Into Oblivion

by Arnaldur Indridason

  ‘Yes, but wait a minute, surely there’s nothing suspicious about that? It’s got nothing to do with … with what happened to Dagbjört?’

  ‘What does he do now? This Mensalder?’

  ‘Last I heard he was working at a petrol station,’ said Rósanna.

  ‘Here in Reykjavík?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he married? Any children?’

  ‘No, no wife, no children,’ said Rósanna, and Erlendur saw it gradually dawning on her, the real reason he was here in her flat this evening, a complete stranger, asking questions about Dagbjört. ‘Mensalder’s always lived alone,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Why are you dragging him into this? What’s he done?’

  Erlendur didn’t know how to answer.

  ‘I don’t believe … no, Mensalder’s totally harmless. He could never have … are you implying he’s linked to Dagbjört’s disappearance? Is that what you’re insinuating?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said Erlendur, observing Rósanna’s dismay. ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’

  40

  Marion drew up in front of the Andrews Movie Theater. The car park was quite busy. Apocalypse Now, the film currently showing, appeared to be very popular. The area was poorly lit and Marion switched off the ignition on the side furthest from the cinema and was just wondering how best to conduct an unobtrusive search for Caroline inside the building when the rear door of the car was torn open and Caroline herself climbed in. Marion jerked round.

  ‘Why didn’t you call to say you were coming?’ Caroline asked, nervously scanning their surroundings. ‘Are you being followed?’

  ‘Followed …?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed,’ said Marion, starting the car and preparing to reverse out of the space.

  ‘No, stay here,’ said Caroline. ‘We’re OK here in the parking lot.’

  ‘We rang the number you gave us and thought you were trying to trick us when the cinema answered,’ said Marion.

  ‘Trick you? Why did you come here if you thought I was trying to trick you?’

  ‘Because then I heard about Bill,’ said Marion, switching off the engine again.

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘I bumped into a friend of yours, Martinez. A very friendly guy, I must say.’

  ‘Carlos Martinez?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marion. ‘He was at the Animal Locker. I thought he’d never stop talking about himself.’

  ‘Bill works here at the movie theatre. He’s a friend. He let me use the office after he went home. I’ve been making calls all day.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m OK, though all this secrecy’s making me jumpy. Did you go round to my apartment? I haven’t been back there yet.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Was the dorm being watched? That you noticed?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone,’ said Marion. ‘But it’s possible. This is all rather new to me.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Erlendur’s already given me the speech about how you guys are clueless when it comes to this place, how it’s a whole new world to you and all that bullshit. I wondered what the hell he was talking about.’

  ‘I met your neighbour. He mentioned the Animal Locker, and Erlendur had already told me you sometimes went there. Do you realise you missed a practice?’

  Marion caught the flash of Caroline’s grin in the mirror.

  ‘Tell me about Martinez.’

  ‘I don’t know him that well,’ said Caroline. ‘He’s a sergeant in the marines. We go bowling together. He’s OK. Quite a hotshot at bowling too.’

  ‘I asked him about Kristvin and if he was acquainted with a man called Wilbur Cain.’

  ‘What did he say about Cain?’

  ‘He didn’t recognise the name.’

  ‘I heard earlier that Cain spent a lot of time in Greenland before he came here,’ said Caroline. ‘He still goes there on regular assignments. And NCT planes stop there fairly frequently too, en route from Europe to points west. They land here at Keflavík to refuel and sometimes take on cargo, and every now and then Cain joins them to travel to Greenland and back.’

  ‘What’s in Greenland?’

  ‘Thule,’ said Caroline. ‘Our biggest military installation in the northern hemisphere.’

  ‘Where did you learn this?’

  ‘Here and there. My buddy in Washington. Also a woman I know quite well who works for air traffic control here on the base. I helped her out once. Her husband used to knock her around. She left him and they’re getting a divorce now but the jackass couldn’t leave her alone whenever he had a drink inside him. He wasn’t a bad person apart from that. Just a loser, like so many of those guys. Anyhow, I pulled a few strings to get him transferred so she could get rid of him. All without his knowledge. The first he knew about it was when he landed in his new station. And guess where that was?’

  ‘Thule?’

  ‘You got it. She called him for me. He works in air traffic control too and she got the lowdown from him about NCT at that end, who travels with the planes, and so on. He always used to come crawling back to her after he’d hit her, so he’ll do anything for her now.’

  ‘What’s going on in Greenland? Why should a Military Intelligence agent be travelling back and forth between Keflavík and Thule?’

  ‘I still haven’t been able to dig up any information on that.’

  ‘Do you think Kristvin might have known?’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ said Caroline. ‘These are covert flights. Your air traffic control is unaware of them. He’d have had to speak to someone who was well informed about these matters and, what’s more, was prepared to talk about them.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘I have no idea. The aircraft generally stop very briefly here and don’t attract any special attention.’

  ‘But then one develops a fault,’ said Marion, ‘and they have to call in the mechanics. And one of them sees enough to make him curious and starts asking questions and before you know it he’s dead. We’ve established that he almost certainly died as the result of the impact from a big drop. And we’re told there are some very high work platforms in Hangar 885. Kristvin could have climbed up them and fallen off.’

