DESMOND BAGLEY

Running Blind
AND
The Freedom Trap

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk

Running Blind first published in Great Britain by Collins 1970 The Freedom Trap first published in Great Britain by Collins 1971 A Matter of Months first published in Winter’s Crimes 8, edited by Hilary Watson, by Macmillan 1976

Copyright © Brockhurst Publications 1970, 1971, 1976

Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007304745

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007347681

Version: 2018-10-12

PRAISE

‘Sizzling adventure.’

Evening Standard

‘Bagley has become a master of the genre – a thriller writer of intelligence and originality.’

Sunday Times

‘Compulsively readable.’

Guardian

‘From word one, you’re off. Bagley’s one of the best.’

The Times

‘The best adventure stories I have read for years.’

Daily Mirror

‘Bagley has no equal at this sort of thing.’

Sunday Mirror

‘Tense, heroic, chastening … a thumping good story.’

Sunday Express

‘The detail is immaculately researched – the action has the skill to grab your heart or your bowels.’

Daily Mirror

‘Bagley in top form.’

Evening Standard

‘Bagley is a master story-teller.’

Daily Mirror

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Running Blind

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

The Freedom Trap

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

RUNNING BLIND

DEDICATION

To: Torfi, Gudjon, Helga, Gisli, HerdisValtýr, Gudmundur, Teitur, Siggi, and allthe other Icelanders.

Thanks for lending me your country.

ONE

To be encumbered with a corpse is to be in a difficult position, especially when the corpse is without benefit of death certificate. True, any doctor, even one just hatched from medical school, would have been able to diagnose the cause of death. The man had died of heart failure or what the medical boys pompously call cardiac arrest.

The proximate cause of his pumper having stopped pumping was that someone had slid a sharp sliver of steel between his ribs just far enough to penetrate the great muscle of the heart and to cause a serious and irreversible leakage of blood so that it stopped beating. Cardiac arrest, as I said.

I wasn’t too anxious to find a doctor because the knife was mine and the hilt had been in my hand when the point pricked out his life. I stood on the open road with the body at my feet and I was scared, so scared that my bowels loosened and the nausea rose in my throat to choke me. I don’t know which is the worse – to kill someone you know or to kill a stranger. This particular body had been a stranger – in fact, he still was – I had never seen him before in my life.

And this was the way it happened.

Less than two hours previously the airliner had slid beneath the clouds and I saw the familiar, grim landscape of Southern Iceland. The aircraft lost height over the Reykjanes Peninsula and landed dead on time at Keflavik International Airport, where it was raining, a thin drizzle weeping from an iron grey sky.

I was unarmed, if you except the sgian dubh. Customs officers don’t like guns so I didn’t carry a pistol, and Slade said it wasn’t necessary. The sgian dubh – the black knife of the Highlander – is a much underrated weapon if, these days, it is ever regarded as a weapon at all. One sees it in the stocking tops of sober Scotsmen when they are in the glory of national dress and it is just another piece of masculine costume jewellery.

Mine was more functional. It had been given to me by my grandfather who had it off his grandfather, so that made it at least a hundred and fifty years old. Like any good piece of killing equipment it had no unnecessary trimmings – even the apparent decorations had a function. The ebony haft was ribbed on one side in the classic Celtic basket-weave pattern to give a good grip when drawing, but smooth on the other side so it would draw clear without catching; the blade was less than four inches long, but long enough to reach a vital organ; even the gaudy cairngorm stone set in the pommel had its use – it balanced the knife so that it made a superlative throwing weapon.

It lived in a flat sheath in my left stocking top. Where else would you expect to keep a sgian dubh? The obvious way is often the best because most people don’t see the obvious. The Customs officer didn’t even look, not into my luggage and certainly not into the more intimate realms of my person. I had been in and out of the country so often that I am tolerably well known, and the fact I speak the language was a help – there are only 20,000 people who speak Icelandic and the Icelanders have a comical air of pleased surprise when they encounter a foreigner who has taken the trouble to learn it.

‘Will you be fishing again, Mr Stewart?’ asked the Customs officer.

I nodded. ‘Yes, I hope to kill a few of your salmon. I’ve had my gear sterilized – here’s the certificate.’ The Icelanders are trying to keep out the salmon disease which has attacked the fish in British rivers.

He took the certificate and waved me through the barrier. ‘The best of luck,’ he said.

I smiled at him and passed through into the concourse and went into the coffee shop in accordance with the instructions Slade had given me. I ordered coffee and presently someone sat next to me and laid down a copy of the New York Times. ‘Gee!’ he said. ‘It’s colder here than in the States.’

‘It’s even colder in Birmingham,’ I said solemnly, and then, the silly business of the passwords over, we got down to business.

‘It’s wrapped in the newspaper,’ he said.

He was a short, balding man with the worried look of the ulcered executive. I tapped the newspaper. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. You know where to take it?’

‘Akureyri,’ I said. ‘But why me? Why can’t you take it?’

‘Not me,’ he said definitely. ‘I take the next flight out to the States.’ He seemed relieved at that simple fact.

‘Let’s be normal,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you a coffee.’ I caught the eye of a waitress.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and laid down a key-ring. ‘There’s a car in the parking lot outside – the registration number is written alongside the masthead of The Times there.’

‘Most obliging of you,’ I said. ‘I was going to take a taxi.’

‘I don’t do things to be obliging,’ he said shortly. ‘I do things because I’m told to do them, just like you – and right now I’m doing the telling and you’re doing the doing. You don’t drive along the main road to Reykjavik; you go by way of Krysuvik and Kleifavatn.’

I was sipping coffee when he said that and I spluttered. When I came to the surface and got my breath back I said, ‘Why the hell should I do that? It’s double the distance and along lousy roads.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m just the guy who passes the word. But it was a last-minute instruction so maybe someone’s got wind that maybe someone else is laying for you somewhere on the main road. I wouldn’t know.’

‘You don’t know much, do you?’ I said acidly, and tapped the newspaper. ‘You don’t know what’s in here; you don’t know why I should waste the afternoon in driving around the Reykjanes Peninsula. If I asked you the time of day I doubt if you’d tell me.’

He gave me a sly, sideways grin. ‘I bet one thing,’ he said. ‘I bet I know more than you do.’

‘That wouldn’t be too difficult,’ I said grumpily. It was all of a piece with everything Slade did; he worked on the ‘need to know’ principle and what you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

He finished his coffee. ‘That’s it, buster – except for one thing. When you get to Reykjavik leave the car parked outside the Hotel Saga and just walk away from it. It’ll be taken care of.’

He got up without another word and walked away, seemingly in a hurry to get away from me. All during our brief conversation he had seemed jittery, which worried me because it didn’t square with Slade’s description of the job. ‘It’ll be simple,’ Slade had said. ‘You’re just a messenger boy.’ The twist of his lips had added the implied sneer that it was all I was good for.

I stood and jammed the newspaper under my arm. The concealed package was moderately heavy but not obtrusive. I picked up my gear and went outside to look for the car; it proved to be a Ford Cortina, and minutes later I was on my way out of Keflavik and going south – away from Reykjavik. I wished I knew the idiot who said, ‘The longest way round is the shortest way there.’

When I found a quiet piece of road I pulled on to the shoulder and picked up the newspaper from the seat where I had tossed it. The package was as Slade had described it – small and heavier than one would have expected. It was covered in brown hessian, neatly stitched up, and looked completely anonymous. Careful tapping seemed to indicate that under the hessian was a metal box, and there were no rattles when it was shaken.

I regarded it thoughtfully but that didn’t give me any clue, so I wrapped it in the newspaper again, dropped it on the back seat, and drove on. It had stopped raining and driving conditions weren’t too bad – for Iceland. The average Icelandic road makes an English farm track look like a super-highway. Where there are roads, that is. In the interior, which Icelanders know as the Óbyggdir, there are no roads and in winter the Óbyggdir is pretty near as inaccessible as the moon unless you’re the hearty explorer type. It looks very much like the moon, too; Neil Armstrong practised his moon-walk there.

I drove on and, at Krysuvik, I turned inland, past the distant vapour-covered slopes where super-heated steam boils from the guts of the earth. Not far short of the lake of Kleifavatn I saw a car ahead, pulled off the road, and a man waving the universally recognized distress signal of the stranded motorist.

We were both damned fools; I because I stopped and he because he was alone. He spoke to me in bad Danish and then in good Swedish, both of which I understand. It turned out, quite naturally, that there was something wrong with his car and he couldn’t get it to move.

I got out of the Cortina. ‘Lindholm,’ he said in the formal Swedish manner, and stuck out his hand which I pumped up and down once in the way which protocol dictates.

‘I’m Stewart,’ I said, and walked over to his Volkswagen and peered at the exposed rear engine.

I don’t think he wanted to kill me at first or he would have used the gun straight away. As it was he took a swipe at me with a very professionally designed lead-loaded cosh. I think it was when he got behind me that I realized I was being a flaming idiot – that’s a result of being out of practice. I turned my head and saw his upraised arm and dodged sideways. If the cosh had connected with my skull it would have jarred my brains loose; instead it hit my shoulder and my whole arm went numb.

I gave him the boot in the shin, raking down from knee to ankle, and he yelped and hopped back, which gave me time to put the car between us, and groped for the sgian dubh as I went. Fortunately it’s a left-handed weapon which was just as well because my right arm wasn’t going to be of use.

He came for me again but when he saw the knife he hesitated, his lips curling away from his teeth. He dropped the cosh and dipped his hand beneath his jacket and it was my turn to hesitate. But his cosh was too well designed; it had a leather wrist loop and the dangling weapon impeded his draw and I jumped him just as the pistol came out.

I didn’t stab him. He swung around and ran straight into the blade. There was a gush of blood over my hand and he sagged against me with a ludicrous look of surprise on his face. Then he went down at my feet and the knife came free and blood pulsed from his chest into the lava dust.

So there I was on a lonely road in Southern Iceland with a newly created corpse at my feet and a bloody knife in my hand, the taste of raw bile in my throat and a frozen brain. From the time I had got out of the Cortina to the moment of death had been less than two minutes.

I don’t think I consciously thought of what I did next; I think that rigorous training took over. I jumped for the Cortina and ran it forward a little so that it covered the body. Lonely though the road might be that didn’t mean a car couldn’t pass at any time and a body in plain sight would take a hell of a lot of explaining away.

Then I took the New York Times which, its other virtues apart, contains more newsprint than practically any other newspaper in the world, and used it to line the boot of the car. That done, I reversed again, picked up the body and dumped it into the boot and slammed the lid down quickly. Lindholm – if that was his name – was now out of sight if not out of mind.

He had bled like a cow in a Moslem slaughter-house and there was a great pool of blood by the side of the road. My jacket and trousers were also liberally bedaubed. I couldn’t do much about my clothing right then but I covered the blood pool with handfuls of lava dust. I closed the engine compartment of the Volkswagen, got behind the wheel and switched on. Lindholm had not only been an attempted murderer – he had also been a liar because the engine caught immediately. I reversed the car over the bloody bit of ground and left it there. It was too much to hope that the blood wouldn’t be noticed when the car was taken away but I had to do what I could.

I got back into the Cortina after one last look at the scene of the crime and drove away, and it was then I began to think consciously. First I thought of Slade and damned his soul to hell and then I moved into more practicable channels of thought such as how to get rid of Lindholm. You’d think that in a country four-fifths the size of England with a population less than half of, say Plymouth, there’d be wide open spaces with enough nooks and crannies to hide an inconvenient body. True enough, but this particular bit of Iceland – the south-west – was also the most heavily populated and it wasn’t going to be particularly easy.

Still, I knew the country and, after a little while, I began to get ideas. I checked the petrol gauge and settled down for a long drive, hoping that the car was in good trim. To stop and be found with a blood-smeared jacket would cause the asking of pointed questions. I had another outfit in my suitcase but all at once there were too many cars about and I preferred to change discreetly.

Most of Iceland is volcanic and the south-west is particularly so with bleak vistas of lava fields, ash cones and shield volcanoes, some of them extinct, some not. In my travels I had once come across a gas vent which now seemed an ideal place for the last repose of Lindholm, and it was there I was heading.

It was a two-hour drive and, towards the end, I had to leave the road and take to the open country, bouncing across a waste of volcanic ash and scoria which did the Cortina no good. The last time I had been that way I had driven my Land-Rover which is made for that sort of country.

The place was exactly as I remembered it. There was an extinct crater with a riven side so that one could drive right into the caldera and in the middle was a rocky pustule with a hole in it through which the hot volcanic gases had driven in some long-gone eruption. The only sign that any other human being had been there since the creation of the world was the mark of tyre tracks driving up towards the lip of the crater. The Icelanders have their own peculiar form of motor sport; they drive into a crater and try to get out the hard way. I’ve never known anyone break his neck at this hazardous game but it’s not for want of trying.

I drove the car as near to the gas vent as I could and then went forward on foot until I could look into the impenetrable darkness of the hole. I dropped a stone into it and there was a receding clatter which went on for a long time. Verne’s hero who went to the centre of the earth might have had an easier time if he had picked this hole instead of Snaefellsjökull.

Before I popped Lindholm into his final resting-place I searched him. It was a messy business because the blood was still sticky and it was lucky I had not yet changed my suit. He had a Swedish passport made out in the name of Axel Lindholm, but that didn’t mean a thing – passports are easy to come by. There were a few more bits and pieces but nothing of importance, and all I retained were the cosh and the pistol, a Smith & Wesson .38.

Then I carried him up to the vent and dropped him into it. There were a few soggy thumps and then silence – a silence I hoped would be eternal. I went back to the car and changed into a clean suit and pulled the stained clothing inside out so that the blood would not touch the inside of my suitcase. The cosh, the pistol and Slade’s damned package I also tossed into the suitcase before I closed it, and then I set off on the wearisome way to Reykjavik.

I was very tired.

II

It was late evening when I pulled up in front of the Hotel Saga, although it was still light with the brightness of the northern summer. My eyes were sore because I had been driving right into the western sun and I stayed in the car for a moment to rest them. If I had stayed in the car two minutes more the next fateful thing would not have happened, but I didn’t; I got out and was just extracting the suitcase when a tall man came out of the hotel, paused, and hailed me. ‘Alan Stewart!’

I looked up and cursed under my breath because the man in the uniform of an Icelandair pilot was the last man I wanted to see – Bjarni Ragnarsson. ‘Hello, Bjarni,’ I said.

We shook hands. ‘Elin didn’t tell me you were coming.’

‘She didn’t know,’ I said. ‘It was a last-minute decision; I didn’t even have time to telephone.’

He looked at my suitcase resting on the pavement. ‘You’re not staying at the Saga!’ he said in surprise.

It was a snap judgment and I had to make it fast. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll be going to the apartment.’ I didn’t want to bring Elin into this but now her brother knew I was in Reykjavik he would be sure to tell her and I didn’t want her to be hurt in that way. Elin was very special.

I saw Bjarni looking at the car. ‘I’ll leave it here,’ I said lightly. ‘It’s just a delivery job for a friend. I’ll take a taxi to the apartment.’

He accepted that, and said, ‘Staying long?’

‘For the rest of the summer, as usual,’ I said easily.

‘We must go fishing,’ he said.

I agreed. ‘Have you become a father yet?’

‘Another month,’ he said glumly. ‘I’m dreading it.’

I laughed. ‘I should think that’s Kristin’s worry; you aren’t even in the country half the time. No nappy-changing for you.’

We spent another few minutes in the usual idle-small-talk of old friends just met and then he glanced at his watch. ‘I have a flight to Greenland,’ he said. ‘I must go. I’ll ring you in a couple of days.’

‘Do that.’ I watched him go and then captured a taxi which had just dropped a fare at the hotel and told the driver where to go. Outside the building I paid him off and then stood uncertainly on the pavement wondering whether I was doing the right thing.

Elin Ragnarsdottir was someone very special.

She was a schoolteacher but, like many other Icelanders of her type, she held down two jobs. There are certain factors about Iceland – the smallness of population, the size of the country and its situation in high northern latitudes – which result in a social system which outsiders are apt to find weird. But since the system is designed to suit Icelanders they don’t give a damn what outsiders think, which is just as it should be.

One result of this social system is that all the schools close down for four months in the summer and a lot of them are used as hotels. The teachers thus have a lot of spare time and many of them have quite a different summer occupation. When I first met her three years earlier, Elin had been a courier for Ferdaskrifstofaa Nordri, a travel agency in Reykjavik, and had shown visitors around the country.

A couple of seasons before, I had persuaded her to become my personal courier on a full-time summer basis. I had been afraid that her brother, Bjarni, might have thought that a touch irregular and put in an objection, but he didn’t – presumably he thought his sister to be grown-up enough to handle her own affairs. She was an undemanding person and it was an easy relationship, but obviously it couldn’t go on like that for ever and I intended to do something about it, but I doubted if this was the appropriate time – it takes someone with a stronger stomach than mine to propose marriage on the same day one has dropped a body down a hole.

I went up to the apartment and, although I had a key, I didn’t use it; instead I knocked on the door. Elin opened it and looked at me with an expression of surprise changing to delight, and something in me jumped at the sight of her trim figure and corn-coloured hair. ‘Alan!’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

‘A quick decision,’ I said, and held up the cased fishing-rod. ‘I’ve got a new one.’

Her lips curved down in mock glumness. ‘That makes six,’ she said severely, and held the door wide. ‘Oh, come in, darling!’

I went in, dropped the suitcase and the rod, and took her in my arms. She held me closely and said, with her head against my chest, ‘You didn’t write, and I thought …’

‘You thought I wasn’t coming.’ The reason I hadn’t written was because of something Slade had said, but I couldn’t tell her that. I said, ‘I’ve been very busy, Elin.’

She drew back her head and looked at me intently. ‘Yes, your face is drawn; you look tired.’

I smiled. ‘But I feel hungry.’

She kissed me. ‘I’ll prepare something.’ She broke away. ‘Don’t worry about unpacking your bag; I’ll do it after supper.’

I thought of the bloody suit. ‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘I can do it.’ I picked up the suitcase and the rod and took them into my room. I call it my room because it was the place where my gear was stored. Actually, the whole apartment was mine because, although it was in Elin’s name, I paid the rent. Spending one-third of every year in Iceland, it was convenient to have a pied-à-terre.

