East of Desolation by Jack Higgins Page A

full, mostly people I either knew personally or by sight, but there were three who were new to me—the woman from the corridor and two men who were seated together at the table in the bow window that Ilana Eytan had used that morning. I glanced at her briefly on my way across the room and sat on the other side of the table from Desforge.
    He smiled. “You noticed her too?”
    “Is there a man in the room who hasn’t? Who is she?”
    “I haven’t had a chance to find out yet.”
    “You will, Jack, you will.”
    • • •
    Desforge had a bottle of hock to himself and I shared a fresh salmon with him. We had reached the coffee stage when someone put a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and found one of the two men who had been sitting at the table by the window with the woman. I glanced across and saw that his companions had disappeared.
    “Mr. Martin—Mr. Joe Martin?”
    He was of medium height and thickset and wore a two-piece suit in thornproof tweed that had been cut by someone who knew what he was doing. His English was excellent with just the trace of an accent that hinted at something Germanic in his background although, as I learned later, he was Austrian.
    I disliked him on sight and not for any particular reason. It was simply that I didn’t care for solid middle-European-looking gentlemen with bald heads and gold-capped teeth and large diamond rings on the little finger of the left hand.
    I didn’t bother getting up. “I’m Joe Martin—what can I do for you?”
    “Vogel—Hans Vogel. My card.”
    It was an elegant strip of white pasteboard which announced that he was managing director of the London and Universal Insurance Company Ltd., with offices just off Berkeley Square.
    “What’s it all about, Mr. Vogel?” I said. “This is Mr. Jack Desforge, by the way, a friend of mine.”
    “There is no need to introduce Mr. Desforge.” He reached across to shake hands. “A very great honour, sir.”
    Desforge looked suitably modest and graciously wavedhim into one of the vacant chairs. Vogel sat down, took out his wallet and produced a scrap of paper which he passed across to me.
    “Perhaps you would be good enough to read this.”
    It was a clipping from The Times only four days old and described an interview with the leaders of an Oxford University expedition which had just arrived back in London after successfully crossing the Greenland ice-cap from west to east. It seemed they had come across the wreckage of an aeroplane, a Heron, with a Canadian registration and a couple of bodies inside or what was left of them. Identification had been difficult, but according to the personal belongings and documentary evidence recovered, one was an Englishman called Gaunt and the other a man named Harrison. The expedition had buried the remains and continued on its way.
    Strange, but for the briefest of moments I seemed to see it lying there in the snowfield, the scarlet and blue of the crumpled fuselage vivid in the bright white light of the ice-cap. It was as if it had been biding its time, waiting for the moment when things were going well for me for the first time in years before drifting up from the darkness like some pale ghost to taunt me. But why hadn’t it burned? With the amount of fuel left in the tanks it should have gone up like a torch.
    I don’t know how I managed to keep my hands still, but I did and read the cutting through again slowly to give myself time.
    “What do you think, Mr. Martin?” Vogel’s voice cut through to me.
    I passed the cutting to Desforge. “Interesting, buthardly surprising. Earlier this year a similar expedition four hundred miles further north came across an American transport plane that disappeared on a flight from Thule three years ago.”
    “That seems incredible. Was no search mounted?”
    “As a matter of fact, a highly intensive one, but a million and a quarter square miles of ice and snow is a hell of an area to cover.” I was getting into my stride now, my