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I put the handset back into its clip. ‘That bastard, Slade!’ I said. ‘I was right.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Elin.
I looked at the clouds which were beginning to boil over Dyngjufjöll. ‘I’d like to get off this track,’ I said. ‘We have twenty-four hours to waste and I’d rather not do it right here. Let’s get up into Askja before that storm really breaks.’
FOUR (#ulink_eb98a3eb-19b4-5888-94db-5c6d2cb2d6ba)
The great caldera of Askja is beautiful – but not in a storm. The wind lashed the waters of the crater lake far below and someone, possibly old Odin, pulled the plug out of the sky so that the rain fell in sheets and wind-driven curtains. It was impossible to get down to the lake until the water-slippery ash had dried out so I pulled off the track and we stayed right there, just inside the crater wall.
Some people I know get jumpy even at the thought of being inside the crater of what is, after all, a live volcano; but Askja had said his piece very loudly in 1961 and would probably be quiet for a while apart from a few minor exuberancies. Statistically speaking, we were fairly safe. I put up the top of the Land-Rover so as to get headroom, and presently there were lamb chops under the grill and eggs spluttering in the pan, and we were dry, warm and comfortable.
While Elin fried the eggs I checked the fuel situation. The tank held sixteen gallons and we carried another eighteen gallons in four jerrycans, enough for over 600 miles on good roads. But we weren’t on good roads and, in the Óbyggdir, we’d be lucky to get even ten miles from a gallon. The gradients and the general roughness meant a lot of low gear work and that swallows fuel greedily, and the nearest filling station was a long way south. Still, I reckoned we’d have enough to get to Geysir.
Miraculously, Elin produced two bottles of Carlsberg from the refrigerator, and I filled a glass gratefully. I watched her as she spooned melted fat over the eggs and thought she looked pale and withdrawn. ‘How’s the shoulder?’
‘Stiff and tender,’ she said.
It would be. I said, ‘I’ll put another dressing on it after supper.’ I drank from the glass and felt the sharp tingle of cold beer. ‘I wish I could have kept you out of this, Elin.’
She turned her head and offered me a brief smile. ‘But you haven’t.’ With a dextrous twist of a spatula she lifted an egg on to a plate. ‘I can’t say I’m enjoying it much, though.’
‘Entertainment isn’t the object,’ I said.
She put the plate down before me. ‘Why did you ask about Kennikin’s drinking habits? It seems pointless.’
‘That goes back a long way,’ I said. ‘As a very young man Kennikin fought in Spain on the Republican side, and when that war was lost he lived in France for a while, stirring things up for Leon Blum’s Popular Front, but I think even then he was an undercover man. Anyway, it was there he picked up a taste for Calvados – the Normandy applejack. Got any salt?’
Elin passed the salt cellar. ‘I think maybe he had a drinking problem at one time and decided to cut it out because, as far as the Department is aware, he’s a non-drinker. You heard Taggart on that.’
Elin began to cut into a loaf of bread. ‘I don’t see the point of all this,’ she complained.
‘I’m coming to it. Like a lot of men with an alcohol problem he can keep off the stuff for months at a time, but when the going becomes tough and the pressures build up then he goes on a toot. And, by God, there are enough tensions in our line of work. But the point is that he’s a secret drinker; I only found out when I got next to him in Sweden. I visited him unexpectedly and found him cut to the eyeballs on Calvados – it’s the only stuff he inhales. He was drunk enough to talk about it, too. Anyway, I poured him into bed and tactfully made my exit, and he never referred to the incident again when I was with him.’
I accepted a piece of bread and dabbed at the yolk of an egg. ‘When an agent goes back to the Department after a job he is debriefed thoroughly and by experts. That happened to me when I got back from Sweden, but because I was raising a stink about what had happened to Jimmy Birkby maybe the debriefing wasn’t as thorough as it should have been, and the fact that Kennikin drinks never got put on record. It still isn’t on record, as I’ve just found out.’
‘I still don’t see the point,’ said Elin helplessly.
‘I’m just about to make it,’ I said. ‘When Slade came to see me in Scotland he told me of the way I had wounded Kennikin, and made the crack that Kennikin would rather operate on me with a sharp knife than offer to split a bottle of Calvados. How in hell would Slade know about the Calvados? He’s never been within a hundred miles of Kennikin and the fact isn’t on file in the Department. It’s been niggling at me for a long time, but the penny only dropped this afternoon.’
Elin sighed. ‘It’s a very small point.’
‘Have you ever witnessed a murder trial? The point which can hang a man can be very small. But add this to it – the Russians took a package which they presumably discovered to be a fake. You’d expect them to come after the real thing, wouldn’t you? But who did come after it, and with blood in his eye? None other than friend Slade.’
