I looked at her and remembered certain things about her
– the kind of things you remember about a woman to whom you've made love. "I might," I said. "But I'm not going to."
She made a little face. "Like that, eh?"
"Like that," I said. "Do you want to come along and help me shoot these pix of yours, or would you prefer to stay in Kiruna and sulk?"
There was color in her face, and her eyes were hot and angry, but the advantage was all mine and she knew it. She had to come with me. She had to supervise the taking of the pictures. If I'd had any doubts on that score, the way she swallowed her temper and managed to smile would have settled them for good.
"Just forget I brought it up," she said lightly. "You're not losing me that easily, Mr. Helm. I'll be on the platform in ten minutes."
Chapter Nineteen
I REALLY had to hand it to the girl. Her motives might be questionable, her morals might leave something to be desired-not that I was in a position to criticize on that score-and her eye for pictures, while accurate, wasn't characterized by much in the way of freshness and originality, but her talent for organization was awe-inspiring.
Usually, on a job like that, you spend half your time waitIng for somebody to find a key to unlock a gate, or for somebody's secretary to get back from a two-hour cup of joe so she can tell you the big boy's left for the golf course and you'd better come back in the morning. There was no such monkey business here. Everywhere we came, they were expecting us; and I'd be led straight to the battlefield, aimed in the right direction, and told to commence firing.
In Luleв I thought she was going to spoil her perfect record. One morning, a polite but firm young lieutenant in the off-green uniform of the Swedish Army had come up to inform us that we were operating inside the military protection district of Bodйn's fortress-that same mysterious fortification that had caused our airliner to make a detour the week before. In this district aliens weren't even supposed to wander from certain designated public roads and areas, let alone set up enough photographic equipment to film a Hollywood super-colossal and proceed to make a careful documentary record of freight yards and docks.
Lou smiled prettily and displayed some official-looking papers, and the boy wavered and asked our pardon. But he had his instructions, and while everything was undoubtedly in perfect order, he would appreciate our accompanying him while he checked with his superiors.
We were working to a pretty tight schedule at the time, cleaning up this eastern end of the job so we could head back to Kiruna, our headquarters, and work our way from there across the mountains to Narvik, in Norway. Any delay that particular morning would have scrambled our connections badly. Lou smiled at the boy again, and suggested he use a nearby telephone first, and call Overste Borg.
"How the hell did you manage that?" I asked, after the kid lieutenant had departed, with apologies. "I was all resigned to bars at the windows. Who's Overste Borg?"
"Colonel Borg?" she said. "Oh, he's an old friend of Hal's. His wife's a darling. They had me to dinner when I was here a few weeks ago. Come on, let's finish up; we've got a plane to catch."
It seemed as if the entire north of Sweden and substantial portions of Norway were populated by old friends of Hal's, usually in fairly high official positions, all with darling wives. It made life very simple for a hard-working photographer. I asked no questions. I just went where I was led and did as I was told. It was a week to the day after Vance's death that we wrapped up the job and took the afternoon train out of Narvik, which brought us into Kiruna Central Station on time at nineteen forty-five-.. a quarter of eight, to you. All official times in Sweden are given on the twenty-four-hour system, as in the armed forces back home. This saves a lot of A.M.'S and P.M.'S in the railroad time tables.
In my hotel room-the same one I'd kept right along- I changed to more respectable clothes. Our old friends the Ridderswдrds were having us to dinner again. Waiting for Lou to let me know she was ready to go, I organized my films and equipment for, presumably, the last time on this particular jaunt. Then she knocked on the door and came in carrying her coat, purse, and gloves in one hand, and holding up her dress with the other.
"The damn zipper's stuck," she said. "Why does it alw~..ys have to happen when I'm in a hurry?"
She deposited her belongings on a chair and turned her back to me. It was the same smoothly fitting black dress she'd been wearing for important occasions right along, but it always gave me a funny feeling to see it these days, although it showed no signs whatever of the early-morning horseplay in which it had once figured. She'd got the cloth jammed in the machinery. It didn't take me long to worry loose the zipper. As a married man of fifteen years' stand ing, I'm officially checked out on zippers, single-engine, multi-engine, and jet.
I closed her up the back and gave her a brotherly pat on the fanny. We hadn't officially forgiven each other yet, but two reasonably intelligent people, reasonably equipped with senses of humor, can't work together for a week without coming to some sort of tacit understanding. I might as well have saved the pat, however. For kicks, you might as well pat Joan of Arc in full armor, as a modern woman in her best girdle.
"All clear," I said. "I asked the desk to call a taxi. It's probably waiting by now."
She didn't move at once. She was looking at the dresser top, where an impressive number of film cartridges stood in neat rows, like soldiers on parade. After a moment, she glanced at me questioningly.
I said, "That's the gather, ma'am. I lined them all up there to see what they looked like. I'll wrap them up and send them out in the morning."
She looked surprised. "I thought you were going to take them to Stockholm with you."
I shook my head. "I changed my mind. Why should I take a chance on their color processing, when I know I can get a good job in New York? As for the black-and-whites, there's a lab I know that can do a better job than I can, working in a hotel sink. It'll mean a little fun with customs, I understand, but I've been told they'll let you send exposed, undeveloped film out of the country, if you merely sign your life away first."
There was a little silence. Her back was to me, but I could see her face in the mirror. It was a mean curve I'd pitched her. She'd expected those films to be lying around for several days longer. She was thinking hard. She laughed mechanically, and touched one of the cartridges.
"My God, there are a lot of them, aren't there?"
It was a typical amateur reaction. The stuff comes out of the factories by the running mile, but the amateur clings to the notion that each square inch is precious and irreplaceable. Lou still had the attitude of the box-camera duffer who keeps the same roll in the camera from one Christmas to the next. I hadn't been able to get it through her head that film, like ammunition, is expendable.
"Yup," I said, "a lot of 'em. And there ain't a cow in the herd worth a plugged nickel, ma'am."
She threw me a quick, startled glance over her shoulder. "What do you mean?"
I said deliberately, "I'm speaking from the artistic and editorial point of view, of course, not the technical. We've got lots of technically beautiful negatives, but as publishable pictures go, all we've got is a bunch of corny, unimaginative junk. I think you know that."
She swung around to face me. "If you feel like that, why did you take them?" she demanded angrily. "Why didn't you tell me-"
"Lou," I said, "don't go naпve on me at this late stage in the proceedings. You've hauled me hundreds of miles and had me expose hundreds of yards of film in weird and rather dull places that had nothing much to do with the article we were supposed to be illustrating. Any time I turned aside to shoot something really interesting, something with human appeal, something a magazine might actually go for, you'd be tapping your foot impatiently and looking at your watch. Now don't give me that wide-eyed look and start asking silly questions. You know why I took your pictures the way you wanted me to. I've been waiting for a man to show. A man named Caselius. I expect him to turn up any time now, particularly if you let him know all this stuff will be leaving the country tomorrow."