Baal

Baal Page 22

Part THREE

"And I saw... a sea of glass mingled with fire"

- Revelation 15:2

Chapter 21

ACROSS SPRAWLING WHITE SANDS in the lands of simmering heat, across winter-canopied Europe, across great blue threads of rivers and wide valleys marked with man's cities Virga thought of Baal and Baal alone.

Baal was the disease of madness, carried through the bodies of once-sane men to infect the world; he was the end of man. And why Virga desired to confront Baal again was a question he could not answer. Michael had been right. He had no part in this, no place in what was to unfold. He was only a man, yes, and an old man; he had the awesome and frightening premonition that what was to come would be beyond his comprehension. Michael's glittering golden eyes disturbed him as much as the darker visage of Baal. The two would finally meet face to face, if not in Greenland then somewhere else, somewhere hidden from all eyes but his own. He would have to see it; he had made up his mind he would have to see it. and this, he concluded, was what drove him on.

Through a succession of airline connections he steadily moved toward the top of the world. He watched the sun lower on the horizon; it hung blood-red and sinking in a sky of ice. Through the airports and the flights that carried him farther north he watched the faces of people and wondered how they could be so unaware. The businessmen with their eternal black briefcases and dark suits, the young tourists, the solitary travelers: all of them so unaware. And everywhere, in every language, he saw magazines and newspapers with front-page photographs of murders and bombings and faces eager for war. Baal, though hidden perhaps from even the eye of God, was still at work. Virga turned his head from the smiling SAS stewardess in the aisle and looked through the oval window at a sea of darkening clouds. Where is God? he asked himself. Has man lost himself so hopelessly now that God allows this moment without a single merciful breath? Has Baal grown so strong that even He is struck with terror? The thought chilled him. Now it seemed that the great mechanism that governed the last moments of man had been set in motion; it ticked the seconds away like a gigantic pendulum clock.

Virga was wasted. The constant pressure of the travel schedule necessary to meet the time limit imposed by Michael had worn him down until he was so tired he couldn't even sleep. The stubble of whiskers he'd seen in the lavatory mirror made him look dismal and forlorn and the new lines around his eyes added years to his appearance.

In glittering, frost-encrusted Copenhagen he'd purchased boots and warm clothing for the colder climate ahead. Now, in the final hours, there would be a landing at Reykjavik and then at the commercial air facilities at Søndre Strømfjord. From there he would have to arrange a charter flight up the western coast to Avatik, a pinhead on the map of Greenland.

When they had left Iceland, Virga saw the sun vanish beneath the horizon, leaving only a faint trace of angry red in the sky. They were outracing its brilliance, climbing toward the dark Pole.

Virga drank a final scotch and wondered if Michael had lied to him. Perhaps he would not wait at all; perhaps he would be gone when Virga arrived there. Then the long journey would have been for nothing. He would be lost and alone and not know whether to remain in Avatik or return, without hope, to the United States. Both of them would seem foreign to him now.

But he found himself wondering, while a knot of tension steadily grew in his stomach, what they would do when, and if, they found Baal. Short of murder, they could do nothing to stop the man and, in murdering him, they would only be strengthening the philosophy of violence that had grown in his shadow. No, he was not yet prepared to view himself as a religious assassin; there was enough bloodshed in the world already.

At the air facility at Søndre Strømfjord, Virga found that the violence had arrived with Baal. Danish authorities were carefully checking passports and baggage. A bomb, one of them told a man ahead of Virga, had been hidden in a suitcase and left among the seats in a waiting area. The resultant blast had killed four people and wounded six more. The authorities checked through the one bag Virga carried and waved him through. Virga passed the area that had been damaged; he saw the remaining metal stumps where seats had been ripped away. There were dark stains on the linoleum floor. Virga wondered briefly who the people had been.

With little difficulty, which surprised him because he knew none of the language, Virga learned from the attractive dark-haired girl at the information center that, yes, there were private planes for charter up the coast but he would have to arrange for a pilot some days in advance. No, Virga said, that would not do. He would be willing to pay anything the man asked. It was crucial that he get to Avatik by the following morning, he said, and watched as she winced and reached for a directory of charter agents. Virga chose one at random, Helmer Ingestahl. It was only when he heard the sleepy voice on the other end of the telephones that Virga realized he was calling in the middle of the night; he was that disoriented and bone-weary.

"Avatik?" the man asked in a thick Danish accent. "I know the settlement. There's an airstrip. Who has given you this number?"

"I'm at the airfield now," said Virga, speaking slowly so the man would understand. "I cannot tell you how much it means to me to reach Avatik immediately."

"Why?" he asked. "Something you're doing is against the law?"

"No. I'll pay as much as you ask."

Silence. Then, "You will?"

"Yes," Virga said.

The man grunted. "Well then," he said, "maybe I forgive you for awakening me."

Ingestahl was a burly, broad-shouldered Dane with reddish-brown hair and a thick bull neck. Out on the airfield, as they walked across the crust of snow toward his hanger, he laughed at the wolfskin coat Virga had bought in Copenhagen. "You going to wear that thing?" he asked. "Ha! Your balls will freeze off!"

