Betrayal

by Lilja Sigurdardóttir

  ‘Jónatan Kristjánsson has been called in for an interview at the police station tomorrow. That’s something I’ll be listening in on.’

  ‘Apart from Jónatan apparently making efforts to get important evidence to disappear,’ Gunnar said, ‘he also put pressure on Óðinn to derail the rape investigation. Óðinn admitted as much last night.’

  Úrsúla nodded her agreement. ‘And he said he had known for years that this would come back to haunt him,’ she said. ‘By that he meant my father’s death.’

  Boris fetched a chair from the corner of the room, dragged it across the bed and sat at Úrsúla’s side.

  ‘According to data from the phone companies, Óðinn and Jónatan had been in touch a lot, beginning around six months ago, or shortly after Jónatan was charged with rape. That gives us certain indications, but if neither of them admit it, it’ll be difficult to prove. And I’ll warn you that opening an old case isn’t a simple matter; it’s one of the most difficult things to do. More than likely, for your father’s case to be reopened, they would both need to admit guilt.’

  ‘And Pétur?’ Úrsúla asked. Gunnar heard the note of desperation in her voice. ‘Won’t Pétur’s death be investigated in view of the new information?’

  Boris patted the duvet as if to reassure Úrsúla. ‘The whole matter will be investigated in light of any new evidence, and the assault on you is the basis for that. When we dig deeper into the reasons for the attack, everything else will come out into the open.’

  Úrsúla took a deep breath, winced, and allowed herself to sink back onto the pillow.

  ‘Hell, my chest hurts,’ she sighed, and Gunnar realised that he still had a headache. Both of them were pretty rough around the edges, he decided.

  ‘I have something interesting for you,’ Boris said to Úrsúla, clearing his throat. ‘When we were going through the communications between Óðinn and Jónatan, I came across something else. Strictly speaking, we don’t have clearance to look at this, but as I’m being transferred to Europol anyway, I don’t really care one way or the other if there’s any fallout. I just think you need to see it.’ He took a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to her. ‘It’s an email to Óðinn from the prime minister.’

  119

  Úrsúla inhaled the outdoor smell of the children’s hair. They had both practically thrown themselves onto the bed as soon as they had appeared in her hospital room.

  ‘Isn’t your dad with you?’ she asked, and they shook their heads.

  ‘No, he’s waiting in the car,’ Herdís said. ‘He said he’d talk to you later in peace and quiet, and that you have some problems that you need to sort out.’

  ‘Are you divorcing?’ Ari asked.

  Herdís jabbed him with an elbow. ‘Don’t ask things like that, idiot,’ she hissed.

  Úrsúla took a deep breath.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. At least, I’ll do everything I can to put things right. It’s been a bit difficult for us to talk to each other recently.’ It was a cliché, but it wasn’t easy to find the right words to explain the situation to the children. ‘But whatever happens, we both still love you.’

  ‘Yeah. Dad said that as well,’ Ari said, getting up from the bed. There was a perplexed expression on his face, the one that always appeared when he didn’t quite understand what was going on.

  ‘You look better than you did yesterday,’ Herdís said, clearly keen to direct the conversation elsewhere, and Úrsúla knew she was doing this to stop herself bursting into tears.

  ‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ Úrsúla said, and patted the back of her hand.

  The previous evening had been a fog of confusion. She had slept and woken at intervals, and remembered seeing Nonni and the children at her side in the intensive-care unit. There had been so much that she would have liked to say to Nonni, but she’d drifted out of consciousness before she could say anything, and the next thing she knew, a woman in white appeared to take her blood pressure.

  ‘Good morning,’ the prime minister announced as he swept into the room with a vast box of chocolates in his hands.

  Úrsúla kissed the children and felt a pang of guilt as she saw the disappointment on their faces as they disappeared sadly and silently through the door. They had probably become accustomed to being in second place. She promised herself she would deal with this: give them more of her time and make them a priority over meetings and assignments.

  Úrsúla shook herself. Now she would need all the strength she had. She reached for the remote control and lifted the upper part of the bed as far as it would go, pulling herself into as much of a sitting position as the pain in her chest would allow. Then she reached for the sheet of paper Boris had given her and smoothed it out.

  ‘I have a copy of an email,’ she said. ‘Sent by you to Óðinn, my permanent secretary, in which you ask him to be of assistance in preparing an announcement postponing the South Coast Highway initiative.’

  Úrsúla straightened herself in the bed, winced at the wave of pain that shot through her, and read directly from the paper – the words that she had read again and again that morning.

  ‘“…it would be perfect if you could arrange to leak some scandal or other so we can get rid of her well before elections, and so E can establish himself…”’

  The hand holding the letter sank down onto the duvet and she glared at the prime minister.

  He shuffled awkwardly.

  ‘It seems I’ve been caught up in one of your famous prearranged series of events,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to do the shit job, cancel the South Coast Highway and make myself unpopular for doing that. Then Óðinn was going to leak something sensitive so I’d have to resign, and your golden boy Edvard would have a few months before the elections come around to make himself a popular minister.’

  The prime minister sighed and sank onto a chair.

  ‘It’s politics, Úrsúla,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing personal; just politics.’

