The Wild One

by Nick Petrie

  “Well, Óskar knows the first four thousand digits. He’ll begin to recite them at the slightest provocation, and he’ll continue until you ask him to stop. He’s quite a brilliant boy. When you bring him home—” Her voice roughened and he knew she was pushing down tears. She cleared her throat. “He’ll be at a good school where he can develop his gifts. Instead of climbing rocks and trees where he might crack his head open every day.”

  Peter pictured her ravaged face, the lines carved deep with grief. He was afraid he was only adding to it. “After the Norwegian investigator, did you send anyone else to look for Óskar?”

  “I tried,” she said, “believe me. But nobody else would take my money. They didn’t speak the language. They told me Iceland was too remote, too empty. They said I was better off with the police.”

  Those were good reasons, Peter thought. Yet here he was. And Erik and Óskar were still missing.

  “When they found Óskar’s backpack, who else did you talk to, before me?”

  “I talked with my husband, because of his connections. He told me to talk to Tom Wetzel. And Tom sent me to you. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out who the players are.”

  “Peter, I need you to call me.” He could hear the strain in her voice. “Every day. I need to hear what you’re doing, what progress you’re making. Can you promise me that?”

  “Catherine, I can’t,” he said gently. “I’ll be traveling cross-country soon, and the weather is going to get bad. I don’t know what kind of connection I’ll have.”

  “Do what you can,” she said. “Promise me that? You’ll do what you can?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I will.”

  Then his phone went silent. The battery had died.

  He found his headlamp and pulled out the photo of Óskar again. The father’s bearded face. The boy in his arms, so full of life.

  In the pale false light of the LED, Peter held up the photo by thin, worn corners.

  He lay there amid the howling darkness and looked at the photo for a long, long time.

  22

  The slouching salesman clearly didn’t believe Peter could afford to buy a Land Rover, even a used one.

  Peter didn’t blame the man. His eye was still swollen shut and the cut on the back of his head felt puffy and raw. The dreams were more vivid than ever, so he was bleary from lack of sleep, and he hadn’t showered since he’d left Portland three days and four airports ago. In that time, he’d danced like a dervish, had two major panic attacks, lost one fight and won another. Standing by the floor-to-ceiling dealership windows, he could smell himself through the open neck of his coat.

  But when Peter held out Catherine Price’s black credit card, the salesman flashed a broad, surprised smile, stood up straight, and carried the card reverently to the manager’s office, where they stood in hushed consultation. The transformative power of money. The manager made a phone call, then came out and shook Peter’s hand.

  He ended up with a seventeen-year-old blue Defender 110. With serious four-wheel drive and seating for nine, the utility vehicles were legendary for their toughness and durability, and widely used in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Peter’s Defender had fabric seats and minimal dashboard controls, definitely not a luxury model. But it had a powerful engine and oversized tires with good rubber remaining, and the previous owner had tricked it out like an English redneck with a winch on the front bumper, a snorkel tube for crossing rivers, and a cargo basket on the roof carrying four spare gas cans and a disturbingly substantial snow shovel.

  It wasn’t Peter’s green 1968 Chevrolet pickup, but it had a certain style.

  The salesman looked confused when Peter didn’t want the dirty truck washed, but was happy to sell him a pair of sand ladders and a bumper jack for crossing roadless areas. Then Peter pulled into an empty service bay, where he borrowed a wrench from a tall mechanic in black overalls and a commemorative World Cup sweater.

  The mechanic scratched his beard as he watched Peter remove the second- and third-row seats to make a sleeping bay in the back. He didn’t mention Peter’s swollen eye, or his pained grunts as he contorted his aching body to get to the seat bolts.

  When Peter returned the wrench, he noticed the mechanic’s safety-yellow work coat hanging from a hook on the side of his toolbox. The coat was worn and dirty but Swedish-made and designed for Nordic weather. Even better, he’d seen dozens of men wearing similar gear, all over Reykjavík. “Nice coat.”

  “Já.” The mechanic shrugged. “It is warm.”

  “How much do these cost? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Too much,” the mechanic said. “But they last. The best.”

  “May I see?” The mechanic nodded. Peter picked it up and pulled it over his fleece. It fit him well enough. The mechanic clearly didn’t like Peter wearing the coat. Peter took it off.

