by Nick Petrie
14
Peter packed up and walked back through the rain to his truck, where he fired up his laptop, found the video file on the thumb drive, and hit Play.
The screen showed Óskar on his mother’s hip, arms around her neck. His face was dreamy, half-buried in her hair, his lips moving as he talked to himself. Peter could see the straps of a backpack over his shoulders, sky blue with the yellow Lego logo.
“Such a lover boy.” Catherine’s voice. She must have been holding the camera.
“Ugh. He’s a heavy boy.” A smile quirked the corner of Sarah’s mouth. She looked different now than she did in the photo Peter had been given, not so serious. Her thick-framed rectangular glasses perched atop her head, her sandy hair down and blowing in the wind. Then she glanced at the screen, realized she was on camera, and wrinkled up her face. “Mom, please.”
“What? It’s a beautiful day.” The camera closed in on Sarah and Óskar’s faces. In that simple act of observation, Catherine’s unconditional love was evident in every moment.
With the camera closer, Óskar’s voice was loud enough to be understood. He wasn’t talking to himself, he was reciting numbers. “Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine . . .” The digits kept coming, spilling out of him.
Sarah raised one arm and pointed. “Hey, Óskar, look at the trees. Aren’t they pretty?”
The boy blinked and turned to look. “Wow,” he said. “Wow, wow, wow!”
He released his mother’s neck, slid from her arms, and hit the ground running, dumping the backpack to the grass as he ran toward the trees.
The camera tracked him across a lumpy green field backed by a row of trees wearing fall colors. A park. The screen bounced as Sarah and Catherine hustled to catch up.
The boy sprinted from tree to tree, skinny arms and legs pumping. “What kind is this tree? How about this one? And this one!” After all his time in war zones, Peter had almost forgotten what it was like to watch a child run without fear. How could the boy be so small, but still so wild and free? It made Peter want to run alongside, seeing the world the way he did. All that joy and excitement and energy.
Óskar stopped at a flame-orange maple with broad, spreading limbs and wrapped his arms around the trunk in a hug. No, not a hug, he was climbing up the tree like a monkey.
The camera jolted, forgotten but still taking video. “Is that a good idea? What if he falls? What if he hits his head?” Worry clear in Catherine’s voice.
“Hey, kiddo?” Sarah sounded calm, a good mother. She held his backpack in her arms like a baby. “Be careful, please. Not too high.”
“He’s fine.” A man stepped under the tree, looking up into the branches. Erik, his face almost invisible under a thick blond beard. His voice was deep. “How’s the view up there?”
“I can see forever!” Óskar’s voice was high and excited. “Which way is our house?”
Then a soft crack and a panicked yelp. A thrashing of branches, the slow ticking fall of leaves knocked loose.
Sarah’s hands clenched into fists, but her voice stayed steady. “Óskar? Are you okay?”
“A branch broke. I sorta slipped?” A quiet but rising panic. “Now I’m stuck. I can’t get down.”
“You’re doing fine,” Erik called. “You’re a Viking, remember? So be strong, hold tight with your hands, and find a place for your feet.”
“Sarah,” Catherine said, “he’s seven.”
“He’ll figure it out,” Erik said, staring upward. He looked exactly like his photo. “When I was his age I was climbing mountains, chasing lost sheep.”
More thrashing of branches. “Mama?”
Sarah’s voice was low. “This isn’t Iceland, Erik. Parenting isn’t a spectator sport.”
“He’s more capable than you think.” Erik kept his eyes trained on the branches. “How else will he learn?”
“I’m his mother.” Sarah dropped the boy’s backpack and reached for the lowest branch. “Jesus, Erik. Sometimes kids need help.”
She wore a cardigan and high-waisted jeans and ballet flats. She did not appear particularly athletic. Yet she pulled herself up onto the first branch, then the next. “I’m coming, Óskar. Hold tight, okay?”
Limb by limb, she climbed until she vanished into the flame-colored leaves.
