CHAPTER 24 MAY/JUNE                                                       ‘Hello? Hello? Perdon. Excusa. Buenos Dias Senora. Senorita McKechnie por favor?’                   ‘Hello? Excusa. Seniorita McKechnie Por ... Liz! Thank God! How are you? Got your message.’                   ‘Hey! That's great. Yes we do have a couple of days. Friday and Monday. Terrific. I'll be there. No. Nothing here I would be interested in. Barbacues mostly and people marching around in Chilean National dress.’                   ‘I've nothing against Chillean national dress. But it doesn't go with Bermuda shorts does it? Or with cheer leaders waving pom-poms.’                   *      *      *      *      *                   He caught the plane to Santiago on the Thursday evening and took a taxi to Liz's place from the airport. He was pleased to see that she checked him out through the spy-hole before she opened the door. She was wearing a grey pullover and fawn slacks and just a hint of perfume. Her hair was caught behind her head into a pony tail. She let him give her a peck on the cheek.          Over supper he dug out the maps and she told him what she knew about the ski resorts. He found a dot on the map marked 'refuge' and Liz said it was a German ski chalet and that the Army railway went up to it. It was all very circumspect. They even remembered to say something about Cousin Lachlan. He slept on the sofa.          *      *      *      *      *          It was called the 'Army' railway but apart from the fact that the guards all wore khaki you wouldn't have known. The rolling stock was ancient. At each station the engine stopped to gather breath. Men walked up and down and tapped things with hammers, not too hard. There were long pauses at nowhere in particular. Santiago was a long way south of Ocean Springs and the mountains here were more like the Alps. The rock was grey-black. Conifers clad the slopes and there was much more snow.          Liz was elated. Her previous trips out of Santiago had been to other towns like Valparaiso or Vina del Mar. This was a revelation. They leaned out of the window together at one stop and the narrowness of the window pressed them together. She put her arm round his waist and he held her shoulders. Clouds jostled round the peaks and gave tantalising glimpses of brilliant light and patterned shadows and patches of high up glistening whiteness that might have been glaciers.          The train disgorged them at a tiny station full of disused wagons and rusty railway lines with grass growing between. The other passengers disappeared down a roadway to some houses that stood in a terrace below the station but Liz and Allan went in the other direction, up the valley towards the higher hills. He had brought his big rucksack and his smaller day-sack which Liz was using. Sleeping arrangements had been a problem for he had only one sleeping bag but Liz solved that one by packing up her down-filled bed cover in a plastic bag and Allan rammed it into his pack.          The roadway was good and properly metalled and they soon discovered why. As they emerged from trees they found the floor of the valley covered in a mineral white stuff which was being mined by huge machines. It was alabaster. Beyond the mine the valley opened to a wide expanse surrounded by mountains. The lower slopes were littered with the unsightly industrial junk of a ski resort in the off-season, pylons, wire ropes, ash-covered car parks and derelict snow-cats.          They stopped to look at the map and then took the smaller higher road which branched off to the right and after climbing some distance over a ridge the refuge came into sight. It was large, half-timbered like an Bavarian chalet with a distinctive herring-bone pattern painted maroon on white. Green shutters on the windows. No signs of life. Allan told her the story of his three nights in the toilet at the Bheinn na Cailleach hut and she didn't believe a word of it. ‘No one could be that stupid,’ she said pushing him sideways.                   The windows were small in comparison to the size of the rooms and the hut was distinctly gloomy. But there was someone. The hut guardian was a thin man with a bald head and a beaky nose. He explained the darkness as they signed the visitors book.          ‘No gasolina,’ he said, rubbing his hands together, ‘pero muy romantico.’          He leered at Liz and handed Allan two candles.          He gave them a small room under the eaves with a view of the valley. The clouds had thickened and light rain fell that evening. Allan went outside stretched out his arms and turned his face to the heavens. It was the first rain he had felt for months. Liz watched him from the window.          ‘You know what you look like?’ she shouted. ‘One of those monuments they put on the tops of hills - like at Rio.’          ‘I'm communing with nature.’          ‘Well I wish you'd commune with this picnic stove. I'm starving.’          He made them one of his one-pot specialities. Boiled macaroni and onions and when the macaroni was cooked he tipped in corned beef and tomato puree. Liz was polite about it. She made coffee the real way with fresh ground beans in his one remaining clean pot. He had to admit he had been upstaged.          It was clear from the outset that Liz wanted things to go at her own pace with plenty of opportunity to retreat before either of them got hurt. Allan contained his soul in patience.          The following day they walked up the valley by a zig-zig path to a high lake and picnicked there. Sheltered from the wind it was moderately warm and Allan slept in long grass while Liz took snaps and sketched. The second day was much like the first except that it rained more heavily and they got soaked on their return to the refuge.          ‘Are you still keen on rain?’ she said laughing and holding up her arms to let the water run off.          ‘Yes,’ he said and gave her a kiss. ‘It reminds me of home.’          She said ‘Ouch your squeezing the water into me!’ but she didn't resist.          The guardian was going down for his `gasolina' supplies and gave them a lift back to Santiago the following morning. His driving was erratic and they died a thousand deaths before he turned them out in the Calle Almirado.          At Liz's flat Allan showered before getting a taxi back to the airport. She held him at the door and gave him a long kiss.          ‘Thank's,’ she said. ‘That was a lovely weekend, and thanks for being patient with me.’          ‘Can I see you again?’          ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I would like that.’          On the flight back he tried to get his thoughts back on to his counter-conspiracy plan but it wasn't easy.                            *      *      *      *      *          ‘So how's it going?’          Willie Tomasco took his jacket off revealing large damp patches in his armpits. He hung the jacket on the back of his chair and sat down.          Allan said, ‘Ok. I think. Yea. Not bad at all really.’          ‘Would you like to give us all a talk on it?’          ‘Er. Yes.’ It seemed years ago now that Karl Wellington, his supervisor, had asked him, a young nervous PhD student, the same thing and the floor had seemed to open beneath him, but now he took it easily. ‘Yes. When do you want me to do it?’          Willie pulled a desk calendar over to him and thumbed through it. ‘The heads conference is due ....’ he said, his finger stabbed at a place on the page. ‘If you could do a written report before then .... Best if the talk coincided with publication of your report ... say four weeks?’          Allan considered. Everything seemed to be building up to the Heads Conference. The seminar, the report, Rosa and Halpern coming to the conference and Vidar, his program. He had known that a seminar had to be done sometime and he was grateful to Willie for his understanding attitude. If a report would help Willie's standing then he would do his best for him but he would need to ensure that there were no awkward repercussions. He wanted no whiff of controversy about his report, nothing to disturb the impression that he was a harmless boffin pursuing useless academic concerns.          Four weeks was just about the minimum to finish off the work and write the report. Or it would have been before Liz began to dominate his thoughts.          ‘Ok Willie. I'll do it.’                            *      *      *      *      *          After the weekend at the refuge they had talked on the phone regularly and it was Liz who suggested that she should come to Copiapo. Allan was tied up writing his report.          ‘I'd like to see the desert, ... but not Ocean Springs,’ she said. ‘I'm not interested in all that hi-tech stuff.’          He said ‘Great. I'll book a couple of rooms at the Hotel Miguel,’ and waited to see if she would say `One room will do, don't you think?' but she didn't.          Saturday, they did the town, what he knew of it and a bit more. They sat in cafes drinking harsh black coffee, eating peppery bean dishes, laughing about Allan's attempts at Spanish.          Next day he drove her out across the desert to meet Hironimo Arostica, to see the orange grove and to talk to Theresa. Theresa told her about Allan getting roadways and trucks mixed up and Liz laughed and shoved Allan playfully. Hironimo made Allan climb the little cliff near the ranch to show Liz.          ‘And you do that up mountains?’ she said ‘You're mad! I'm not sure that I want to be seen with anyone so mad.’          He played down the danger, telling her about rope technique and how impossible it is to fall and she didn't believe a word of it.          