Arnaldur Indriðason: Operation Napoleon

She sat lost in a reverie over her coffee, leafing absently through the morning paper until it was time to leave for work. There was not much in the news. The national bank was in the process of being privatised and the minister for trade and industry was quoted as dismissing the need for legislation to diversify share ownership. The site of a Viking Age farm had been uncovered in the west of the country, and the Russian president Boris Yeltsin was due to celebrate his sixty-eighth birthday. It was quarter to nine when she left home. Sunrise was still nearly two hours off and the snow was falling thickly. She toiled slowly through the drifts. The traffic was heavy; people were in a hurry to get to work once they had dropped off their youngest children at the day nursery and seen the older ones off to school. The snow muffled the noise of the cars but a thick haze of exhaust fumes hung over the city. Kristín did not have a car; she preferred to walk, especially when the snow was deep like this. Distances were short in Reykjavík compared to California where she used to live; there you could talk about distance. Reykjavík had a population of only just over a hundred thousand but there were times when the locals behaved as if they lived in a giant metropolis, refusing to go anywhere without a car, even if it took only five minutes on foot.

On arriving at the office she was informed that the chairman of the Trade Council was waiting to see her, together with the foreign minister’s aide. What now? she wondered, bracing herself for the worst. Once the men had taken a seat in her office, they explained to Kristín that the man with the portable freezing plants, Runólfur Zóphaníasson, had made threats against the chairman of the Trade Council, which were considered serious enough for the police to be notified. He had called the chairman late last night, apparently sober but raging about the advice he had received in connection with his dealings with Russia. During the call, he had threatened the chairman with physical violence and there was reason to believe he was in earnest.

‘But what does this have to do with me?’ Kristín asked, after they had filled her in.

‘He mentioned you specifically by name,’ explained the foreign minister’s aide, a young party member with political ambitions. ‘I gather he wasn’t exactly in good humour when he stormed out of here yesterday.’

‘He did nothing but hurl abuse as usual so I chucked him out. He threw a chair at the wall. I ignored his threats, and that made him even madder. What kind of headcase is he anyway? He thinks there’s some kind of conspiracy going on. Here at the ministry.’

‘I had the police run a check on him,’ said the chairman, a plump man, with a small, kindly face. ‘Runólfur has done a lot of wheeling and dealing in his time but nothing illegal, as far as they can tell. They went and had a word with him and he promised to behave, claimed he’d just lost his temper for a moment, but they warned us to be careful anyway. They don’t put much faith in his word. I won’t repeat the language he used about you in my hearing. Apparently he’s furious about losing a large amount of money in Russia and he blames us for it.’

‘I don’t really know the ins and outs of the case,’ Kristín said, ‘though I can assure you that we never gave him any incorrect information.’

‘Of course not,’ the aide said. ‘He alleges that we encouraged him to facilitate his business by sending over goods without any securities but that’s utter nonsense. It’s not our job to give out that sort of advice. How people conduct their business deals is entirely their own responsibility.’

‘Of course,’ Kristín agreed.

‘Anyway,’ the aide continued, glancing at his watch. ‘We wanted you to be aware of developments and to warn you that it wouldn’t hurt to keep your eyes open. If this Runólfur tries to intimidate you in any way, you’re to call the police at once. They have been briefed about the case.’

The meeting ended soon afterwards and the day’s business began. Kristín did not look up from her desk until midday when she went out with a couple of colleagues to a cosy little café near the ministry where she chatted and glanced through the afternoon paper over coffee and an omelette. When she returned to the office at one, there were a number of voicemail messages, including one from her brother saying he would ring back later. Otherwise the day was entirely uneventful.

She left work early. It had stopped snowing and turned into a beautiful, mild January evening. As it was Friday, she stopped off at a shop on the way home and bought some food for the weekend. She lived in the ground floor flat of a neat little two-storey maisonette built of whitewashed concrete, with a flat roof that had a tendency to leak. On entering the shared hall she heard the phone ringing inside her flat before she could even insert the key in the lock. She hastily opened the door, rushed over to the phone and snatched up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ said a voice that she immediately recognised as her brother’s.

‘Elías!’

‘Hello,’ her brother repeated. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Loud and clear…’

But the connection was lost and she hung up. She waited beside the phone for a while in case Elías rang straight back but nothing happened, so she went and shut the front door, took off her coat and hung it in the cupboard. She had just sat down at the kitchen table when the phone rang again.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is that you, Elías?’

No answer.

‘Are you on the glacier?’

No answer.

‘Elías?’

Down the line she heard the faint sound of breathing and the suspicion flashed into her mind that it might be Runólfur. She stopped talking and listened intently.

‘Who is this?’ she asked eventually but there was no answer. ‘Is that Runólfur?’ she asked, adding after a moment’s thought: ‘Pervert!’ and hung up.

She thought back over her meeting with the chairman and foreign minister’s aide as she tucked into a sandwich and drank some orange juice. Later, she took a pile of documents out of her briefcase and tried to concentrate on work. Feeling sleepy, however, she lay down on the sofa in the sitting room and thought about making coffee, until she realised that she had forgotten to buy any milk. She ought to drag herself out to the shop before it closed, but could not be bothered and tiredness overtook her.

Kristín did not know how long she had been asleep. She got up and put on her jacket and gloves. The local shop was only round the corner, she really ought to force herself out. Coffee was no good unless it was made with hot milk. She had just reached the door when the phone started ringing again, making her jump.

‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked, picking up the receiver.

‘Hi, it’s Elías. Can you hear me?’

‘Elías!’ Kristín exclaimed. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’ve… trying to get hold of you… day. I’m on the glacier…’

The connection was poor; her brother’s voice kept breaking up.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, still groggy from her nap. She had got up far too early that morning.

‘Everything’s grea… Two of us… taken off on snowmobiles. Per… weather. It’s… dark.’

‘What do you mean, two of you? Where are the others?’

‘We’re… bit of a test drive… fine.’

‘This is hopeless. I can only hear the odd word. Will you please go back and join the rest of the team.’

‘We’re turning round… lax. The phone cost seven… thousand. Can’t you hear me?’

‘Your phone’s useless!’

‘Don’t be like that. When… you coming… glacier trip with me?’

‘You’ll never get me to set foot on any bloody glacier.’