Erik remained on the ground, his expression hidden under the heavy beard.
Then the video ended.
Peter wasn’t a father, and he wasn’t sure what to make of their argument. He’d grown up without a lot of oversight, and he’d definitely fallen out of his share of trees. Right now, though, he couldn’t stop seeing Erik’s face.
The depth of feeling in his eyes was startling. The eyes of a man who would do anything.
* * *
—
Peter uploaded the data stick from his laptop to the cloud, then used Catherine Price’s credit card to make reservations for the first flight to Reykjavík, leaving that evening.
He spent the next few hours on his laptop, learning everything he could about Iceland’s culture, geography, and winter weather.
In the end, he didn’t tell June anything. He didn’t even call her.
He told himself that she already thought he’d be off the grid in Death Valley. She had her own work to do. She wasn’t expecting to hear from him for two weeks.
He just got on the plane and left.
15
When Peter woke in the back of the Mitsubishi, the storm had softened and a giant plow was roaring down the road beside the parking lot. The Reykjavík curbs were piled high with thick, wet snow. Everything inside the 4x4 was damp from the weather that had blown through the broken window.
Peter’s head throbbed painfully in time to his heartbeat. His right eye had swollen completely shut, rendering him blind on one side. Blood clotted his hair where Dónaldur had clocked him with the vodka bottle. His back and ribs and legs ached where each boot had hit its mark. Even his elbow was sore from breaking the Mitsubishi’s window the night before.
Losing his pants, with his phone and wallet and key, was obviously a setback, too.
On the plus side, his skull seemed to be intact, and he still had all his teeth. The truck’s clock said it was after noon, which meant he’d slept something like twelve hours. The midwinter sun was hovering somewhere near the southern horizon, brightening the clouds.
He gulped ibuprofen from his first-aid kit, then unwrapped alcohol wipes to clean his swollen eye and the split skin on the back of his head. He was probably too late to actually sterilize the wounds, but the sting of the alcohol got him focused. The hardest part of getting dressed in the car was putting on his socks.
In his still-damp coat and boots, he walked up the hill into the old city, feeling his stiff body begin to loosen up. He wondered why Bjarni and Dónaldur hadn’t simply killed him and tossed him in a dumpster. The family had already run the Norwegian off the road.
Maybe Bjarni was softhearted. Maybe the family didn’t want to risk any more attention. Maybe it was just harder to hide a body in the city.
It didn’t matter. Peter still had a job to do.
He stopped at a newer apartment building with a covered entrance where he could stand out of the snow and keep his good eye on the stairway to Snorri’s Rave Cave. It wasn’t due to open for hours, but Bjarni would have to come to work eventually.
He thought about the night before, dancing in the club. That purity of feeling, as if he were linked by some gossamer thread of humanity with every person there.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt like that before.
Certainly not since his last deployment.
What did it say about him, that the only time he felt connected to something larger than himself was in a running firefight with his platoon or high as a kite on some club drug slipped into his beer. O
r alone and off-trail on the side of a mountain, miles from so-called civilization.
The snow came softly down. He was hungry and cold and long overdue for coffee. His head throbbed. His swollen eye tightened. The day got darker. But the white static was strangely silent.
He found that he missed it.
He didn’t want to begin to think about what that meant.
Peter had let his guard down, in the club.
It wouldn’t happen again.
He would be as ruthless as these Vikings obviously were.
* * *
—
The snow had mostly stopped and shopkeepers were shoveling their sidewalks when Bjarni came around the corner in a dirty red coat and familiar rubber boots, a day pack slung over one shoulder. The white static finally woke, sparking high. Fight or flight. Peter had a definite preference.
As Bjarni passed the apartment entrance, Peter stepped out behind him, grabbed his hood, and slung him around to slam him face-first into the building. The day pack fell to the ground.
Bjarni said something guttural in Icelandic, then pushed off the wall with one hand. When he spun to meet Peter, his eyes widened in recognition. One sleeve was empty, his right arm slung under his coat. Even with just one good eye, Peter had no trouble thumping Bjarni in the temple with his sore elbow.
