Desmond Bagley - Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

They released me and each took a step away, their faces hard and their eyes watchful. There were no guns in sight but that didn’t mean a damn thing. Not that I intended to start anything; the camera case was gone and the odds were too great anyway. As though someone had given a signal they all turned and walked away, each in a different direction, and left me standing there. There was quite a few people around but not one of the good people of Akureyri had any idea that anything untoward had just happened in their line of sight.

I felt ruffled so I straightened my jacket and then took a taxi to the Hotel Vardborg. There wasn’t anything else to do.

Elin had been right; I was in time to lunch at the Vardborg. I had just stuck my fork into the mutton when Herr Buchner walked in, looked around and spotted me, and headed in my direction. He stood on the other side of the table, twitched his moustache, and said, ‘Mr Stewart?’

I leaned back. ‘Well, if it isn’t Herr Buchner! What can I do for you?’

‘My name is Graham,’ he said coldly. ‘And I’d like to talk to you.’

‘You were Buchner this morning,’ I said. ‘But if I had a name like that I’d want to change it, too.’ I waved him towards a chair. ‘Be my guest – I can recommend the soup.’

He sat down stiffly. ‘I’m not in the mood for acting straight man to your comedian,’ he said, extracting his wallet from his pocket. ‘My credentials.’ He pushed a scrap of paper across the table.

I unfolded it to find the left half of a 100-kronur banknote. When I matched it against the other half from my own wallet the two halves fitted perfectly. I looked up at him. ‘Well, Mr Graham; that seems to be in order. What can I do for you?’

‘You can give me the package,’ he said. ‘That’s all I want.’

I shook my head regretfully. ‘You know better than that.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that I can’t give you the package because I haven’t got it.’

His moustache twitched again and his eyes turned cold. ‘Let’s have no games, Stewart. The package.’ He held out his hand.

‘Damn it!’ I said. ‘You were there – you know what happened.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was where?’

‘Outside Akureyri Airport. You were taking a taxi.’

His eyes flickered. ‘Was I?’ he said colourlessly. ‘Go on!’

‘They grabbed me before I knew what was happening, and they got clean away with the package. It was in my camera case.’

His voice cracked. ‘You mean you haven’t got it!’

I said sardonically, ‘If you were supposed to be my bodyguard you did a bloody awful job. Slade isn’t going to like it.’

‘By God, he’s not!’ said Graham with feeling. A tic pulsed under his right eye. ‘So it was in the camera case.’

‘Where else would it be? It was the only luggage I carried. You ought to know that – you were standing right behind me with your big ears flapping when I checked in at Reykjavik airport.’

He gave me a look of dislike. ‘You think you’re clever, don’t you?’ He leaned forward. ‘There’s going to be a Godawful row about this. You’d better stay available, Stewart; you’d better be easy to find when I come back.’

I shrugged. ‘Where would I go? Besides, I have the Scottish sense of thrift, and my room here is paid for.’

‘You take this damned coolly.’

‘What do you expect me to do? Burst into tears?’ I laughed in his face. ‘Grow up, Graham.’

His face tightened but he said nothing; instead he stood up and walked away. I put in fifteen minutes of deep thought while polishing off the mutton and at the end of that time I came to a decision, and the decision was that I could do with a drink, so I went to find one.

As I walked through the hotel foyer I saw Buchner-Graham hard at work in a telephone-box. Although it wasn’t particularly warm he was sweating.

I came out of a dreamless sleep because someone was shaking me and hissing, ‘Stewart, wake up!’ I Opened my eyes and found Graham leaning over me.

I blinked at him. ‘Funny! I was under the impression I locked my door.’

He grinned humourlessly. ‘You did. Wake up – you’re going to be interviewed. You’d better have your wits sharpened.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Five a.m.’

I smiled. ‘Gestapo technique, eh! Oh, well: I suppose I’ll feel better when I’ve shaved.’

Graham seemed nervous. ‘You’d better hurry. He’ll be here in five minutes.’

‘Who will?’

‘You’ll see.’

I ran hot water into the basin and began to lather my face. ‘What was your function on this particular exercise, Graham? As a bodyguard you’re a dead loss, so it can’t have been that.’

‘You’d better stop thinking about me and start to think about yourself,’ he said. ‘You have a lot of explaining to do.’

‘True,’ I said, and put down the brush and picked up the razor. The act of scraping one’s face with a sliver of sharp metal always seems futile and a little depressing; I would have been happier in one of the hairier ages – counterespionage agent by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria would have been the ideal ticket.

I must have been more nervous than I thought because I shaved myself down to the blood on the first pass. Then someone knocked perfunctorily on the door and Slade came into the room. He kicked the door shut with his foot and glowered at me with a scowl on his jowly face, his hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets. Without an overture he said briefly, ‘What’s the story, Stewart?’

There’s nothing more calculated to put a man off his stroke than having to embark on complicated explanations with a face full of drying lather. I turned back to the mirror and continued to shave – in silence.

Slade made one of those unspellable noises – an explosive outrush of air expelled through mouth and nose. He sat on the bed and the springs creaked in protest at the excessive weight. ‘It had better be good,’ he said. ‘I dislike being hauled out of bed and flown to the frozen north.’

I continued to shave, thinking that whatever could bring Slade from London to Akureyri must be important. After the last tricky bit around the Adam’s apple, I said, ‘The package must have been more important than you told me.’ I turned on the cold tap and rinsed the soap from my face.

‘… that bloody package,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ I apologized. ‘I didn’t hear that. I had water in my ears.’

He contained himself with difficulty. ‘Where’s the package?’ he asked with synthetic patience.

‘As of this moment I couldn’t tell you.’ I dried my face vigorously. ‘It was taken from me at midday yesterday by four unknown males – but you know that already from Graham.’

His voice rose. ‘And you let them take it – just like that!’

‘There wasn’t much I could do about it at the time,’ I said equably. ‘I had a gun in my kidneys.’ I nodded towards Graham. ‘What was he supposed to be doing about it – if it isn’t a rude answer?’

Slade folded his hands together across his stomach. ‘We thought they’d tagged Graham – that’s why we brought you in. We thought they’d tackle Graham and give you a free run to the goal line.’

I didn’t think much of that one. If they – whoever they were – had tagged Graham, then it wasn’t at all standard procedure for him to draw attention to me by lurking outside my flat. But I let it go because Slade always had been a slippery customer and I wanted to keep something in reserve.

Instead, I said, ‘They didn’t tackle Graham – they tackled me. But perhaps they don’t know the rules of rugby football; it’s not a game they go for in Sweden.’ I gave myself a last dab behind the ears and dropped the towel. ‘Or in Russia,’ I added as an afterthought.