by Nick Carter
There was a car behind me all the way in to work this morning," Tomasson said. "I thought it odd. But now…"
"Was it a small, black two-door? A Lancia?"
"I don t know the make of the car, but that sounds like it."
"Go home. Professor. Take the photographs with you, and lock and bolt your doors. I'll be there as fast as I can."
"But…"
"I think you may be in danger. Please do as I say."
"This is crazy…" Tomasson said. But he agreed to do as Carter asked. When he hung up. Carter had the operator connect him with police headquarters.
"Captain Einarsson, please," he asked the police switchboard operator.
"It's me," Carter said when Einarsson came on. "I'm catching the first flight out for Reykjavik. Any luck on identifying Victor?"
"Not yet," Einarsson said. "I'd like you to stick around for a day or so, though. Until we get this settled."
"Sorry, but that's not possible. I have to get back."
"Something has come up?" Einarsson asked, interested.
"I think so. I'll trade you whatever I find in Reykjavik for whatever you come up with on our friend."
"For now all I can tell you for sure is that he is not an Icelander. We have nothing on him at all."
Carter gave him his number at the Saga Hotel, the only one he knew other than the Borg. When the police captain hung up, Carter sat a moment thinking.
Since he had arrived in Iceland, Einarsson had been the only one who had played it a hundred-percent straight with him. Everyone else seemed to be walking on eggshells, afraid to open up. Everyone seemed to be hiding his own little secrets.
He showered and shaved, packed his single remaining bag, and went downstairs to pay his bill. He took the Land-Rover out to the airport, leaving it in the parking lot. His plane left less than an hour later.
Reykjavik was an eyeful from the air, scrubbed and clean; it reminded him of a bouquet of flowers, the colored houses and gardens so brilliantly clear. It was the air, he thought. In Iceland the air was the clearest he had ever seen it anywhere. Because of the city's unique energy system, there were no smokestacks. No need for power plants to pollute the air. No fireplaces or furnaces in the homes to spread their sulphurous smoke.
Except for one wisp he saw on the south side of the city — a black plume rising like an exclamation point from some unidentifiable source — there was no smoke. A fire, he imagined, then dismissed the thought, his mind preoccupied with Dr. Petur Tomasson.
He landed, looked up the professor's home address in the phone book, and took a taxi into the city.
Tomasson lived on the south side of the city, and as they were driving, a lire truck, its lights flashing and its siren blaring, screamed past them, and turned in the direction they were headed.
Carter began to have a sinking feeling about this, and he asked the cabbie to speed up.
They turned a second corner, the fire truck still ahead of them, its blue lights pulsing.
Smoke rose in a thick black column over the trees and rooftops. The cabbie said something over his shoulder that Carter couldn't quite catch, and they turned a final time into a narrow lane and pulled up short.
Fire trucks filled the street and many of the yards. Hoses crisscrossed from gutter to gutter. Men with fire hats and slickers ran back and forth while a throng of people watched. In the center of the confusion a two-story house burned like kindling, huge billows of smoke rolling out of its windows.
The cabbie turned. "This is the number you have given me, sir."
"Damn," Carter swore. He jumped out of the cab. "Wait for me," he shouted back at the driver and raced up the street to the crowd.
A thin, middle-aged man in a cardigan and bedroom slippers stood watching. Carter spun him around and shouted, "Did they all get out?"
The man looked at him as if he were crazy.
He pushed his way through the crowd as two firemen came from the rear of the burning house, carrying a body. Ambulance attendants rushed over to them with a stretcher.
Carter broke through the crowd and almost made it to the stretcher-bearers before he was stopped. But he recognized the body. It was Petur Tomasson, badly burned but recognizable. He lay face up, charred pieces of skin hanging from his shrunken cheeks, his lips seared to paper-thinness. It looked as though he were still breathing.
The stretcher-bearers hurried to the ambulance as the upper story of the house collapsed inward, sending a shower of sparks high into the air. Everyone fell back.