Back at the hotel, over supper, she said, ‘It was right there on the notice board at the council, Temporary lecture required to teach English - Copiapo area - one month contract.’ She put her fork down and looked at him. ‘So I spoke to Harry - that's the guy in charge - and he said it would be ok if I wanted it - and I said I'd let him know next week - and I just thought I would come up and case the joint - and,’ she hesitated, ‘- and give you the once over too.’ She blushed.          ‘Do we pass muster?’          ‘Oh I like Copiapo,’ she said. ‘I'll reserve judgement on you. This mountain thing. I don't know that I could put up with someone so mad. And then there's the thing you're doing at MCI. Why don't you give that up Allan? You know it's dangerous.’          He shuffled the food on his plate.          ‘I'll think about it.’          On Monday morning Liz spoke to `Mrs Miguel' at the Hotel. She wiped her hands on her apron and took Liz to the door by the main road and pointed a lot and Liz wrote some things down. On Sunday afternoon they went round a few places.          They settled on a bedsitter in a big old mansion called the Casa Rosado. Both the house and the crone who ran it had seen better days. No two square metres of floor were on the same level and the walls were riven by huge cracks held together by iron brackets pegged by steel spikes into the masonry. But there was a back entrance and a small staircase up to the room so that it was almost self contained, and it was cool. Allan paid for a month.          He ran her back to airport in the Dodge, waved goodbye as she climbed the wobbling airport steps into the jet and then hurried back to Ocean Springs in a daze. The report was lying on the table by his bed and when he saw it he realised with a shock that he couldn't remember anything he had written in the last few pages.                            *      *      *      *      *          He stood up to a few desultory claps and arranged his papers and transparencies on the desk. He looked round the audience. His abstract had been written carefully. It contained lots of obscure phrases and polysyllabic words. His hard work had paid off. Olafsen was not there. There could not have been more than ten people there and one of them was already asleep.          He put the first transparency on the projector and was pleased to see the eyes of his audience screwing up in an attempt to read it. Instead of using a laser printer he had borrowed a portable typewriter from one of the librarians. The type face was very small and worn. He crammed as much as possible on to each page. He had also written squiggly symbols in free-hand using a notation which he suspected was entirely foreign to everyone at the `Springs'. He had photocopied each page on to a transparent acetate and satisfied himself that the result was totally illegible.          He spoke in a low monotone and watched the eyelids droop. He stood between the projector and the screen so that his shadow obliterated the display.          No one asked any questions, indeed few of his initially sparse audience were still there when he finished. Those that were had their heads slumped down on their hands and two of them were snoring.          His report was filed, unloved and, more importantly, unread in the main library. But its title appeared in the departmental report and helped Willie to fulfil his quota and get stars on his managerial effectiveness rating.          *      *      *      *      *          Having got rid of the seminar problem he could concentrate once more on the Vidar program, spending hours and hours sitting among the orange trees, sitting on the tail-gate of the truck, hammering away at the keys. The weeks of exploration and library research were over. The ideas were there, they just needed to be put together.          ‘How about this weekend?’          ‘Sorry Liz, I've got to work.’          Sealed off from distractions, alone and unobserved except by the dead eyes of Bob Chalmers.                   *      *      *      *      *          ‘What is it we're celebrating?’          Liz lay on her back and stretched an arm up to run a finger along the seam of the tent fabric above her head. Dappled shadows of orange trees moved on the canvas and there was a continuous quiet hum of insects.          ‘I've finished something I had to finish. It's ready now.’          ‘What was it?’          ‘You don't like all that hi-tech stuff, remember? It was just something I had to do.’          ‘Is it anything to do with the thing Peter was worried about?’          They were strict with themselves. They didn't mention Peter or Allan's work when they were in the Casa Rosedo, or anywhere within the Ocean Springs complex or even when they were in the Dodge. The only time they allowed the rule to slip was when they were in the mountains.          ‘Yes and no.’          ‘You will be careful Allan. I couldn't bear anything to happen to you too.’          She looked lovely with her long crinkly gingerish hair all over the pillow of the air mattress. She had green eyes and ginger eyebrows. The freckles on her nose and brow had grown in the sun.          ‘I'm a very careful guy Liz.’          ‘You're cautious yes, but when you get an idea in your head you stick with it. You frighten me Allan. You're a kind of monster.’          ‘That's funny. Someone else once said that to me.’          ‘Who was that?’ she rolled over to face him, suddenly interested.          ‘Rosa, my boss at Gairnock. She'll be coming here soon.’          ‘How? When?’          ‘There is to be a conference soon. It's an annual event. All the heads of sections come and pat each other on the back for all their so-called hard work over the past year and to plan more megalomania for the next. Rosa's coming to it and so is Halpern. He's the supremo in Scotland. He's a pain.’          ‘Is Rosa a pain?’          ‘No. She's nice. I like her a lot.’          ‘Oh! I see.’ She pouted pretending pique.          He laughed and told her a bit about their project.          ‘You admire her don't you?’          ‘Yes I do.’          ‘Is it anything more than admiration?’          Pause.          ‘It was, but not now. She said in her last letter that she is taking up a senior fellowship at Grenoble University and she has met someone there she likes. She's going to get a divorce. Her husband is obnoxious.’          ‘But you still have a soft spot for her.’          ‘Yes I do. And I think she still has one for me. Would you like to meet her?’          Liz looked at him carefully before she answered. ‘Yes I think I would.’          ‘When will you be free? I'll ask her to come into Copiapo for a meal some evening during the conference.’          ‘I don't have a class on Thursdays.’          ‘OK. Thursday it is. I'll phone.’                   *      *      *      *      *          Liz liked to talk to Hironimo and Theresa and most of all to Hironimo's wife Augustina. Afterwards she told Allan what they had been talking about.          ‘Do you know that family gets up hours before dawn every morning and Theresa has done a day's work before she goes to school?’          Allan said, ‘I've often wondered how they scrape a living. Does Hironimo own the orange grove?’          ‘Yes and no. He's in hock to MCI for it. MCI owns most of the land and estates about here. And do you know what they've done? A condition of the loan was that he does not grow any food for himself on his land. He has to grow the cash crops they tell him to grow and when the crop is ready the men come and take it away and he has to take the price they give him. It's slavery. So much for the new world order.’          Sometimes they argued about that and he found himself using the kind of argument he had heard coming from Halpern and Maurice.          ‘It is not as simple as that Liz. Even owning a luxury yacht creates work for the people who make luxury yachts.’          ‘That might work if there were no limits to anything, but these luxury things consume resources and there is a limit.’          Liz was strong on the environment and he was puzzled. Was there a right answer to anything? There was only one thing he was sure about. People should get the government they voted for, not one chosen by someone else no matter how clever that someone else may be.                   *      *      *      *      *          They walked on a ridge of rust brown rock. Liz wore strong shoes but they did not protect her ankles so he was careful to avoid scree. Sometimes she got scared by the height and he tied her on a short rope knotting it carefully round her waist and taking the opportunity to kiss her.          He loved to watch her. She moved so easily. She wore wide baggy shorts and he was anxious lest she got sunburned so he made her plaster on the protective cream and helped her do it. They were long slim legs with narrow tapering ankles. The slimness of them was emphasised by her chunky white socks. As she walked along the narrow rocky edge before him she held out her arms with elbows inverted and hands spread in a feminine gesture.          They stopped at a small summit and sat to eat sandwiches. He pointed out some peaks and places he had been to.          ‘That's the Plaza del Toros. I'd like to take you there but it's a bit far for a normal weekend.’          ‘They don't have bulls up here surely.’          ‘No. It's just the shape it is. It's a great round hollow with just a narrow entrance and huge cliffs all round like an amphitheatre. In the middle there is this great spike which is supposed to be the bull's horn. You can see the top poking over.’          She shaded her eyes.          ‘What an improbable shape. You wouldn't ever try to climb a thing like that Allan. Would you?’          ‘Eh ... well ... actually I have climbed it.’          ‘You're joking!’          ‘No. It's not that bad. It's peppered with good holds because of the way the strata lie. It is a bit airy at the top though.’          ‘You're mad. Do you have a death wish or something?’          Rationalise it as he may, he knew that it was because it was dangerous that he liked to do it. Liz pressed home her point.          ‘You were talking about self-indulgent people at MCI and how they play computer games while people like Hironimo slave just to stay alive. Do you not think you are being self-indulgent. What is the point of climbing and risking your neck. What good does it do anyone?’          After a while he said, ‘May be you're right. It just seems to come naturally. I'm not properly alive unless I can climb.’          *      *      *      *      *          ‘There is something else,’ Liz said as he handed her the water bottle. ‘Harry my boss is also looking for someone to go to Argentina.’          His hand with the bottle stopped in mid air. Then he handed it to her. She unscrewed the top and went on.          ‘I said I would think about it. The thing is, it's a tenured post.’          ‘You mean there's no time limit?’          ‘That's right. It means I'd have a permanent post and do some administration for the Council. I'd have jumped at the chance if it wasn't for us.’          He didn't know what to say. The sandwich had lost its taste. She handed him the bottle back and he took a swig.          ‘So what are you going to do?’          ‘I don't know. I'm thinking about it. It came up before the Copiapo thing and I'd got as far as getting my visa. But then the Copiapo job turned up and I thought I'd give it a whirl. It was only for a month and that would let me see how we worked out.’          ‘And have we worked out?’          ‘Yes. That's the trouble. So now I don't know what to do.’          ‘Would you marry me?’ He hadn't imagined he would ever hear himself saying the words.          She smiled gently and blew him a kiss.          ‘Thanks for asking. But I don't want to be an Ocean Springs wife. I'd go mad there.’          ‘If I left MCI?’          She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Would you come to Argentina? ’It's not far away.‘          ’It's closer than you think. See that red peak?‘ he pointed to the East. Not the sharp one, the one to the right and a bit farther away? That's in Argentina. We could walk there in two days.’          ‘You could walk it in two days. You'd have to carry me.’          ‘Nonsense. You could do it.’          ‘Would you leave MCI Allan?’          ‘I'm planning to leave MCI. But there's something I have to do first.’          She came over and sat on his knee put her arms round him. The sharpness of the rocks under his buttocks cut into him painfully but he said nothing, suffering the pain stoically and gladly as he embraced her.          ‘It's too soon for us Allan. We've only known each other a few weeks really. What is it you have to do?’          ‘It's been two months,’ he protested. ‘... Nearly. It's just something important to me. But it will be finished soon.’          ‘Is it to do with the people who killed Peter? ... It is. Isn't it? What are you going to do Allan?’ She was suddenly alarmed.          ‘I think I can spoil their plans.’          ‘Allan!’ She held his face and stared into it. Her eyes were wide and frightened. ‘Don't Allan! Stop it now! Come to Argentina now!’          She got off his knee and began packing up her knapsack. He moved to help her and stumbled.          ‘What's the matter with you?’ she snapped.          ‘Nothing. I've just got pins and bloody needles that's all.’          He grabbed her by the arm. A wild plan was forming in his head.          ‘Listen. You go to Argentina and go soon. I'll give you some money to keep for me and you set things up there. I think I'm going to need a new passport and a whole new name. I don't speak the lingo so I stand out like a sore thumb. But you speak Spanish. They tell me people can be bribed. You set things up for me. In Argentina. So I can disappear there. And I'll walk through these mountains to reach you. They can stop me at the airports but they can't stop me in the mountains. I can run the legs off them. Stop crying!’ he shook her almost roughly. ‘I need your help!’          She was trembling with anger. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared at him and then she was shouting. Her voice was shrill.          ‘You're mad! Do you think Argentina is still like forty years ago? Just because some Nazis disappeared there do you think I can spirit you away there? You think because I can speak Spanish I can work miracles?’          ‘We'll be all right Liz. We'll work something out.’          The tears came again.          ‘You told me what you were doing was not dangerous!’.