‘You’re trying to make out a case that Slade is a Russian agent,’ said Elin. ‘But it won’t work. Who was really responsible for the destruction of Kennikin’s network in Sweden?’
‘Slade master-minded it,’ I said. ‘He pointed me in the right direction and pulled the trigger.’
Elin shrugged. ‘Well, then? Would a Russian agent do that to his own side?’
‘Slade’s a big boy now,’ I said. ‘Right next to Taggart in a very important area of British Intelligence. He even lunches with the Prime Minister – he told me so. How important would it be to the Russians to get a man into that position?’
Elin looked at me as though I’d gone crazy. I said quietly, ‘Whoever planned this has a mind like a pretzel, but it’s all of a piece. Slade is in a top slot in British Intelligence – but how did he get there? Answer – by wrecking the Russian organization in Sweden. Which is more important to the Russians? To retain their Swedish network – which could be replaced if necessary? Or to put Slade where he is now?’
I tapped the table with the handle of my knife. ‘You can see the same twisted thinking throughout. Slade put me next to Kennikin by sacrificing Birkby; the Russkies put Slade next to Taggart by sacrificing Kennikin and his outfit.’
‘But this is silly!’ burst out Elin. ‘Why would Slade have to go to all that trouble with Birkby and you when the Russians would be co-operating with him, anyway?’
‘Because it had to look good,’ I said. ‘The operation would be examined by men with very hard eyes and there had to be real blood, not tomato ketchup – no fakery at all. The blood was provided by poor Birkby – and Kennikin added some to it.’ A sudden thought struck me. ‘I wonder if Kennikin knew what was going on? I’ll bet his organization was blasted from under him – the poor bastard wouldn’t know his masters were selling him out just to bring Slade up a notch.’ I rubbed my chin. ‘I wonder if he’s still ignorant of that?’
‘This is all theory,’ said Elin. ‘Things don’t happen that way.’
‘Don’t they? My God, you only have to read the published accounts of some of the spy trials to realize that bloody funny things happen. Do you know why Blake got a sentence of forty-two years in jail?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t read about it.’
‘You won’t find it in print, but the rumour around the Department was that forty-two was the number of our agents who came to a sticky end because he’d betrayed them. I wouldn’t know the truth of it because he was in a different outfit – but think of what Slade could do!’
‘So you can’t trust anyone,’ said Elin. ‘What a life to lead!’
‘It’s not as bad as that. I trust Taggart to a point – and I trust Jack Case, the man I’m meeting at Geysir. But Slade is different; he’s become careless and made two mistakes – one about the Calvados, and the other in coming after the package himself.’
Elin laughed derisively. ‘And the only reason you trust Taggart and Case is because they’ve made no mistakes, as you call them?’
‘Let me put it this way,’ I said. ‘I’ve killed Graham, a British intelligence agent, and so I’m in a hot spot. The only way I can get out of it is to prove that Slade is a Russian agent. If I can do that I’ll be a bloody hero and the record will be wiped clean. And it helps a lot that I hate Slade’s guts.’
‘But what if you’re wrong?’
I put as much finality into my voice as I could. ‘I’m not wrong,’ I said, and hoped it was true. ‘We’ve had a long hard day, Elin; but we can rest tomorrow. Let me put a dressing on your shoulder.’
As I smoothed down the last piece of surgical tape, she said, ‘What did you make of what Taggart said just before the storm came?’
I didn’t like to think of that. ‘I think,’ I said carefully, ‘that he was telling me that Kennikin is in Iceland.’
II
Tired though I was after a hard day’s driving I slept badly. The wind howled from the west across the crater of Askja, buffeting the Land-Rover until it rocked on its springs, and the heavy rain drummed against the side. Once I heard a clatter as though something metallic had moved and I got up to investigate only to find nothing of consequence and got drenched to the skin for my pains. At last I fell into a heavy sleep, shot through with bad dreams.
Still, I felt better in the morning when I got up and looked out. The sun was shining and the lake was a deep blue reflecting the cloudless sky, and in the clear, rain-washed air the far side of the crater seemed a mere kilometre away instead of the ten kilometres it really was. I put water to boil for coffee and when it was ready I leaned over and dug Elin gently in the ribs.
‘Umph!’ she said indistinctly, and snuggled deeper into the sleeping bag. I prodded her again and one blue eye opened and looked at me malignantly through tumbled blonde hair. ‘Stop it!’
‘Coffee,’ I said, and waved the cup under her nose.
She came to life and clutched the cup with both hands. I took my coffee and a jug of hot water and went outside where I laid my shaving kit on the bonnet and began to whisk up a lather. After shaving, I thought, it would be nice to go down to the lake and clean up. I was beginning to feel grubby – the Odàdahraun is a dusty place – and the thought of clean water was good.
