Desmond Bagley - Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

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.