His plane was an old United States Army recon job that Ingestahl said he'd bought from the junkpile and refitted. Virga took little comfort in the way he kicked the studded rubber tires and wrenched at the wing slats. "Fine old lady," Ingestahl said. "Good American labor."

Within twenty minutes they were lifting off from the frozen airfield. With a final shudder and groan the plane left the ground. Swirling snow threatened for a moment to obscure visibility; then they were free of it and climbing, climbing, climbing into the darkness.

Ingestahl cursed and slammed violently at the heater; it sputtered and refused to operate. Virga pulled his collar up around his frost-burning ears and breathed slowly and shallowly to protect his lungs as the craft continued to gain altitude. When they leveled off Ingestahl unscrewed a thermos of coffee and drank from it. He offered a swig to Virga.

"You never said what you were going there for," the man said. "You don't plan to?"

Virga saw the dark caps of mountains around them. The sun had completely gone now, though the sky still clung to the faintest trace of gray at the horizon. Below them were stretched miles and miles of snow-covered land, dotted infrequently with the lights of settlements. The land was rough. Virga could see its harshness even at this height. He pulled the hood of his coat up and laced it beneath his chin. The cold across his cheeks lay as heavy as freezing metal. In the darkness Virga could look over and see the blinking light at the wingtip on his side; as he sat in the cockpit steam rose from the open thermos in his hand and Ingestahl's face was daubed green by the glow of his instrument panel.

"I'm going to meet someone," Virga said.

"Well. None of my business. You're paying me. Looks like you had a fall."

"What?"

"Looks like you had a fall. Your hand."

"Oh. An accident."

The man nodded. "Had a fall like that once myself. Broke my shoulder, my collarbone and my left leg. Ha!" His laugh was a clearing of the throat. "Crash-landing when I was a bush pilot in Manitoba."

Virga drank from the thermos. The taste was terrible. It had obviously been sitting for some time, but he needed the warmth. He peered out through the ice-glazed window at forbidding glaciers as they slid their inevitable way to the sea. The expanse of snow was now completely unbroken except for dark outcrop-pings of rock. And when they had passed over the mountainous land, beneath them was nothing but a flat stretch of solid ice. There seemed to be no end to it. It stretched in every direction and at the horizon seemed to merge into the sky. Beyond the wingtip light and the green of the panel Virga could see no colors but black and white, black and white, black and white, merging and yet startlingly separate.

"I don't know what you're traveling to this place for," Ingestahl said, "but I'll tell you something. This is a hard land. It lulls you to sleep and when you fall asleep it kills you. I can tell by your face you don't live in the weather. And I don't know if you know the Eskimo or not. Do you?"

"No."

"As I thought. You're a stranger, kraslunas. You have no place here. You'd better keep your eyes open."

Between them they drank the thermos dry. On the last leg of the journey, over a new series of black rock and white wind-tossed snow, the heater abruptly clicked on and the glorious warmth filled the cockpit. Virga took off his gloves and thrust his hands before the vent.

"You're going to be returning soon?" the man asked. "You'll have to pay me for my waiting time."

"No," Virga said. "I'm not sure. It won't be necessary for you to wait."

Ingestahl nodded. "There's a Danish family living with the Eskimos in Avatik. A Lutheran minister and his wife who came up about four years ago. You'll be just in time for breakfast." He motioned ahead. Far below and off to the left there were lights on the ice-pack. "That's Avatik. The Eskimo there is in the middle: too far south to be nomadic, too far north to be part of modern Greenland. You'll see."

He swung the plane around in a wide arc. Virga could see two rows of widely spaced oil drums, the contents of which had been set afire, marking the boundaries of a short airstrip. Ingestahl steadily lost altitude until Virga could make out pale yellow lights in the windows of what appeared to be shantylike dwellings. Beyond Avatik the ice mountains loomed like bleached bodies, supine in the snow. Ingestahl hit the airstrip, calmly corrected a threatening skid, and stopped the craft in a wild flurry of snow and chips of ice.

Ingestahl kept the engine alive and reached behind the cockpit for Virga's case. He waited until the other man had stepped out into the snow and then tossed it to him. Ingestahl made a thumbs-up gesture, and shouted over the roar of the prop, "Good luck!"

Virga stepped back out of the way and, snow stinging his face, stood watching the old craft tear away between the rows of bright burning drums until it finally lifted from the ice and headed into the veil of darkness.

He pulled his coat up against the bitter wind and, his boots crunching snow, walked toward the settlement. A metal-walled supply hut, ringed with broken stones, stood at one end of the airstrip. The doors had been thrown open and empty crates were scattered about. Across the ice were the prefabricated dwellings of Avatik. Lanterns gleamed behind windows that Virga thought must be of double thickness to withstand the below-zero temperatures.

Ahead he could hear dogs howling and barking. There came a sudden series of yips as if one, or more than one, had been injured. Then the dogs quieted and there was only the sound of the wind as it hissed through the thick snow underneath his feet.

A figure clad in furs appeared suddenly from between two of the prefabricated dwellings. Startled, Virga stood where he was and watched the bundled figure approach. Virga heard the crunch of snow beneath heavy boots. Beyond the figure the howling started up again; there was the sound of churning bodies as if some of the dogs had begun fighting.

Michael reached him. He said, "You're late."