Bjarni’s eyes fluttered and his knees buckled. Peter caught him under the armpit and held him up. “Viking my ass.”
A gaggle of tourists in immaculate new outerwear walked past, staring. Peter hung Bjarni’s good arm around his shoulder and clamped his hand around the man’s wrist to hold him, just two local drunks trying to keep it together. Bjarni stomped at Peter’s instep, but Peter shifted and the heavy heel slipped off the outside of Peter’s boot. Bjarni tried to pull his hand away at the same moment, not the worst idea, but Peter just tightened his grip and leaned in.
“Stop fighting or I’ll hurt you.”
Bjarni kept thrashing, so Peter popped him on the broken arm. He wore a fiberglass cast inside the sling—lucky Bjarni had gone to the doctor—but Peter’s hands were hard, and the break was fresh. Bjarni froze in place, face rigid, paralyzed by the pain. The tourists kept walking, shaking their heads. Icelanders.
“Where’s your wallet?”
“You are crazy.”
“Yes. Where’s your fucking wallet?”
Bjarni shook his head. “Back pocket.”
“I’m going to take it now. If you try anything, I’ll break your other arm. Got me?” Peter watched the muscles flex in Bjarni’s face.
“Já.” Yes.
Peter released Bjarni’s shoulder and fished out the man’s wallet. It was a thin, black leather envelope with his national ID and a bank card with a few high-denomination krónur folded between. The ID didn’t have an address. Peter put the wallet in his own pocket.
“Give that back.”
“Maybe later. What’s in the bag?”
“My shoes, for work. A book.”
“Any weapons?”
An arrogant tilt of the chin. “This is Iceland, not America.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “I forgot, you just use your boots here.”
Bjarni opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Peter patted Bjarni’s coat pockets and fished through the bag. He found keys and mittens and a pair of black shoes and Ken Bruen’s The Guards. At least the guy had good taste in books. He put a knuckly hand on Bjarni’s bad arm. “Where are my things from the club? My phone and wallet and key. My goddamn pants.”
He watched Bjarni weigh his options. To help him along the path to truth, Peter drummed heavy fingers on the cast. Bjarni’s eyes tipped down. “At my home.”
“Then that’s where we’re going. Do we walk or drive?”
“I cannot be late for work.” Bjarni said.
“Look at my face.” Peter pointed at his swollen eye, his cheek gone black and blue. “You think I feel bad for you?” He scooped up Bjarni’s bag. “Now, do we walk or drive? Or should I break something else?”
Bjarni had a banged-up little Skoda hatchback parked just down the hill.
16
They drove along the Saebraut, snow piled waist-high and lumpy beside the road. People walked the seawall on the left, with the dark bay beyond like a hole in the night. Peter had Bjarni’s bag at his feet. He wondered where they’d pulled little Óskar’s backpack out of the water.
Bjarni turned right on Snorrabraut, which cut back up the hill and through town. The Skoda was a stick shift, and he had trouble driving with one hand, which suited Peter just fine. It would make Bjarni less likely to try fighting in the car, although Peter knew he’d try something eventually. The square-shouldered Icelander with the sword and shield tattoos didn’t have the submissive slump of a man who’d given up. When it came, Peter would be ready. Even if he only had one good eye.
Snorrabraut was a major thoroughfare, four lanes packed with small cars and big trucks and enormous yellow-orange buses. The buildings were mostly concrete, three or four stories tall, built right up against the sidewalk and each other. Snowflakes melted on the windshield, shining in the approaching headlights.
They crossed over a highway and came to a long stretch of parkland on the right, with low trees and shrubs half-buried in white. Icelanders had long ago cut down almost all of their native trees for building materials and fuel. New plantings grew very slowly in the subarctic climate.
Peter already had the city map in his head, so he knew where they were, but he didn’t know where they were going, and he didn’t speak the language. Bjarni could be taking him anywhere. A Viking longhouse packed with cannibals seemed as likely as anything.