  “Can I buy this one? I’ll pay you the same as a new one.”

  The mechanic looked at Peter with the frugal man’s suspicion of an offer too good to be true. “It is not new.”

  “I know,” Peter said. “I need to drive north, but I don’t think my coat is good for working in this weather.” He took out a fat wad of Bjarni’s krónur. “What do you think? Maybe with enough extra to buy some beer for your friends?”

  The mechanic still didn’t answer. Deeply skeptical. A female mechanic, working on a Volkswagen in the next bay, had straightened up to see what the conversation was about.

  “Why don’t you try my coat?” Peter had laid his own across the hood of the Defender. It was a gift from June, so he didn’t look like a mountain bum when they went to town. “Not so durable, but warm.”

  The mechanic scratched his beard again, then looked at the female mechanic, who shrugged. He stepped forward cautiously, as if Peter was playing a trick on him, then pulled Peter’s coat over his overalls. He looked at the female mechanic again. She raised her eyebrows, maybe seeing her coworker in a new light, then gave a grudging nod.

  “It looks good on you,” Peter said. “Keep it.” He held out the wad of krónur. “And the money.”

  “You are certain?”

  Peter nodded. “Please.”

  The mechanic shook his head at the extravagance of outlanders. “Okay.”

  He took the bills and they shook on the deal. The mechanic had a grip like a hydraulic press. Peter put on his new work coat and climbed into the Defender. The mechanic came over and put his hand on the door frame.

  “I do not want to give advice,” he said. “But this weather is bad, even for Iceland. There is a storm coming. It will get worse. You should not go. Maybe instead go to the doctor?”

  Peter smiled. “Thanks for the coat.” Then he threw the truck into reverse, backed out of the service bay, and headed out into the snow.

  In his Swedish safety yellow and the fat-tired Defender crusted with dirt, Peter had officially gone native.

  * * *

  —

  It was oddly bright out, probably because the previous night’s heavy wind had wiped the clouds from the sky. The Defender’s heater was still working hard. There was no built-in thermometer for the exterior temperature, but the previous owner had epoxied one to the side mirror. In Celsius, it read twenty below zero, which was about zero Fahrenheit. Not bad, if you grew up in Wisconsin.

  Of course, it was only noon. Things would get a lot colder when the sun went down.

  Driving out of the city center, he plugged Bjarni’s phone into the cigarette lighter to charge. The cold was hard on battery life. His own phone’s battery was so dead that the phone wouldn’t even turn on.

  He parked in front of a supersized strip mall in a busy commercial area, then went surfing on Bjarni’s reviving phone. He found a nearby hostel with an open room and made a reservation on the hostel’s websi
te with Catherine Price’s black credit card. He didn’t like using the card, because it could leave a trail for Hjálmar to follow, but unless Peter wanted to get naked in the parking lot and give himself a snow bath, he really needed to take a shower. With soap. Otherwise they’d lock him up as a hazard to public health.

  He couldn’t check into the hostel until four, but that was fine.

  He had a few other things to do first.

  First, he went to Bónus, a big grocery store with a lot of boxed and canned and frozen foods. The food selection made sense on an island where most food arrived in shipping containers. They had fruits and vegetables, but apples were five dollars apiece. He paid cash for several weeks’ worth of food he could eat without cooking, like bread and butter and cheese and cured sausage.

  He also bought a roll of tinfoil, although he wouldn’t be cooking with it.

  At a gas station that doubled as a kind of convenience store, he filled his tank and his spare gas cans, and picked up a handful of preloaded gas cards, because he couldn’t use cash at the unattended pumps outside the big cities. He also bought a new local smartphone with a front-loaded data plan, and a handmade wool hat with goofy earflaps that partially covered the sides of his face. He’d seen a lot of locals wearing them.

  In his hat and safety-yellow coat and six-day beard, nobody gave him a second look.

  Peter Ash, master of disguise.

  23

  The United States Embassy was a modest, older three-story concrete office block with no redeeming architectural features, set in a snug neighborhood among small apartment buildings and single-family homes on Reykjavík’s central hill.

  Peter parked a quarter block from the embassy and continued up the one-way street on foot to get a look. The sun had gone down and the streetlights had come on. The building’s blank face was bright with security lighting.

