“Let me ask another question.” Mackenzie looked at Brinckman. “How did the kidnappers stop your bus?”
“They had a truck slewed across the road. Blocked it completely.”
“It couldn’t have been there long. There’s a fair bit of traffic on that road, and drivers wouldn’t take kindly to being held up. Was there, in fact, any other traffic at the time?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
Willoughby said, “Your point, Mr. Mackenzie?”
“Plain as a pikestaff. The kidnappers were tipped off. They knew the precise time when Reynolds’ bus left and when it could be expected at the interception point. Phone or short-wave radio — even a CB would have been enough. Two things are for sure — there was an informer, and he came from Sanmobil.”
“Impossible!” Shore sounded shocked.
“Nothing else makes sense,” said Brady. “Mackenzie’s right.”
“Good God!” Shore sounded outraged. “You make Sanmobil sound like a criminals’ den.”
“It’s not a Sunday school,” said Brady heavily.
Dermott turned back to Brinckman. “So Reynolds pulled up when he saw this truck across the road? Then?”
“It was all so quick. There were two men lying in the road. One was face-down and very still, as if he were hurt real bad. The other was moving — he’d both hands clutching at the small of his back and was rolling from side to side. He seemed to be in agony. Two other men came running toward us — well, hardly running, more staggering. One was limping badly, and he had an arm stuck inside his mackinaw jacket as if he was trying to support it. Both of them had a hand up in front of their faces, covering their eyes.”
Dermott said, “Didn’t that strike you as odd?”
“Not at all. It was dark, and we had our headlights on. It seemed natural they should shield their eyes from the glare.”
There was a pause. Then Brinckman went on, “Well — this guy with the damaged arm — as I thought — came weaving up to my side of the bus, I grabbed the first-aid box and jumped out. I slipped on the ice, and by the time I had my balance I saw the man had dropped his hand and was wearing a stocking mask. Then I saw his left arm coming up. It was almost a blur, but I could see he had some kind of a sap in his hand. I had no time to react.” He fingered his forehead gingerly. “That’s all, I guess.”
Dermott crossed to him and examined the contusion on the side of his forehead. “Nasty. Could have been worse, though. An inch or so further back and you’d likely have had a fractured temple. Looks as if your friend was using lead shot. A leather bludgeon wouldn’t have done that.”
Brinckman stared at him in an odd fashion. “Lead, you reckon?”
“I should think so.” Dermott turned to Jorgensen. “I take it you hadn’t much better luck?”
“At least I wasn’t blackjacked. I just thought my jaw had been broken. The other guy was either a heavyweight champion, or he was clutching something heavy in his fist. I couldn’t see. He jerked open Mr. Reynolds’ door, flung in some kind of smoke bomb, then banged the door shut again.”
“Tear gas,” said Willoughby. “You can see his eyes are still inflamed.”
“I got out,” Jorgensen went on. “I waved my gun around, but it might have been a water pistol, the use it was. I was blind. Next thing I remember, Pete Johnson was trying to shake some sense into us.”
“So, of course, you don’t know how Reynolds and his passengers made out.” Jim Brady looked around. He was taking over. “Where’s Carmody?”
“Down at the station,” said Shore. “Still making his report. Pete Johnson’s with him. They’ll be here presently.”
“Good.” Brady turned back to Brinckman. “The man who attacked you — was he wearing gloves?”
“I’m not sure.” Brinckman thought and then said, “Once he’d passed out of the beam of the headlights, he was in pretty deep shadow, and, as I said, it all happened so damn quickly. But I don’t think so.”
“Your man, Mr. Jorgensen?”
“I could see his hand pretty clearly as he threw the tear-gas canister. No — no glove.”
“Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Willoughby, a few questions if I may.”
“Go ahead.” Willoughby cleared his throat.
“This truck the kidnappers used — you say it was stolen?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s been identified?”
“Belongs to a local garage proprietor. It was known he was off on a couple of days’ hunting trip.”
“At this time of year?”
“Your true enthusiast goes hunting any time. At all events, it was seen passing through the streets yesterday afternoon, and we assumed the owner was taking it along for his trip.”