  ‘Been pushed off, you mean?’

  ‘We’ve been denied access to the hangar, in addition to everything else. Chances are he took refuge in there while trying to escape, fled up the scaffolding and was trapped there. What do you know about the airbase at Thule?’

  All was quiet in the car park. The Andrews cinema was a splash of neon in the winter darkness. It was named, Marion knew, after an American general who had died in a plane crash near Keflavík during the war. Posters advertising the latest Hollywood films hung either side of the entrance: Kramer vs. Kramer, Alien, The China Syndrome.

  ‘Not much,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s strategically important as part of the defensive line against the Russians in the northern hemisphere. From there it’s possible to enter Soviet airspace via Siberia where there are far fewer defences than if we fly from our bases in Western Europe over the heavily fortified areas of Eastern Europe and Russia. Thule’s vital in that context. Even more significant than this little installation here.’

  ‘Talking of hardship posts,’ said Marion. ‘Iceland must seem like a tropical paradise compared to Thule.’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘The Danes are about as happy with the base at Thule as we are about our “little installation”,’ said Marion, and went on to explain that there had been a major debate in Denmark in recent years about the fate of the Inuit in the vicinity of Thule. When the base was built, the Greenlandic hunting settlement was uprooted and moved north to a place called Qaanaaq, without reference to their wishes, with unforeseen consequences.

  ‘You must think we’re complete monsters,’ said Caroline.

  Marion was silent. Taking this as assent, Caroline saw red.

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know why the hell I�
��m doing this. You hate literally everything I stand for. Everything we do looks suspicious to you.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ protested Marion. ‘Your help’s been invaluable and we’re very grateful, even if we do have our doubts about your country’s military activities. You’ve done more for us than we could have dared ask and I get the impression that’s because you yourself want to know what’s going on here.’

  Caroline didn’t answer. The cinema doors opened and people began to pour out. The crowd quickly dispersed homewards, some on foot, others in cars. There was only a short interval before the next screening and a new audience was already gathering. Occasional shouts, the honking of car horns and laughter carried through the darkness.

  ‘Thule’s a top-secret installation, of course,’ said Caroline. She had slid down in her seat and was peering out of the window at the cinema-goers as if they belonged to a different, more benign world. ‘Not many people know this but I’m told that B-52 bombers used to be kept aloft in a holding pattern over the area at all times, one taking over from the other so the chain was never broken. That was to ensure the fastest possible response in the event of a Soviet strike. They assumed it would be one of the first places to be flattened in a nuclear attack. By keeping the B-52s constantly airborne they made sure that at least one would escape being destroyed in the attack and make it over the Soviet frontier with its payload of bombs.’

  ‘What kind of bombs?’

  ‘Hydrogen bombs. Four to a plane. Each one a hundred times more powerful than the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.’

  ‘Are you telling me there are nuclear weapons in Greenland?’ said Marion.

  ‘Apparently. About a decade ago a bomber crashed in one of the violent blizzards you get in the region. The wreckage was found about six miles from the base and the bombs were removed. After that they abandoned the policy of keeping B-52s airborne. But the weapons are still stored on the base.’

  ‘The Danish government has always denied the presence of nuclear weapons in Greenland,’ said Marion. ‘It’s a highly controversial issue over there. Was it your friend in Washington who told you this?’

  Caroline nodded. ‘He feels he owes me,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It was hard for me to turn to him for help but he’s behaved honourably. And I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘What … in what way does he owe you?’

  ‘He feels guilty.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Another woman.’

  ‘Another woman?’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘No, fair enough.’

  ‘I thought we had a good relationship until he started cheating on me,’ said Caroline. ‘I guess he’s still trying to make up for it. He’s the reason I’m here. I wanted to get as far away from him as I could and now he thinks it’s his fault that I’m in deep shit out here at the ends of the earth.’

  ‘What’s all this got to do with Hangar 885 and Wilbur Cain?’

  ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you but it’s conceivable, just conceivable, that the NCT Hercules transports have been ferrying nuclear weapons from Thule and establishing them here. It’s also conceivable that the person responsible for security matters on this operation is none other than our friend Cain.’

  ‘Wilbur Cain?’

  ‘You got it.’

  41

  There were two men on duty at the filling station, one of whom looked to be in his late fifties. Rósanna’s cousin, presumably. The age was right at any rate. Erlendur sat in his car, trying to be inconspicuous, and watched the garage. The occasional vehicle pulled up by the petrol pumps and the men would fill it up and, if required, perform small additional tasks such as topping up the antifreeze or cleaning the windscreen. The older man, the cousin, pumped petrol and exchanged pleasantries with the customers while the younger one mainly took care of the till. The weather was cold, as it had been for several days now, and the pump attendant was wearing a down jacket and a baseball cap, both branded with the petrol station logo. He was round-shouldered and moved with slow deliberation as was common with manual labourers his age. In between customers, he took a seat behind the counter and whiled away the time with some activity that Erlendur couldn’t make out.

