Putting the rod near the cracks in the concrete floors raised an endless stream of clicks; clicks so fast that they coalesced into one sound.
I thought of radon. Radon gas could be a problem the world over as it was produced by the decay of naturally occurring uranium in rocks and seeped unseen and unsmelled into people’s homes, giving them cancer. But, I thought, radon needed an enclosed space to congregate and the hurricane had ensured there were no enclosed spaces left. And besides, limestone had little radioactive uranium in it to decay.
So what was causing the count? Was this perhaps why the islanders had left: not because of Nicky, still less because of Odin, but because they feared the radioactivity under their feet?
If the Geiger counter was energised round the houses, it practically took off over the outlined remnants of the foundations of the mushroom sheds. Frowning, I made a long detour down and off the runway to see if the cattle en masse were emitting strong radioactivity too, but to my relief they weren’t. I hadn’t, it seemed, drunk quantities of radioactive milk.
Eventually the Geiger counter lost its attraction as entertainment and I restored it to the safe. The folder lay there also, each sheet familiar but reproaching my lack of scholarship.
I closed the safe and locked it, and again in the idyllic air I added one more piece of wood to a growing line. Each piece of wood represented a day, and at that moment there were four of them. Four long days and longer nights.
Despair was too strong a word for it.
Perhaps despondency was better.
When they came for me, they came with guns.
Chapter 6
In the late afternoon of my fifth day on the island, while I swam in the sea off the small sandy beach at the far end of the landing strip, a twin-engined aeroplane droned in, dropped down neatly over the distant village and rolled nearly halfway down the strip before pausing, turning, and taxiing back to what, before Odin, had been habitation.
Every day I had laid the bright yellow-orange life jacket conspicuously on the runway and weighted it with stones in the hope that it would be visible from any passing low-flying aircraft, and although the cattle had thoroughly dirtied it a couple of times I had washed it well enough for the purpose in one of the filthy cisterns. With absolute joy then, I reckoned that the jacket had successfully delivered its intended message, and I scrambled with haste up the winding rocky path from the little beach, aiming, sore feet or not, to run towards my rescuers so they should see me before believing the island to be deserted and flying off again.
In my anxiety to be seen I gave no thought at all to the possibility that the newcomers might not be friendly. They had come in an aircraft that would take eighteen or so passengers comfortably: the sort of aircraft regularly used for flying people to and from small islands. The sort of aircraft sensibly sent out to survey small islands for hurricane survivors. A workhorse aircraft, unremarkable.
I was surprised but not disturbed that no one emerged from it as I shuffled and ran and struggled up the runway. It was a scorching hot day and I thought only that they would have air-conditioning and glorious cold drinks on board. I was about sixty feet away when the rear door opened and unfolded to enable five figures to walk down a short stairway to the ground.
They all wore the same — shiny metallic coveralls with great hoods coming down over their shoulders, with smoked plastic rectangles instead effaces: more like space suits than suitable wear for a stifling Caribbean afternoon. I’d seen those outfits before — radiation protection suits. I’d seen what they were carrying before too — deadly black assault rifles which they aimed like a firing squad at my chest.
I stopped. I found it less than amusing to be a target again, but at least no one this time read me my ‘rights’. No one told me I could remain silent but if I said anything it would be held against me in court. No one mentioned a court of any description. Silence, however, agreed with me fine.
One of the suits took a hand off his weapon long enough to beckon to me to walk forward and, seeing no advantage in trying to run, I slowly advanced until signalled to stop.
I must have looked a bit primitive. I wore only what Odin had left me; underpants and torn shirt. My chin was dark with unshaven beard and my feet were bruised and swollen. The television audience back home, used to my well-brushed tidy screen self, would have been affronted and disbelieving.
The five suits talked to each other For a while but were too far away for me to hear what they said. I hopefully guessed in the end that they weren’t so much concerned about their exposure to radioactivity as about preventing me from recognising them if I saw them anywhere again in future. This helpfully implied that they’d voted against killing me casually and chucking my corpse into the sea — from where it might wash up again inconveniently — and also, I thought, it meant that they hadn’t known I would be on the island at all.
I’d had four long days and nights for thinking, and many things in that time had grown clearer. If they gave me a reasonable chance of acting, they could report me to be as ignorant when they found me as I’d been when I got lost.
Three of the suits peeled off and headed for the village area, leaving only two with their unamiable black machinery pointing my way. These two in fact looked nervous more than murderous, shuffling uncertainly from foot to foot; but nervous gunmen frightened me more than those who knew their business. I stood very still and didn’t speak, and was glad not to be sweltering inside heavy protective gear.
When eventually the other three returned from their walkabout, they were carrying in plain sight both the Geiger counter and the folder of papers. If they’d found my camera in its new out-of-cow-reach perch near the top of a high tangle of timbers, they weren’t telling.
All five conferred near the aircraft, then a different group of three walked up the entry stairs and pulled the doors shut behind them.
My spirits sank to zero when they started both of the engines, but as the two left to guard me continued unemotionally to do so, I waited as patiently as I could manage, even if screaming inside. Food, sleep and shoes, I needed all of those. On that island paradise I’d had a surfeit of hunger, thirst, heat, insects and general deprivation, and I was perilously near to begging.
Turn your mind, I told myself, to something else.
A gentle wind was blowing steadily up the runway towards the village, but the aircraft, though travelling the right way for take-off, was going far too slowly to achieve lift. Eventually it stopped altogether, disgorging one figure who walked to an edge of the runway to survey the rocky terrain between landing strip and sea. The figure returned and reboarded, and the travel-stop-search procedure was repeated again and again.
They were looking for the cattle, I realised, and although I could have saved them time, I didn’t. I let them stop and search, stop and search, stop and search until they came across the peaceful beasts lying and chewing the cud down at the far end of the island, where there was a patch of more succulent grass.
The aeroplane turned back after a lengthy herd inspection and stopped where it had been before.
Another general discussion took place, which resulted in two of my long-time guards advancing on me nervously, one with gun held ready, the other to tie first a blindfolding scarf around my head and next a thinner uncomfortable restraint round my wrists, behind my back.
I thought of several protests, both verbal and physical, but saw no point in any of them, and nor did I complain when roughly prodded, blindly stumbling, up the stairs into the body of the aircraft to be pushed into a rear seat. The engines roared immediately as if in a hurry to be gone and the aircraft lifted easily into the blue.