“Which argues a fairly intimate local knowledge?”
“Sure, but no help to us.” Willoughby smoothed his dark moustache. “Fort McMurray’s no longer a village.”
“Have you fingerprinted the truck, inside and out?”
“Being done now. It’s a long job — there are hundreds of prints.”
“May we see them?”
“Of course. I’ll have them Photostatted. But, with respect, Mr. Brady, what do you hope to achieve that we, the police, can’t?”
“You never know.” Brady smiled enigmatically. “Mr. Dermott here is an international expert in fingerprinting.”
“I didn’t know!” Willoughby smiled at Dermott, who smiled back. He hadn’t known either.
Brady changed his tack. “Any chance of identifying the helicopter from the measurements of the ski marks that Carmody took?”
Willoughby shook his head. “It was a good idea to record them, but no — the chances of identifying any one machine from its skiprints are extremely remote, because there will almost certainly be dozens of its particular type around. This is helicopter country, Mr. Brady, like Alaska. Here in northern Alberta our communications are still very primitive. We have no divided highways — freeways — in this part of the world. In fact, north of Edmonton there are only two paved roads that reach up north. Between them — nothing. Apart from ourselves, and Peace River and Fort Chipewyan, there are no commercial airports in an area of two hundred thousand square miles.”
“So,” Brady nodded. “You use choppers.”
“The preferred form of transport at all times. In winter, the only form.”
“It’s a good bet that an intensive air search wouldn’t have a hope in hell of locating the getaway machine?”
“None. I’ve made a bit of a study of kidnapping, and I can answer you best by a comparison. The world’s most kidnap-happy place is Sardinia. It’s a kind of national pastime there. Whenever a millionaire is snatched, all the resources of the law and the Italian armed forces are brought into play. The Navy blockades harbors and virtually every fishing village on the coast. The Army sets up roadblocks, and specially trained troops sweep the hills. The Air Force carries out exhaustive reconnaissance by plane and helicopter. In all the years these searches have been carried out, they’ve never yet located a single kidnapper’s hideout. Alberta is twenty-seven times larger than Sardinia. Our resources are a fraction of theirs. Answer your question?” –
“One begins to feel the first faint twinges of despair. But tell me, Mr. Willoughby, if you had four kidnapped people on your hands, where would you hide them?”
“Edmonton or Calgary.”
“But those are towns. Surely…”
“Cities, yes — and the population of each must be crowding half a million. The captives wouldn’t be hidden — they’d be lost.”
“Well.” Brady pulled himself up in his chair. He looked weary. “Okay. I suppose we have to wait word from the kidnappers before we make a move. You two gentlemen” — he turned to Brinckman and Jorgensen — “I don’t think we need keep you any longer. Thank you for your co-operation.”
The two security men said their good nights and left. Brady hoisted himself to his feet. “No sign of Carmody yet? Let’s go and make ourselves more comfortable while we wait for him. The desk will no doubt inform us when he arrives. This way, gentlemen.”
Once in the privacy of his own room, armed now with a fresh drink, Brady seemed suddenly to shake, off his exhaustion.
“Okay, George,” he said briskly. “You’ve been holding out on us. Why?”
“In what way?”
“Don’t pussyfoot. You said you were more concerned about the demands the crooks are going to make than about my family. You love my family. Now what did you mean?”
“The first demand will be that you, Don and I take off for Houston. They must be convinced we’re on the verge of a breakthrough.
“The second demand will be a ransom message. To keep things within reasonable bounds they can hardly ask for more than a couple of million dollars. But that would be peanuts compared with the stakes our friends are playing for.
“Third, the greater stakes. Obviously, they’ll demand a fortune to cease their harassment of both Prudhoe Bay’s and Sanmobil’s oil supplies, and the increasing destruction of their equipment. That’s where they hold all the aces. As we’ve seen, both systems are embarrassingly vulnerable to attack. For as long as the criminals’ identity remains undiscovered, they can keep on destroying both systems piecemeal.