Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  I held out my empty glass. ‘I could do with a refill—this is thirsty work.’ As Case picked up the depleted bottle, I said, ‘Let me put it this way. The question has been asked and, once asked, it can’t be unasked. If you put my case against Slade to Taggart, just as I’ve put it to you, then he’ll be forced to take action. He can’t afford not to. He’ll have Slade under a microscope and I don’t think Slade can stand close inspection.’

  Case nodded. ‘There’s just one thing, Alan. Be sure—be very, very sure—that your prejudices aren’t shouting too loud. I know why you left the Department and I know why you hate Slade’s guts. You’re biased. This is a serious accusation you’re making, and if Slade comes out of it cleaner than the driven snow then you’re in big trouble. He’ll demand your head on a platter—and he’ll get it.’

  ‘He’ll deserve it,’ I said. ‘But the problem won’t arise. He’s as guilty as hell.’ I may have sounded confident but there was the nagging fear that perhaps I was wrong. Case’s warning about bias and prejudice was sound, and I hastily re-examined the indictment against Slade. I found no flaw.

  Case looked at his watch. ‘Eleven-thirty.’

  I put down the whisky untasted. ‘It’s late—I’d better be going.’

  ‘I’ll tell Taggart all about it,’ said Case. ‘And I’ll also tell him about Fleet and McCarthy. Maybe he can get a line on that angle through Washington.’

  I retrieved the sgian dubh from the dressing-table and slipped it into my stocking-top. ‘Jack, you really haven’t any idea of what this operation is all about?’

  ‘Not the faintest clue,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything about it until I was pulled out of Spain. Taggart was angry, and justifiably so, in my opinion. He said you refused to have anything to do with Slade, and you wouldn’t even tell him where you were. He said you’d agree to meet me here. All I am is a messenger boy, Alan.’

  ‘That’s what Slade told me I was,’ I said morosely. ‘I’m getting tired of running blind; I’m getting tired of running. Maybe if I stood my ground for once in a while I’d be better off.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Case. ‘Just follow orders and get the package to Reykjavik.’ He put on his jacket. ‘I’ll walk with you to your car. Where is it?’

  ‘Up the road.’

  He was about to unlock the door when I said, ‘Jack, I don’t think you’ve been entirely frank with me. You’ve dodged a couple of issues in this conversation. Now there have been some bloody funny things going on lately, such as a member of the Department coming after me with a gun—so I just want to tell you one thing. It’s likely that I’ll be stopped on the way to Reykjavik, and if you have any part in that I’ll go right through you, friendship or no friendship. I hope you understand that.’

  He smiled and said, ‘For God’s sake, you’re imagining things.’

  But the smile was strained and there was something about his expression I couldn’t place, and it worried me. It was only a long time afterwards that I identified the emotion. It was pity but by then the identification had come too late.

  SEVEN

  We went outside to find it was as dark as it ever gets in the Icelandic summer. There was no moon but there was visibility of sorts in a kind of ghostly twilight. There was a soft explosion among the hot pools and the eerie spectre of Strokkur rose into the air, a fading apparition which dissipated into wind-blown shreds. There was a stink of sulphur in the air.

  I shivered suddenly. It’s no wonder that the map of Iceland is littered with place names which tell of the giant trolls who dwell in the roots of the mountains, or that the old men still hand down the legends of man in conflict with spirits. The young Icelanders, geared to the twentieth century with their transistor radios and casual use of aircraft, laugh and call it superstition. Maybe they’re right, but I’ve noticed that they tend to force their laughter sometimes and it has a quality of unease about it. All I know is that if I had been one of the old Vikings and had come upon Strokkur unexpectedly one dark night I’d have been scared witless.

  I think Case caught something of the atmosphere because he looked across at the thinning curtain of mist as Strokkur disappeared, and said softly, ‘It’s really something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said shortly. ‘The car’s over there. It’s quite a way.’

  We crunched on the crushed lava of the road and walked past the long row of white-painted pillars which separate the road from the pools. I could hear the bubbling of hot water and the stench of sulphur was stronger. If you looked at the pools in daylight you would find them all colours, some as white and clear as gin, others a limpid blue or green, and all close to boiling point. Even in the darkness I could see the white vapour rising in the air.

