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And when I woke up next morning after a broken night I knew there was only one thing to do; to obey Slade, carry out his orders and deliver the damned package to Akureyri and hope to God I could get clear without further entanglement.
III
My mouth was dry with talking and smoking. I pitched the cigarette butt from the window and it lay on a stone sending a lonely smoke signal to the North Pole. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘I was blackmailed into it.’
Elin shifted in her seat. ‘I’m glad you’ve told me. I was wondering why you had to fly to Akureyri so suddenly.’ She leaned forward and stretched. ‘But now you’ve delivered this mysterious package you have nothing more to worry about.’
‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t deliver it.’ I told her about the four men at Akureyri Airport and she went pale. ‘Slade flew here from London. He was annoyed.’
‘He was here – in Iceland?’
I nodded. ‘He said that I’m out of it, anyway; but I’m not, you know. Elin, I want you to stay clear of me – you might get hurt.’
She regarded me intently. ‘I don’t think you’ve told me everything.’
‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘And I’m not going to. You’re better out of this mess.’
‘I think you’d better complete your story,’ she said.
I bit my lip. ‘Have you anywhere to stay – out of sight, I mean?’
She shrugged. ‘There’s the apartment in Reykjavik.’
‘That’s compromised,’ I said. ‘Slade knows about it and one of his men has it tagged.’
‘I could visit my father,’ she said.
‘Yes, you could.’ I had met Ragnar Thorsson once only; he was a tough old farmer who lived in the wilds of Strandasysla. Elin would be safe enough there. I said, ‘If I tell you the full story will you go and stay with him until I send for you?’
‘I give no guarantees,’ she said uncompromisingly.
‘Christ!’ I said. ‘If I get out of this you’re going to make me one hell of a wife. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand it.’
She jerked her head. ‘What did you say?’
‘In a left-handed way I was asking you to marry me.’
Things immediately got confused and it was a few minutes before we got ourselves untangled. Elin, pink-faced and tousle-haired, grinned at me impishly. ‘Now tell!’
I sighed and opened the door. ‘I’ll not only tell you, but I’ll show you.’
I went to the back of the Land-Rover and took the flat metal box from the girder to which I had taped it. I held it out to Elin on the palm of my hand. ‘That’s what the trouble is all about,’ I said. ‘You brought it up from Reykjavik yourself.’
She poked at it tentatively with her forefinger. ‘So those men didn’t take it.’
I said, ‘What they got was a metal box which originally contained genuine Scottish fudge from Oban – full of cotton wadding and sand and sewn up in the original hessian.’
IV
‘What about some beer?’ asked Elin.
I grimaced. The Icelandic brew is a prohibition beer, tasteless stuff bearing the same relationship to alcohol as candyfloss bears to sugar. Elin laughed. ‘It’s all right; Bjarni brought back a case of Carlsberg on his last flight from Greenland.’
That was better; the Danes really know about beer. I watched Elin open the cans and pour out the Carlsberg. ‘I want you to go to stay with your father,’ I said.
‘I’ll think about it.’ She handed me a glass. ‘I want to know why you still have the package.’
‘It was a phoney deal,’ I said. ‘The whole operation stank to high heaven. Slade said Graham had been tagged by the opposition so he brought me in at the last minute. But Graham wasn’t attacked – I was.’ I didn’t tell Elin about Lindholm; I didn’t know how much strain I could put upon her. ‘Doesn’t that seem odd?’
She considered it. ‘Yes, it is strange.’
‘And Graham was watching our apartment which is funny behaviour for a man who knows he may be under observation by the enemy. I don’t think Graham had been tagged at all; I think Slade has been telling a pack of lies.’
Elin seemed intent on the bubbles glistening on the side of her glass. ‘Talking of the enemy – who is the enemy?’
‘I think it’s my old pals of the KGB,’ I said. ‘Russian Intelligence. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.’