There was nothing more he could do here. He had been too late. The only possibility now was that the professor had hidden the photographs someplace safe and would regain consciousness long enough to tell where they were.
Carter went back to the cab and climbed in the back seat as the ambulance made a U-turn in the narrow lane, and headed away, its sirens screaming.
"Follow that ambulance to the hospital," he said.
The cabbie nodded, made a U-turn, and they hurried back across town to the hospital. Carter paid the driver and hurried up to the waiting area outside the emergency room.
A great many people were coming and going, and after an hour or so, Carter stopped one of the white-coated men and asked about Tomasson.
"I am so sorry, sir. Were you a relative?"
Carter shook his head. "No, just a friend."
"Professor Tomasson passed away within minutes of his arrival here. I am so sorry that you were not informed earlier."
"I see."
"Is there anything I can do?"
Wearily Carter turned away from the doctor. He called a cab, this one to the Saga Hotel, where he checked in. Once he was alone in his room he turned up the heat, ordered himself a bottle of cognac, one glass, no ice or mix, and took a quick shower.
When his bottle came he poured himself a stiff drink, lit a cigarette, and began disassembling and cleaning his gun. He worked slowly, methodically, until every speck of dirt was gone, and it was well oiled and ready for use. Then he disassembled it once more and started all over again.
First Lydia and now Tomasson. How many other innocent people would get hurt before this was stopped?
Of all the evil men in the world, Carter had most often come up against those who betrayed the trust of their public office. Policemen, commissioners, politicians… men such as Josepsson.
Around four in the afternoon, his anger somewhat abated, he showered again, got dressed, and went downstairs. An empty cab was waiting in the stand in front of the hotel. Carter got in and asked to be taken to the police station downtown. He was not on assignment here to Iceland. He was not on official business. This incident had gotten too far out of hand; it was time to bring the local police in on it. Let them clean up their own mess.
Police headquarters was housed in a modern building of glass and concrete on the corner of Hverfisgata and Snorrabraut. As Carter got out of the cab and paid his fare, the weak afternoon sun was just tinting the aluminum window casings gold.
Inside, a pretty blond girl behind the information desk looked up and smiled.
"I would like to speak with whoever is investigating the fire this morning near the university," Carter said.
"Have you come for some information, sir?" she asked.
"No, I'm here to give some."
She thumbed through a daily report log. "That would be Sergeant Gundarsson," she said, finding it. "I believe he is still in." She telephoned someone, speaking in rapid-fire Icelandic.
Moments later a young officer in a crisp blue uniform appeared at the corridor door, and Carter followed him through a maze of desks and partitions until they reached a gray, nondescript desk tucked in a comer, where a sallow-faced man, also in a blue uniform, sat typing. Smoke from a cigarette dangling on his lip curled up into his eyes, making him blink from time to time.
"Yes?" he said, looking up.
"I want to talk to you about the fire this morning."
"Tomasson?"
Carter nodded and sat down.
"What have you found out?"
"That depends on who you are," Gundarsson said.
"I'm Nick Carter. A friend of Tomasson's — and of his colleague Dr. Lydia Coatsworth, who died here recently."
"I see. And?"
"I think Professor Tomasson was murdered. Arson."
"Faulty gas range in the kitchen, Mr. Nick Carter, American. Who would want to kill the professor?"
"He'd just discovered something very important," Carter said. "Something very important to the internal security of Iceland. I believe he was killed to prevent this information from getting out."
Gundarsson lit another cigarette off the stub of the one in his mouth, then pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil. He jotted down Carter's name. And the names Petur Tomasson and Lydia Coatsworth.
"Go ahead." he said, looking up. "You came to tell me something. Tell it."