  Case said, ‘About Slade. What was the…?’

  I never heard the end of that question because three heavier patches of darkness rose up about us suddenly. Someone grabbed me and said, ‘Stewartsen, stanna! Förstar Ni?’ Something hard jabbed into my side.

  I stopped all right, but not in the way that was expected. I let myself go limp, just as McCarthy had done when I hit him with the cosh. My knees buckled and I went down to the ground. There was a muffled exclamation of surprise and momentarily the grip on my arm relaxed and the movement in a totally unexpected direction dislodged the gun from my ribs.

  As soon as I was down I spun around fast with one leg bent and the other extended rigidly. The outstretched leg caught my Swedish-speaking friend behind the knees with a great deal of force and he fell to the ground. His pistol was ready for use because there was a bang as he fell and I heard the whine of a ricocheting bullet.

  I rolled over until I was prone against one of the pillars. I would be too conspicuous against that painted whiteness so I wormed off the road and into the darkness, pulling the pistol from my pocket as I went. Behind me there was a shout of ‘Spheshíte!’ and another voice in a lower tone said, ‘Net! Slúshayte!’ I kept very still and heard the thudding of boots as someone ran towards the hotel.

  Only Kennikin’s mob would have addressed me as Stewartsen and in Swedish, and now they were bellowing in Russian. I kept my head close to the ground and looked back towards the road so I could see anyone there silhouetted against the paler sky. There was a flicker of movement quite close and a crunch of footsteps, so I put a bullet in that direction, picked myself up, and ran for it.

  And that was damned dangerous because, in the darkness, I could very well run headlong into a bottomless pool of boiling water. I counted my paces and tried to visualize the hot pools area as I had often seen it in daylight under less unnerving conditions. The pools vary in size from a piddling little six inches in diameter to the fifty-foot giant economy size. Heated by the subterranean volcanic activity, the water continually wells out of the pools to form a network of hot streams which covers the whole area.

  After I had covered a hundred yards I stopped and dropped on one knee. Ahead of me steam rose and lay in a level blanket and I thought that was Geysir itself. That means that Strokkur was somewhere to my left and a little behind. I wanted to keep clear of Strokkur—getting too close would be dicey in the extreme.

  I looked back and saw nothing, but I heard footsteps following in the line I had come, and others away to the right and getting closer. I didn’t know if my pursuers knew the lie of the ground or not but, intentionally or accidentally, I was being herded right into the pools. The man on the right switched on a flash lamp, a big thing like a miniature searchlight. He directed it at the ground which was lucky for me, but he was more troubled about turning himself into goulash.

  I lifted my pistol and banged off three shots in that direction and the light went out suddenly. I don’t think I hit him but he had come to the acute realization that his light made a good target. I wasn’t worried about making a noise; the more noise the better as far as I was concerned. Five shots had been fired, five too many in the quiet Icelandic night, and already lights were popping on in the hotel and I hea
rd someone call from that direction.

  The man behind me let fly with two shots and I saw the muzzle flare of his pistol very close, not more than ten yards away. The bullets went wide; one I don’t know where, but the other raised a fountain in the pool of Geysir. I didn’t return the fire but ran to the left, skirting the pool. I stumbled through a stream of hot water, but it was barely two inches deep and I went through fast enough not to do any damage to myself and being more concerned that the splashing noise would give away my position.

  There were more cries from the hotel and the slam of windows opening. Someone started up a car with a rasping noise and headlights were switched on. I paid little attention to that, but carried on, angling back towards the road. Whoever started that car had a bright idea—and no pun intended. He swung around and drove towards the pools, his headlamps illuminating the whole area.

  It was fortunate for me that he did because it prevented me from running headlong into one of the pools. I saw the reflections strike from the water just in time to skid to a halt, and I teetered for a moment right on the edge. My balancing act wasn’t improved much when someone took a shot at me from an unexpected direction—the other side of the pool—and something tugged briefly at the sleeve of my jacket.

