Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  She looked at me nervously. ‘I thought I heard someone scream.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ I said. ‘But they won’t be driving that jeep very far. Let’s go on. You can drive for a bit.’ I was suddenly very tired.

  SIX

  We drove out of the Óbyggdir and hit the main road system. Even if Kennikin was able to follow us we would have a good chance of losing him because this was one of the main areas of population and there was a network of roads harder to police than the simple choices of the Óbyggdir. Elin drove while I relaxed in the passenger seat, and once we were on the good roads were able to pick up speed.

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘I’d like to get this vehicle out of sight,’ I said. ‘It’s too damned conspicuous. Any suggestions?’

  ‘You have to be at Geysir tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘I have friends at Laugarvatn—you must remember Gunnar.’

  ‘Weren’t you running around with him before you met me?’

  She smiled. ‘It wasn’t serious—and we’re still friends. Besides, he’s married now.’

  Marriage, to a lot of men, doesn’t mean an automatic cancellation of their hunting licence, but I let it lie; a more-or-less civilized butting match with Elin’s old boyfriend was preferable to a more deadly encounter with Kennikin. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Head for Laugarvatn.’

  We were silent for a while, then I said, ‘Thank you for what you did back there when I was on Búdarháls. It was a damned silly thing to do, but it helped.’

  ‘I thought it might distract their attention,’ she said.

  ‘It sure as hell distracted mine for a minute. Did you know you were in the sights of a rifle all the way—and there was a finger on the trigger?’

  ‘I did feel uneasy,’ she admitted, and shivered involuntarily. ‘What happened up there?’

  ‘I gave headaches to a couple of men. One of them will probably wind up in hospital at Keflavik.’

  She looked at me sharply. ‘Keflavik!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They were Americans.’ I told her about Fleet, McCarthy and the waiting helicopter. ‘I’ve been trying to make sense out of it ever since—without much success.’

  She thought about it too, and said. ‘But it doesn’t make sense. Why would the Americans co-operate with the Russians? Are you sure they were Americans?’

  ‘They were as American as Mom’s apple-pie—at least Fleet was. I didn’t get to talk to McCarthy.’

  ‘They could be sympathizers,’ said Elin. ‘Fellowtravellers.’

  ‘Then they’re travelling closer than a flea to a dog.’ I took out Fleet’s pass to the remoter recesses of Keflavik Air Base. ‘If they’re fellow-travellers then the Yanks had better watch it—their furniture is riddled with woodworm.’ I examined the pass and thought about the helicopter. ‘It’s just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard of.’

  ‘Then what other explanation is there?’

  The idea of a nest of communist sympathizers being convenient to hand at Keflavik and able to lay their hands on a navy helicopter at a moment’s notice was untenable. I said, ‘I doubt if Kennikin rang up Keflavik and said, “Look, boys; I’m chasing a British spy and I need your help. Can you lay on a chopper and a sharpshooter and stop him for me?” But there’s someone else who could do it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘There’s a man called Helms in Washington who could pick up a telephone and say, “Admiral, there’ll be a couple of guys dropping in at Keflavik pretty soon. Let them have a helicopter and a crew—and don’t ask too many questions about what they want it for.” And the Admiral would say, “Yes, sir; yes, sir; three bags full, sir,” because Helms is the boss of the CIA.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I’m damned if I know,’ I said. ‘But it’s a bloody sight more likely than Keflavik being white-anted by Russian agents.’ I thought of my brief and unsatisfactory conversation with Fleet. ‘Fleet said that his orders were to pin us down until someone—presumably Kennikin—arrived. He said he’d never heard of Kennikin. He also said that when Kennikin arrived his job was over and he could go home. There’s one more question I should have asked him.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Whether his instructions called for him to show himself to Kennikin or whether they specifically forbade it. I’d give a lot to know the answer to that one.’

  ‘You’re sure we were chased by Russians? I mean, you’re sure it was Kennikin?’

  ‘That’s a face I’ll never forget,’ I said. ‘And there was a lot of swearing in Russian back at the Tungnaá River.’