  A car drove into the forecourt and the older man stood up and drew on his gloves. Rósanna had told Erlendur that Mensalder worked at one of the few garages in the capital that stayed open late. She didn’t know much about him as they hadn’t been in contact for years. Although they were first cousins, their families didn’t get along so they weren’t close. Erlendur had gone round to his flat first but, finding nobody home, had swung by the garage Rósanna mentioned. She had been keen to come too but Erlendur had dissuaded her, telling her not to worry. All he was doing was gathering information about Dagbjört’s case and the fact that her cousin had come into the picture wasn’t necessarily significant.

  The garage, one of the largest in the city, was located on its eastern outskirts. After watching the place from a discreet distance for a while, Erlendur drove up to one of the pumps. He went into the shop and asked for petrol. The attendant he took to be Mensalder stood up and Erlendur saw that he had been playing patience. Mensalder asked if he should ‘fill ‘er up’. When Erlendur said yes, the man put his gloves on again and went out to the pump. Erlendur looked around the shop which sold newspapers, magazines and a variety of motoring accessories such as windscreen wipers and ice scrapers, as well as shelves of cigarettes, cigars and sweets. Then he went outside in the wake of the attendant who had started filling his car. There was a rumble of traffic from the road. The man leaned against the car while the pump was working, glancing every now and then at the litre counter and price.

  ‘Quiet this evening,’ remarked Erlendur, automatically reaching for his cigarettes, then remembering where he was.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the man. ‘It’s been pretty quiet. We were busier yesterday. It varies. Every day’s different, like anywhere else.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Erlendur.

  The pump churned away and the man checked the litre counter. As he did so, Erlendur caught a glimpse of his face. He had several days’ worth of stubble on his lean cheeks, a small nose and bushy eyebrows. His nose was running.

  ‘Was she totally empty?’ asked the attendant.

  ‘Yes, almost.’

  ‘Nearly there, though it’s surprising what big tanks some of these little cars have.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Need any new windscreen wipers or anything like that?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘We have to ask,’ said the man apologetically. ‘New rules. We have to ask the customers if they need anything else.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘We’re always learning something new.’

  ‘By the way, you wouldn’t be Mensalder, would you?’ asked Erlendur casually.

  ‘Yes, that’s me. Or that’s my name, anyway. Do we know each other?’

  ‘Rósanna’s cousin?’

  ‘I’ve got a cousin called Rósanna, yes. Why do you ask? Do you know her?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Erlendur. ‘Not well. But I happened to be chatting to her recently and your name came up.’

  ‘Oh, I see. What’s she up to these days?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Erlendur. ‘She mentioned you used to work out at Keflavík years ago.’

  The pump clicked. The tank was full. Mensalder added a few more drops, his eye on the price. Erlendur thought he was trying to finish on a round number.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, I used to work on the base,’ he said. ‘Why … were you talking about me specially? Why did she mention me?’

  ‘Oh, we were just talking about the base and she said she had a cousin who used to work there and supplied her and her friends with goods he acquired from the Yanks. That he was very obliging like that.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said Mensalder. ‘It was a long time ago,
but it’s true, you could get hold of this and that, stuff you couldn’t find in town. Everything was in short supply in those days, but not for the GIs. Their stores were overflowing with goods. They had all the newest and best of everything.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘Saw my first fast-food joint there and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Wasn’t it tricky smuggling goods out of the area?’

  ‘Not for me,’ said Mensalder. ‘But then I didn’t operate on any big scale. Others might have done but I was never that greedy. I was employed directly by the army, so I was paid in dollars which was a real bonus. Until they put an end to that.’

  ‘Did you live on the base?’

  ‘Yes, quite a few of us did,’ said Mensalder, beginning to clean the windscreen with a scraper. ‘We were put up in army huts. A lot of the GIs lived in and around Keflavík. Rented basements or small flats. There was more mixing back then. Later they got worried about fraternisation and built accommodation for the soldiers on the base, and after that it all changed and … you know how it is – we’ve always avoided close contact with them.’

  ‘True. It must have been child’s play getting your hands on sought-after items if you actually lived on site. And could pay in dollars.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. They had amazing shops and you could buy vodka and beer and cigarettes and all kinds of clothes that were almost impossible to find here in town. Things have changed a lot since then, you know. These days the shops are crammed with new stuff but it wasn’t like that back then.’

  ‘Records too?’ said Erlendur.

  He could still only see part of the man’s face between his cap and jacket collar; the dull, weary expression of someone who had known little else in life but monotonous hard grind. Mensalder went about his work methodically, heavy on his feet and slow in his movements. He struck Erlendur as a pleasant man who seemed to enjoy reminiscing about the old days, even when talking to a stranger. Perhaps it was rare for people to show any interest in him, hence his willingness to talk when someone actually bothered to give him the time of day. Then again, maybe he was simply obeying orders in being polite to the customer. He spoke without emphasis, without varying his intonation, as if little took him by surprise these days and he had nothing exciting to tell.