  Although I was illuminated by the lights of that damned car my attacker was in an even worse position because he was between me and the light and marvellously silhouetted. I slung a shot at him and he flinched with his whole body and retreated. Briefly the headlights of the car swung away and I hastily ran around the pool while he put a bullet in roughly the place I had been.

  Then the lights came back and steadied and I saw him retreating backwards, his head moving from side to side nervously. He didn’t see me because by this time I was flat on my belly. Slowly he went backwards until he put a foot into six inches of boiling water and jerked apprehensively. He moved fast but not fast enough, because the big gas bubble which heralds the blasting of Strokkur was already rising in the pool behind him like a monster coming to the surface.

  Strokkur exploded violently. Steam, superheated by the molten magma far below, drove a column of boiling water up the shaft so that it fountained sixty feet above the pool and descended in a downpour of deadly rain. The man screamed horribly, but his shrill piping was lost in the roar of Strokkur. He flung his arms wide and toppled into the pool.

  I moved fast, casting a wide circle away from the revealing lights and heading eventually towards the road. There was a confused babble of shouting and more cars were started up to add their lights to the scene, and I saw a crowd of people running towards Strokkur. I came to a pool and tossed the pistol into it, together with the spare clips of ammunition. Anyone found carrying a gun that night would be likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.

  At last I got to the road and joined the crowd. Someone said, ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I flung my hand towards the pool. ‘I heard shooting.’

  He dashed past me, avid for vicarious excitement—he would have run just as fast to see a bloody motor smash—and I discreetly melted into the darkness behind the line of parked cars drawn up with headlamps blazing.

  After I had gone a hundred yards up the road in the direction of the Volkswagen I turned and looked back. There was a lot of excitement and waving of arms, and long shadows were cast on to the shifting vapour above the hot pools, and there was a small crowd about Strokkur, edging closer but not too close because Strokkur has a short, seven-minute cycle. I realized, with some astonishment, that from the time Case and I had seen Strokkur blow when we left the hotel until the man had fallen into the pool had been only seven minutes.

  Then I saw Slade.

  He was standing clearly visible in the lights of a car and looking out towards Strokkur. I regretted throwing away the pistol because I would have shot him there and then had I been able, regardless of the consequences. His companion raised his arm and pointed and Slade laughed. Then his friend turned around and I saw it was Jack Case.

  I found myself trembling all over, and it was with an effort that I dragged myself away up the road and looked for the Volkswagen. It was where I had left it and I got behind the driving wheel, switched on the engine, and then sat there for a moment, letting the tension drain away. No one I know has ever been shot at from close range and retained his equanimity—his autonomic nervous system sees to that. The glands work overtime and the chemicals stir in the blood, the muscles tune up and the belly goes loose, and it’s even worse when the danger has gone.

  I found that my hands were trembling violently and rested them on the wheel, and presently they grew still and I felt better. I had just put the car into gear when I felt a ring of cold metal applied to the back of my neck, and a harsh, well-remembered voice said, ‘God dag, Herr Stewartsen. Var forsiktig.’

  I sighed, and switched off the engine. ‘Hello, Vaslav,’ I said.

  II

  ‘I am surrounded by a pack of idiots of an incomparable stupidity,’ said Kennikin. ‘Their brains are in their trigger fingers. It was different in our day; eh, Stewartsen?’

  ‘My name is Stewart now,’ I said.

  ‘So? Well. Herr Stewart; you may switch on your engine and proceed. I will direct you. We will let my incompetent assistants find their own way.’

  The muzzle of the gun nudged me. I switched on, and said, ‘Which way?’

  ‘Head towards Laugarvatn.’

  I drove out of Geysir slowly and carefully. The gun no longer pressed into the back of my neck but I knew it wasn’t far away, and I knew Kennikin well enough not to go in for any damn-fool heroics. He was disposed to make light conversation. ‘You’ve caused a lot of trouble, Alan—and you can solve a problem that’s been puzzling me. Whatever happened to Tadeusz?’

  ‘Who the hell is Tadeusz?’

  ‘The day you landed at Keflavik he was supposed to stop you.’