  I could almost see the wheels whizzing round as Elin thought about it. ‘Try this,’ she said. ‘Supposing Slade is also chasing us, and suppose he asked the Americans to co-operate—but what he didn’t know was that Kennikin was closer to us. The Americans were supposed to hold us up until Slade arrived—not Kennikin.’

  ‘It’s barely possible,’ I conceded. ‘But it shows lousy liaison. And why go to all the trouble of a sniper hidden on a hill? Why not have the Americans just make a simple pinch?’ I shook my head. ‘Besides, the Department isn’t all that chummy with the CIA—the special relationship has its limits.’

  ‘My explanation is the more reasonable,’ said Elin.

  ‘I’m not sure there is any reason involved—it’s turning into a thoroughly unreasonable situation. It reminds me of what a physicist once said about his job: “The universe is not only queerer than we imagine but, perhaps, queerer than we can imagine.” I can see his point now.’

  Elin laughed, and I said, ‘What the hell’s so funny? Slade has already taken a crack at us, and may do again if Taggart hasn’t pulled him off. Kennikin is sweating blood trying to get at me—and now the Americans have put in their oar. Any minute from now I’m expecting the West Germans to pitch up, or maybe the Chilean Secret Service. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything. But there’s one thing that really worries me.’

  ‘What?’

  I said, ‘Suppose I give this gadget to Case tomorrow night. Kennikin won’t know that, will he? I can’t see Jack Case writing him a letter—”Dear Vaslav, Stewart doesn’t have the football any more; I’ve got it—come and chase me.” I’ll be just as much up the creek as before. Farther, in fact, because if Kennikin catches me and I haven’t got the damned thing then he’ll be even madder than he is now, if that’s possible.’

  I wasn’t so sure I was going to give the gadget to Case, after all. If I was going to be up the creek, I’d better retain the paddle.

  II

  Laugarvatn is a district educational centre which takes in children from a wide rural area. The country is so big relative to the population, and the population so scattered, that the educational system is rather peculiar. Most of the rural schools are boarding schools and in some of them the pupils spend a fortnight at school and a fortnight at home, turn and turn about, during the winter teaching terms. The children from farther away spend all winter at school. In the summer the schools are turned into hotels for four months.

  Because Laugarvatn is conveniently close to Thingvellir, Geysir, Gullfoss and other tourist attractions its two large schools come in very useful as summer hotels, and Laugarvatn had become a pony-trekking centre very popular with visitors. Personally, I’ve never cared much for horses, not even the multi-coloured Icelandic variety which is better-looking than most. I think the horse is a stupid animal—any animal which allows another to ride it must be stupid—and I prefer to be bounced by a Land-Rover rather than by a stubborn pony who would rather go home.

  Gunnar Arnarsson was a schoolteacher in the winter and in summer ran a pony-trekking operation. Very versatile people, these Icelanders. He was away when we arrived, but his wife, Sigurlin Asgeirsdottir, made us welcome with much clucking at the sight of Elin’s arm in an improvised sling.

  One of the problems in Iceland is sorting out the single from the married people, because the woman does not change her name when she gets married. In fac
t, the whole problem of names is a trap into which foreigners usually fall with a loud thump. The surname just tells everyone who your father was; Sigurlin was the daughter of Asgeir, just as Gunnar was the son of Arnar. If Gunnar had a son and decided to name the boy after his grandfather he’d be called Arnar Gunnarsson. All very difficult and the reason why the Icelandic telephone directory is listed alphabetically under given names. Elin Ragnarsdottir was listed under ‘E’.

  Gunnar appeared to have done well for himself because Sigurlin was one of those tall, leggy, svelte, Scandinavian types who go over big when they get to Hollywood, and what the hell has acting got to do with it, anyway? The widespread belief that the Nordic nations are populated exclusively on the distaff side by these tow-headed goddesses is, however, a regrettable illusion.

