Десмонд Бэгли - Running Blind

The man behind me let fly with two shots and I saw the muzzle flare of his pistol very close, not more than ten yards away. The bullets went wide; one I don’t know where, but the other raised a fountain in the pool of Geysir. I didn’t return the fire but ran to the left, skirting the pool. I stumbled through a stream of hot water, but it was barely two inches deep and I went through fast enough not to do any damage to myself and being more concerned that the splashing noise would give away my position.

There were more cries from the hotel and the slam of windows opening. Someone started up a car with a rasping noise and headlights were switched on. I paid little attention to that, but carried on, angling back towards the road. Whoever started that car had a bright idea — and no pun intended. He swung around and drove towards the pools, his headlamps illuminating the whole area.

It was fortunate for me that he did because it prevented me from running headlong into one of the pools. I saw the reflections strike from the water just in time to skid to a halt, and I teetered for a moment right on the edge. My balancing act wasn’t improved much when someone took a shot at me from an unexpected direction — the other side of the pool — and something tugged briefly at the sleeve of my jacket.

Although I was illuminated by the lights of that damned car my attacker was in an even worse position because he was between me and the light and marvellously silhouetted. I slung a shot at him and he flinched with his whole body and retreated. Briefly the headlights of the car swung away and I hastily ran around the pool while he put a bullet in roughly the place I had been.

Then the lights came back and steadied and I saw him retreating backwards, his head moving from side to side nervously. He didn’t see me because by this time I was flat on my belly. Slowly he went backwards until he put a foot into six inches of boiling water and jerked apprehensively. He moved fast but not fast enough, because the big gas bubble which heralds the blasting of Strokkur was already rising in the pool behind him like a monster coming to the surface.

Strokkur exploded violently. Steam, superheated by the molten magma far below, drove a column of boiling water up the shaft so that it fountained sixty feet above the pool and descended in a downpour of deadly rain. The man screamed horribly, but his shrill piping was lost in the roar of Strokkur. He flung his arms wide and toppled into the pool.

I moved fast, casting a wide circle away from the revealing lights and heading eventually towards the road. There was a confused babble of shouting and more cars were started up to add their lights to the scene, and I saw a crowd of people running towards Strokkur. I came to a pool and tossed the pistol into it, together with the spare clips of ammunition. Anyone found carrying a gun that night would be likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.

At last I got to the road and joined the crowd. Someone said, ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ I flung my hand towards the pool. ‘I heard shooting.’

He dashed past me, avid for vicarious excitement — he would have run just as fast to see a bloody motor smash — and I discreetly melted into the darkness behind the line of parked cars drawn up with headlamps blazing.

After I had gone a hundred yards up the road in the direction of the Volkswagen I turned and looked back. There was a lot of excitement and waving of arms, and long shadows were cast on to the shifting vapour above the hot pools, and there was a small crowd about Strokkur, edging closer but not too close because Strokkur has a short, seven-minute cycle. I realized, with some astonishment, that from the time Case and I had seen Strokkur blow when we left the hotel until the man had fallen into the pool had been only seven minutes.

Then I saw Slade.

He was standing clearly visible in the lights of a car and looking out towards Strokkur. I regretted throwing away the pistol because I would have shot him there and then had I been able, regardless of the consequences. His companion raised his arm and pointed and Slade laughed. Then his friend turned around and I saw it was Jack Case.

I found myself trembling all over, and it was with an effort that I dragged myself away up the road and looked for the Volkswagen. It was where I had left it and I got behind the driving wheel, switched on the engine, and then sat there for a moment, letting the tension drain away. No one I know has ever been shot at from close range and retained his equanimity — his autonomic nervous system sees to that. The glands work overtime and the chemicals stir in the blood, the muscles tune up and the belly goes loose, and it’s even worse when the danger has gone.

I found that my hands were trembling violently and rested them on the wheel, and presently they grew still and I felt better. I had just put the car into gear when I felt a ring of cold metal applied to the back of my neck, and a harsh, well-remembered voice said, ‘God dag, Herr Stewartsen. Var forsiktig .’

I sighed, and switched off the engine. ‘Hello, Vaslav,’ I said.

‘I am surrounded by a pack of idiots of an incomparable stupidity,’ said Kennikin. ‘Their brains are in their trigger fingers. It was different in our day; eh, Stewartsen?’

‘My name is Stewart now,’ I said.

‘So? Well. Herr Stewart; you may switch on your engine and proceed. I will direct you. We will let my incompetent assistants find their own way.’

The muzzle of the gun nudged me. I switched on, and said, ‘Which way?’

‘Head towards Laugarvatn.’

I drove out of Geysir slowly and carefully. The gun no longer pressed into the back of my neck but I knew it wasn’t far away, and I knew Kennikin well enough not to go in for any damn-fool heroics. He was disposed to make light conversation. ‘You’ve caused a lot of trouble, Alan — and you can solve a problem that’s been puzzling me. Whatever happened to Tadeusz?’

‘Who the hell is Tadeusz?’

‘The day you landed at Keflavik he was supposed to stop you.’

‘So that was Tadeusz — he called himself Lindholm. Tadeusz — that sounds Polish.’

‘He’s Russian; his mother is Polish, I believe.’

‘She’ll miss him,’ I said.

‘So!’ He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘Poor Yuri had his leg amputated this morning.’

‘Poor Yuri ought to have known better than to wave a belly gun at a man armed with a rifle,’ I said.

‘But Yuri didn’t know you had a rifle,’ said Kennikin. ‘Not that rifle, anyway. It came as quite a surprise.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘You really shouldn’t have wrecked my jeep like that. It wasn’t nice.’

Not that rifle! He expected a rifle, but not the blockbuster I’d taken from Fleet. That was interesting because the only other rifle was the one I’d taken from Philips and how could he know about that? Only from Slade — another piece of evidence.

I said, ‘Was the engine wrecked?’

‘There was a hole shot through the battery,’ he said. ‘And the cooling system was wrecked. We lost all the water. That must be quite a gun.’

‘It is,’ I said. ‘I hope to use it again.’

He chuckled. ‘I doubt if you will. That little episode was most embarrassing; I had to talk fast to get out of it. A couple of inquisitive Icelanders asked a lot of questions which I didn’t really feel like answering. Such as why the cable car was tied up, and what had happened to the jeep. And there was the problem of keeping Yuri quiet.’

‘It must have been most uncomfortable,’ I said.

‘And now you’ve done it again,’ said Kennikin. ‘And in public this time. What really happened back there?’