East of Desolation. Jack Higgins

run.

      When I was about a hundred yards north of the Stella, I started to turn into the wind and found the whaleboat bearing down on me, Desforge standing up in the prow waving furiously. I cut the engine and opened the side door as the whaleboat pulled in alongside. Desforge tossed me a canvas holdall, stepped on to the nearest float and hauled himself up into the cabin.

      ‘I’ve got a sudden hankering to see some city life for a change – any objections?’

      ‘You’re the boss,’ I said. ‘But we’ll have to get moving. I’m trying to beat some dirty weather into Frederiksborg.’

      The whaleboat was already turning away and I pressed down the starter switch and started to make the run. Twenty seconds later we drifted into the air and climbed steeply, banking over the Stella just as Ilana Eytan appeared from the companionway and stood looking up at us.

      ‘What about her?’ I said.

      Desforge shrugged. ‘She’ll be okay. I told Sørensen to make tracks for Frederiksborg tonight. They’ll be there by tomorrow afternoon.’

      He produced the inevitable hip flask, took a swallow and started to laugh. ‘I don’t know what you did back there, but she was certainly in one hell of a temper when I went to her cabin.’

      ‘I’d have thought you’d have wanted to stay and console her,’ I said sourly.

      ‘What that baby needs is time to cool off. I’m getting too old to have to fight for it. I’ll wait till she’s in the mood.’

      ‘What’s she doing here anyway?’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me she just came to deliver that letter. There is such a thing as a postal service, even in Greenland.’

      ‘Oh, that’s an easy one. She’s hoping for the female lead in the picture I’m making.’ He grinned. ‘That’s why I’m so sure she’ll come round – they always do. She’ll be sweetness and light when the Stella arrives tomorrow.’

      He leaned back in his seat, tilting the peak of his hunting cap down over his eyes and I sat there, hands steady on the wheel, thinking about Ilana Eytan, trying to imagine her selling herself, just for a role in a picture. But why not? After all, people sell themselves into one kind of slavery or another every day of the week.

      Rain scattered across the windscreen in a fine spray and I frowned, all other thoughts driven from my mind at the prospect of that front moving in faster than they had realised at Søndre. I pulled back the stick and started to climb.