  From the way she welcomed us Sigurlin knew about me, but not all, I hoped. At any rate she knew a lot—enough to hear the distant chime of wedding bells. It’s funny, but as soon as a girl gets married she wants to get all her old girl-friends caught in the same trap. Because of Kennikin there weren’t going to be any immediate wedding bells—the tolling of a single funeral note was more likely—but, disregarding Kennikin, I wasn’t going to be pressured by any busty blonde with a match-making glint in her eye.

  I put the Land-Rover into Gunnar’s empty garage with some relief. Now it was safely off the road and under cover I felt much better. I saw that the collection of small arms was decently concealed and then went into the house to find Sigurlin just coming downstairs. She gave me a peculiar look and said abruptly, ‘What did Elin do to her shoulder?’

  I said cautiously, ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘She said she was climbing and fell against a sharp rock.’

  I made an indeterminate noise expressive of agreement, but I could see that Sigurlin was suspicious. A gunshot wound tends to look like nothing else but, even to someone who has never seen one before. I said hastily, ‘It’s very good of you to offer us a bed for the night.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Thank you, I would.’ I followed her into the kitchen. ‘Have you known Elin long?’

  ‘Since we were children.’ Sigurlin dumped a handful of beans into a coffee grinder. ‘And you?’

  ‘Three years.’

  She filled an electric kettle and plugged it in, then swung around to face me. ‘Elin looks very tired.’

  ‘We pushed it a bit in the Óbyggdir.’

  That can’t have sounded convincing because Sigurlin said, ‘I wouldn’t want her to come to any harm. That wound…’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She didn’t fall against a rock, did she?’

  There was a brain behind those beautiful eyes. ‘No,’ I said. ‘She didn’t.’

  ‘I thought not,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen wounds like that. Before I married I was a nurse at Keflavik. An American sailor was brought into hospital once—he’d been cleaning his gun and shot himself accidentally. Whose gun was Elin cleaning?’

  I sat down at the kitchen table. ‘There’s a certain amount of trouble,’ I said carefully. ‘And it’s best you’re not involved, so I’m not going to tell you anything about it—for your own good. I tried to keep Elin out of it from the beginning, but she’s headstrong.’

  Sigurlin nodded. ‘Her family always was stubborn.’

  I said, ‘I’m going to Geysir tomorrow evening and I’d like Elin to stay here. I’ll want your co-operation on that.’

  Sigurlin regarded me seriously. ‘I don’t like trouble with guns.’

  ‘Neither do I. I’m not exactly shouting for joy. That’s why I want Elin out of it. Can she stay here for a while?’

  ‘A gunshot wound should be reported to the police.’

  ‘I know,’ I said wearily. ‘But I don’t think your police are equipped to cope with this particular situation. It has international ramifications and there is more than one gun involved. Innocent people could get killed if it’s not carefully handled, and with no disrespect to your police, I think they’d be likely to blunder.’

  ‘This trouble, as you call it—is it criminal?’

  ‘Not in the normal sense. You might call it an extreme form of political action.’

  Sigurlin turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘The only good thing I’ve heard about this is that you want to keep Elin out of it,’ she said waspishly. ‘Tell me, Alan Stewart; are you in love with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to marry her?’

  ‘If she’ll have me after all this.’

  She offered me a superior smile. ‘Oh, she’ll have you. You’re hooked like a salmon and you won’t get away now.’

  ‘I’m not so sure of that,’ I said. ‘There are certain things that have come up lately that don’t add to my charms in Elin’s eyes.’

  ‘Such as guns?’ Sigurlin poured coffee. ‘You don’t need to answer that. I won’t probe.’ She put the cup before me. ‘All right; I’ll keep Elin here.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do it,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been able to make her do anything she didn’t want to do.’

  ‘I’ll put her to bed,’ said Sigurlin. ‘Strict medical supervision. She’ll argue, but she’ll do it. You do what you have to do and Elin will stay here. But I won’t be able to keep her long. What happens if you don’t come back from Geysir?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But don’t let her go back to Reykjavik. To go to the apartment would be extremely unwise.’

  Sigurlin took a deep breath. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down. ‘If it weren’t for the concern you show for Elin I’d be inclined to…’ She shook her head irritably. ‘I don’t like any of this, Alan. For God’s sake get it cleared up as quickly as you can.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  III

  The next day seemed very long.