I put the rod with the others and laid down the suitcase, wondering what to do with the suit. Until that moment I had never had any secrets I wanted to keep from Elin – with the one important exception – and there wasn’t a lockable cupboard or drawer in the place. I opened the wardrobe and surveyed the line of suits and jackets, each on its hanger and neatly encased in its zippered plastic bag. It would be very risky to let the suit take its place in that line; Elin was meticulous in the care of my clothes and would be certain to find it.

In the end I emptied the suitcase of everything but the suit and the weapons, locked it, and heaved it on top of the wardrobe where it usually lived when not in use. It was unlikely that Elin would pull it down and even then it was locked, although that was not usual.

I took off my shirt and examined it closely and discovered a spot of blood on the front so I took it into the bathroom and cleaned it under the cold tap. Then I scrubbed my face in cold water and felt better for it. By the time Elin called that supper was ready I was cleaned up and already in the living-room looking through the window.

I was about to turn away when my attention was caught by a flicker of movement. On the other side of the street there was an alley between two buildings and it had seemed that someone had moved quickly out of sight when I twitched the curtains. I stared across the street but saw nothing more, but when Elin called again I was thoughtful as I turned to her.

Over supper I said, ‘How’s the Land-Rover?’

‘I didn’t know when you were coming but I had a complete overhaul done last week. It’s ready for anything.’

Icelandic roads being what they are, Land-Rovers are as thick as fleas on a dog. The Icelanders prefer the short wheelbase Land-Rover, but ours was the long wheelbase job, fitted out as a camping van. When we travelled we were self-contained and could, and did, spend many weeks away from civilization, only being driven into a town by running out of food. There were worse ways of spending a summer than to be alone for weeks on end with Elin Ragnarsdottir.

In other summers we had left as soon as I arrived in Reykjavik, but this time it had to be different because of Slade’s package, and I wondered how I was to get to Akureyri alone without arousing her suspicions. Slade had said the job was going to be easy but the late Mr Lindholm made all the difference and I didn’t want Elin involved in any part of it. Still, all I had to do was to deliver the package and the job would be over and the summer would be like all the other summers. It didn’t seem too difficult.

I was mulling this over when Elin said, ‘You really do look tired. You must have been overworking.’

I managed a smile. ‘An exhausting winter. There was too much snow on the hills – I lost a lot of stock.’ Suddenly I remembered. ‘You wanted to see what the glen was like; I brought you some photographs.’

I went and got the photographs and we pored over them. I pointed out Bheinn Fhada and Sgurr Dearg, but Elin was more interested in the river and the trees. ‘All those trees,’ she said luxuriously. ‘Scotland must be beautiful.’ That was an expected reaction from an Icelander; the island is virtually treeless. ‘Are there salmon in your river?’

‘Just trout,’ I said. ‘I come to Iceland for salmon.’

She picked up another photograph – a wide landscape. ‘What on here is yours?’

I looked at it and grinned. ‘All you can see.’

‘Oh!’ She was silent for a while, then said a little shyly, ‘I’ve never really thought about it, Alan; but you must be rich.’

‘I’m no Croesus,’ I said. ‘But I get by. Three thousand acres of heather isn’t very productive, but sheep on the hills and forestry in the glen bring in the bread, and Americans who come to shoot the deer put butter on the bread.’ I stroked her arm. ‘You’ll have to come to Scotland.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said simply.

I put it to her fast. ‘I have to see a man in Akureyri tomorrow – it’s a favour I’m doing for a friend. That means I’ll have to fly. Why don’t you take up the Land-Rover and meet me there? Or would it be too much for you to drive all that way?’

She laughed at me. ‘I can drive the Land-Rover better than you.’ She began to calculate. ‘It’s 450 kilometres; I wouldn’t want to do that in one day so I’d stop somewhere near Hvammstangi. I could be in Akureyri at mid-morning the next day.’

‘No need to break your neck,’ I said casually. I was relieved; I could fly to Akureyri, get rid of the package before Elin got there and all would be well. There was no need to involve her at all. I said, ‘I’ll probably stay at the Hotel Vardborg. You can telephone me there.’

But when we went to bed I found I was strung up with unrelieved tensions and I could do nothing for her. While holding Elin in the darkness, Lindholm’s face hovered ghost-like in my inner vision and again I tasted the nausea in my throat. I choked a little, and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter, darling,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re tired. Just go to sleep.’

But I couldn’t. I lay on my back and reviewed the whole of an unpleasant day. I went over every word that had been said by my uncommunicative contact at Keflavik airport, the man whom Slade had said would pass me the package. ‘Don’t take the main road to Reykjavik,’ he had said. ‘Go by Krysuvik.’

So I had gone by Krysuvik and come within an ace of being killed. Chance or design? Would the same thing have happened had I gone by the main road? Had I been set up as a patsy deliberately?

The man at the airport had been Slade’s man, or at least he had the password that Slade had arranged. But supposing he wasn’t Slade’s man and still had the password – it wasn’t too hard to think up ways and means of that coming about. Then why had he set me up for Lindholm? Certainly not for the package – he already had the package! Scratch that one and start again.

Supposing he had been Slade’s man and had still set me up for Lindholm – that made less sense. And, again, it couldn’t have been for the package; he needn’t have given it to me in the first place. It all boiled down to the fact that the man at the airport and Lindholm had nothing to do with each other.

But Lindholm had definitely been waiting for me. He had even made sure of my name before attacking. So how in hell did he know I’d be on the Krysuvik road? That was one I couldn’t answer.

Presently, when I was sure Elin was sound asleep, I got out of bed quietly and went into the kitchen, not bothering to turn on a light. I opened the refrigerator and poured myself a glass of milk, then wandered into the living-room and sat by the window. The short northern night was almost over but it was still dark enough to see the sudden glow from the alley across the street as the watching man drew on a cigarette.

He worried me because I was no longer certain Elin was safe.

III

We were both up early, Elin because she wanted to make a quick start for Akureyri, and I because I wanted to get at the Land-Rover before Elin did. I had some things to stow in the Land-Rover that I didn’t want Elin to know about; Lindholm’s gun, for instance. I taped it securely to one of the main chassis girders and well out of sight. His cosh I put in my pocket. It had occurred to me that if things did not go well I might be in need of weaponry in Akureyri.

I didn’t have to go out of the front door to get at the Land-Rover because the garage was at the back, and so the watcher in the alley got no sight of me. But I saw him because the next thing I did was to take a pair of field glasses one flight up to a landing where there was a window overlooking the street.

He was a tall, lean man with a neat moustache and he looked cold. If he had been there all night without a break he would be not only frozen to the marrow but starving. I made sure I would know him again if I saw him and lowered the glasses just as someone came downstairs from an upstairs flat. It was a middle-aged grey-haired woman who looked at me and then at the glasses and gave a meaningful sniff.

I grinned. It was the first time I had been suspected of voyeurism.

I enjoyed breakfast all the more because of my hungry friend across the street. ‘You’re looking more cheerful,’ said Elin.

‘It’s your cooking,’ I said.

She looked at the herring, the cheese, the bread and the eggs. ‘What cooking? Anyone can boil an egg.’

‘Not like you,’ I assured her.

But I was more cheerful. The dark thoughts of the night had gone and in spite of all the unanswered questions the death of Lindholm no longer oppressed me. He had tried to kill me and failed, and had suffered the penalty for failure. The fact that I had killed him didn’t weigh too heavily upon my conscience. My only lingering worry was for Elin.

I said, ‘There’s a flight for Akureyri from Reykjavik City Airport at eleven.’

‘You’ll have lunch there,’ said Elin. ‘Spare a thought for me bouncing about down in Kaldidalur.’ She swallowed hot coffee hastily. ‘I’d like to leave as soon as possible.’

I waved at the laden table. ‘I’ll clean up here.’

She got ready to leave, then picked up the binoculars. ‘I thought these were in the Land-Rover.’

‘I was just checking them,’ I said. ‘They seemed a bit out of focus last time I used them. They’re all right, though.’

‘Then I’ll take them,’ she said.

I went with her down to the garage and kissed her goodbye. She looked at me closely, and said, ‘Everything is all right, isn’t it, Alan?’

‘Of course; why do you ask?’

‘I don’t really know. I’m just being feminine, I suppose. See you in Akureyri.’

I waved her off and watched as she drove away. Nobody seemed to bother; no heads popped around corners and no one followed in hot pursuit. I went back into the flat and checked on the watcher in the alley. He wasn’t to be seen, so I made a mad dash for the upstairs landing from where I could get a better view and I breathed easier when I saw him leaning against the wall, beating his hands against his arms.

It would seem that he was not aware that Elin had left or, if he was, he didn’t care. It lifted a considerable load off my mind.

I washed the breakfast crockery and then went to my room where I took a camera bag and emptied it of its contents. Then I took the hessian-covered steel box and found that it fitted neatly into the leather bag. From now on it was not going to leave my person until I handed it over in Akureyri.

At ten o’clock I rang for a taxi and left for the airport, a move which resulted in some action. I looked back along the street and saw a car draw up near the alley into which my watcher jumped. The car followed the taxi all the way to the airport, keeping a discreet distance.

On arrival I went to the reservation counter. ‘I have a reservation on the flight to Akureyri. My name is Stewart.’

The receptionist checked a list. ‘Oh, yes; Mr Stewart.’ She looked at the clock. ‘But you’re early.’

‘I’ll have a coffee,’ I said. ‘It passes the time.’

She gave me the ticket and I paid for it, then she said, ‘Your luggage is weighed over there.’

I touched the camera case. ‘This is all I have. I travel light.’

She laughed. ‘So I see, Mr Stewart. And may I compliment you on how you speak our language.’

‘Thank you.’ I turned and saw a recognized face lurking close by – my watcher was still watching. I ignored him and headed for the coffee-counter where I bought a newspaper and settled down to wait.

My man had a hurried conversation at the reservation counter, bought a ticket, and then came my way and both of us ignored each other completely. He ordered a late breakfast and ate ravenously, his eyes flicking in my direction infrequently. Presently I had a stroke of luck; the announcement loudspeaker cleared its throat and said in Icelandic, ‘Mr Buchner is wanted on the telephone.’ When it repeated this in fluent German my man looked up, got to his feet, and went to answer the call.

At least I could now put a name to him, and whether the name was accurate or not was really immaterial.

He could see me from the telephone-box and spoke facing outwards as though he expected me to make a break for it. I disappointed him by languidly ordering another coffee and becoming immersed in a newspaper account of how many salmon Bing Crosby had caught on his latest visit to Iceland.

In airport waiting lounges time seems to stretch interminably and it was a couple of eons before the flight to Akureyri was announced. Herr Buchner was close behind me in the queue and in the stroll across the apron towards the aircraft, and he chose a seat on the aisle just behind me.

We took off and flew across Iceland, over the cold glaciers of Langjökull and Hofsjökull, and soon enough we were circling over Eyjafjördur preparatory to landing at Akureyri, a city of fully ten thousand souls, the metropolis of Northern Iceland. The aircraft lurched to a halt and I undid my seat-belt, hearing the answering click as Buchner, behind me, did the same.

The attack, when it came, was made with smoothness and efficiency. I left the airport building and was walking towards the taxi rank when suddenly they were all about me – four of them. One stood in front of me and grabbed my right hand, pumping it up and down while babbling in a loud voice about how good it was to see me again and the enormous pleasure it would give him to show me the marvels of Akureyri.

The man on my left crowded hard and pinned my left arm. He put his mouth close to my ear, and said in Swedish, ‘Don’t make trouble, Herr Stewartsen; or you will be dead.’ I could believe him because the man behind me had a gun in my back.

I heard a snip and turned my head just as the man on my right cut through the shoulder-strap of the camera case with a small pair of shears. I felt the strap snake loose and then he was gone and the camera case with him, while the man behind me took his place with one arm thrown carelessly over my shoulder and the other digging the gun into my ribs.

I could see Buchner standing by a taxi about ten yards away. He looked at me with a blank face and then turned and bent to get into the car. It drove away and I saw the white smudge of his face as he looked through the back window.

They kept up the act for two minutes more to give the man with the camera case time to get clear, and the man on my left said, again in Swedish, ‘Herr Stewartsen: we’re going to let you go now, but I wouldn’t do anything foolish if I were you.’

They released me and each took a step away, their faces hard and their eyes watchful. There were no guns in sight but that didn’t mean a damn thing. Not that I intended to start anything; the camera case was gone and the odds were too great anyway. As though someone had given a signal they all turned and walked away, each in a different direction, and left me standing there. There was quite a few people around but not one of the good people of Akureyri had any idea that anything untoward had just happened in their line of sight.

I felt ruffled so I straightened my jacket and then took a taxi to the Hotel Vardborg. There wasn’t anything else to do.

IV

Elin had been right; I was in time to lunch at the Vardborg. I had just stuck my fork into the mutton when Herr Buchner walked in, looked around and spotted me, and headed in my direction. He stood on the other side of the table, twitched his moustache, and said, ‘Mr Stewart?’

I leaned back. ‘Well, if it isn’t Herr Buchner! What can I do for you?’

‘My name is Graham,’ he said coldly. ‘And I’d like to talk to you.’

‘You were Buchner this morning,’ I said. ‘But if I had a name like that I’d want to change it, too.’ I waved him towards a chair. ‘Be my guest – I can recommend the soup.’

He sat down stiffly. ‘I’m not in the mood for acting straight man to your comedian,’ he said, extracting his wallet from his pocket. ‘My credentials.’ He pushed a scrap of paper across the table.

I unfolded it to find the left half of a 100-kronur banknote. When I matched it against the other half from my own wallet the two halves fitted perfectly. I looked up at him. ‘Well, Mr Graham; that seems to be in order. What can I do for you?’

‘You can give me the package,’ he said. ‘That’s all I want.’

I shook my head regretfully. ‘You know better than that.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that I can’t give you the package because I haven’t got it.’

His moustache twitched again and his eyes turned cold. ‘Let’s have no games, Stewart. The package.’ He held out his hand.

‘Damn it!’ I said. ‘You were there – you know what happened.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was where?’

‘Outside Akureyri Airport. You were taking a taxi.’

His eyes flickered. ‘Was I?’ he said colourlessly. ‘Go on!’

‘They grabbed me before I knew what was happening, and they got clean away with the package. It was in my camera case.’

His voice cracked. ‘You mean you haven’t got it!’

I said sardonically, ‘If you were supposed to be my bodyguard you did a bloody awful job. Slade isn’t going to like it.’

‘By God, he’s not!’ said Graham with feeling. A tic pulsed under his right eye. ‘So it was in the camera case.’

‘Where else would it be? It was the only luggage I carried. You ought to know that – you were standing right behind me with your big ears flapping when I checked in at Reykjavik airport.’

He gave me a look of dislike. ‘You think you’re clever, don’t you?’ He leaned forward. ‘There’s going to be a Godawful row about this. You’d better stay available, Stewart; you’d better be easy to find when I come back.’

I shrugged. ‘Where would I go? Besides, I have the Scottish sense of thrift, and my room here is paid for.’

‘You take this damned coolly.’

‘What do you expect me to do? Burst into tears?’ I laughed in his face. ‘Grow up, Graham.’

His face tightened but he said nothing; instead he stood up and walked away. I put in fifteen minutes of deep thought while polishing off the mutton and at the end of that time I came to a decision, and the decision was that I could do with a drink, so I went to find one.

As I walked through the hotel foyer I saw Buchner-Graham hard at work in a telephone-box. Although it wasn’t particularly warm he was sweating.

V

I came out of a dreamless sleep because someone was shaking me and hissing, ‘Stewart, wake up!’ I Opened my eyes and found Graham leaning over me.

I blinked at him. ‘Funny! I was under the impression I locked my door.’

He grinned humourlessly. ‘You did. Wake up – you’re going to be interviewed. You’d better have your wits sharpened.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Five a.m.’

I smiled. ‘Gestapo technique, eh! Oh, well: I suppose I’ll feel better when I’ve shaved.’

Graham seemed nervous. ‘You’d better hurry. He’ll be here in five minutes.’

‘Who will?’

‘You’ll see.’

I ran hot water into the basin and began to lather my face. ‘What was your function on this particular exercise, Graham? As a bodyguard you’re a dead loss, so it can’t have been that.’

‘You’d better stop thinking about me and start to think about yourself,’ he said. ‘You have a lot of explaining to do.’

‘True,’ I said, and put down the brush and picked up the razor. The act of scraping one’s face with a sliver of sharp metal always seems futile and a little depressing; I would have been happier in one of the hairier ages – counterespionage agent by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria would have been the ideal ticket.

I must have been more nervous than I thought because I shaved myself down to the blood on the first pass. Then someone knocked perfunctorily on the door and Slade came into the room. He kicked the door shut with his foot and glowered at me with a scowl on his jowly face, his hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets. Without an overture he said briefly, ‘What’s the story, Stewart?’

There’s nothing more calculated to put a man off his stroke than having to embark on complicated explanations with a face full of drying lather. I turned back to the mirror and continued to shave – in silence.

Slade made one of those unspellable noises – an explosive outrush of air expelled through mouth and nose. He sat on the bed and the springs creaked in protest at the excessive weight. ‘It had better be good,’ he said. ‘I dislike being hauled out of bed and flown to the frozen north.’

I continued to shave, thinking that whatever could bring Slade from London to Akureyri must be important. After the last tricky bit around the Adam’s apple, I said, ‘The package must have been more important than you told me.’ I turned on the cold tap and rinsed the soap from my face.

‘… that bloody package,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ I apologized. ‘I didn’t hear that. I had water in my ears.’

He contained himself with difficulty. ‘Where’s the package?’ he asked with synthetic patience.

‘As of this moment I couldn’t tell you.’ I dried my face vigorously. ‘It was taken from me at midday yesterday by four unknown males – but you know that already from Graham.’

His voice rose. ‘And you let them take it – just like that!’

‘There wasn’t much I could do about it at the time,’ I said equably. ‘I had a gun in my kidneys.’ I nodded towards Graham. ‘What was he supposed to be doing about it – if it isn’t a rude answer?’