  ‘Thank you for this important lesson in the fundamentals of political science.’

  The prime minister forced an embarrassed smile, and Úrsúla noticed how blue his eyes were, even though no daylight reached the ward, as dusk had fallen, leaving only the electric light with its yellow tint.

  ‘It’s a shame you bet on the wrong horse,’ she added. ‘Óðinn had everything planned in advance and then lost control of it. The journalist leaked the first juicy piece of information he pulled from the rubbish he had bought – the one about my father and Pétur. That took Óðinn by surprise and it was difficult for him to deal with.’

  ‘What do you want, Úrsúla?’ the prime minister asked. ‘What was the job you applied for last year and didn’t get? Head of the International Development Agency?’

  Úrsúla snorted.

  ‘I thought the normal way to do it was to try bribery first, and force next. You do it the other way around.’ The prime minister muttered something unintelligible, and to her own amazement, Úrsúla felt some sympathy for him. ‘I don’t need to set conditions,’ she said. ‘I’ll resign tomorrow for health reasons. That won’t take anyone by surprise. It’s already all over the news that the permanent secretary stabbed the minister.’

  ‘In that case…’ he began, and Úrsúla raised a finger, telling him to keep quiet.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll blow off the South Coast Highway at the same time.’

  120

  Looking back, it had been the promise she made that first day in office that had been her downfall. If she hadn’t pressured Óðinn to look into the rape charge against Jónatan, then everything would have worked out very differently. On the other hand, the promise she had made had also served to release her from the daze she had been in since coming home.

  ‘The shortest ministerial career on record,’ Eva said. ‘Two and a half weeks.’

  ‘True,’ Úrsúla said. ‘And I hadn’t even made a start on all the things I was going to do. I haven’t
even touched immigration, and that was the first thing I had on my list.’

  ‘Like I said, two and a half weeks. Considering everything that’s gone on, it’s probably no surprise that you don’t have any towering achievements behind you.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  This was the only thing that Úrsúla regretted about leaving office; the loss of her opportunity to bring about changes to the treatment of those seeking asylum in Iceland.

  ‘Are you sure you want to take responsibility for the South Coast Highway issue?’ Eva asked yet again, as if repeating the same question in another guise might elicit a different answer.

  ‘Yes, I want to do that,’ Úrsúla said. ‘Trust me. You can hold a press call here in the ward. I’ll lie in bed and announce that I’m standing down for health reasons, and will let them know that my last act in office is to postpone the South Coast Highway initiative as there are serious failings in the preparatory stages.’

  ‘People will go crazy,’ Eva said. ‘That’s such an open way of putting it.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Úrsúla said. ‘That’s why I need you here to make sure the press people know in advance that I’m not answering questions, and this is just a short statement. With me lying here in a hospital bed, they’ll have to behave themselves.’

  ‘You’re learning fast!’ Eva said in delight. ‘They’ll be so excited to see you and take pictures of you in bed that they’ll accept not getting to ask questions.’ But the look of concern reappeared on her face. ‘You’re absolutely, completely sure about the road issue?’ she asked. ‘You could just leave it. Considering how the PM was planning to manipulate you, he deserves to handle this himself.’

  ‘He would never do it himself,’ Úrsúla said. ‘Some unsuspecting victim would be persuaded to shoulder responsibility for it. But don’t worry about it. The blame will end up where it belongs.’

  Eva leaned over her and kissed Úrsúla’s forehead.

  ‘I hope it works out,’ she muttered. ‘I can see you’re plotting something.’

  ‘I’m not plotting anything. I’m just thinking of going in new directions. I’m considering applying to work at the homeless shelter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The shelter for homeless people. I reckon I owe my father that.’

  ‘The papers will love that,’ Eva sighed. ‘“The Minister and the Bums”,’ she said, drawing quote marks in the air with her fingers as she imagined the headline.

  ‘That’s fine. It raises awareness of the homelessness problem. I’ve been lying here wondering what kind of aid work I can do that would let me stay at home with Nonni and the children. I need to be there among the people who need help. I’d just wither away if I was doing an office job for the Red Cross. And going back to overseas aid work is more than I can ask Nonni to accept.’

  ‘This is all news to me,’ Eva said, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘But I can see you’re plotting something. This has to be an election stunt, or something.’

  ‘You remember what you said to me when I took the job, Eva?’ Úrsúla said. ‘About the politics bug? That it’s easy to catch but difficult to get rid of? Well, I think I’ve managed to get away with it.’

  She winked at Eva, who looked at her with the same concerned expression on her face.

  ‘The girl came, as I asked her to,’ she said at last. ‘Shall I show her in?’ she asked.

  Úrsúla nodded.

  121

  Stella came into the room shamefacedly, and hesitantly approached the bed, as if she expected Úrsúla to scream at her, or worse.

  ‘Sorry I said that on TV about the journalist guy. Your assistant said that your marriage is wrecked because of it. I didn’t even know you were married. I was just trying to help – make up for what I did. It’s just wrong that you have to resign because of some shit that leaked because I sold the rubbish. I’m so sorry.’

  Úrsúla put out a hand, and Stella hesitated before taking it.

