Running Blind / The Freedom Trap (5 page)

‘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.

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.’

‘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?’

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.