I could see by her set face that she didn’t like the sound of that, so I switched back to Slade and Graham. ‘Another thing – Graham saw me being tackled at Akureyri Airport and he didn’t do a bloody thing to help me. He could at least have followed the man who ran off with the camera case, but he didn’t do a damned thing. What do you make of that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Neither do I,’ I admitted. ‘That’s why the whole thing smells rotten. Consider Slade – he is told by Graham that I’ve fallen down on the job so he flies from London. And what does he do? He gives me a slap on the wrist and tells me I’ve been a naughty boy. And that’s too bloody uncharacteristic coming from Slade.’
Elin said, ‘You don’t trust Slade.’ It was a statement.
I pointed over the sea towards Grimsey. ‘I trust Slade as far as I can throw that island. He’s cooked up a complicated deal and I’d like to find out where I fit in before the chopper falls because it might be designed to fall right on my neck.’
‘And what about the package?’
‘That’s the ace.’ I lifted the metal box. ‘Slade thinks the opposition have it, but as long as they haven’t there’s no great harm done. The opposition think they have it, assuming they haven’t opened it yet.’
‘Is that a fair assumption?’
‘I think so. Agents are not encouraged to pry too much. The quartet who took the package from me will have orders to take it to the boss unopened, I think.’
Elin looked at the box. ‘I wonder what’s in it?’
I looked at it myself, and it looked right back at me and said nothing. ‘Maybe I’d better get out the can-opener,’ I said. ‘But not just yet. Perhaps it might be better not to know.’
Elin made a sound of exasperation. ‘Why must you men make everything complicated? So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to lie low,’ I said mendaciously. ‘While I do some heavy thinking. Maybe I’ll post the damned thing to post restante, Akureyri, and telegraph Slade telling him where to pick it up.’
I hoped Elin would swallow that because I was going to do something quite different and infinitely more dangerous. Somebody was soon going to find out he’d been sold a pup; he was going to scream loudly and I wanted to be around to find out who was screaming. But I didn’t want to have Elin around when that happened.
‘Lie low,’ repeated Elin thoughtfully. She turned to me. ‘What about Asbyrgi for tonight?’
‘Asbyrgi!’ I laughed and drained my glass. ‘Why not?’
V
In that dim and faraway time when the gods were young and Odin rode the arctic wastelands, he was out one day when his horse, Sleipnir, stumbled and planted a hoof in Northern Iceland. The place where the hoof hit the ground is now known as Asbyrgi. So runs the legend but my geologist friends tell it a little differently.
Asbyrgi is a hoof-shaped rock formation about two miles across. Within it the trees, sheltered from the killing wind, grow quite strongly for Iceland, some of them attaining a height of nearly twenty feet. It is a green and fertile place nestling between the towering rock walls which surround it. There is nothing to draw one there but the legend and the unaccustomed sight of growing trees, but although it is a tourist attraction they don’t stay the night. More to the point, it is quite off the main road.
We pushed through the narrow entrance to Asbyrgi and along the track made by the wheels of visiting cars until we were well inside at a place where the rock walls drew together and the trees were thick, and there we made camp. It was our custom to sleep on the ground when the climate allowed so I erected the awning which fitted on to the side of the Land-Rover, and brought out the air mattresses and sleeping bags while Elin began to prepare supper.
Perhaps we were sybaritic about our camping because we certainly didn’t rough it. I took out the folding chairs and the table and set them up and Elin put down a bottle of Scotch and two glasses and joined me in a drink before she broiled the steak. Beef is a luxury I insist upon in Iceland; one can get awfully tired of mutton.
It was quiet and peaceful and we sat and enjoyed the evening, savouring the peaty taste of the whisky and talking desultorily of the things farthest from our minds. I think we both needed a respite from the nagging problem of Slade and his damned package, and the act of setting out our camp was a return to happier days which we both eagerly grasped.