Carter began to relate the entire story, nonstop, from the time he'd come to Iceland, just as he had done for Einarsson. It took the better part of thirty minutes for the telling, during which time Gundarsson wrote furiously and smoked continuously. When Carter was done, Gundarsson repeated the main points, Carter made a few corrections, and then the officer rose from his chair, told Carter to wait, and disappeared around a partition.
Carter went over what he had just told the man. Einarsson had been skeptical about the story, but this cop had seemed indifferent. The story sounded lame, of course. Too much speculation and too little hard fact. He should have waited until he had more information. Yet…
Gundarsson came back and took Carter down a long corridor until they reached an office near the end. Gundarsson opened the door, and Carter stepped inside.
The man behind the desk was in shirt-sleeves. Semicircles of sweat appeared under each arm as he put his elbows out in front of him and peered up at Carter through thick, black-rimmed glasses.
"Sit down, Mr. Carter," the man said. His voice was gruff. A brass nameplate on his desk identified him as Lieutenant Thor Thorsson.
Carter sat down.
"Do you know the time?" the lieutenant asked. He did not seem very happy.
"Four forty-five," Carter said, glancing at his watch.
"My day ends at five, Mr. Carter, at which time our business will be concluded, wild stories and all."
"It may seem like a wild story, Lieutenant, but it's true nevertheless."
Thorsson shook his head in exasperation. "I just finished speaking with Mr. Johann Sigurjonsson. On the telephone. He is the gentleman who heads our Energy Commission. He said your story is utter nonsense. There is, and will be in the forseeable future, no shortage of geothermal energy here in Iceland. If Professor Tomasson thought differently, he was wrong."
"They wouldn't admit it. Can you imagine the effect if it became common knowledge that Iceland was running out of power?"
"Mr. Sigurjonsson is lying, then. He heads the biggest business concern in this country, he is a well-known and very respected leader, and he had done a great deal both publicly and privately to benefit dozens of charities. You, on the other hand, are a foreigner. Who shall I believe?"
"I was attacked and nearly killed outside Akureyri by a stranger. Why?"
The cop just glared at him.
"I was getting too close to the truth, and it upset the power in this country. Dr. Coatsworth and Professor Tomasson were on the same story."
"I have had no report from Akureyri yet. Only your ridiculous story."
"Then you will not help me?" Carter asked.
"Drop this immediately," the lieutenant said.
Carter got up and started to leave, but the lieutenant stopped him.
"What hotel are you staying at?"
"The Saga," Carter said. He knew what was coming.
"Do not leave your hotel, Mr. Carter. Reservations on the morning plane to the States will be made for you. Your welcome has expired."
Carter nodded. "I came up here to investigate the accidental death of a friend. Now I am being booted out of the country when I discover it may have been a murder. You people have a strange sense of justice."
"I have also spoken with Mr. Josepsson. He complained about you yesterday. I held off doing anything about it, however, but now you have gone too far."
"So they got to you too," Carter said.
The lieutenant's face turned red. He got to his feet. "One more word… just one… and you will be spending a very long time in a very unpleasant jail, just downstairs."
Carter nodded after a moment. "I'll be on the morning plane."
"Yes, you will," the lieutenant said.
Outside in the lobby, he asked the girl at the desk if he could glance at the incident report Gundarsson had filed about the fire. She hesitated.
"I've just now spoken with Lieutenant Thorsson about this," he said.
She dug out the report and handed it up. The folder only included one sheet, on which were written the names of Tomasson's estranged wife and their two children. Their address was listed.
He took a cab back to his hotel, and in a phone booth in the lobby he looked up Tomasson's wife. Her last name was not Tomasson. In Iceland, he was learning, there are no last names. One is named for one's father. Tomas's son becomes Tomasson. His daughter, Tomasdottir. Consequently everyone has two names that are his and his alone, no matter who marries whom. Tomasson's wife was Helga Arnadottir. She lived in the eastern sector, Skipholti 33. She was home when he called.