Slade folded his hands together across his stomach. ‘We thought they’d tagged Graham – that’s why we brought you in. We thought they’d tackle Graham and give you a free run to the goal line.’

I didn’t think much of that one. If they – whoever they were – had tagged Graham, then it wasn’t at all standard procedure for him to draw attention to me by lurking outside my flat. But I let it go because Slade always had been a slippery customer and I wanted to keep something in reserve.

Instead, I said, ‘They didn’t tackle Graham – they tackled me. But perhaps they don’t know the rules of rugby football; it’s not a game they go for in Sweden.’ I gave myself a last dab behind the ears and dropped the towel. ‘Or in Russia,’ I added as an afterthought.

Slade looked up. ‘And what makes you think of Russians?’

I grinned at him. ‘I always think of Russians,’ I said drily. ‘Like the Frenchman who always thought of sex.’ I leaned over him and picked up my cigarettes. ‘Besides, they called me Stewartsen.’

‘So?’

‘So they knew who I was – not who I am now, but what I was once. There’s a distinction.’

Slade shifted his eyes to Graham and said curtly, ‘Wait outside.’

Graham looked hurt but obediently went to the door. When he’d closed it I said, ‘Oh, goody; now the children are out of the room we can have a grown-up conversation. And where, for Christ’s sake, did you get that one? I told you I wouldn’t stand for trainees on the operation.’

‘What makes you think he’s a trainee?’

‘Come, now; he’s still wet behind the ears.’

‘He’s a good man,’ said Slade, and shifted restlessly on the bed. He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘Well, you’ve really cocked this one up, haven’t you? Just a simple matter of carrying a small parcel from A to B and you fall down on it. I knew you were past it but, by God, I didn’t think you were so bloody decrepit.’ He wagged his finger. ‘And they called you Stewartsen! You know what that means?’

‘Kennikin,’ I said, not relishing the thought. ‘Is he here – in Iceland?’

Slade hunched his shoulders. ‘Not that I know of.’ He looked at me sideways. ‘When you were contacted in Reykjavik what were you told?’

I shrugged. ‘Not much. There was a car provided which I had to drive to Reykjavik by way of Krysuvik and leave parked outside the Saga. I did all that.’

Slade grunted in his throat. ‘Run into any trouble?’

‘Was I supposed to?’ I asked blandly.

He shook his head irritably. ‘We had word that something might happen. It seemed best to re-route you.’ He stood up with a dissatisfied look on his face and went to the door. ‘Graham!’

I said, ‘I’m sorry about all this, Slade; I really am.’

‘Being sorry butters no bloody parsnips. We’ll just have to see what we can salvage from this mess. Hell, I brought you in because the Department is short-handed – and now we have a whole country to seal off because of your stupidity.’ He turned to Graham. ‘Put a call through to the Department in London; I’ll take it downstairs. And talk to Captain Lee at the airport; I want that plane to be ready to take off at five minutes’ notice. We may have to move fast.’

I coughed delicately. ‘Me, too?’

Slade looked at me malevolently. ‘You! You’ve caused enough of a shambles on this operation.’

‘Well, what do I do?’

‘You can go to hell for all I care,’ he said. ‘Go back to Reykjavik and shack up with your girl-friend for the rest of the summer.’ He turned and bumped into Graham. ‘What the hell are you waiting for?’ he snarled, and Graham fled.

Slade paused at the door and said without turning, ‘But you’d better watch out for Kennikin because I’ll not lift a finger to stop him. By God, I hope he does nail you!’

The door slammed and I sat on the bed and brooded. I knew that if ever I met Kennikin again I would be meeting death.

TWO

Elin rang up as I was finishing breakfast. From the static and the slight fading I could tell she was using the radiotelephone in the Land-Rover. Most vehicles travelling long distances in Iceland are fitted with radio-telephones, a safety measure called for by the difficult nature of the terrain. That’s the standard explanation, but not the whole truth. The fact is that Icelanders like telephoning and constitute one of the gabbiest nations on earth, coming just after the United States and Canada in the number of calls per head.

She asked if I had slept well and I assured her I had, then I said, ‘When will you get here?’

‘About eleven-thirty.’

‘I’ll meet you at the camp site,’ I said.

That gave me two hours which I spent in walking around Akureyri like a tourist, ducking in and out of shops, unexpectedly retracing my steps and, in general acting the fool. But when I joined Elin at the camp site I was absolutely sure that I didn’t have a tail. It seemed as though Slade had been telling the truth when he said he had no further use for me.

I opened the door of the Land-Rover, and said, ‘Move over; I’ll drive.’

Elin looked at me in surprise. ‘Aren’t we staying?’

‘We’ll drive a little way out of town and then have lunch. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

I drove along the north road by the coast, moving fast and keeping a close check behind. As it became clear that no one was following I began to relax, although not so much as to take the worry from Elin’s eyes. She could see I was preoccupied and tactfully kept silent, but at last she said, ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’

‘You’re so damn right,’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to discuss.’

Back in Scotland Slade had warned me about involving Elin in the operation; he had also invoked the Official Secrets Act with its penalties for blabbermouths. But if my future life with Elin was going to mean anything at all I had to tell her the truth and to hell with Slade and to hell with the Official Secrets Act.

I slowed down and left the road to bump over turf, and stopped overlooking the sea. The land fell away in a rumble of boulders to the grey water and in the distance the island of Grimsey loomed hazily through the mist. Apart from the scrap of land there wasn’t a damned thing between us and the North Pole. This was the Arctic Ocean.

I said, ‘What do you know about me, Elin?’

‘That’s a strange question. You’re Alan Stewart – whom I like very much.’

‘Is that all?’

She shrugged. ‘What else do I need to know?’

I smiled. ‘No curiosity. Elin?’

‘Oh, I have my curiosity but I keep it under control. If you want me to know anything, you’ll tell me,’ she said tranquilly, then hesitated. ‘I do know one thing about you.’

‘What’s that?’

She turned to face me. ‘I know that you have been hurt, and it happened not long before we met. That is why I keep my questions to myself – I don’t want to bring the hurt back.’

‘You’re very perceptive,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think it showed. Would it surprise you to know I was once a British agent – a spy?’

She regarded me curiously. ‘A spy,’ she said slowly, as though rolling the word about her mouth to taste it. ‘Yes, it surprises me very much. It is not a very honourable occupation – you are not the type.’

‘So someone else told me recently,’ I said sardonically. ‘Nevertheless, it is true.’

She was silent for a while, then she said, ‘You were a spy. Alan, what you were in the past doesn’t matter. I know you as you are now.’

‘Sometimes the past catches up with you,’ I said. ‘It did with me. There’s a man called Slade … ’ I stopped, wondering if I was doing the right thing.

‘Yes?’ she prompted me.

‘He came to see me in Scotland. I’ll tell you about that – about Slade in Scotland.’

II

The shooting was bad that day. Something had disturbed the deer during the night because they had left the valley where my calculations had placed them and had drifted up the steep slopes of Bheinn Fhada. I could see them through the telescopic sight – pale grey-brown shapes grazing among the heather. The way the wind was blowing the only chance I had of getting near them was by sprouting wings and so, since it was the last day of the season, the deer were safe from Stewart for the rest of the summer.

At three in the afternoon I packed up and went home and was scrambling down Sgurr Mor when I saw the car parked outside the cottage and the minuscule figure of a man pacing up and down. The cottage is hard to get to – the rough track from the clachan discourages casual tourists – and so anyone who arrives usually wants to see me very much. The reverse doesn’t always apply; I’m of a retiring nature and I don’t encourage visitors.

So I was very careful as I approached and stopped under cover of the rocks by the burn. I unslung the rifle, checked it again to make sure it was unloaded, and set it to my shoulder. Through the telescopic sight the man sprang plainly to view. He had his back to me but when he turned I saw it was Slade.

I centred the cross-hairs on his large pallid face and gently squeezed the trigger, and the hammer snapped home with a harmless click. I wondered if I would have done the same had there been a bullet up the spout. The world would be a better place without men like Slade. But to load was too deliberate an act, so I put up the gun and walked towards the cottage. I should have loaded the gun.

As I approached he turned and waved. ‘Good afternoon,’ he called, as coolly as though he were a regular and welcome guest.

I stepped up to him. ‘How did you find me?’

He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t too hard. You know my methods.’

I knew them and I didn’t like them. I said, ‘Quit playing Sherlock. What do you want?’

He waved towards the door of the cottage. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me inside?’

‘Knowing you, I’ll bet you’ve searched the place already.’

He held up his hands in mock horror. ‘On my word of honour, I haven’t.’

I nearly laughed in his face because the man had no honour. I turned from him and pushed open the door and he followed me inside, clicking his tongue deprecatingly. ‘Not locked? You’re very trusting.’

‘There’s nothing here worth stealing,’ I said indifferently.

‘Just your life,’ he said, and looked at me sharply.

I let that statement lie and put up the rifle on its rack. Slade looked about him curiously. ‘Primitive – but comfortable,’ he remarked. ‘But I don’t see why you don’t live in the big house.’

‘It happens to be none of your business.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, and sat down. ‘So you hid yourself in Scotland and didn’t expect to be found. Protective coloration, eh? A Stewart hiding among a lot of Stewarts. You’ve caused us some little difficulty.’

‘Who said I was hiding? I am a Scot, you know.’

He smiled fatly. ‘Of a sort. Just by your paternal grandfather. It’s not long since you were a Swede – and before that you were Finnish. You were Stewartsen then, of course.’

‘Have you travelled five hundred miles just to talk of old times?’ I asked tiredly.

‘You’re looking very fit,’ he said.

‘I can’t say the same for you; you’re out of condition and running to fat,’ I said cruelly.

He chuckled. ‘The fleshpots, dear boy; the fleshpots – all those lunches at the expense of Her Majesty’s Government.’ He waved a pudgy hand. ‘But let’s get down to it, Alan.’

‘To you I’m Mr Stewart,’ I said deliberately.

‘Oh, you don’t like me,’ he said in a hurt voice. ‘But no matter – it makes no difference in the end. I … we … want you to do a job for us. Nothing too difficult, you understand.’

‘You must be out of your mind,’ I said.

‘I know how you must feel, but …’

‘You don’t know a damn thing,’ I said sharply. ‘If you expect me to work for you after what happened then you’re crazier than I thought.’

I was wrong, of course; Slade knew perfectly well how I felt – it was his business to know men and to use them like tools. I waited for him to put on the pressure and, sure enough, it came, but in his usual oblique manner.

‘So let’s talk of old times,’ he said. ‘You must remember Kennikin.’

I remembered – I’d have to have total amnesia to forget Kennikin. A vision of his face swam before me as I had last seen him; eyes like grey pebbles set above high Slavic cheekbones, and the scar ran from his right temple to the corner of his mouth standing out lividly against the suddenly pale skin. He had been angry enough to kill me at that moment.

‘What about Kennikin?’ I said slowly.

‘Just that I hear he’s been looking for you, too. You made a fool of him and he didn’t like it. He wants to have you … ’ Slade paused as though groping for a thought. ‘What’s that delicate phrase our American colleagues of the CIA use? Oh, yes – Kennikin wants to have you “terminated with extreme prejudice.” Although I daresay the KGB don’t employ that exact wording.’

A damned nice term for a bullet in the back of the head one dark night. ‘So?’ I said.

‘He’s still looking for you,’ Slade pointed out.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I’m no longer with the Department.’

‘Ah, but Kennikin doesn’t know that.’ Slade examined his fingernails. ‘We’ve kept the information from him – quite successfully, I believe. It seemed useful to do so.’

I saw what was coming but I wanted to make Slade come right out with it, to commit himself in plain language – something he abhorred. ‘But he doesn’t know where I am.’

‘Quite right, dear boy – but what if someone should tell him?’

I leaned forward and looked closely at Slade. ‘And who would tell him?’

‘I would,’ he said blandly. ‘If I thought it necessary. I’d have to do it tactfully and through a third party, of course; but it could be arranged.’

So there it was – the threat of betrayal. Nothing new for Slade; he made a life’s work out of corruption and betrayal. Not that I was one to throw stones; it had been my work too, once. But the difference between us was that Slade liked his work.

I let him waffle on, driving home the point unnecessarily. ‘Kennikin runs a very efficient Mordgruppe, as we know to our cost, don’t we? Several members of the Department have been … er … terminated by Kennikin’s men.’

‘Why don’t you just say murdered?’

He frowned and his piggy eyes sank deeper into the rolls of fat that larded his face. ‘You always were blunt, Stewart; perhaps too blunt for your own good. I haven’t forgotten the time you tried to get me in trouble with Taggart. I remember you mentioned that word then.’

‘I’ll mention it again,’ I said. ‘You murdered Jimmy Birkby.’

‘Did I?’ Slade asked softly. ‘Who put the gelignite in his car? Who carefully connected the wire from the detonator to the ignition system? You did!’ He cut me off with a chopping motion of his hand. ‘And it was only that which got you next to Kennikin, only that induced Kennikin to trust you enough so that we could break him. You did very well, Stewart – all things considered.’

‘Yes, you used me,’ I said.

‘And I’ll use you again,’ he said brutally. ‘Or would you rather be thrown to Kennikin?’ He laughed suddenly. ‘You know, I don’t think Kennikin gives a damn if you’re with the Department or not. He wants you for your own sweet self.’

I stared at him. ‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘Didn’t you know that Kennikin is impotent now?’ Slade said in surprise. ‘I know you intended to kill him with that last shot, but the light was bad and you thought you’d merely wounded him. Indeed you had, but not merely – you castrated the poor man.’ His hands, which were folded across his belly, shook with his sniggers. ‘To put it crudely – or bluntly, if you like, dear boy – you shot his balls off. Can you imagine what he’ll do to you if – and when – he catches up with you?’

I felt cold and there was a yawning emptiness in the pit of my stomach. ‘There’s only one way of opting out of the world and that’s by dying,’ said Slade with phoney philosophy. ‘You tried your way and it doesn’t work.’

He was right; I shouldn’t have expected otherwise. ‘What it comes to is this,’ I said. ‘You want me to do a job. If I don’t do it, you’ll tip off the opposition and the opposition will knock me off – and your hands will be theoretically clean.’

‘Very succinctly put,’ said Slade. ‘You always did write good, clear reports.’ He sounded like a schoolmaster complimenting a boy on a good essay.

‘What’s the job?’

‘Now you’re being sensible,’ he said approvingly. He produced a sheet of paper and consulted it. ‘We know you are in the habit of taking an annual holiday in Iceland.’ He looked up. ‘Still sticking to your northern heritage, I see. You couldn’t very well go back to Sweden – and Finland would be even more risky. Too close to the Russian border for comfort.’ He spread his hands. ‘But who goes to Iceland?’

‘So the job is in Iceland?’

‘Indeed it is.’ He tapped the paper with his fingernail. ‘You take long holidays – three and four months at a time. What it is to have a private income – the Department did very well by you.’

‘The Department gave me nothing that wasn’t mine,’ I said shortly.

He ignored that. ‘I note you’ve been doing very well for yourself in Iceland. All the home comforts down to a love-nest. A young lady, I believe, is …’

‘We’ll leave her out of it.’

‘Just the point I’m making, dear boy. It would be most unwise if she became involved. It could be most dangerous for her, don’t you think? I wouldn’t tell her anything about it.’ His voice was kindly.

Slade had certainly done his homework. If he knew about Elin then he must have tapped me a long time before. All the time I thought I was in cover I’d been under a microscope.

‘Come to the job.’

‘You will collect a package at Keflavik International Airport.’ He sketched dimensions with his hands. ‘About eight inches by four inches by two inches. You will deliver it to a man in Akureyri – you know where that is?’

‘I know,’ I said, and waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. ‘That’s all?’ I asked.

‘That’s all; I’m sure you will be able to accomplish it quite easily.’

I stared at him incredulously. ‘Have you gone through all this rigmarole of blackmail just to give me a messenger boy’s job?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t use such crude language,’ he said peevishly. ‘It’s a job suitable for one who is out of practice, such as yourself. It’s important enough and you were to hand, so we’re using you.’

‘This is something that’s blown up quite quickly, isn’t it?’ I hazarded. ‘You’re forced to use me.’

Slade waggled his hand. ‘We’re a bit stretched for manpower, that’s all. Don’t get delusions of grandeur – in using you I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel.’

Slade could be blunt enough when it suited his purpose. I shrugged, and said, ‘Who is the man in Akureyri?’

‘He’ll make himself known,’ Slade took a slip of paper from his wallet and tore it jaggedly across. One piece he passed to me and it proved to be half of a 100-kronur banknote. ‘He’ll have the other half. Old ways are best, don’t you think? Effective and uncomplicated.’

I looked at the ruined Icelandic currency in my hand and said ironically, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be paid for this enterprise?’

‘Of course you will, dear boy. Her Majesty’s Government is never niggardly when it comes to valuable services rendered. Shall we say two hundred pounds?’

‘Send it to Oxfam, you bastard.’

He shook his head deprecatingly. ‘Such language – but I shall do as you say. You may depend on it.’

I studied Slade and he looked back at me with eyes as candid as those of a baby. I didn’t like the smell of this operation – it sounded too damned phoney. It occurred to me that perhaps he was setting up a training exercise with me as the guinea pig. The Department frequently ran games of that sort to train the new boys, but all the participants usually knew the score. If Slade was ringing me into a training scheme without telling me I’d strangle the sadistic bastard.

To test him, I said, ‘Slade, if you’re using me as the football in a training game it could be dangerous. You could lose some of your budding spies that way.’

He looked shocked. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that to you.’

‘All right; what do I do if someone tries to take the package?’

‘Stop him,’ he said succinctly.

‘At any cost?’

He smiled. ‘You mean – should you kill? Do it any way you want. Just deliver the package to Akureyri.’ His paunch shook with amusement. ‘Killer Stewart!’ he mocked gently. ‘Well, well!’

I nodded. ‘I just wanted to know. I’d hate to make your manpower problems more difficult. After Akureyri – what happens then?’

‘Then you may go on your way rejoicing. Complete your holiday. Enjoy the company of your lady friend. Feel free as air.’

‘Until the next time you drop by.’