Elin got up to cook supper and I poured another drink and wondered how I was to get rid of her. If she wouldn’t go voluntarily then perhaps the best way would be to decamp early in the morning leaving her a couple of cans of food and a water bottle. With those and the sleeping bag she would be all right for a day or two until someone came into Asbyrgi and gave her a lift into civilization. She would be mad as a hornet but she would still be alive.
Because lying low wasn’t good enough. I had to become visible – set myself up like a tin duck at a shooting gallery so that someone would have a crack at me. I didn’t want Elin around when the action started.
Elin brought the supper and we started to eat. She said, ‘Alan, why did you leave the … the Department?’
I hesitated with my fork in the air. ‘I had a difference of opinion,’ I said shortly.
‘With Slade?’
I laid down the fork gently. ‘It was about Slade – yes. I don’t want to talk about it, Elin.’
She brooded for a while, then said, ‘It might be better if you talked about it. You don’t want to keep things locked up.’
I laughed silently. ‘That’s funny,’ I said. ‘Telling that to an agent of the Department. Haven’t you heard of the Official Secrets Act?’
‘What’s that?’
‘If the Department found I’d talked out of turn I’d be slung into jail for the rest of my life.’
‘Oh, that!’ she said disparagingly. ‘That doesn’t count – not with me.’
‘Try telling that to Sir David Taggart,’ I said. ‘I’ve told you more than enough already.’
‘Then why not get it all out? You know I won’t tell anyone.’
I looked down at my plate. ‘Not of your own free will. I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt you, Elin.’
‘Who would hurt me?’ she asked.
‘Slade would, for one. Then there’s a character called Kennikin who may be around, but I hope not.’
Elin said slowly, ‘If I ever marry anyone it will be a man who has no secrets. This is not good, Alan.’
‘So you think that a trouble shared is a trouble halved. I don’t think the Department would go along with you on that. The powers that be don’t think confession is good for the soul, and Catholic priests and psychiatrists are looked upon with deep suspicion. But since you’re so persistent I’ll tell you some of it – not enough to be dangerous.’
I cut into the steak again. ‘It was on an operation in Sweden. I was in a counter-espionage group trying to penetrate the KGB apparat in Scandinavia. Slade was masterminding the operation. I’ll tell you one thing about Slade; he’s very clever – devious and tricky, and he likes a ploy that wins coming and going.’
I found I had lost my appetite and pushed the plate away. ‘A man called V. V. Kennikin was bossing the opposition, and I got pretty close to him. As far as he was concerned I was a Swedish Finn called Stewartsen, a fellow traveller who was willing to be used. Did you know I was born in Finland?’
Elin shook her head. ‘You didn’t tell me.’
I shrugged. 1 suppose I’ve tried to close off that part of my life. Anyway, after a lot of work and a lot of fright I was inside and accepted by Kennikin; not that he trusted me, but he used me on minor jobs and I was able to gather a lot of information which was duly passed on to Slade. But it was all trivial stuff. I was close to Kennikin, but not close enough.’
Elin said, ‘It sounds awful. I’m not surprised you were frightened.’
‘I was scared to death most of the time; double agents usually are.’ I paused, trying to think of the simplest way to explain a complicated situation. I said deliberately, ‘The time came when I had to kill a man. Slade warned me that my cover was in danger of being blown. He said the man responsible had not reported to Kennikin and the best thing to do was to eliminate him. So I did it with a bomb.’ I swallowed. ‘I never even saw the man I killed – I just put a bomb in a car.’
There was horror in Elin’s eyes. I said harshly, ‘We weren’t playing patty-cake out there.’
‘But someone you didn’t know – that you had never seen!’
‘It’s better that way,’ I said. ‘Ask any bomber pilot. But that’s not the point. The point is that I had trusted Slade and it turned out that the man I killed was a British agent – one of my own side.’
