tripod was standing
just inside the doorway. For an instant she thought about stealing a gun and
shooting the men as they slept, but what if she woke them first?

    She
flipped the memory card from the camera and dropped it in her pocket, then
hurried back along the path.

    By
the time she reached the beach some of the cloud cover had gone and the
moonlight was reflecting off the sea, producing a dank silver light. She made
her way to the Zodiac and pushed off the beach.

    Soon
she was rowing in a strong, helpful current towards the launch. She tied up,
pushed the oars, her backpack, jerry cans of sweet water and the cans of
pemmican she'd bought in Siorapaluk onto the deck of the launch and hauled
herself up.

    The
outboard was a Johnson 150hp, an unfamiliar model. A large, fit man might pull-start
something that big, but she would have to take off the keyswitch and hope the
wires were labelled. For that she would need a screwdriver.

    She
looked about the deck for some tools then remembering her hunting knife in the backpack
she found the blade in the pocket where she'd left it. Her jaw pulsed and
thrummed. Quickly, she rummaged through her things, looking for something to
bandage around her jaw to stabilize it.

    It
was then she remembered her wallet. She'd definitely had it with her, but it
didn't seem to be in the backpack. She was sure the Russians hadn't touched the
bag, so then, where was it? A memory bubbled to the surface. Of course! She'd
taken it from her pack when she paid for her food at Siorapaluk then put it
back in the pocket of her parka. It must have fallen out at the Russians' camp.
She had all her money in it, but she didn't need that now. Tucked into a side
pocket was a photo of Joe and with a jolt she realized that the other pocket
held her guiding licence, on which was neatly written her name and address.

    The
sun would rise again soon and the Russians would wake and find her gone. If
they found the wallet they would immediately make the connection to Autisaq.
She had no doubt then that they would come after her.

    She
moved quickly to the outboard and pulled the starter cable, but she wasn't
strong enough to get up enough speed on the cable to get the engine firing.
Moving back to the wheel column, she pulled out the rope that had been wound around
her ankles, and began to tie a length from the wheel to a cleat at the edge of
the seating bay, so that when the engine started, the launch would steer true
while she made her way from the outboard. On the wheel column she could see
that someone had hung a key on a little hook. She picked it up and inspected
it, moving once more to the stern. The key slotted straight into the starter.
Whoever owned the boat had kept the spare on hand.

    She
moved over to the anchor winch and hauled it up, checked the tow line to the
Zodie then stepped along the deck to the Johnson. Freed from its anchor, the
launch began to drift and pitch. Above the wind and the slap of the water, she
could hear the flutter of her pulse. Edie looked out to sea. The Canadian border
lay fifteen kilometres into the gloom. Beyond that, at the same distance, lay
Ellesmere Island and between herself and it, the most dangerous waterway on the
planet.

    The
launch moved slowly past the shore-fast ice into the band of water just off the
coast where there was only fragmented year-long ice. For a while it hit a
particularly strong band of current and seemed to be going nowhere. The pain in
Edie's jaw was excruciating now. Not for the first time since she had arrived
in Greenland, she was afraid.

    At
Siorapaluk she turned the launch to the west. The wind was steady but low and
coming from the northeast, and the current pulled against the little boat and
dragged at the Zodie behind. It was tempting to go with it, but Edie knew that
it would be a mistake to turn south until she was nearing the ice foot on the
eastern coast of Ellesmere.

    Further
out into the channel, the launch began to encounter larger floes and the leads
between them became smaller and more transient. The little boat slapped against
the water, grinding its way every so often across a thin patch of soupy ice,
each judder and shake rattling her bruised and swollen jaw. The coast of
Greenland was nothing more than a dark stain in the sky now, and Ellesmere not
yet visible through the low cirrus cloud and frost smoke. A voice told her that
Inuit did not move away from the sight of land, that she was taking a crazy
risk, but she knew that to turn back to Greenland would bring a world of
trouble on her head. She had stolen a gun and a boat. Worse, if the Russians
had found her wallet and connected their trip to Autisaq to her arrival in Etah
she had no doubt that they would track her down.

    There
was no radio on the launch and from its age and condition Edie guessed it
belonged to a local hunter. The Russians almost certainly didn't want the
attention a fancier boat might have prompted. She doubted that the launch had
ever been expected to make this crossing. Already it had begun to moan and a
faint grinding sound issued from the engine.

    It
had been a warm summer, the ice pack in the North Water was much more
fragmented than usual and as the current passed through the narrowest strait at
Smith Sound there was a stretch of chaotic swell where the moving floes were at
their most active. If she misjudged her moment, the launch could be crushed in
seconds.

    In
all her thirty-three years, Edie Kiglatuk had never heard of an Inuk making the
crossing alone by boat. Even in navigation season, hulls and engines were
always in danger of icing over. If the engine seized, she'd have to lift it
from the water and find something to chip at the ice. If the hull iced, in all
likelihood the pressure would crack the bulkhead and the launch would go down.
Then she would be dependent on the Zodie.