‘That is a highly unlikely eventuality,’ said Slade decisively. ‘The world has passed you by. Things are not the same in the Department as they were – techniques are different – many changes you would not understand. You would be quite useless, Stewart, in any real work; but this job is simple and you’re just a messenger boy.’ He looked around the room a little disdainfully. ‘No, you may come back here and rusticate peacefully.’

‘And Kennikin?’

‘Ah, I make no promises there. He may find you – he may not; but if he does it will not be because of my doing, I assure you.’

‘That’s not good enough,’ I said. ‘You’ll tell him I haven’t been a member of the Department for four years?’

‘I may,’ he said carelessly. ‘I may.’ He stood and buttoned his coat. ‘Of course, whether he would believe it is one thing, and whether it would make any difference is yet another. He has his own, strictly unprofessional, reasons for wanting to find you, and I’m inclined to think that he’ll want to operate on you with a sharp knife rather than to ask you to share his bottle of Calvados.’

He picked up his hat and moved over to the door. ‘You will receive further instructions about picking up the package before you leave. It’s been nice to see you again, Mr Stewart.’

‘I wish I could say the same,’ I said, and he laughed jollily.

I walked with him to his car and pointed to the rocks from where I had watched him waiting outside the cottage. ‘I had you in rifle sights from up there. I even squeezed the trigger. Unfortunately the rifle wasn’t loaded.’

He looked at me, his face full of confidence. ‘If it had been loaded you wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. You’re a civilized man, Stewart; too civilized. I sometimes wonder how you lasted so long in the Department – you were always a little too soft-centred for the big jobs. If it had been my decision you’d have been out long before you decided to … er … retire.’

I looked into his pale cold eyes and knew that if it had been his decision I would never have been allowed to retire. He said, ‘I trust you remember the terms of the Official Secrets Act.’ Then he smiled. ‘But, of course, you remember.’

I said, ‘Where are you in the hierarchy now, Slade?’

‘Quite close to the top, as a matter of fact,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Right next to Taggart. I do make the decisions now. I get to have lunch with the Prime Minister from time to time.’ He gave a self-satisfied laugh and got into the car. He rolled down the window, and said, ‘There’s just one thing. That package – don’t open it, dear boy. Remember what curiosity did to the cat.’

He drove away, bumping down the track, and when he had disappeared the glen seemed cleaner. I looked up at Sgurr Mor and at Sgurr Dearg beyond and felt depressed. In less than twenty minutes my world had been smashed to pieces and I wondered how the hell I was going to pick up the bits.

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. I 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?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘One thing did occur to me. If Slade had thought that Birkby had a better chance of getting next to Kennikin, then he’d have told him to kill me, and for the same reason. Sometimes I think it would have been better that way.’

‘No, Alan!’ Elin leaned forward and took my hand in hers. ‘Never think that.’

‘Don’t worry; I’m not suicidally minded,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you now know why I don’t like Slade and why I distrust him – and why I’m suspicious of this particular operation.’

Elin looked at me closely, still holding my hand. ‘Alan, apart from Birkby, have you killed anyone else?’

‘I have,’ I said deliberately.

Her face seemed to close tight and her hand slipped from mine. She nodded slowly. ‘I have a lot to think about, Alan. I’d like to take a walk.’ She rose. ‘Alone – if you don’t mind.’

I watched her walk into the trees and then picked up the bottle hefting it in my hand and wondering if I wanted another drink. I looked at the level of liquid and discovered that four of my unmeasured slugs had nearly half-emptied the bottle. I put it down again – I have never believed in drowning my problems and this was no time to start.

I knew what was wrong with Elin. It’s a shock for a woman to realize that the man accepted into her bed is a certified killer, no matter in how laudable a cause. And I had no illusions that the cause for which I had worked was particularly commendable – not to Elin. What would a peaceful Icelander know about the murkier depths of the unceasing undercover war between the nations?

I collected the dirty dishes and began to wash them, wondering what she would do. All I had going for me were the summers we had spent together and the hope that those days and nights of happiness would weigh in the balance of her mind. I hoped that what she knew of me as a man, a lover and a human being would count for more than my past.

I finished cleaning up and lit a cigarette. Light was slowly ebbing from the sky towards the long twilight of summer in northern lands. It would never really get dark – it was too close to Midsummer Day – and the sun would not be absent for long.

I saw Elin coming back, her white shirt glimmering among the trees. As she approached the Land-Rover she looked up at the sky. ‘It’s getting late.’

‘Yes.’

She stooped, unzipped the sleeping bags, and then zipped them together to make one large bag. As she turned her head towards me her lips curved in a half-smile. ‘Come to bed, Alan,’ she said, and I knew that nothing was lost and everything was going to be all right.

Later that night I had an idea. I unzipped my side of the bag and rolled out, trying not to disturb Elin. She said sleepily, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I don’t like Slade’s mysterious box being in the open. I’m going to hide it.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere under the chassis.’

‘Can’t it wait until morning?’

I pulled on a sweater. ‘I might as well do it now. I can’t sleep – I’ve been thinking too much.’

Elin yawned. ‘Can I help – hold a torch or something?’

‘Go back to sleep.’ I took the metal box, a roll of insulating tape and a torch, and went over to the Land-Rover. On the theory that I might want to get at the box quickly I taped it inside the rear bumper. I had just finished when a random sweep of my hand inside the bumper gave me pause, because my fingers encountered something that shifted stickily.

I nearly twisted my head off in an attempt to see what it was. Squinting in the light of the torch I saw another metal box, but much smaller and painted green, the same colour as the Land-Rover but definitely not standard equipment as provided by the Rover Company. Gently I grasped it and pulled it away. One side of the small cube was magnetized so it would hold on a metal surface and, as I held it in my hand, I knew that someone was being very clever.

It was a radio bug of the type known as a ‘bumper-bleeper’ and, at that moment, it would be sending out a steady scream, shouting, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ Anyone with a radio direction finder turned to the correct frequency would know exactly where to find the Land-Rover any time he cared to switch on.

I rolled away and got to my feet, still holding the bug, and for a moment was tempted to smash it. How long it had been on the Land-Rover I didn’t know – probably ever since Reykjavik. And who else could have bugged it but Slade or his man, Graham. Not content with warning me to keep Elin out of it, he had coppered his bet by making it easy to check on her. Or was it me he wanted to find?

I was about to drop it and grind it under my heel when I paused. That wouldn’t be too clever – there were other, and better, ways of using it. Slade knew I was bugged, I knew I was bugged, but Slade didn’t know that I knew, and that fact might yet be turned to account. I bent down and leaned under the Land-Rover to replace the bug. It attached itself to the bumper with a slight click.

And at that moment something happened. I didn’t know what it was because it was so imperceptible – just a fractional alteration of the quality of the night silence – and if the finding of the bug had not made me preternaturally alert I might have missed it. I held my breath and listened intently and heard it again – the faraway metallic grunt of a gear change. Then there was nothing more, but that was enough.

THREE

I leaned over Elin and shook her. ‘Wake up!’ I said quietly.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, still half-asleep.

‘Keep quiet! Get dressed quickly.’

‘But what …?’

‘Don’t argue – just get dressed.’ I turned and stared into the trees, dimly visible in the half light. Nothing moved, nor could I hear anything – the quiet of the night was unbroken. The narrow entrance to Asbyrgi lay just under a mile away and I thought it likely that the vehicle would stop there. That would be a natural precaution – the stopper in the neck of the bottle.

It was likely that further investigation of Asbyrgi would be made on foot in a known direction given by radio direction finder and a known distance as given by a signal strength meter. Having a radio bug on a vehicle is as good as illuminating it with a searchlight.

Elin said quietly, ‘I’m ready.’

I turned to her. ‘We’re about to have visitors,’ I said in a low voice. ‘In fifteen minutes – maybe less. I want you to hide.’ I pointed. ‘Over there would be best; find the closest cover you can among the trees and lie down – and don’t come out until you hear me calling you.’

‘But …’

‘Don’t argue – just do it,’ I said harshly. I had never spoken to her before in that tone of voice and she blinked at me in surprise, but she turned quickly and ran into the trees.

I dived under the Land-Rover and groped for Lindholm’s pistol which I had taped there in Reykjavik, but it had gone and all that was left was a sticky strand of insulation tape to show where it had been. The roads in Iceland are rough enough to shake anything loose and I was bloody lucky not to have lost the most important thing – the metal box.

So all I had was the knife – the sgian dubh. I stooped and picked it up from where it was lying next to the sleeping bag and tucked it into the waistband of my trousers. Then I withdrew into the trees by the side of the glade and settled down to wait.

It was a long time, nearer to half an hour, before anything happened. He came like a ghost, a dark shape moving quietly up the track and not making a sound. It was too dark to see his face but there was just enough light to let me see what he carried. The shape and the way he held it was unmistakable – there are ways of holding tools, and a man carries a rifle in a different way from he carries a stick. This was no stick.

I froze as he paused on the edge of the glade. He was quite still and, if I hadn’t known he was there, it would have been easy for the eye to pass over that dark patch by the trees without recognizing it for what it was – a man with a gun. I was worried about the gun; it was either a rifle or a shotgun, and that was the sign of a professional. Pistols are too inaccurate for the serious business of killing – ask any soldier – and are liable to jam at the wrong moment. The professional prefers something more deadly.

If I was going to jump him I’d have to get behind him. which meant letting him pass me, but that would mean laying myself wide open for his friend – if he had a friend behind him. So I waited to see if the friend would turn up or if he was alone. I wondered briefly if he knew what would happen if he fired that gun in Asbyrgi; if he didn’t then he’d be a very surprised gunman when he pulled the trigger.

There was a flicker of movement and he was suddenly gone, and I cursed silently. Then a twig cracked and I knew he was in the trees on the other side of the glade. This was a professional all right – a really careful boy. Never come from the direction in which you are expected, even if you don’t think you’ll be expected. Play it safe. He was in the trees and circling the glade to come in from the other side.

I also began to circle, but in the opposite direction. This was tricky because sooner or later we’d come face to face. I plucked the sgian dubh from my waist and held it loosely – puny protection against a rifle but it was all I had. Every step I took I tested carefully to make sure there was no twig underfoot, and it was slow and sweaty work.

I paused beneath a scrawny birch tree and peered into the semi-darkness. Nothing moved but I heard the faint click as of one stone knocking against another. I remained motionless, holding my breath, and then I saw him coming towards me, a dark moving shadow not ten yards away. I tightened my hold on the knife and waited for him.

Suddenly the silence was broken by the rustle of bushes and something white arose at his feet. It could only be one thing – he had walked right on to Elin where she had crouched in hiding. He was startled, retreated a step, and raised the rifle, I yelled, ‘Get down, Elin!’ as he pulled the trigger and a flash of light split the darkness.

It sounded as though a war had broken out, as though an infantry company had let off a rather ragged volley of rifle fire. The noise of the shot bounced from the cliffs of Asbyrgi, repeating from rock face to rock face in a diminishing series of multiple echoes which died away slowly in the far distance. That unexpected result of pulling the trigger unnerved him momentarily and he checked in surprise.

I threw the knife and there was the soft thud as it hit him. He gave a bubbling cry and dropped the rifle to claw at his chest. Then his knees buckled and he fell to the ground, thrashing and writhing among the bushes.

I ignored him and ran to where I had seen Elin, pulling the flashlight from my pocket as I went. She was sitting on the ground, her hand to her shoulder and her eyes wide with shock. ‘Are you all right?’

She withdrew her hand and her fingers were covered in blood. ‘He shot me,’ she said dully.

I knelt beside her and looked at her shoulder. The bullet had grazed her, tearing the pad of muscle on top of the shoulder. It would be painful later, but it was not serious. ‘We’d better put a dressing on that,’ I said.

‘He shot me!’ Her voice was stronger and there was something like wonder in her tone.

‘I doubt if he’ll shoot anyone again,’ I said, and turned the light on him. He was lying quite still with his head turned away.

‘Is he dead?’ asked Elin, her eyes on the haft of the knife which protruded from his chest.

‘I don’t know. Hold the light.’ I took his wrist and felt the quick beat of the pulse. ‘He’s alive,’ I said. ‘He might even survive.’ I pulled his head around so that I could see his face. It was Graham – and that was something of a surprise. I mentally apologized for accusing him of having been wet behind the ears; the way he had approached our camp had been all professional.

Elin said, ‘There’s a first-aid box in the Land-Rover.’

‘Carry on,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring him over.’ I stooped and picked up Graham in my arms and followed Elin. She spread out the sleeping bag and I laid him down. Then she brought out the first-aid box and sank to her knees.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You first. Take off your shirt.’ I cleaned the wound on her shoulder, dusted it with penicillin powder, and bound a pad over it. ‘You’ll have trouble in raising your arm above your shoulder for the next week,’ I said. ‘Otherwise it’s not too bad.’

She seemed mesmerized by the amber light reflected from the jewelled pommel of the knife in Graham’s chest. ‘That knife – do you always carry it?’

‘Always,’ I said. ‘We have to get it out of there.’ It had hit Graham in the centre of the chest just below the sternum and it had an upwards inclination. The whole of the blade was buried in him and God knows what it had sliced through.

I cut away his shirt, and said, ‘Get an absorbent pad ready,’ and then I put my hand on the hilt and pulled. The serrated back edge admitted air into the wound and made extraction easy and the knife came away cleanly. I half expected a gush of arterial blood which would have been the end of Graham, but there was just a steady trickle which ran down his stomach and collected in his navel.

Elin put the pad on the wound and strapped it down with tape while I took his pulse again. It was a little weaker than it had been.

‘Do you know who he is?’ asked Elin, sitting back on her heels.

‘Yes,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘He said his name is Graham. He’s a member of the Department working with Slade.’ I picked up the sgian dubh and began to clean it. ‘Right now I’d like to know if he came alone or if he has any pals around here. We’re sitting ducks.’

I got up and walked back into the trees and hunted about for Graham’s rifle. I found it and took it back to the Land-Rover; it was a Remington pump action carbine chambered for .30/06 ammunition – a good gun for a murderer. The barrel not too long to get in the way, the fire rapid – five aimed shots in five seconds – and a weight and velocity of slug enough to stop a man dead in his tracks. I operated the action and caught the round that jumped out. It was the ordinary soft-nosed hunting type, designed to spread on impact. Elin had been lucky.

She was bending over Graham wiping his brow. ‘He’s coming round.’

Graham’s eyes flickered and opened and he saw me standing over him with the carbine in my hands. He tried to get up but a spasm of pain hit him and the sweat started out on his brow. ‘You’re not in a position to do much,’ I said. ‘You have a hole in your gut.’

He sagged back and moistened his lips. ‘Slade said … ’ He fought for breath. ‘… said you weren’t dangerous.’

‘Did he, now? He was wrong, wasn’t he?’ I held up the carbine. ‘If you’d come empty-handed without this you wouldn’t be lying where you are now. What was supposed to be the idea?’

‘Slade wanted the package,’ he whispered.

‘So? But the opposition have it. The Russians – I suppose they are Russians?’

Graham nodded weakly. ‘But they didn’t get it. That’s why Slade sent me in here. He said you were playing a double game. He said you weren’t straight.’

I frowned. ‘Now, that’s interesting,’ I said, and sat on my heels next to him with the carbine across my knees. ‘Tell me this, Graham – who told Slade the Russians hadn’t got it? I didn’t tell them, that’s for sure. I suppose the Russkies obligingly told him they’d been fooled.’

A look of puzzlement came over his face. ‘I don’t know how he knew. He just told me to come and get it.’

I lifted the carbine. ‘And he gave you this. I suppose I was to be liquidated.’ I glanced at Elin, and then back at Graham. ‘And what about Elin here? What was to happen to her?’

Graham closed his eyes. ‘I didn’t know she was here.’

‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘But Slade did. How the hell do you think that Land-Rover got here?’ Graham’s eyelids flickered. ‘You know damned well you’d have to kill any witnesses.’

A trickle of blood crept from the corner of his mouth. ‘You lousy bastard!’ I said. ‘If I thought you knew what you were doing I’d kill you now. So Slade told you I’d reneged and you took his word for it – you took the gun he gave you and followed his orders. Ever hear of a man called Birkby?’

Graham opened his eyes. ‘No.’

‘Before your time,’ I said. ‘It just happens that Slade has played that trick before. But never mind that now. Did you come alone?’

Graham closed his mouth tightly and a stubborn look came over his face. ‘Don’t be a hero,’ I advised. ‘I can get it out of you easily enough. How would you like me to stomp on your belly right now?’ I heard Elin gasp, but ignored her. ‘You have a bad gut wound, and you’re liable to die unless we can get you to a hospital. And I can’t do that if someone is going to take a crack at us as we leave Asbyrgi. I’m not going to put Elin into risk just for the sake of your hide.’

He looked beyond me to Elin, and then nodded. ‘Slade,’ he said. ‘He’s here … about a mile …’

‘At the entrance to Asbyrgi?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and closed his eyes again. I took his pulse and found it very much fainter. I turned to Elin. ‘Start to load; leave enough room for Graham to lie in the back on top of the sleeping bags.’ I stood up and checked the load in the carbine.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Maybe I can get close enough to Slade to talk to him,’ I said. ‘To tell him his boy is badly hurt. Maybe I won’t – in that case I’ll talk to him with this.’ I held up the carbine.

She whitened. ‘You’ll kill him?’

‘Christ, I don’t know!’ I said exasperatedly. ‘All I know is that apparently he doesn’t mind if I’m killed – and you, too. He’s sitting at the entrance to Asbyrgi like a bloody cork in a bottle and this is the only corkscrew I’ve got.’

Graham moaned a little and opened his eyes. I bent down. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Bad.’ The trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth had increased to a rivulet which ran down his neck. ‘It’s funny,’ he whispered. ‘How did Slade know?’

I said, ‘What’s in the package?’

‘Don’t … know.’

‘Who is bossing the Department these days?’

His breath wheezed. ‘Ta … Taggart.’

If anyone could pull Slade off my back it would be Taggart. I said, ‘All right; I’ll go and see Slade. We’ll have you out of here in no time.’

