Desmond Bagley - Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

‘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.’

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?’