They talked for twenty minutes. She accepted his condolences, and he learned that she and her husband had been on the verge of divorce, and had ceased living together some time ago. She and the professor had two small children, a boy and a girl.
He asked if Tomasson had talked to her at all before he died. Had she seen him during the past few days? Had he perhaps left something in her care?
No. She hadn't talked with him for several weeks.
He thanked her, expressed his sympathies again, and hung up.
As he was crossing the lobby, the desk clerk motioned to him with a folded piece of paper. "A message, sir," he said. "You're to call this number immediately."
It was Einarsson. Carter recognized the Akureyri exchange. He placed the call from his room. Einarsson was in his office.
"Carter?" he shouted.
Have you got something?"
"We've identified Victor. Turns out Interpol has a file on him several centimeters thick."
"Go ahead."
"Real name is Victor Adolph von Hauptmann. Argentinian."
"Argentinian?"
"Born August 4, 1946, to a German father and an Argentinian mother. Father was Raoul von Hauptmann, German army colonel who managed to escape the fatherland in the last years of the war. Victor didn't show up on the records, however, until December of 1969 when he was picked up in Buenos Aires for disorderly conduct and defacing public property. The arresting officer's jaw was broken. He was jailed several more times over the next year, all for more or less the same thing — inciting to riot, vandalism, disorderly conduct — all of which his father got him out of. But then he disappeared, coming back into the record two years later in Guatemala as a suspect in the shooting deaths of several Communist guerrillas. He was tried but acquitted. From that point on, it was one thing after another all over Latin America — Chile, Paraguay, El Salvador, even Cuba. Always suspicion of murder or attempted assassination, always on left-wing political figures. Cases brought to trial, then acquittal or charges are dropped when witnesses fail to appear or suddenly change their story. A powerful man… or rather, a man with powerful friends."
"What the hell was he doing in Iceland?" Carter asked, half to himself.
"I don't know."
"No mistaking the man?"
"Positive ID. You want me to send you a copy of the report?"
"Not here. I've been kicked out of your country."
"What?"
"That's right. Josepsson figures if he can't kill me, at least he can have me deported."
"What happened? Why didn't you call me?"
"Nothing you could have done. But thanks for the thought. Send me the report though, if you would." He gave his AXE cover address at Amalgamated Press on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. "It will be forwarded to me."
"I have a feeling I know where you are going," Einarsson said.
"If you guess Argentina, you won't be very far off."
Four
High in the building housing the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services, David Hawk looked out his office window at the falling rain and rubbed the back of his neck. The muscles were sore, as was always the case when he was upset, and today he was more upset than usual.
On the desk behind him, a file folder lay open, a field report he had asked his friend, Robert LeMott, the Director of Central Intelligence, to compile for him. It was a thin file, no more than five sheets, comprised of a timetable and a few pages of notes hastily scribbled by LeMott's field man, an army colonel in the liaison office at the U.S. base at Keflavik, Iceland. But it was enough to cause Hawk some genuine discomfort.
The file dealt with Nick Carter's activities in Iceland over a forty-eight-hour period during which Nick had managed to get himself shot at and nearly killed, and had stirred up enough ire among the locals to get himself kicked out of the country. At one point he had almost put himself in the position of bringing undue attention to himself as a man with unique and extensive combat training. In short he had almost blown his AXE cover, and this was not to be tolerated.
As Hawk watched, a maroon Jaguar Super America pulled into the parking lot below and glided to a stop. The door swung open, and Nick Carter got out and hurried through the rain toward the back door of the building.
Hawk took a cigar out of his pocket, bit off the end, and lit it. Then he sat down behind his desk to wait.
* * *
When Carter opened the door and saw Hawk sitting stiffly behind his desk, staring directly at him, he knew the old man's mood was not good. He came in without a word, took a seat in the winged leather armchair across from the desk, and guiltily avoided Hawk's gaze.
"You're home quickly," Hawk said dryly. He tapped the ash from his cigar, then studied the chewed end.