‘Slade said … ’ Graham paused and began again. He seemed to have difficulty in swallowing and he coughed a little, bringing bright red bubbles foaming to his lips. ‘Slade said …’

The coughing increased and there was sudden gush of red arterial blood from his mouth and his head fell sideways. I put my hand to his wrist and knew that Graham would never tell me what more Slade had said because he was dead. I closed his staring eyes, and stood up. ‘I’d better talk to Slade.’

‘He’s dead!’ said Elin in a shocked whisper.

Graham was dead – a pawn suddenly swept from the board. He had died because he followed orders blindly, just as I had done in Sweden; he had died because he didn’t really understand what he was doing. Slade had told him to do something and he had tried and failed and come to his death. I didn’t really understand what I was doing, either, so I’d better not fail in anything I attempted.

Elin was crying. The big tears welled from her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She didn’t sob but just stood there crying silently and looking down at the body of Graham. I said harshly, ‘Don’t cry for him – he was going to kill you. You heard him.’

When she spoke it was without a tremor, but still the tears came. ‘I’m not crying for Graham,’ she said desolately. ‘I’m crying for you. Someone must.’

II

We struck camp quickly and loaded everything into the Land-Rover, and everything included the body of Graham. ‘We can’t leave him here,’ I said. ‘Someone will be sure to stumble across him soon – certainly within the week. To quote the Bard, we lug the guts into the neighbour room.’

A wan smile crossed Elin’s face as she caught the allusion. ‘Where?’

‘Dettifoss,’ I said. ‘Or maybe Selfoss.’ To go over a couple of waterfalls, one the most powerful in Europe, would batter the body beyond recognition and, with luck, disguise the fact that Graham had been stabbed. He would be a lone tourist who had had an accident.

So we put the body in the back of the Land-Rover. I picked up the Remington carbine, and said, ‘Give me half an hour, then come along as fast as you can.’

‘I can’t move fast if I have to be quiet,’ she objected.

‘Quietness won’t matter – just belt towards the entrance as fast as you can, and use the headlights. Then slow down a bit so I can hop aboard.’

‘And then?’

‘Then we head for Dettifoss – but not by the main road. We keep on the track to the west of the river.’

‘What are you going to do about Slade? You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?’

‘He might kill me first,’ I said. ‘Let’s have no illusions about Slade.’

‘No more killing, Alan,’ she said. ‘Please – no more killing.’

‘It might not be up to me. If he shoots at me then I’ll shoot back.’

‘All right,’ she said quietly.

So I left her and headed towards the entrance to Asbyrgi, padding softly along the track and hoping that Slade wouldn’t come looking for Graham. I didn’t think it likely. Although he must have heard the shot he would have been expecting it, and then it would have taken Graham a half-hour to return after searching for the package. My guess was that Slade wouldn’t be expecting Graham for another hour.

I made good time but slowed as I approached the entrance. Slade had not bothered to hide his car; it was parked in full sight and was clearly visible because the short northern night was nearly over and the sky was light. He knew what he was doing because it was impossible to get close to the car without being seen, so I settled behind a rock and waited for Elin. I had no relish for walking across that open ground only to stop a bullet.

Presently I heard her coming. The noise was quite loud as she changed gear and I saw a hint of movement from inside the parked car. I nestled my cheek against the stock of the carbine and aimed. Graham had been professional enough to put a spot of luminous paint on the foresight but it was not necessary in the pre-dawn light.

I settled the sight on the driving side and, as the noise behind me built up to a crescendo, I slapped three bullets in as many seconds through the windscreen which must have been made of laminated glass because it went totally opaque. Slade took off in a wide sweep and I saw that the only thing that had saved him was that the car had right-hand drive, English style, and I had shot holes in the wrong side of the windscreen.

But he wasn’t waiting for me to correct the error and bucked away down the track as fast as he could go. The Land-Rover came up behind me and I jumped for it. ‘Get going!’ I yelled. ‘Make it fast.’

Ahead, Slade’s car skidded around a corner in a four-wheel drift, kicking up a cloud of dust. He was heading for the main road, but when we arrived at the corner Elin turned the other way as I had instructed her. It would have been useless chasing Slade – a Land-Rover isn’t built for that and he had the advantage.

We turned south on to the track which parallels the Jökulsà à Fjöllum, the big river that takes the melt water north from Vatnajökull, and the roughness of the ground dictated a reduction in speed. Elin said, ‘Did you talk to Slade?’

‘I couldn’t get near him.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t kill him.’

‘It wasn’t for want of trying,’ I said. ‘If he had a left-hand drive car he’d be dead by now.’

‘And would that make you feel any better?’ she asked cuttingly.

I looked at her. ‘Elin,’ I said, ‘The man’s dangerous. Either he’s gone off his nut – which I think is unlikely – or …’

‘Or what?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said despondently. ‘It’s too damned complicated and I don’t know enough. But I do know that Slade wants me dead. There’s something I know – or something he thinks I know – that’s dangerous for him; dangerous enough for him to want to kill me. Under the circumstances I don’t want you around – you could get in the line of fire. You did get in the line of fire this morning.’

She slowed because of a deep rut. ‘You can’t survive alone,’ she said. ‘You need help.’

I needed more than help; I needed a new set of brains to work out this convoluted problem. But this wasn’t the time to do it because Elin’s shoulder was giving her hell. ‘Pull up,’ I said. ‘I’ll do the driving.’

We travelled south for an hour and a half and Elin said, ‘There’s Dettifoss.’

I looked out over the rocky landscape towards the cloud of spray in the distance which hung over the deep gorge which the Jökulsá á Fjöllum has cut deep into the rock. ‘We’ll carry on to Selfoss,’ I decided. ‘Two waterfalls are better than one. Besides, there are usually campers at Dettifoss.’

We went past Dettifoss and, three kilometres farther on, I pulled off the road. ‘This is as close to Selfoss as we can get.’

I got out. ‘I’ll go towards the river and see if anyone’s around,’ I said. ‘It’s bad form to be seen humping bodies about. Wait here and don’t talk to any strange men.’

I checked to see if the body was still decently shrouded by the blanket with which we had covered it, and then headed towards the river. It was still very early in the morning and there was no one about so I went back and opened the rear door of the vehicle and climbed inside.

I stripped the blanket away from Graham’s body and searched his clothing. His wallet contained some Icelandic currency and a sheaf of Deutschmarks, together with a German motoring club card identifying him as Dieter Buchner, as also did his German passport. There was a photograph of him with his arm around a pretty girl and a fascia board of a shop behind them was in German. The Department was always thorough about that kind of thing.

The only other item of interest was a packet of rifle ammunition which had been broken open. I put that on one side, pulled out the body and replaced the wallet in the pocket, and then carried him in a fireman’s lift towards the river with Elin close on my heels.

I got to the lip of the gorge and put down the body while I studied the situation. The gorge at this point was curved and the river had undercut the rock face so that it was a straight drop right into the water. I pushed the body over the edge and watched it fall in a tumble of arms and legs until it splashed into the grey, swirling water. Buoyed by air trapped in the jacket it floated out until it was caught in the quick midstream current. We watched it go downstream until it disappeared over the edge of Selfoss to drop into the roaring cauldron below.

Elin looked at me sadly. ‘And what now?’

‘Now I go south,’ I said, and walked away quickly towards the Land-Rover. When Elin caught up with me I was bashing hell out of the radio-bug with a big stone.

‘Why south?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘I want to get to Keflavik and back to London. There’s a man I want to talk to – Sir David Taggart.’

‘We go by way of Myvatn?’

I shook my head, and gave the radio-bug one last clout, sure now that it would tell no more tales. ‘I’m keeping off the main roads – they’re too dangerous. I go by way of the Odádahraun and by Askja – into the desert. But you’re not coming.’

‘We’ll see,’ she said, and tossed the car key in her hand.

III

God has not yet finished making Iceland.

In the last 500 years one-third of all the lava extruded from the guts of the earth to the face of the planet has surfaced in Iceland and, of 200 known volcanoes, thirty are still very much active. Iceland suffers from a bad case of geological acne.

For the last thousand years a major eruption has been recorded, on average, every five years. Askja – the ash volcano – last blew its top in 1961. Measurable quantities of volcanic ash settled on the roofs of Leningrad, 1,500 miles away. That didn’t trouble the Russians overmuch but the effect was more serious nearer home. The country to north and east of Askja was scorched and poisoned by deep deposits of ash and, nearer to Askja, the lava flows overran the land, overlaying desolation with desolation. Askja dominates north-east Iceland and has created the most awesome landscape in the world.

It was into this wilderness, the Odádahraun, as remote and blasted as the surface of the moon, that we went. The name, loosely translated, means ‘Murderers’ Country’. and was the last foothold of the outlaws of olden times, the shunned of men against whom all hands were raised.

There are tracks in the Odádahraun – sometimes. The tracks are made by those who venture into the interior; most of them scientists – geologists and hydrographers – few travel for pleasure in that part of the Óbyggdir. Each vehicle defines the track a little more, but when the winter snows come the tracks are obliterated – by water, by snow avalanche, by rock slip. Those going into the interior in the early summer, as we were, are in a very real sense trail blazers, sometimes finding the track anew and deepening it a fraction, very often not finding it and making another.

It was not bad during the first morning. The track was reasonable and not too bone-jolting and paralleled the Jökulsá á Fjöllum which ran grey-green with melt water to the Arctic Ocean. By midday we were opposite Mödrudalur which lay on the other side of the river, and Elin broke into that mournfully plaintive song which describes the plight of the Icelander in winter: ‘Short are the mornings in the mountains of Mödrudal. There it is mid-morning at daybreak.’ I suppose it fitted her mood; I know mine wasn’t very much better.

I had dropped all thoughts of giving Elin the slip. Slade knew that she had been in Asbyrgi – the bug planted on the Land-Rover would have told him that – and it would be very dangerous for her to appear unprotected in any of the coastal towns. Slade had been a party to attempted murder and she was a witness, and I knew he would take extreme measures to silence her. As dangerous as my position was she was as safe with me as anywhere, so I was stuck with her.

At three in the afternoon we stopped at the rescue hut under the rising bulk of the great shield volcano called Herdubreid or ‘Broad Shoulders’. We were both tired and hungry, and Elin said, ‘Can’t we stop here for the day?’

I looked across at the hut. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Someone might be expecting us to do just that. We’ll push on a little farther towards Askja. But there’s no reason why we can’t eat here.’

Elin prepared a meal and we ate in the open, sitting outside the hut. Halfway through the meal I was in mid-bite of a herring sandwich when an idea struck me like a bolt of lightning. I looked up at the radio mast next to the hut and then at the whip antenna on the Land-Rover. ‘Elin, we can raise Reykjavik from here, can’t we? I mean we can talk to anyone in Reykjavik who has a telephone.’

Elin looked up. ‘Of course. We contact Gufunes Radio and they connect us into the telephone system.’

I said dreamily, ‘Isn’t it fortunate that the transatlantic cables run through Iceland? If we can be plugged into the telephone system there’s nothing to prevent a further patching so as to put a call through to London.’ I stabbed my finger at the Land-Rover with its radio antenna waving gently in the breeze. ‘Right from there.’

‘I’ve never heard of it being done,’ said Elin doubtfully.

I finished the sandwich. ‘I see no reason why it can’t be done. After all, President Nixon spoke to Neil Armstrong when he was on the moon. The ingredients are there – all we have to do is put them together. Do you know anyone in the telephone department?’

‘I know Svein Haraldsson,’ she said thoughtfully.

I would have taken a bet that she would know someone in the telephone department; everybody in Iceland knows somebody. I scribbled a number on a scrap of paper and gave it to her. ‘That’s the London number. I want Sir David Taggart in person.’

‘What if this … Taggart … won’t accept the call?’

I grinned. ‘I have a feeling that Sir David will accept any call coming from Iceland right now.’

Elin looked up at the radio mast. ‘The big set in the hut will give us more power.’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t use it – Slade might be monitoring the telephone bands. He can listen to what I have to say to Taggart but he mustn’t know where it’s coming from. A call from the Land-Rover could be coming from anywhere.’

Elin walked over to the Land-Rover, switched on that set and tried to raise Gufunes. The only result was a crackle of static through which a few lonely souls wailed like damned spirits, too drowned by noise to be understandable. ‘There must be storms in the western mountains,’ she said. ‘Should I try Akureyri?’ That was the nearest of the four radiotelephone stations.

‘No,’ I said. ‘If Slade is monitoring at all he’ll be concentrating on Akureyri. Try Seydisfjördur.’

Contacting Seydisfjördur in eastern Iceland was much easier and Elin was soon patched into the landline network to Reykjavik and spoke to her telephone friend, Svein. There was a fair amount of incredulous argument but she got her way. ‘There’s a delay of an hour,’ she said.

‘Good enough. Ask Seydisfjördur to contact us when the call comes through.’ I looked at my watch. In an hour it would be 3:45 p.m. British Standard Time – a good hour to catch Taggart.

We packed up and on we pushed south towards the distant ice blink of Vatnajökull. I left the receiver switched on but turned it low and there was a subdued babble from the speaker.

Elin said, ‘What good will it do to speak to this man, Taggart?’

‘He’s Slade’s boss,’ I said. ‘He can get Slade off my back.’

‘But will he?’ she asked. ‘You were supposed to hand over the package and you didn’t. You disobeyed orders. Will Taggart like that?’

‘I don’t think Taggart knows what’s going on here. I don’t think he knows that Slade tried to kill me – and you. I think Slade is working on his own, and he’s out on a limb. I could be wrong, of course, but that’s one of the things I want to get from Taggart.’

‘And if you are wrong? If Taggart instructs you to give the package to Slade? Will you do it?’

I hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’

Elin said. ‘Perhaps Graham was right. Perhaps Slade really thought you’d defected – you must admit he would have every right to think so. Would he then …?’

‘Send a man with a gun? He would.’

‘Then I think you’ve been stupid, Alan; very, very stupid. I think you’ve allowed your hatred of Slade to cloud your judgment, and I think you’re in very great trouble.’

I was beginning to think so myself. I said, ‘I’ll find that out when I talk to Taggart. If he backs Slade … ’ If Taggart backed Slade then I was Johnny-in-the-middle in danger of being squeezed between the Department and the opposition. The Department doesn’t like its plans being messed around, and the wrath of Taggart would be mighty.

And yet there were things that didn’t fit – the pointlessness of the whole exercise in the first place, Slade’s lack of any real animosity when I apparently boobed, the ambivalence of Graham’s role. And there was something else which prickled at the back of my mind but which I could not bring to the surface. Something which Slade had done or had not done, or had said or had not said – something which had rung a warning bell deep in my unconscious.

I braked and brought the Land-Rover to a halt, and Elin looked at me in surprise. I said, ‘I’d better know what cards I hold before I talk to Taggart. Dig out the can-opener – I’m going to open the package.’

‘Is that wise? You said yourself that it might be better not to know.’

‘You may be right. But if you play stud poker without looking at your hole card you’ll probably lose. I think I’d better know what it is that everyone wants so much.’

I got out and went to the rear bumper where I stripped the tape from the metal box and pulled it loose. When I got back behind the wheel Elin already had the can-opener – I think she was really as curious as I was.

The box was made of ordinary shiny metal of the type used for cans, but it was now flecked with a few rust spots due to its exposure. A soldered seam ran along four edges so I presumed that face to be the top. I tapped and pressed experimentally and found that the top flexed a little more under pressure than any of the other five sides, so it was probably safe to stab the blade of the can-opener into it.

I took a deep breath and jabbed the blade into one corner and heard the hiss of air as the metal was penetrated. That indicated that the contents had been vacuum-packed and I hoped I wasn’t going to end up with a couple of pounds of pipe tobacco. The belated thought came to me that it could have been booby-trapped; there are detonators that operate on air pressure and that sudden equalization could have made the bloody thing blow up in my face.

But it hadn’t, so I took another deep breath and began to lever the can-opener. Luckily it was one of the old-fashioned type that didn’t need a rim to operate against; it made a jagged, sharp-edged cut – a really messy job – but it opened up the box inside two minutes.

I took off the top and looked inside and saw a piece of brown, shiny plastic with a somewhat electrical look about it – you can see bits of it in any radio repair shop. I tipped the contents of the box into the palm of my hand and looked at the gadget speculatively and somewhat hopelessly.

The piece of brown plastic was the base plate for an electronic circuit, a very complex one. I recognized resistors and transistors but most of it was incomprehensible. It had been a long time since I had studied radio and the technological avalanche of advances had long since passed me by. In my day a component was a component, but the microcircuitry boys are now putting an entire and complicated circuit with dozens of components on to a chip of silicon you’d need a microscope to see.

‘What is it?’ asked Elin with sublime faith that I would know the answer.

‘I’m damned if I know,’ I admitted. I looked closer and tried to trace some of the circuits but it was impossible. Part of it was of modular construction with plates of printed circuits set on edge, each plate bristled with dozens of components; elsewhere it was of more conventional design, and set in the middle was a curious metal shape for which there was no accounting – not by me, anyway.

The only thing that made sense were the two ordinary screw terminals at the end of the base plate with a small engraved brass plate screwed over them. One terminal was marked ’ + ’ and the other ’ - ‘, and above was engraved, ‘110 v. 60~.’ I said, ‘That’s an American voltage and frequency. In England we use 240 volts and 50 cycles. Let’s assume that’s the input end.’

‘So whatever it is, it’s American.’

‘Possibly American,’ I said cautiously. There was no power pack and the two terminals were not connected so that the gadget was not working at the moment. Presumably it would do what it was supposed to do when a 110 volt, 60 cycle current was applied across those terminals. But what it would do I had no idea at all.

Whatever kind of a whatsit it was, it was an advanced whatsit. The electronic whiz-kids have gone so far and fast that this dohickey, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, could very well be an advanced computer capable of proving that eVmc² or, alternatively, disproving it.

It could also have been something that a whiz-kid might have jack-legged together to cool his coffee, but I didn’t think so. It didn’t have the jack-leg look about it; it was coolly professional, highly sophisticated and had the air of coming off a very long production line – a production line in a building without windows and guarded by hard-faced men with guns.

I said thoughtfully, ‘Is Lee Nordlinger still at the base at Keflavik?’

‘Yes,’ said Elin. ‘I saw him two weeks ago.’

I poked at the gadget. ‘He’s the only man in Iceland who might have the faintest idea of what this is.’