“Give me your phone.”
Bjarni looked at him, astonished and offended. “No.”
People were so attached to their phones. “Really?” Peter rapped his knuckles on the other man’s cast.
“Aaah, shit, fuck you. Okay. I must pull over.”
Bjarni found a spot to stop. Peter kept a grip on the other man’s seat belt, in case he tried to slip the buckle and run, but Bjarni just fished his huge smartphone from his inner coat pocket and handed it over.
Peter woke the phone and saw a photo of three men in a snowfield, wearing winter climbing gear, their arms around each other’s shoulders. Two enormous men with cropped hair and graying beards flanked a younger man, clean-shaven and handsome, with empty eyes and a wool hat pushed back on his head. Erik Grímsson was the man in the middle. Maybe the two others were his uncles, the fishermen? Bjarni would have taken the picture.
Peter held up the phone. “What’s your security code?”
Bjarni made a face, but stuck his thumb on the button and the phone’s main screen came up.
The phone’s language was set to Icelandic or Norwegian or something, but Peter recognized the app icons. Global capitalism at work. He found the map function. “What street do you live on?”
Smirking, Bjarni rattled off an impossibly long word or words Peter couldn’t begin to decipher, let alone spell. Peter shook his head, opened the glove box, and unearthed the car’s paperwork. It had Bjarni’s name and what looked like an address. Or, at least, there was a number and a word that began and ended with the same sounds, sort of. He held up the paper. “This?”
Bjarni made a sour face and nodded once.
Peter told him, “Keep driving.”
Bjarni ground his teeth and put the car in gear.
While Peter tweaked the phone’s settings and put the address into the mapping app, Bjarni got them back onto the road, past a long, narrow inlet, and into a tree-filled neighborhood on a small peninsula sticking out into the sea. The map app identified it as Karsnes. The houses were mostly painted concrete with a modern look. Peter liked the clean Icelandic architecture.
Bjarni stopped at a modest single-sto
ry home with wide windows and a low-pitched roof, hiding behind a screen of trees. Tire tracks showed in the snowy cobblestone driveway, which had been shoveled just enough to get the car out.
Bjarni didn’t move from his seat. The muscles clenched in his jaw. “What do you want from me?”
Peter wanted him inside the house, where he couldn’t make a scene. “I told you,” he said. “My phone, my wallet, my car key, my pants.” He gave Bjarni a toothy smile. “And your cousin, Erik.”
Bjarni just looked at him. He was trying for empty eyes, but couldn’t quite manage it.
Peter took the keys from the ignition, unlatched his seat belt, and opened his door. He still hurt all over. “Come on, I can’t wait to see your place. What’s for dinner?”
Bjarni muttered what sounded like a potent Icelandic curse, and followed Peter to the house.
* * *
—
At the narrow entrance, Peter handed Bjarni the keys and hung back while the big man unlocked the house. Peter didn’t know what might be waiting inside, so he bumped Bjarni off-balance and slipped past to turn on the lights.
He saw an open-plan living area decorated in Icelandic Bachelor Pad, with cross-country skis leaning in one corner and snowshoes piled in another. The wide front windows might be nice when the sun was out, but in the midwinter darkness, they just reflected the pale lamplight back like mirrors. The static didn’t like any of it.
Bjarni came in behind him, and Peter pointed at the low couch. “Sit.”
Broken arm or not, square-shouldered Bjarni looked bigger indoors. He glared while Peter poked around. Coats and trekking packs in a closet by the door. Four plastic crates in the corner held climbing gear, crampons and harness and rope. A simple kitchen was separated by a counter and stools. The furnishings were inexpensive and utilitarian, but well-made, even elegant in their Scandinavian simplicity.
“Do you have any guns in the house?”
“No, no.” Bjarni made a face. “Too expensive. It takes several years for a license. You must take classes, learn safety. And what would I shoot, a sheep?”