Elin was looking at me as though I had just crawled out from under a stone. I said, ‘I contacted Slade and asked what the hell was going on. He said the man was a freelance agent whom neither side trusted – the trade is lousy with them. He recommended that I tell Kennikin what I’d done, so I did and my stock went up with Kennikin. Apparently he had been aware of a leak in his organization and there was enough evidence around to point to the man I had killed. So I became one of his blue-eyed boys – we got really chummy – and that was his mistake because we managed to wreck his network completely.’
Elin let out her breath. ‘Is that all?’
‘By Christ, it’s not all!’ I said violently. I reached for the whisky bottle and found my hand was trembling. ‘When it was all over I went back to England. I was congratulated on doing a good job. The Scandinavian branch of the Department was in a state of euphoria and I was a minor hero, for God’s sake! Then I discovered that the man I had killed was no more a freelance agent than I was. His name – if it matters – was Birkby, and he had been a member of the Department, just as I was.’
I slopped whisky into the glass. ‘Slade had been playing chess with us. Neither Birkby nor I were deep enough in Kennikin’s outfit to suit him so he sacrificed a pawn to put another in a better position. But he had broken the rules as far as I was concerned – it was as though a chess player had knocked off one of his own pieces to checkmate the king, and that’s not in the rules.’
Elin said in a shaking voice, ‘Are there any rules in your dirty world?’
‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘There aren’t any rules. But I thought there were. I tried to raise a stink.’ I knocked back the undiluted whisky and felt it burn my throat. ‘Nobody would listen, of course – the job had been successful and was now being forgotten and the time had come to go on to bigger and better things. Slade had pulled it off and no one wanted to delve too deeply into how he’d done it.’ I laughed humourlessly. ‘In fact, he’d gone up a notch in the Department and any muck-raking would be tactless – a reflection on the superior who had promoted him. I was a nuisance and nuisances are unwanted and to be got rid of.’
‘So they got rid of you,’ she said flatly.
‘If Slade had his way I’d have been got rid of the hard way – permanently. In fact, he told me so not long ago. But he wasn’t too high in the organization in those days and he didn’t carry enough weight.’ I looked into the bottom of the glass. ‘What happened was that I had a nervous breakdown.’
I raised my eyes to Elin. ‘Some of it was genuine – I’d say about fifty-fifty. I’d been living on my nerves for a long time and this was the last straw. Anyway, the Department runs a hospital with tame psychiatrists for cases like mine. Right now there’s a file stashed away somewhere full of stuff that would make Freud blush. If I step out of line there’ll be a psychiatrist ready to give evidence that I suffer everything from enuresis to paranoic delusions of grandeur. Who would disbelieve evidence coming from an eminent medical man?’
Elin was outraged. ‘But that’s unethical! You’re as sane as I am.’
‘There are no rules – remember?’ I poured out another drink, more gently this time. ‘So I was allowed to retire. I was no use to the Department anyway; I had become that anomaly, the well-known secret service agent. I crept away to a Scottish glen to lick my wounds. I thought I was safe until Slade showed up.’
‘And blackmailed you with Kennikin. Would he tell Kennikin where you are?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him, on his past record. And it’s quite true that Kennikin has a score to settle. The word is that he’s no good to the girls any more, and he blames me for it. I’d just as soon he doesn’t know where to find me.’
I thought of the last encounter in the dimness of the Swedish forest. I knew I hadn’t killed him; I knew it as soon as I had squeezed the trigger. There is a curious prescience in the gunman which tells him if he has hit the mark at which he aims, and I knew the bullet had gone low and that I had only wounded him. The nature of the wound was something else, and I could expect no mercy from Kennikin if he caught up with me.
Elin looked away from me and across the little glade which was quiet and still in the fading light apart from the sleepy chirrup of birds bedding down for the night. She shivered and put her arms about her body, ‘You come from another world – a world I don’t know.’
‘It’s a world I’m trying to protect you from.’
‘Was Birkby married?’