‘Are you going to show it to him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly. ‘He might recognize it as a piece of missing US government property and, since he’s a commander in the US Navy, he might think he has to take action. After all, I’m not supposed to have it, and there’d be a lot of questions.’

I put the gadget back into its box, laid the lid on top and taped it into place. ‘I don’t think this had better go underneath again now that I’ve opened it.’

‘Listen!’ said Elin. ‘That’s our number.’

I reached up and twisted the volume control and the voice became louder. ‘Seydisfjördur calling seven, zero, five; Seydisfjördur calling seven, zero, five.’

I unhooked the handset. ‘Seven, zero, five answering Seydisfjördur.’

‘Seydisfjördur calling seven, zero, five; your call to London has come through. I am connecting.’

‘Thank you, Seydisfjördur.’

The characteristics of the noise coming through the speaker changed suddenly and a very faraway voice said, ‘David Taggart here. Is that you, Slade?’

I said. ‘I’m speaking on an open line – a very open line. Be careful.’

There was a pause, then Taggart said, ‘I understand. Who is speaking? This is a very bad line.’

He was right, it was a bad line. His voice advanced and receded in volume and was mauled by an occasional burst of static. I said, ‘This is Stewart here.’

An indescribable noise erupted from the speaker. It could have been static but more likely it was Taggart having an apoplexy. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he roared.

I looked at Elin and winced. From the sound of that it appeared that Taggart was not on my side, but it remained to be found if he backed Slade. He was going full blast. ‘I talked to Slade this morning. He said you … er … tried to terminate his contract.’ Another useful euphemism. ‘And what’s happened to Philips?’

‘Who the hell is Philips?’ I interjected.

‘Oh! You might know him better as Buchner – or Graham.’

‘His contract I did terminate,’ I said.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ yelled Taggart. ‘Have you gone out of your mind?’

‘I got in first just before he tried to terminate my contract,’ I said. ‘The competition is awful fierce here in Iceland. Slade sent him.’

‘Slade tells it differently.’

‘I’ll bet he does,’ I said. ‘Either he’s gone off his rocker or he’s joined a competing firm. I came across some of their representatives over here, too.’

‘Impossible!’ said Taggart flatly.

‘The competing representatives?’

‘No – Slade. It’s unthinkable.’

‘How can it be unthinkable when I’m thinking it?’ I said reasonably.

‘He’s been with us so long. You know the good work he’s done.’

‘Maclean,’ I said. ‘Burgess, Kim Philby. Blake, the Krogers, Lonsdale – all good men and true. What’s wrong with adding Slade?’

Taggart’s voice got an edge to it. ‘This is an open line – watch your language. Stewart, you don’t know the score. Slade says you still have the merchandise – is that true?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

Taggart breathed hard. ‘Then you must go back to Akureyri. I’ll fix it so that Slade finds you there. Let him have it.’

‘The only thing I’ll let Slade have is a final dismissal notice,’ I said. ‘The same thing I gave Graham – or whatever his name was.’

‘You mean you’re not going to obey orders,’ said Taggart dangerously.

‘Not so far as Slade is concerned,’ I said. ‘When Slade sent Graham my fiancée happened to be in the way.’

There was a long pause before Taggart said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Did anything …? Is she …?’

‘She’s got a hole in her,’ I said baldly, and not giving a damn if it was an open line. ‘Keep Slade away from me, Taggart.’

He had been called Sir David for so long that he didn’t relish the unadorned sound of his own name, and it took some time for him to swallow it. At last he said, in a subdued voice, ‘So you won’t accept Slade.’

‘I wouldn’t accept Slade with a packet of Little Noddy’s Rice Crispies. I don’t trust him.’

‘Who would you accept?’

That I had to think about. It had been a long time since I had been with the Department and I didn’t know what the turnover had been. Taggart said, ‘Would you accept Case?’

Case was a good man; I knew him and trusted him as far as I’d trust anyone in the Department. ‘I’ll accept Jack Case.’

‘Where will you meet him? And when?’

I figured out the logic of time and distance. ‘At Geysir – five p.m. the day after tomorrow.’

Taggart was silent and all I heard were the waves of static beating against my eardrum. Then he said, ‘Can’t be done – I still have to get him back here. Make it twenty-four hours later.’ He slipped in a fast one. ‘Where are you now?’

I grinned at Elin. ‘Iceland.’

Even the distortion could not disguise the rasp in Taggart’s voice; he sounded like a concrete-mixer. ‘Stewart, I hope you know that you’re well on your way to ruining a most important operation. When you meet Case you take your orders from him and you’ll do precisely as he says. Understand?’

‘He’d better not have Slade with him,’ I said. ‘Or all bets are off. Are you putting your dog on a leash, Taggart?’

‘All right,’ said Taggart reluctantly. ‘I’ll pull him back to London. But you’re wrong about him, Stewart. Look what he did to Kennikin in Sweden.’

It happened so suddenly that I gasped. The irritant that had been festering at the back of my mind came to the surface and it was like a bomb going off. ‘I want some information,’ I said quickly. ‘I might need it if I’m to do this job properly.’

‘All right; what is it?’ said Taggart impatiently.

‘What have you got on file about Kennikin’s drinking habits?’

‘What the hell!’ he roared. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘I need the information,’ I repeated patiently. I had Taggart by the short hairs and he knew it. I had the electronic gadget and he didn’t know where I was. I was bargaining from strength and I didn’t think he’d hold back apparently irrelevant information just to antagonize me. But he tried.

‘It’ll take time,’ he said. ‘Ring me back.’

‘Now you’re being funny,’ I said. ‘You have so many computers around you that electrons shoot out of your ears. All you have to do is to push a button and you’ll have the answer in two minutes. Push it!’

‘All right,’ he said in an annoyed voice. ‘Hold on.’ He had every right to be annoyed – the boss isn’t usually spoken to in that way.

I could imagine what was going on. The fast, computer-controlled retrieval of microfilm combined with the wonders of closed circuit television would put the answer on to the screen on his desk in much less than two minutes providing the right coding was dialled. Every known member of the opposition was listed in that microfilm file together with every known fact about him, so that his life was spread out like a butterfly pinned in a glass case. Apparent irrelevancies about a man could come in awfully useful if known at the right time or in the right place.

Presently Taggart said in a dim voice, ‘I’ve got it.’ The static was much worse and he was very far away. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Speak up – I can hardly hear you. I want to know about his drinking habits.’

Taggart’s voice came through stronger, but not much. ‘Kennikin seems to be a bit of a puritan. He doesn’t drink and, since his last encounter with you, he doesn’t go out with women.’ His voice was sardonic. ‘Apparently you ruined him for the only pleasure in his life. You’d better watch … ’ The rest of the sentence was washed out in noise.

‘What was that?’ I shouted.

Taggart’s voice came through the crashing static like a thin ghost. ‘… best of … knowledge … Kenni … Iceland … he’s …’

And that was all I got, but it was enough. I tried unavailingly to restore the connection but nothing could be done. Elin pointed to the sky in the west which was black with cloud. ‘The storm is moving east; you won’t get anything more until it’s over.’

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

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.’

‘I’m sorry, Alan,’ she said. ‘But a situation like this is so alien to me. I’ve never had to face anything like it.’

I waved towards the knoll. ‘I was doing a bit of thinking up there. It occurred to me that perhaps my assessment of everything has been wrong – that I’ve misjudged people and events.’

‘No!’ she said definitely. ‘You’ve made a strong case against Slade.’

‘And yet you would want me to give him the gadget?’

‘What is it to me?’ she cried. ‘Or to you? Let him have it when the time comes – let us go back to living our own lives.’

‘I’d like to do that very much,’ I said. ‘If people would let me.’ I looked up at the sun which was already high. ‘Come on; let’s be on our way.’

As we drove towards the fork I glanced at Elin’s set face and sighed. I could quite understand her attitude, which was that of any other Icelander. Long gone are the days when the Vikings were the scourge of Europe, and the Icelanders have lived in isolation for so many years that the affairs of the rest of the world must seem remote and alien.

Their only battle has been to regain their political independence from Denmark and that was achieved by peaceful negotiation. True, they are not so isolated that their economy is separated from world trade – far from it – but trade is trade and war, whether open or covert, is something for other crazy people and not for sober, sensible Icelanders.

They are so confident that no one can envy their country enough to seize it that they have no armed forces. After all, if the Icelanders with their thousand years of experience behind them still find it most difficult to scratch a living out of the country then who else in his right mind would want it?

A peaceful people with no first-hand knowledge of war. It was hardly surprising that Elin found the shenanigans in which I was involved distasteful and dirty. I didn’t feel too clean myself.

III

The track was bad.

It was bad right from where we had stopped and it got steadily worse after we had left the river and began to climb under Vatnajökull. I crunched down into low gear and went into four-wheel drive as the track snaked its way up the cliffs, doubling back on itself so often that I had a zany idea I might drive into my own rear. It was wide enough only for one vehicle and I crept around each corner hoping to God that no one was coming the other way.

Once there was a slide of rubble sideways and I felt the Land-Rover slip with rear wheels spinning towards the edge of a sheer drop. I poured on the juice and hoped for the best. The front wheels held their grip and hauled us to safety. Soon after that I stopped on a reasonably straight bit, and when I took my hands from the wheel they were wet with sweat.

I wiped them dry. ‘This is bloody tricky.’

‘Shall I drive for a while?’ asked Elin.

I shook my head. ‘Not with your bad shoulder. Besides, it’s not the driving – it’s the expectation of meeting someone around every corner.’ I looked over the edge of the cliff. ‘One of us would have to reverse out and that’s a flat impossibility.’ That was the best that could happen; the worst didn’t bear thinking about. No wonder this track was one way only.

‘I could walk ahead,’ Elin said. ‘I can check around the corners and guide you.’

‘That would take all day,’ I objected. ‘And we’ve a long way to go.’

She jerked her thumb downwards. ‘Better than going down there. Besides, we’re not moving at much more than a walking pace as it is. I can stand on the front bumper while we go on the straight runs and jump off at the corners.’

It was an idea that had its points but I didn’t like it much. ‘It won’t do your shoulder much good.’

‘I can use the other arm,’ she said impatiently, and opened the door to get out.

At one time in England there was a law to the effect that every mechanically propelled vehicle on the public highway must be preceded by a man on foot bearing a red flag to warn the unwary citizenry of the juggernaut bearing down upon them. I had never expected to be put in the same position, but that’s progress.

Elin would ride the bumper until we approached a corner and jump off as I slowed down. Slowing down was no trick at all, even going down hill; all I had to do was to take my foot off the accelerator. I had dropped into the lowest gear possible which, on a Land-Rover is something wondrous. That final drive ratio of about 40:1 gives a lot of traction and a lot of engine braking. Driven flat out when cranked as low as that the old girl would make all of nine miles an hour when delivering ninety-five horsepower – and a hell of a lot of traction was just what I needed on that Icelandic roller-coaster. But it was hell on fuel consumption.

So Elin would guide me around a corner and then ride the bumper to the next one. It sounds as though it might have been a slow job but curiously enough we seemed to make better time. We went on in this dot-and-carry-one manner for quite a long way and then Elin held up her hand and pointed, not down the track but away in the air to the right. As she started to hurry back I twisted my neck to see what she had seen.

A helicopter was coming over Trölladyngja like a grasshopper, the sun making a spinning disc of its rotor and striking reflections from the greenhouse which designers put on choppers for their own weird reasons. I’ve flown by helicopter on many occasions and on a sunny day you feel like a ripening tomato under glass.

But I wasn’t thinking about that right then because Elin had come up on the wrong side of the Land-Rover. ‘Get to the other side,’ I shouted. ‘Get under cover.’ I dived out of the door on the other side where the cliff face was.

She joined me. ‘Trouble?’

‘Could be.’ I held open the door and grabbed the carbine. ‘We’ve seen no vehicles so far, but two aircraft have been interested in us. That seems unnatural.’

I peered around the rear end of the Land-Rover, keeping the gun out of sight. The helicopter was still heading towards us and losing height. When it was quite close the nose came up and it bobbed and curtsied in the air as it came to a hovering stop about a hundred yards away. Then it came down like a lift until it was level with us.

I sweated and gripped the carbine. Sitting on the ledge we were like ducks in a shooting gallery, and all that was between us and any bullets was the Land-Rover. It’s a stoutly built vehicle but at that moment I wished it was an armoured car. The chopper ducked and swayed and regarded us interestedly, but I could see no human movement beyond the reflections echoed from the glass of the cockpit.

Then the fuselage began to rotate slowly until it was turned broadside on, and I let out my breath in a long sigh. Painted in large letters along the side was the single word – NAVY – and I relaxed, put down the carbine and went into the open. If there was one place where Kennikin would not be it was inside a US Navy Sikorsky LH-34 chopper.

I waved, and said to Elin, ‘It’s all right; you can come out.’

She joined me and we looked at the helicopter. A door in the side slid open and a crewman appeared wearing a white bone-dome helmet. He leaned out, holding on with one hand, and made a whirling motion with the other and then put his fist to the side of his face. He did this two or three times before I tumbled to what he was doing.

‘He wants us to use the telephone,’ I said. ‘A pity we can’t.’ I climbed on top of the Land-Rover and pointed as eloquently as I could to where the whip antenna had been. The crewman caught on fast; he waved and drew himself back inside and the door closed. Within a few seconds the helicopter reared up and gained height, the fuselage turning until it was pointing south-west, and then away it went until it disappeared into the distance with a fading roar.

I looked at Elin. ‘What do you suppose that was about?’

‘It seemed they want to talk to you. Perhaps the helicopter will land farther down the track.’

‘It certainly couldn’t land here,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’re right. I could do with a trip back to Keflavik in comfort.’ I looked into the thin air into which the chopper had vanished. ‘But nobody told me the Americans were in on this.’

Elin gave me a sidelong look. ‘In on what?’

‘I don’t know, damn it! I wish to hell I did.’ I retrieved the carbine. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

So on we went along that bastard of a track, round and round, up and down, but mostly up, until we had climbed right to the edge of Vatnajökull, next to the ice. The track could only go one way from there and that was away, so it turned at right-angles to the ice field and from then on the direction was mostly down. There was one more particularly nasty bit where we had to climb an outlying ridge of Trölladyngja but from then on the track improved and I called Elin aboard again.

I looked back the way we had come and was thankful for one thing; it had been a bright, sunny day. If there had been mist or much rain it would have been impossible. I checked the map and found we were through the one-way section for which I was heartily thankful.

Elin looked tired. She had done a lot of walking over rough ground and a lot of jumping up and down, and her face was drawn. I checked the time, and said, ‘We’ll feel better after we’ve eaten, and hot coffee would go down well. We’ll stop here a while.’

And that was a mistake.

I discovered it was a mistake two and a half hours later. We had rested for an hour and eaten, and then continued for an hour and a half until we came to a river which was brimming full. I pulled up at the water’s edge where the track disappeared into the river, and got out to look at the problem.

I estimated the depth and looked at the dry stones in the banks. ‘It’s still rising, damn it! If we hadn’t stopped we could have crossed an hour ago. Now, I’m not so sure.’

Vatnajökull is well named the ‘Water Glacier’. It dominates the river system of Eastern and Southern Iceland – a great reservoir of frozen water which, in slowly melting, covers the land with a network of rivers. I had been thankful it had been a sunny day, but now I was not so sure because sunny days mean full rivers. The best time to cross a glacier is at dawn when it is low. During the day, especially on a clear, sunny day, the melt water increases and the flow grows to a peak in the late afternoon. This particular river had not yet reached its peak but it was still too damned deep to cross.

Elin consulted the map. ‘Where are you making for? Today, I mean.’

‘I wanted to get to the main Sprengisandur route. That’s more or less a permanent track; once we’re on it getting to Geysir should be easy.’

She measured the distance. ‘Sixty kilometres,’ she said, and paused.

I saw her lips moving. ‘What’s the matter?’

She looked up, ‘I was counting,’ she said. ‘Sixteen rivers to cross in that sixty kilometres before we hit the Sprengisandur track.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’ I said. Normally in my travels in Iceland I had never been in a particular hurry to get anywhere. I had never counted the rivers and if an unfordable one had barred my path it was no great hardship to camp for a few hours until the level dropped. But the times were a-changing.

Elin said, ‘We’ll have to camp here.’

I looked at the river and knew I had to make up my mind quickly. ‘I think we’ll try to get over,’ I said.

Elin looked at me blankly. ‘But why? You won’t be able to cross the others until tomorrow.’

I tossed a pebble into the water. If it made any ripples I didn’t see them because they were obliterated by the swift flowing current. I said,’ “By the pricking of my thumbs, something evil this way comes.” ’ I swung around and pointed back along the track. ‘And I think it will come from that direction. If we have to stop I’d rather it was on the other side of this river.’

Elin looked doubtfully at the fast rip in the middle. ‘It will be dangerous.’

‘It might be more dangerous to stay here.’ I had an uneasy feeling which, maybe, was no more than the automatic revulsion against being caught in a position from which it was impossible to run. It was the reason I had left Askja, and it was the reason I wanted to cross this river. Perhaps it was just my tactical sense sharpening up after lying dormant for so long. I said, ‘And it’ll be more dangerous to cross in fifteen minutes, so let’s move it.’

I checked whether, in fact, the place where the track crossed the river was the most practicable. This turned out to be a waste of time but it had to be done. Anywhere upstream or downstream was impossible for various reasons, either deep water or high banks – so I concentrated on the ford and hoped the footing was sound.

Dropping again into the lowest gear possible I drove slowly into the river. The quick water swirled against the wheels and built up into waves which slapped against the side of the cab. Right in midstream the water was deep and any moment I expected to find it flowing under the door. More ominously the force of the water was so great that for one hair-raising second I felt the vehicle shift sideways and there was a curiously lifting lurch preparatory to being swept downstream.

I rammed my foot down and headed for shallower water and the opposite bank. The front wheels bit into the bed of the river but the back of the Land-Rover actually lifted and floated so that we got to the other side broadside on and climbed out awkwardly over a moss-crusted hummock of lava, streaming water like a shaggy dog just come from a swim.