  At breakfast Sigurlin read the paper and suddenly said, ‘Well, well! Someone tied up the cable transport on the Tungnaá just the other side of Hald. A party of tourists was stranded on the farther side for several hours. I wonder who could have done that?’

  ‘It was all right when we came across,’ I said blandly. ‘What does it say about the tourists? Anyone hurt?’

  She looked at me speculatively across the breakfast table. ‘Why should anyone be hurt? No, it says nothing about that.’

  I changed the subject quickly. ‘I’m surprised that Elin is still asleep.’

  Sigurlin smiled. ‘I’m not. She didn’t know it, but she had a sleeping draught last night. She’ll be drowsy when she wakes and she won’t want to jump out of bed.’

  That was one way of making sure of Elin. I said, ‘I noticed your garage was empty—don’t you have a car?’

  ‘Yes. Gunnar left it at the stables.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  ‘In two days—providing the party doesn’t get saddle-sore.’

  ‘When I go to Geysir I’d just as soon not use the Land-Rover,’ I said.

  ‘You want the car? All right—but I want it back in one piece.’ She told me where to find it. ‘You’ll find the key in the glove locker.’

  After breakfast I regarded the telephone seriously and wondered whether to ring Taggart. I had a lot to tell him but I thought it would be better to let it go until I heard what Jack Case had to say. Instead I went out to the Land-Rover and cleaned Fleet’s rifle.

  It really was a good tool. With its fancy hand-grip and freestyle stock it had obviously been tailor-made to suit Fleet, whom I suspected of being an enthusiast. In every field of human endeavour there are those who push perfection to its ultimate and absurd end. In hi-fi, for example, there is the maniac who has seventeen loud-speakers and one test record. In shooting there is the gun nut.

  The gun nut believes that there is no standard, off-the-shelf weapon that could be possibly good enough for him and so he adapts and chisels until he finally achieves
something that looks like one of the more far-out works of modern sculpture. He also believes that the ammunition manufacturers know damn-all about their job and so he loads his own cases, carefully weighing each bullet and matching it with an amount of powder calculated to one-tenth of a grain. Sometimes he shoots very well.

  I checked the ammunition from the opened box and, sure enough, found the telltale scratches from a crimping tool. Fleet was in the habit of rolling his own, something I have never found necessary, but then my own shooting has not been of the type necessary to get a perfect grouping at x-hundred yards. It also explained why the box was unlabelled.

  I wondered why Fleet should have carried as many as fifty rounds; after all, he was a good shot and had brought us to a standstill with one squeeze of the trigger. He had loaded the rifle with ordinary hunting ammunition, soft-nosed and designed to spread on impact. The closed box contained twenty-five rounds of jacketed ammunition—the military load.

  It’s always seemed odd to me that the bullet one shoots at an animal is designed to kill as quickly and as mercilessly as possible, whereas the same bullet shot at a man is illegal under the Geneva Convention. Shoot a hunting load at a man and you’re accused of using dum-dum bullets and that’s against the rules. You can roast him to death with napalm, disembowel him with a jump mine, but you can’t shoot him with the same bullet you would use to kill a deer cleanly.

  I looked at the cartridge in the palm of my hand and wished I had known about it earlier. One of those going into the engine of Kennikin’s jeep was likely to do a hell of a lot more damage than the soft-nosed bullet I had used. While a .375 jacketed bullet with a magnum charge behind it probably wouldn’t drill through a jeep from end to end at a range of a hundred yards, I wouldn’t like to bet on it by standing behind the jeep.

  I filled the magazine of the rifle with a mixed load, three soft-nosed and two jacketed, laid alternately. Then I examined McCarthy’s Smith & Wesson automatic pistol, a more prosaic piece of iron than Fleet’s jazzed-up rifle. After checking that it was in order I put it into my pocket, together with the spare clips. The electronic gadget I left where it was under the front seat. I wasn’t taking it with me when I went to see Jack Case, but I wasn’t going empty-handed either.