I finished scraping my face and, as I rinsed the lather away, I ran through in my mind the things I had to do, the most important of which was to contact Taggart as soon as it was a reasonable hour to find him in his office. I wanted to give him the detailed case against Slade.
Elin came up with the coffee pot. ‘More?’
‘Thanks,’ I said, holding out my cup. ‘We’ll have a lazy day.’ I nodded towards the lake at the bottom of the crater. ‘Fancy a swim?’
She pulled a face and moved her wounded shoulder. ‘I can’t do the crawl, but perhaps I can paddle with one arm.’ She looked up at the sky, and said, ‘It’s a lovely day.’
I watched her face change. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The radio antenna,’ she said. ‘It’s not there.’
I whirled around. ‘Damn!’ That was very bad. I climbed up and looked at the damage. It was easy to see what had happened. The rough ground in Central Iceland is enough to shake anything loose that isn’t welded down; nuts you couldn’t shift with a wrench somehow loosen themselves and wind off the bolts; split-pins jump out, even rivets pop. A whip antenna with its swaying motion is particularly vulnerable; I know one geologist who lost three in a month. The question here was when did we lose it?
It was certainly after I had spoken to Taggart, so it might have gone during the mad dash for Askja when we raced the storm. But I remembered the metallic clatter I had heard during the night; the antenna might have been loosened enough by the bumping to have been swept away by the strong wind. I said, ‘It may be around here – quite close. Let’s look.’
But we didn’t get that far because I heard a familiar sound – the drone of a small aircraft. ‘Get down!’ I said quickly. ‘Keep still and don’t look up.’
We dropped flat next to the Land-Rover as the light plane came over the edge of the crater wall flying low. As it cleared the edge it dipped down into the crater to our left. I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t lift your head. Nothing stands out so much as a white face.’
The plane flew low over the lake and then turned, spiralling out into a search pattern to survey the interior of the crater. It looked to me like a four-seater Cessna from the brief glimpse I got of it. The Land-Rover was parked in a jumble of big rocks, split into blocks by ice and water, and maybe it wouldn’t show up too well from the air providing there was no movement around it.
Elin said quietly, ‘Do you think it’s someone looking for us?’
‘We’ll have to assume so,’ I said. ‘It could be a charter plane full of tourists looking at the Óbyggdir from the air, but it’s a bit early in the day for that – tourists aren’t awake much before nine o’clock.’
This was a development I hadn’t thought of. Damn it, Slade was right; I was out of practice. Tracks in the Óbyggdir are few and it would be no great effort to keep them under surveillance from the air and to direct ground transport by radio. The fact that my Land-Rover was the long wheelbase type would make identification easier – there weren’t many of those about.
The plane finished quartering the crater and climbed again, heading north-west. I watched it go but made no move. Elin said, ‘Do you think we were seen?’
‘I don’t know that, either. Stop asking unanswerable questions – and don’t move because it may come back for another sweep.’
I gave it five minutes and used the time to figure out what to do next. There would be no refreshing swim in the lake, that was certain. Askja was as secluded a place as anywhere in Iceland but it had one fatal flaw – the track into the crater was a spur from the main track – a dead end – and if anyone blocked the way out of the crater there’d be no getting past, not with the Land-Rover. And I didn’t have any illusions about the practicability of going anywhere on foot – you can get very dead that way in the Óbyggdir.
‘We’re getting out of here fast,’ I said. ‘I want to be on the main track where we have some choice of action. Let’s move!’
‘Breakfast?’
‘Breakfast can wait.’
‘And the radio antenna?’
I paused, indecisive and exasperated. We needed that antenna – I had to talk to Taggart – but if we had been spotted from the air then a car full of guns could be speeding towards Askja, and I didn’t know how much time we had in hand. The antenna could be close by but, on the other hand, it might have dropped off somewhere up the track and miles away.
I made the decision. ‘The hell with it! Let’s go.’
There was no packing to do beyond collecting the coffee cups and my shaving kit and within two minutes we were climbing the narrow track on the way out of Askja. It was ten kilometres to the main track and when we got there I was sweating for fear of what I might find, but nothing was stirring. I turned right and we headed south.
An hour later I pulled up where the track forked. On the left ran the Jökulsá á Fjöllum, now near its source and no longer the mighty force it displayed at Dettifoss. I said, ‘We’ll have breakfast here.’
‘Why here particularly?’
I pointed to the fork ahead. ‘We have a three-way choice – we can go back or take either of those tracks. If that plane is going to come back and spot us I’d just as soon he did it here. He can’t stay up there forever so we wait him out before we move on and leave him to figure which way we went.’