I headed for the track and we bucked and lurched over the lava, and when we were finally on reasonably level ground I switched off the engine and looked at Elin. ‘I don’t think we’ll cross any more rivers today. That one was enough. Thank God for four-wheel drive.’

She was pale. ‘That was an unjustifiable risk,’ she said. ‘We could have been swept downstream.’

‘But we weren’t,’ I said, and switched on the engine again. ‘How far to the next river? We’ll camp there and cross at dawn.’

She consulted the map. ‘About two kilometres.’

So we pushed on and presently came to river number two which was also swollen with sun-melted water from Vatnajökull. I turned the vehicle and headed towards a jumble of rocks behind which I parked, out of sight of both the river and the track – again on good tactical principles.

I was annoyed. It was still not very late and there were several hours of daylight left which we could have used for mileage if it hadn’t been for those damned rivers. But there was nothing for it but to wait until the next day when the flow would drop. I said, ‘You look tired; you’ve had a hard day.’

Elin nodded dispiritedly and got out of the cab. I noticed her favouring her right arm, and said, ‘How is the shoulder?’

She grimaced. ‘Stiff.’

‘I’d better take a look at it.’

I put up the collapsible top of the Land-Rover and set water to boil, and Elin sat on a bunk and tried to take off her sweater. She couldn’t do it because she couldn’t raise her right arm. I helped her take it off but, gentle though I was, she gasped in pain. Reasonably enough, she wasn’t wearing a brassière under the sweater because the shoulder strap would have cut right into the wound.

I took off the pad and looked at her shoulder. The wound was angry and inflamed but there was no sign of any pus which would indicate infection. I said, ‘I told you that you’d begin to feel it. A graze like this can hurt like the devil, so don’t be too stiff-upper-lipped about it – I know how it feels.’

She crossed her arms across her breasts. ‘Has it ever happened to you?’

‘I was grazed across the ribs once,’ I said, as I poured warm water into a cup.

‘So that’s how you got that scar.’

‘Yours is worse because it’s across the trapezius muscle and you keep pulling it. You really should have your arm in a sling – I’ll see what I can find.’ I washed the wound and put on a new medicated dressing from the first-aid box, then helped her put on the sweater. ‘Where’s your scarf – the new woollen one?’

She pointed. ‘In that drawer.’

‘Then that’s your sling.’ I took out the scarf and fitted it to her arm so as to immobilize the shoulder as much as possible. ‘Now, you just sit there and watch me cook supper.’

I thought this was an appropriate time to open the goody box – the small collection of luxuries we kept for special occasions. We both needed cheering up and there’s nothing like a first-class meal under the belt to lift the spirits. I don’t know if Mr Fortnum and Mr Mason are aware of the joy they bring to sojourners in far-flung lands, but after the oyster soup, the whole roast quails and the pears pickled in cognac I felt almost impelled to write them a letter of appreciation.

The colour came back into Elin’s cheeks as she ate. I insisted that she didn’t use her right hand and she didn’t have to – the dark, tender flesh fell away from the quail at the touch of a fork and she managed all right. I made coffee and we accompanied it with brandy which I carried for medicinal purposes.

As she sipped her coffee she sighed. ‘Just like old times, Alan.’

‘Yes,’ I said lazily. I was feeling much better myself. ‘But you’d better sleep. We make an early start tomorrow.’ I calculated it would be light enough to move at three a.m. when the rivers would also be at their lowest. I leaned over and took the binoculars.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Just to have a look around. You go to bed.’

Her eyes flickered sleepily. ‘I am tired,’ she admitted.

That wasn’t surprising. We’d been on the run for a long time, and bouncing about in the Óbyggdir wasn’t helping – we’d managed to fall into every damned pothole on the track. I said, ‘Get your head down – I won’t be long.’

I hung the lanyard of the binoculars around my neck, opened the back door and dropped to the ground. I was about to walk away when I turned back on impulse, reached into the cab and picked up the carbine. I don’t think Elin saw me do that.

First I inspected the river we had to cross. It was flowing well but exposed wet stones showed that the level was already dropping. By dawn the crossing would be easy, and we should be able to get across all the other rivers that lay between us and Sprengisandur before the increased flow made it impossible.

I slung the carbine over my shoulder and walked back along the track towards the river we had crossed which lay a little over a mile away. I approached cautiously but everything was peaceful. The river flowed and chuckled and there was nothing in sight to cause alarm. I checked the distant view with the binoculars, then sat down with my back against a mossy boulder, lit a cigarette and started to think.

I was worried about Elin’s shoulder; not that there was anything particularly alarming about its condition, but a doctor would do a better job than I could, and this bouncing about the wilderness wasn’t helping. It might be difficult explaining to a doctor how Elin had come by an unmistakable gunshot wound, but accidents do happen and I thought I could get away with it by talking fast.

I stayed there for a couple of hours, smoking and thinking and looking at the river, and at the end of that time I had come up with nothing new despite my brain beating. The added factor of the American helicopter was a piece of the jigsaw that wouldn’t fit anywhere. I looked at my watch and found it was after nine o’clock, so I buried all the cigarette stubs, picked up the carbine and prepared to go back.

As I stood up I saw something that made me tense – a plume of dust in the far distance across the river. I laid down the carbine and lifted the glasses and saw the little dot of a vehicle at the head of that feather of dust like a high-flying jet at the head of a contrail. I looked around – there was no cover near the river but about two hundred yards back a spasm of long gone energy had heaved up the lava into a ridge which I could hide behind. I ran for it.

The vehicle proved to be a Willys jeep – as good for this country in its way as my Land-Rover. It slowed as it came to the river, nosed forward and came to a stop at the water’s edge. The night was quiet and I heard the click of the door handle as a man got out and walked forward to look at the water. He turned and said something to the driver and, although I could not hear the words, I knew he was speaking neither Icelandic nor English.

He spoke Russian.

The driver got out, looked at the water and shook his head. Presently there were four of them standing there, and they seemed to be having an argument. Another jeep came up behind and more men got out to study the problem until there were eight in all – two jeeps full. One of them, the one who made the decisive gestures and who seemed to be the boss, I thought I recognized.

I lifted the glasses and his face sprang into full view in the dimming light. Elin had been wrong; crossing the river had not been an unjustifiable risk, and the justification lay in the face I now saw. The scar was still there, running from the end of the right eyebrow to the corner of the mouth, and the eyes were still grey and hard as stones. The only change in him was that his close-cropped hair was no longer black but a grizzled grey and his face was puffier with incipient wattles forming on his neck.

Kennikin and I were both four years older but I think I may have worn better than he had.

FIVE

I put my hand out to the carbine and then paused. The light was bad and getting worse, the gun was strange and it hadn’t the barrel to reach out and knock a man down at a distance. I estimated the range at a shade under three hundred yards and I knew that if I hit anyone at that range and in that light it would be by chance and not by intention.

If I had my own gun I could have dropped Kennikin as easily as dropping a deer. I have put a soft-nosed bullet into a deer and it has run for half a mile before dropping dead, and that with an exit wound big enough to put your fist in. A man can’t do that – his nervous system is too delicate and can’t stand the shock.

But I hadn’t my own rifle, and there was no percentage in opening fire at random. That would only tell Kennikin I was close, and it might be better if he didn’t know. So I let my fingers relax from the carbine and concentrated on watching what was going to happen next.

The arguing had stopped with Kennikin’s arrival, and I knew why, having worked with him. He had no time for futile blathering; he would accept your facts – and God help you if they were wrong – and then he would make the decisions. He was busily engaged in making one now.

I smiled as I saw someone point out the tracks of the Land-Rover entering the water and then indicate the other bank of the river. There were no tracks where we had left the water because we had been swept sideways a little, and that must have been puzzling to anyone who hadn’t seen it happen.

The man waved downstream eloquently but Kennikin shook his head. He wasn’t buying that one. Instead he said something, snapping his fingers impatiently, and someone else rushed up with a map. He studied it and then pointed off to the right and four of the men got into a jeep, reversed up the track, and then took off across country in a bumpy ride.

That made me wrinkle my brows until I remembered there was a small group of lakes over in that direction called Gaesavötn. If Kennikin expected me to be camping at Gaesavötn he’d draw a blank, but it showed how thorough and careful he was.

The crew from the other jeep got busy erecting a camp just off the track, putting up tents rather inexpertly. One of them went to Kennikin with a vacuum flask and poured out a cup of steaming hot coffee which he offered obsequiously. Kennikin took it and sipped it while still standing at the water’s edge looking across the impassable river. He seemed to be staring right into my eyes.

I lowered the glasses and withdrew slowly and cautiously, being careful to make no sound. I climbed down from the lava ridge and then slung the carbine and headed back to the Land-Rover at a fast clip, and checked to make sure there were no tyre marks to show where we had left the track. I didn’t think Kennikin would have a man swim the river – he could lose a lot of men that way – but it was best to make sure we weren’t stumbled over too easily.

Elin was asleep. She lay on her left side, buried in her sleeping bag, and I was thankful that she always slept quietly and with no blowing or snoring. I let her sleep; there was no reason to disturb her and ruin her night. We weren’t going anywhere, and neither was Kennikin. I switched on my pocket torch shading it with my hand to avoid waking her, and rummaged in a drawer until I found the housewife, from which I took a reel of black thread.

I went back to the track and stretched a line of thread right across it about a foot from the ground, anchoring each end by lumps of loose lava. If Kennikin came through during the night I wanted to know it, no matter how stealthily he went about it. I didn’t want to cross the river in the morning only to run into him on the other side.

Then I went down to the river and looked at it. The water level was still dropping and it might have been barely feasible to cross there and then had the light been better. But I wouldn’t risk it without using the headlights and I couldn’t do that because they’d certainly show in the sky. Kennikin’s mob wasn’t all that far away.

I dropped into my berth fully clothed. I didn’t expect to sleep under the circumstances but nevertheless I set the alarm on my wrist watch for two a.m. And that was the last thing I remember until it buzzed like a demented mosquito and woke me up.

II

We were ready to move at two-fifteen. As soon as the alarm buzzed I woke Elin, ruthlessly disregarding her sleepy protests. As soon as she knew how close Kennikin was she moved fast. I said, ‘Get dressed quickly. I’m going to have a look around.’

The black thread was still in place which meant that no vehicle had gone through. Any jeep moving at night would have to stick to the track; it was flatly impossible to cross the lava beds in the darkness. True, someone on foot might have gone through, but I discounted that.

The water in the river was nice and low and it would be easy to cross. As I went back I looked in the sky towards the east; already the short northern night was nearly over and I was determined to cross the river at the earliest opportunity and get as far ahead of Kennikin as I could.

Elin had different ideas. ‘Why not stay here and let him get ahead? Just let him go past. He’d have to go a long way before he discovered he’s chasing nothing.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We know he has two jeeps, but we don’t know if he has more. It could happen that, if we let him get ahead, we could be the meat in a sandwich and that might be uncomfortable. We cross now.’

Starting an engine quietly is not easy. I stuffed blankets around the generator in an attempt to muffle that unmistakable rasp, the engine caught and purred sweetly, and I took the blankets away. And I was very light-footed on the accelerator as we drove towards the river. We got across easily, although making more noise than I cared for, and away we went towards the next river.

I told Elin to keep a sharp eye to the rear while I concentrated on moving as fast as possible compatible with quietness. In the next four kilometres we crossed two more rivers and then there was a long stretch where the track swung north temporarily, and I opened up. We were now far enough away from Kennikin to make speed more important than silence.

Sixteen rivers in sixty kilometres, Elin had said. Not counting the time spent in crossing rivers we were now averaging a bone-jarring twenty-five kilometres an hour – too fast for comfort in this country – and I estimated we would get to the main Sprengisandur track in about four hours. It actually took six hours because some of the rivers were bastards.

In reaching the Sprengisandur track we had crossed the watershed and all the rivers from now on would be flowing south and west instead of north and east. We hit the track at eight-thirty, and I said, ‘Breakfast. Climb in the back and get something ready.’

‘You’re not stopping?’

‘Christ, no! Kennikin will have been on the move for hours. There’s no way of knowing how close he is and I’ve no urgent inclination to find out the hard way. Bread and cheese and beer will do fine.’

So we ate on the move and stopped only once, at ten o’clock, to fill up the tank from the last full jerrycan. While we were doing that up popped our friend of the previous day, the US Navy helicopter. It came from the north this time, not very low, and floated over us without appearing to pay us much attention.

I watched it fly south, and Elin said, ‘I’m puzzled about that.’

‘So am I,’ I said.

‘Not in the same way that I am,’ she said. ‘American military aircraft don’t usually overfly the country.’ She was frowning.

‘Now you come to mention it, that is odd.’ There’s a certain amount of tension in Iceland about the continuing American military presence at Keflavik. A lot of Icelanders take the view that it’s an imposition and who can blame them? The American authorities are quite aware of this tension and try to minimize it, and the American Navy in Iceland tries to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Flaunting military aircraft in Icelandic skies was certainly out of character.

I shrugged and dismissed the problem, concentrating on getting the last drop out of the jerrycan, and then we carried on with not a sign of anything on our tail. We were now on the last lap, running down the straight, if rough, track between the River Thjórsá and the ridge of Búdarháls with the main roads only seventy kilometres ahead, inasmuch as any roads in Iceland can be so described.

But even a lousy Icelandic road would be perfection when compared with the tracks of the Óbyggdir, especially when we ran into trouble with mud. This is one of the problems of June when the frozen earth of winter melts into a gelatinous car trap. Because we were in a Land-Rover it didn’t stop us but it slowed us down considerably, and the only consolation I had was that Kennikin would be equally hampered when he hit the stuff.

At eleven o’clock the worst happened – a tyre blew. It was a front tyre and I fought the wheel as we jolted to a stop. ‘Let’s make this fast,’ I said, and grabbed the wheel brace.

If we had to have a puncture it wasn’t a bad place to have it. The footing was level enough to take the jack without slipping and there was no mud at that point. I jacked up the front of the Land-Rover and got busy on the wheel with the brace. Because of Elin’s shoulder she wasn’t of much use in this kind of job. so I said. ‘What about making coffee – we could do with something hot.’

I took the wheel off, rolled it away and replaced it with the spare. The whole operation took a little under ten minutes, time we couldn’t afford – not there and then. Once we were farther south we could lose ourselves on a more-or-less complex road network, but these wilderness tracks were too restricted for my liking.

I tightened the last wheel nut and then looked to see what had caused a blowout and to put the wheel back into its rack. What I saw made my blood run cold. I fingered the jagged hole in the thick tyre and looked up at the Búdarháls ridge which dominated the track.

There was only one thing that could make a hole like that – a bullet. And somewhere up on the ridge, hidden in some crevice, was a sniper – and even then I was probably in his sights.

III

How in hell did Kennikin get ahead of me? That was my first bitter thought. But idle thoughts were no use and action was necessary.

I heaved up the wheel with its ruined tyre on to the bonnet and screwed it down securely. While I rotated the wheel brace I glanced covertly at the ridge. There was a lot of open ground before the ridge heaved itself into the air – at least two hundred yards – and the closest a sniper could have been was possibly four hundred yards and probably more.

Any man who could put a bullet into a tyre at over four hundred yards – a quarter mile – was a hell of a good shot. So good that he could put a bullet into me any time he liked – so why the devil hadn’t he? I was in plain view, a perfect target, and yet no bullets had come my way. I tightened down the last nut and turned my back to the ridge, and felt a prickling feeling between my shoulder blades – that was where the bullet would hit me if it came.

I jumped to the ground and put away the brace and jack, concentrating on doing the natural thing. The palms of my hands were slippery with sweat. I went to the back of the Land-Rover and looked in at the open door. ‘How’s the coffee coming?’

‘Just ready,’ said Elin.

I climbed in and sat down. Sitting in that confined space gave a comforting illusion of protection, but that’s all it was – an illusion. For the second time I wished the Land-Rover had been an armoured car. From where I was sitting I could inspect the slopes of the ridge without being too obvious about it and I made the most of the opportunity.

Nothing moved among those red and grey rocks. Nobody stood up and waved or cheered. If anyone was still up there he was keeping as quiet as a mouse which, of course, was the correct thing to do. If you pump a bullet at someone you’d better scrunch yourself up small in case he starts shooting back.

But was anybody still up there? I rather thought there was. Who in his right mind would shoot a hole in the tyre of a car and then just walk away? So he was still up there, waiting and watching. But if he was still there why hadn’t he nailed me? It didn’t make much sense – unless he was just supposed to immobilize me.

I stared unseeingly at Elin who was topping up a jar with sugar. If that was so, then Kennikin had men coming in from both sides. It wouldn’t be too hard to arrange if he knew where I was – radio communication is a wonderful thing. That character up on the ridge would have been instructed to stop me so that Kennikin could catch up; and that meant he wanted me alive.

I wondered what would happen if I got into the driving seat and took off again. The odds were that another bullet would rip open another tyre. It would be easier this time on a sitting target. I didn’t take the trouble to find out – there was a limit to the number of spare tyres I carried, and the limit had already been reached.

Hoping that my chain of reasoning was not too shaky I began to make arrangements to get out from under that gun. I took Lindholm’s cosh from under the mattress where I had concealed it and put it into my pocket, then I said, ‘Let’s go and … ’ My voice came out as a hoarse croak and I cleared my throat. ‘Let’s have coffee outside.’

Elin looked up in surprise. ‘I thought we were in a hurry.’

‘We’ve been making good time,’ I said. ‘I reckon we’re far enough ahead to earn a break. I’ll take the coffee pot and the sugar; you bring the cups.’ I would have dearly loved to have taken the carbine but that would have been too obvious; an unsuspecting man doesn’t drink his coffee fully armed.

I jumped out of the rear door and Elin handed out the coffee pot and the sugar jar which I set on the rear bumper before helping her down. Her right arm was still in the sling but she could carry the cups and spoons in her left hand. I picked up the coffee pot and waved it in the general direction of the ridge. ‘Let’s go over there at the foot of the rocks.’ I made off in that direction without giving her time to argue.

We trudged over the open ground towards the ridge. I had the coffee pot in one hand and the sugar jar in the other, the picture of innocence. I also had the sgian dubh tucked into my left stocking and a cosh in my pocket, but those didn’t show. As we got nearer the ridge a miniature cliff reared up and I thought our friend up on top might be getting worried. Any moment from now he would be losing sight of us, and he might just lean forward a little to keep us in view.