  ‘So that was Tadeusz—he called himself Lindholm. Tadeusz—that sounds Polish.’

  ‘He’s Russian; his mother is Polish, I believe.’

  ‘She’ll miss him,’ I said.

  ‘So!’ He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘Poor Yuri had his leg amputated this morning.’

  ‘Poor Yuri ought to have known better than to wave a belly gun at a man armed with a rifle,’ I said.

  ‘But Yuri didn’t know you had a rifle,’ said Kennikin. ‘Not that rifle, anyway. It came as quite a surprise.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘You really shouldn’t have wrecked my jeep like that. It wasn’t nice.’

  Not that rifle! He expected a rifle, but not the blockbuster I’d taken from Fleet. That was interesting because the only other rifle was the one I’d taken from Philips and how could he know about that? Only from Slade—another piece of evidence.

  I said, ‘Was the engine wrecked?’

  ‘There was a hole shot through the battery,’ he said. ‘And the cooling system was wrecked. We lost all the water. That must be quite a gun.’

  ‘It is,’ I said. ‘I hope to use it again.’

  He chuckled. ‘I doubt if you will. That little episode was most embarrassing; I had to talk fast to get out of it. A couple of inquisitive Icelanders asked a lot of questions which I didn’t really feel like answering. Such as why the cable car was tied up, and what had happened to the jeep. And there was the problem of keeping Yuri quiet.’

  ‘It must have been most uncomfortable,’ I said.

  ‘And now you’ve done it again,’ said Kennikin. ‘And in public this time. What really happened back there?’

  ‘One of your boys got himself parboiled,’ I said. ‘He got too close to a spouter.’

  ‘You see what I mean,’ said Kennikin. ‘Incompetents, the lot of them. You’d think three to one would be good odds, wouldn’t you? But no; they bungled it.’

  The odds had been three to two, but what had happened to Jack Case? He hadn’t lifted a finger to help. The image of him standing and talking to Slade still burned brightly in my mind
and I felt the rage boil up within me. Every time I had turned to those I thought I could trust I had been betrayed, and the knowledge burned like acid.

  Buchner/Graham/Philips I could understand; he was a member of the Department fooled by Slade. But Case knew the score—he knew my suspicions of Slade—and he had not done one damned thing to help when I had been jumped by Kennikin’s men. And ten minutes later he was hobnobbing with Slade. It seemed as though the whole Department was infiltrated although, Taggart excepted, Case was the last man I would have thought to have gone over. I thought sourly that even Taggart might be on the Moscow pay-roll—that would wrap the whole bundle into one neat package.

  Kennikin said, ‘I’m glad I didn’t underestimate you. I rather thought you’d get away from the morons I’ve had wished on me, so I staked out this car. A little forethought always pays, don’t you think?’

  I said, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You don’t need to know in detail,’ he said. ‘Just concentrate on the driving. And you will go through Laugarvatn very carefully, observing all the speed limits and refraining from drawing attention. No sudden blasts on the horn, for example.’ The cold steel momentarily touched my neck. ‘Understand?’

  ‘I understand.’ I felt a sudden relief. I had thought that perhaps he knew where I had spent the last twenty-four hours and that we were driving to Gunnar’s house. It wouldn’t have surprised me overmuch; Kennikin seemed to know everything else. He had been lying in wait at Geysir, and that had been a neat trick. The thought of Elin being taken and what might have happened to Sigurlin had made my blood freeze.

  We went through Laugarvatn and on to Thingvellir, and took the Reykjavik road, but eight kilometres out of Thingvellir Kennikin directed me to turn left on a secondary road. It was a road I knew well, and it led around the lake of Thingvallavatn. I wondered where the hell we were going.

  I didn’t have to wonder long because at a word from Kennikin I turned off the road again and we went down a bumpy track towards the lake and the lights of a small house. One of the status symbols in Reykjavik is to have a summer chalet on the shores of Thingvallavatn, even more prized because the building restrictions have forbidden new construction and so the price has shot up. Owning a chalet on Thingvallavatn is the Icelandic equivalent of having a Rembrandt on the wall.