  ‘Your part in all this was quite small. Óðinn is the guilty one. He was manipulating Thorbjörn. He meant for Thorbjörn to pin some sort of scandal on me so I’d have to resign. Thorbjörn had his own methods to get close to me – he used … personal methods, and bought the ministry trash from you. But then he started digging into my father’s death, and it all started to go wrong for Óðinn; all that coming to light again was disastrous for him. So your part in all this wasn’t a big one. You were caught up in it, like so many others.’

  The tears flooded from Stella’s brown eyes, and she blinked quickly as if trying to hold them back. Instead they gathered on her long eyelashes and glittered like pearls.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked and sniffed hard. ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  ‘I’m going to be fine,’ Úrsúla said. ‘Especially if you can help me with one last thing. That would easily make up for selling the ministry rubbish and blathering on TV.’

  ‘Anything,’ Stella said eagerly. ‘Tell me what you want me to do.’

  Úrsúla cleared her throat.

  ‘I want you to go to your friend at the TV station,’ she said.

  ‘You mean Gréta?’

  ‘That’s right. Go to Gréta and tell her that you heard me mention that the reason behind the cancellation of the South Coast Highway is Ingimar Magnússon.’

  ‘The government’s pulling out of the South Coast Highway?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be announcing it tomorrow, but your friend can be ahead with the news, and if she does her homework well, then she’ll understand why I cancelled the initiative.’

  ‘People are so excited about that road…’ Stella began and Úrsúla held back a sigh.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said sternly, sounding like a strict teacher. ‘Just tell Gréta that you heard me say that the initiative was cancelled because of Ingimar Magnússon. She can find the rest of it out for herself. You remember the name?’

  ‘Ingimar Magnússon. Who’s that?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. And tell her that you’re giving her this as an anonymous source. Nobody else must know that this came from you. OK?’

  Stella nodded.

  ‘This is going to help you?’ she asked, eyes wide and sincere. ‘I don’t really want to meet Gréta again. It’s a bit awkward between us, but if you reckon it’ll help you…’

  ‘It would,’ Úrsúla said. ‘You’ve no idea how much this would help me. As the old saying goes: the truth sets you free. And this is the truth. Ingimar Magnússon is the reason I have to cancel the initiative.’

  She closed her eyes and gave herself a mental pat on the back. Experienced politicians seemed mostly to weave their own realities, trying to manage facts only as they were presented, but the truth was a powerful weapon; maybe even the most powerful. She imagined how events would play out tomorrow.

  The media would publish their pictures of her, injured in her hospital bed as her resignation was announced, and there would be a wave of sympathy that would soon enough turn into astonishment and even fury as the South Coast Highway was cancelled. But when Gréta came up with her scoop, leaked via Stella, people would understand why she had been forced to cancel the road. That way she would be recognised as having ended a venture backed by Ingimar the Terrorist and his friends, all of which stank of corruption.

  The government parties would be slaughtered at the next election, and it would take the media and investigating committees months on end to get to the bottom of the road project’s financing. It would be just as bad for the prime minister to be seen as corrupt as it would be if he was seen as having been taken for a ride, when it emerged that he hadn’t known with whom he was dealing on such a critical matter. On top of which would be all the bitterness left by broken election promises.

  It would be tough, but the social democrats would be reinvigorated over the next parliament, even if they were in opposition. To be fair, it would do them good to take something of a beating. It might breathe life into them and a new leader would prob
ably emerge towards the end of the parliamentary term. Maybe what she had said to Eva earlier wasn’t entirely true. Perhaps she hadn’t got away from politics uninfected.

  Stella took a black marker pen from her pocket and took hold of Úrsúla’s arm.

  ‘I’ll draw you a rune,’ she said. ‘It’s an old Icelandic one that will help you recover and give you power.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Úrsúla said. ‘That would be very welcome. I could do with some extra strength.’

  She watched as Stella drew fine lines with the marker pen on the inside of her arm, first a cross and then two more lines that made it a star, a circle around the point where the lines all crossed, and then a whole forest of hooks, point and curves that crossed the lines at intervals, so that it soon looked like an ice crystal.

  ‘You put your arm across your chest,’ Stella said, demonstrating to Úrsúla. ‘And then the magic goes all the way to your heart and it makes you brave and strong.’

  ‘What’s this rune called?’ Úrsúla asked.

  ‘It’s a stave called the Power Giver,’ Stella said, drawing the final line and blowing on the ink to dry it.

  ‘Maybe I’ll get it tattooed there,’ Úrsúla said. ‘I’m going to need all the strength I can find.’

  She would talk to Nonni. She needed to tell him about Ebola, to explain how the plastic protection suit that had been in between her and suffering had become steadily thicker until it had become armour that nothing could penetrate, neither Syrian high explosives nor the love of her husband and children. She needed to tell him that she had had to face losing first him and then her own life to be able to find, deep in her heart, the truth of just how much she loved them all.

  She would recover. She was certain of this now. As she thought of a way of working with homeless people – men such as Pétur and her father – she felt a surge of anticipation. The feeling was warm and unexpected, and she had not had such a sense of expectation for a long time.