While Elin was fixing breakfast I took the rifle I had liberated from Graham and examined it. I unloaded it and looked down the bore. This was no way to treat a good gun; not to clean it after shooting. Fortunately, modern powder is no longer so violently corrosive and a day’s wait before cleaning no longer such a heinous offence. Besides, I had neither gun oil nor solvent and engine oil would have to do.
I checked the ammunition after cleaning the rifle. Graham had loaded from a packet of twenty-five; he had shot one and I had popped off three at Slade – twenty-one rounds left. I set the sights of the rifle at a hundred yards. I didn’t think that if things came to the crunch I’d be shooting at much over that range. Only film heroes can take a strange gun and unknown ammunition and drop the baddy at 500 yards.
I put the rifle where I could get at it easily and caught a disapproving glance from Elin. ‘Well, what do you expect me to do?’ I said defensively. ‘Start throwing rocks?’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ she said.
‘No, you didn’t,’ I agreed. ‘I’m going down to the river to clean up. Give me a shout when you’re ready.’
But first I climbed a small knoll from where I could get a good view of the surrounding country. Nothing moved for as far as I could see, and in Iceland you can usually see a hell of a long way. Satisfied, I went down to the river which was the milky grey-green colour of melt water and shockingly cold, but after the first painful gasp it wasn’t too bad. Refreshed, I went back to tuck into breakfast.
Elin was looking at the map. ‘Which way are you going?’
‘I want to get between Hofsjökull and Vatnajökull,’ I said. ‘So we take the left fork.’
‘It’s a one-way track,’ said Elin and passed me the map.
True enough. Printed in ominous red alongside the dashed line which denoted the track was the stern injunction: Adeins faert til austurs – eastward travel only. We wanted to go to the west.
I frowned. Most people think that because Greenland is covered with ice and is wrongly named then so is Iceland, and there’s not much ice about the place. They’re dead wrong. Thirty-six icefields glaciate one-eighth of the country and one of them alone – Vatnajökull – is as big as all the glaciated areas in Scandinavia and the Alps put together.
The cold wastes of Vatnajökull lay just to the south of us and the track to the west was squeezed right up against it by the rearing bulk of Trölladyngja – the Dome of Trolls – a vast shield volcano. I had never been that way before but I had a good idea why the track was one way only. It would cling to the sides of cliffs and be full of hair-pin blind bends – quite hairy enough to negotiate without the unnerving possibility of running into someone head on.
I sighed and examined other possibilities. The track to the right would take us north, the opposite direction to which I wanted to go. More damaging, to get back again would triple the mileage. The geography of Iceland has its own ruthless logic about what is and what is not permitted and the choice of routes is restricted.
I said, ‘We’ll take our chances going the short way and hope to God we don’t meet anyone. It’s still early in the season and the chances are good.’ I grinned at Elin. ‘I don’t think there’ll be any police around to issue a traffic ticket.’
‘And there’ll be no ambulance to pick us up from the bottom of a cliff,’ she said.
‘I’m a careful driver; it may never happen.’
Elin went down to the river and I walked to the top of the knoll again. Everything was quiet. The track stretched back towards Askja and there was no tell-tale cloud of dust to indicate a pursuing vehicle, nor any mysterious aircraft buzzing about the sky. I wondered if I was letting my imagination get the better of me. Perhaps I was running away from nothing.
The guilty flee where no man pursueth. I was as guilty as hell! I had withheld the package from Slade on nothing more than intuition – a hunch Taggart found difficult to believe. And I had killed Graham! As far as the Department was concerned I would already have been judged, found guilty and sentenced, and I wondered what would be the attitude of Jack Case when I saw him at Geysir.
I saw Elin returning to the Land-Rover so I took one last look around and went down to her. Her hair was damp and her cheeks glowed pink as she scrubbed her face with a towel. I waited until she emerged, then said, ‘You’re in this as much as I am now, so you’ve got a vote. What do you think I should do?’
She lowered the towel and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I should do exactly what you are doing. You’ve made the plan. Meet this man at Geysir and give him that … that whatever-it-is.’
I nodded. ‘And what if someone should try to stop us?’
She hesitated. ‘If it is Slade, then give him the gadget. If it is Kennikin … ’ She stopped and shook her head slowly.
I saw her reasoning. I might be able to hand over to Slade and get away unscathed; but Kennikin would not be satisfied with that – he’d want my blood. I said, ‘Supposing it is Kennikin – what would you expect me to do?’
She drooped. ‘I think you would want to fight him – to use that rifle. You would want to kill him.’ Her voice was desolate.
I took her by the arm. ‘Elin, I don’t kill people indiscriminately. I’m not a psychopath. I promise there will be no killing unless it is in self defence; unless my life is in danger – or yours.’