I turned as though to speak to Elin and then turned back quickly, glancing upwards as I did so. There was no one to be seen but I was rewarded by the glint of something – a reflection that flickered into nothing. It might have been the sun reflecting off a surface of glassy lava, but I didn’t think so. Lava doesn’t jump around when left to its own devices – not after it has cooled off, that is.

I marked the spot and went on, not looking up again, and we came to the base of the cliff which was about twenty feet high. There was a straggly growth of birch; gnarled trees all of a foot high. In Iceland bonsai grow naturally and I’m surprised the Icelanders don’t work up an export trade to Japan. I found a clear space, set down the coffee pot and the sugar jar, then sat down and pulled up my trouser leg to extract the knife.

Elin came up. ‘What are you doing?’

I said, ‘Now don’t jump out of your pants, but there’s a character on the ridge behind us who just shot a hole in that tyre.’

Elin stared at me wordlessly. I said, ‘He can’t see us here, but I don’t think he’s worried very much about that. All he wants to do is to stop us until Kennikin arrives – and he’s doing it very well. As long as he can see the Land-Rover he knows we aren’t far away.’ I tucked the knife into the waistband of my trousers – it’s designed for a fast draw only when wearing a kilt.

Elin sank to her knees. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m positive. You don’t get a natural puncture like that in the side wall of a new tyre.’ I stood up and looked along the ridge. ‘I’m going to winkle out that bastard; I think I know where he is.’ I pointed to a crevice at the end of the cliff, a four-foot high crack in the rock. ‘I want you to get in there and wait. Don’t move until you hear me call – and make bloody sure it is me.’

‘And what if you don’t come back?’ she said bleakly.

She was a realist. I looked at her set face and said deliberately, ‘In that case, if nothing else happens, you stay where you are until dark, then make a break for the Land-Rover and get the hell out of here. On the other hand, if Kennikin pitches up, try to keep out of his way – and do that by keeping out of sight.’ I shrugged. ‘But I’ll try to get back.’

‘Do you have to go at all?’

I sighed. ‘We’re stuck here, Elin. As long as that joker can keep the Land-Rover covered we’re stuck. What do you want me to do? Wait here until Kennikin arrives and then just give myself up?’

‘But you’re not armed?’

I patted the hilt of the knife. ‘I’ll make out. Now, just do as I say.’ I escorted her to the cleft and saw her inside. It can’t have been very comfortable; it was a foot and a half wide by four feet high and so she had to crouch. But there are worse things than being uncomfortable.

Then I contemplated what I had to do. The ridge was seamed by gullies cut by water into the soft rock and they offered a feasible way of climbing without being seen. What I wanted to do was to get above the place where I had seen the sudden glint. In warfare – and this was war – he who holds the high ground has the advantage.

I set out, moving to the left and sticking close in to the rocks. There was a gully twenty yards along which I rejected because I knew it petered out not far up the ridge. The next one was better because it went nearly to the top, so I went into it and began to climb.

Back in the days when I was being trained I went to mountain school and my instructor said something very wise. ‘Never follow a watercourse or a stream, either uphill or downhill,’ he said. The reasoning was good. Water will take the quickest way down any hill and the quickest way is usually the steepest. Normally one sticks to the bare hillside and steers clear of ravines. Abnormally, on the other hand, one scrambles up a damned steep, slippery, waterworn crack in the rock or one gets one’s head blown off.

The sides of the ravine at the bottom of the ridge were about ten feet high, so there was no danger of being seen. But higher up the ravine was shallower and towards the end it was only about two feet deep and I was snaking upwards on my belly. When I had gone as far as I could I reckoned I was higher than the sniper, so I cautiously pushed my head around a pitted chunk of lava and assessed the situation.

Far below me on the track, and looking conspicuously isolated, was the Land-Rover. About two hundred feet to the right and a hundred feet below was the place where I thought the sniper was hiding. I couldn’t see him because of the boulders which jutted through the sandy skin of the ridge. That suited me; if I couldn’t see him then he couldn’t see me, and that screen of boulders was just what I needed to get up close.

But I didn’t rush at it. It was in my mind that there might be more than one man. Hell, there could be a dozen scattered along the top of the ridge for all I knew! I just stayed very still and got back my breath, and did a careful survey of every damned rock within sight.

Nothing moved, so I wormed my way out of cover of the ravine and headed towards the boulders, still on my belly. I got there and rested again, listening carefully. All I heard was the faraway murmur of the river in the distance. I moved again, going upwards and around the clump of boulders, and now I was holding the cosh.

I pushed my head around a rock and saw them, fifty feet below in a hollow in the hillside. One was lying down with a rifle pushed before him, the barrel resting on a folded jacket; the other sat farther back tinkering with a walkie-talkie. He had an unlighted cigarette in his mouth.

I withdrew my head and considered. One man I might have tackled – two together were going to be tricky, especially without a gun. I moved carefully and found a better place from which to observe and where I would be less conspicuous – two rocks came almost together but not quite, and I had a peephole an inch across.

The man with the rifle was very still and very patient. I could imagine that he was an experienced hunter and had spent many hours on hillsides like this waiting for his quarry to move within range. The other man was more fidgety; he eased his buttocks on the rock on which he was sitting, he scratched, he slapped at an insect which settled on his leg, and he fiddled with the walkie-talkie.

At the bottom of the ridge I saw something moving and held my breath. The man with the rifle saw it, too, and I could see the slight tautening of his muscles as he tensed. It was Elin. She came out of cover from under the cliff and walked towards the Land-Rover.

I cursed to myself and wondered what the hell she thought she was doing. The man with the rifle settled the butt firmly into his shoulder and took aim, following her all the way with his eye glued to the telescopic sight. If he pulled that trigger I would take my chances and jump the bastard there and then.

Elin got to the Land-Rover and climbed inside. Within a minute she came out again and began to walk back towards the cliff. Half-way there she called out and tossed something into the air. I was too far away to see what it was but I thought it was a packet of cigarettes. The joker with the rifle would be sure of what it was because he was equipped with one of the biggest telescopic sights I had ever seen.

Elin vanished from sight below and I let out my breath. She had deliberately play-acted to convince these gunmen that I was still there below, even if out of sight. And it worked, too. The rifleman visibly relaxed and turned over and said something to the other man. I couldn’t hear what was said because he spoke in low tones, but the fidget laughed loudly.

He was having trouble with the walkie-talkie. He extended the antenna, clicked switches and turned knobs, and then tossed it aside on to the moss. He spoke to the rifleman and pointed upwards, and the rifleman nodded. Then he stood up and turned to climb towards me.

I noted the direction he was taking, then turned my head to find a place to ambush him. There was a boulder just behind me about three feet high, so I pulled away from my peephole and dropped behind it in a crouch and took a firm hold of the cosh. I could hear him coming because he wasn’t making much attempt to move quietly. His boots crunched on the ground and once there was a flow of gravel as he slipped and I heard a muttered curse. Then there was a change in the light as his shadow fell across me, and I rose up behind him and hit him.

There’s quite a bit of nonsense talked about hitting men on the head. From some accounts – film and TV script writers – it’s practically as safe as an anaesthetic used in an operating theatre; all that happens is a brief spell of unconsciousness followed by a headache not worse than a good hangover. A pity it isn’t so because if it were the hospital anaesthetists would be able to dispense with the elaborate equipment with which they are now lumbered in favour of the time-honoured blunt instrument.

Unconsciousness is achieved by imparting a sharp acceleration to the skull bone so that it collides with the contents – the brain. This results in varying degrees of brain damage ranging from slight concussion to death, and there is always lasting damage, however slight. The blow must be quite heavy and, since men vary, a blow that will make one man merely dizzy will kill another. The trouble is that until you’ve administered the blow you don’t know what you’ve done.

I wasn’t in any mood for messing about so I hit this character hard. His knees buckled under him and he collapsed, and I caught him before he hit the ground. I eased him down and turned him so that he lay on his back. A mangled cigar sagged sideways from his mouth, half bitten through, and blood trickled from the cigar butt to show he had bitten his tongue. He was still breathing.

I patted his pockets and came upon the familiar hard shape, and drew forth an automatic pistol – a Smith & Wesson .38, the twin to the one I had taken from Lindholm. I checked the magazine to see if it was full and then worked the action to put a bullet into the breech.

The collapsed figure at my feet wasn’t going to be much use to anybody even if he did wake up, so I didn’t have to worry about him. All I had to do now was to take care of Daniel Boone – the man with the rifle. I returned to my peephole to see what he was doing.

He was doing precisely what he had been doing ever since I had seen him – contemplating the Land-Rover with inexhaustible patience. I stood up and walked into the hollow, gun first. I didn’t worry overmuch about keeping quiet; speed was more important than quietness and I reckoned he might be more alarmed if I pussyfooted around than if I crunched up behind him.

He didn’t even turn his head. All he did was to say in a flat Western drawl, ‘You forgotten something, Joe?’

I caught my jaw before it sagged too far. A Russian I expected; an American I didn’t. But this was no time to worry about nationalities – a man who throws bullets at you is automatically a bastard, and whether he’s a Russian bastard or an American bastard makes little difference. I just said curtly, ‘Turn around, but leave the rifle where it is or you’ll have a hole in you.’

He went very still, but the only part of him that he turned was his head. He had china-blue eyes in a tanned, narrow face and he looked ideal for type-casting as Pop’s eldest son in a TV horse opera. He also looked dangerous. ‘I’ll be goddamned!’ he said softly.

‘You certainly will be if you don’t take your hands off that rifle,’ I said. ‘Spread your arms out as though you were being crucified.’

He looked at the pistol in my hand and reluctantly extended his arms. A man prone in that position finds it difficult to get up quickly. ‘Where’s Joe?’ he asked.

‘He’s gone beddy-byes.’ I walked over to him and put the muzzle of the pistol to the nape of his neck and I felt him shudder. That didn’t mean much; it didn’t mean he was afraid – I shudder involuntarily when Elin kisses me on the nape of the neck. ‘Just keep quiet,’ I advised, and picked up the rifle.

I didn’t have time to examine it closely then, but I did afterwards, and it was certainly some weapon. It had a mixed ancestry and probably had started life as a Browning, but a good gunsmith had put in a lot of time in reworking it, giving it such refinements as a sculptured stock with a hole in it to put your thumb, and other fancy items. It was a bit like the man said, ‘I have my grandfather’s axe – my father replaced the blade and I gave it a new haft.’

What it had ended up as was the complete long-range assassin’s kit. It was bolt action because it was a gun for a man who picks his target and who can shoot well enough not to want to send a second bullet after the first in too much of a hurry. It was chambered for a .375 magnum load, a heavy 300 grain bullet with a big charge behind it – high velocity, low trajectory. This rifle in good hands could reach out half a mile and snuff out a man’s life if the light was good and the air still.

To help the aforesaid good hands was a fantastic telescopic sight – a variable-powered monster with a top magnification of 30. To use it when fully racked out would need a man with no nerves – and thus no tremble – or a solid bench rest. The scope was equipped with its own range-finding system, a multiple mounting of graduated dots on the vertical cross hair for various ranges, and was sighted in at five hundred yards.

It was a hell of a lot of gun.

I straightened and rested the muzzle of the rifle lightly against my friend’s spine. ‘That’s your gun you can feel,’ I said. ‘You don’t need me to tell you what would happen if I pulled the trigger.’

His head was turned sideways and I saw a light film of sweat coating the tan. He didn’t need to let his imagination work because he was a good craftsman and knew his tools enough to know what would happen – over 5,000 foot-pounds of energy would blast him clean in two.

I said, ‘Where’s Kennikin?’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t be childish,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask you again – where’s Kennikin?’

‘I don’t know any Kennikin,’ he said in a muffled voice. He found difficulty in speaking because the side of his face was pressed against the ground.

‘Think again.’

‘I tell you I don’t know him. All I was doing was following orders.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You took a shot at me.’

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘At your tyre. You’re still alive, aren’t you? I could have knocked you off any time.’

I looked down the slope at the Land-Rover. That was true; it would be like a Bisley champion shooting tin ducks at a fairground. ‘So you were instructed to stop me. Then what?’

‘Then nothing.’

I increased the pressure on his spine slightly. ‘You can do better than that.’

‘I was to wait until someone showed up and then quit and go home.’

‘And who was the someone?’

‘I don’t know – I wasn’t told.’

That sounded crazy; it was even improbable enough to be true. I said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘John Smith.’

I smiled and said, ‘All right, Johnny; start crawling – backwards and slowly. And if I see more than half an inch of daylight between your belly and the ground I’ll let you have it.’

He wriggled back slowly and painfully away from the edge and down into the hollow, and then I stopped him. Much as I would have liked to carry on the interrogation I had to put an end to it because time was wasting. I said, ‘Now, Johnny; I don’t want you to make any sudden moves because I’m a very nervous man, so just keep quite still.’

I came up on his blind side, lifted the butt of the rifle and brought it down on the back of his head. It was no way to treat such a good gun but it was the only thing I had handy. The gun butt was considerably harder than the cosh and I regretfully decided I had fractured his skull. Anyway, he wouldn’t be causing me any more trouble.

I walked over to pick up the jacket he had been using as a gun rest. It was heavy and I expected to find a pistol in the pocket, but the weight was caused by an unbroken box of rounds for the rifle. Next to the jacket was an open box. Both were unlabelled.

I checked the rifle. The magazine was designed to hold five rounds and contained four, there was one in the breech ready to pop off, and there were nineteen rounds in the opened box. Mr Smith was a professional; he had filled the magazine, jacked one into the breech, and then taken out the magazine and stuffed another round into it so he would have six rounds in hand instead of five. Not that he needed them – he had bust the tyre on a moving vehicle at over four hundred yards with just one shot.

He was a professional all right, but his name wasn’t Smith because he carried an American passport in the name of Wendell George Fleet. He also carried a pass that would get him into the more remote corners of Keflavik Naval Base, the parts which the public are discouraged from visiting. He didn’t carry a pistol; a rifleman as good as he usually despises handguns.

I put the boxes of ammunition into my pocket where they weighed heavy, and I stuck Joe’s automatic pistol into the waistband of my trousers, unloading it first so I didn’t do a Kennikin on myself. Safety catches are not all that reliable and a lot of men have ruined themselves for their wives by acting like a character in a TV drama.

I went to see how Joe was doing and found that he was still asleep and that his name wasn’t even Joe according to his passport. It turned out he was Patrick Aloysius McCarthy. I regarded him speculatively; he looked more Italian than Irish to me. Probably all the names were phoney, just as Buchner who wasn’t Graham turned out to be Philips.

McCarthy carried two spare magazines for the Smith & Wesson, both of them full, which I confiscated. I seemed to be building up quite an armoury on this expedition – from a little knife to a high-powered rifle in one week wasn’t doing too bad. Next up the scale ought to be a burp gun or possibly a fully-fledged machine-gun. I wondered how long it would take me to graduate to something really lethal, such as an Atlas ICBM.

McCarthy had been going somewhere when I thumped him. He had been trying to contact someone by radio, but the walkie-talkie had been on the blink so he’d decided to walk, and that put whoever it was not very far away. I stared up towards the top of the ridge and decided to take a look over the next rise. It was a climb of perhaps two hundred yards and when I poked my head carefully over the top I caught my breath in surprise.

The yellow US Navy helicopter was parked about four hundred yards away and two crewmen and a civilian sat in front of it, talking casually. I lifted Fleet’s rifle and looked at them through the big scope at maximum magnification. The crewmen were unimportant but I thought I might know the civilian. I didn’t, but I memorized his face for future reference.

For a moment I was tempted to tickle them up with the rifle but I shelved the idea. It would be better to depart quietly and without fuss. I didn’t want that chopper with me the rest of the way, so I withdrew and went back down the hill. I had been away quite a while and Elin would be becoming even more worried, if that were possible.

From where I was I had a good view along the track so I looked to see if Kennikin was yet in sight. He was! Through the scope I saw a minute black dot in the far distance crawling along the track, and I estimated that the jeep was about three miles away. There was a lot of mud along there and I didn’t think he’d be making much more than ten miles an hour, so that put him about fifteen minutes behind.

I went down the hillside fast.

Elin was squashed into the crack in the rock but she came out when I called. She ran over and grabbed me as though she wanted to check whether I was all in one piece and she was laughing and crying at the same time. I disentangled myself from her arms. ‘Kennikin’s not far behind; let’s move.’

I set out towards the Land-Rover at a dead run, holding Elin’s arm, but she dragged free. ‘The coffee pot!’

‘The hell with it!’ Women are funny creatures; this was not a time to be thinking of domestic economy. I grabbed her arm again and dragged her along.

Thirty seconds later I had the engine going and we were bouncing along the track too fast for either safety or comfort while I decided which potholes it would be safe to put the front wheels into. Decisions, decisions, nothing but bloody decisions – and if I decided wrongly we’d have a broken half-axle or be stuck in the mud and the jig would be up.

We bounced like hell all the way to the Tungnaá River and the traffic got thicker – one car passed us going the other way, the first we had seen since being in the Óbyggdir. That was bad because Kennikin was likely to stop it and ask the driver if he had seen a long wheelbase Land-Rover lately. It was one thing to chase me through the wilderness without knowing where I was, and quite another to know that I was actually within spitting distance. The psychological spur would stimulate his adrenal gland just that much more.

On the other hand, seeing the car cheered me because it meant that the car transporter over the Tungnaá would be on our side of the river and there would be no waiting. I have travelled a lot in places where water crossings are done by ferry – there are quite a few in Scotland – and it’s a law of nature that the ferry is always on the other side when you arrive at the water’s edge. But that wouldn’t be so this time.

Not that this was a ferry. You cross the Tungnaá by means of a contraption – a platform slung on an overhead cable. You drive your car on to the platform and winch yourself across, averting your eyes from the white water streaming below. According to the Ferdahandbokin, which every traveller in the Óbyggdir ought to consult, extreme care is necessary for people not acquainted with the system. Personally, I don’t recommend it for those with queasy stomachs who have to cross in a high wind.

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