  Iceland was a small, low-risk posting, which explained why the building was set right on the street, with no gated compound, no barbed wire or guard tower. Still, a row of rectangular concrete planters stood waist-high along the front of the building, projecting into the street and narrowing the road to a single lane. The planters might have looked decorative, but with hidden steel reinforcement sunk deep underground, Peter knew they could stop a heavy truck or absorb the blast of a car bomb.

  The other security measures would never be mistaken for decoration. The windows were protected with thick metal grates, an array of obvious cameras watched the street, and a pair of armed men were stationed by the door. Their large mustaches and longer hair told Peter they were not Marines. Embassy guards, especially in Europe, tended to be groomed within an inch of their lives. Peter was glad. He didn’t want to embarrass a fellow Marine. Private security was a different matter.

  He had a map of the area in his head, but on the ground, the streets were a jumble of curves, angled intersections, and one-way residential lanes. The exception was a busy thoroughfare paralleling the embassy to the west, with a historic church and the National Gallery on one side and a small lake on the other. From there, it was a direct half-kilometer to the highway.

  The snow had been cleared, although some ice remained on the uneven sidewalks. He circled the block on foot, then climbed back into the Defender. He could see the embassy entrance from the driver’s seat. The truck’s previous owner had rigged the cigarette lighter to work even when the engine wasn’t running, so Peter unplugged Bjarni’s phone from the charger and plugged in his own.

  When it collected enough juice to wake up, the screen flashed with text messages and missed calls. Catherine Price wanting a progress report. June asking about his appointment with the shrink in Springfield.

  Feeling like a bad person, Peter ignored the messages and tore off a generous rectangle of tinfoil, folded it in half, then in half again, and laid it on the passenger seat.

  Then he called Hjálmar’s cell phone.

  “Halló, my friend Peter Ash. Your time is perfect. I have not yet had lunch. May I invite you?”

  Peter heard a soft commotion in the background. “Thank you, Hjálmar. Lunch sounds great. First, I was hoping you’d give me the cell number for David Staple. I have some questions.”

  A pause. “Why would I do this for you? It would only make trouble for me.”

  “You don’t like him, either. He’s using you. Icelanders are independent people, remember?”

  The commotion in the background continued. Peter heard whispers. He smiled. It was good to know the Icelandic cops were human.

  “Okay,” Hjálmar said. “I will text you David Staple’s information. After you finish with him, you call me back. We will have lunch, then I will take you to the airport.”

  “Sounds great, thanks.”

  Peter didn’t know how hard it would be for Hjálmar to track his phone. But Peter’s refusal to go with Hjálmar the night before would have made picking him up a priority. If the police had the capability, they would use it.

  He figured the only reason they hadn’t found him yet was the fact that he’d drained his phone battery. But they’d had the overnight hours to get themselves ready. Wasn’t Europe supposed to be the home of the nanny state? They probably knew what he’d had for lunch. Which was exactly nothing, because despite buying four bags of groceries, he’d forgotten to eat.

  Hjálmar’s text arrived. Peter made the call.

  “Who the hell is this?” Definitely Staple. Peter could practically see his outraged pink face.

  “Hi, it’s Peter Ash. We met at the airport a few days ago?”

  “You? Son, you better be there now, or on your way. Your flight leaves in, what, four hours? Otherwise you’ve got Interpol on your case. You’ll go home in handcuffs.”

  “About that,” Peter said. “My rental car got towed. Any chance you can give me a lift?”

  “Jesus Christ. You’re pathetic.”

  “I thought you wanted me to go home,” Peter said. “You can walk me to airport security yourself. They make a good cup of coffee.”

  Staple sighed loudly. “Where are you now?”

  “Do you know that big modern church on top of the hill, where all the tourists take their pictures? It’s not far from the embassy. That’s where you are, right?”

  The embassy was a wild guess. Staple could have been at the Hilton, or lunch, or anywhere else. It didn’t really matter. Staple would want to be at the church when the police grabbed Peter, just to make sure it happened. He hadn’t gone to all that trouble getting Peter kicked out of Iceland just to drop the ball now. Mostly Peter didn’t want Staple to hide out where Peter couldn’t get at him.

  “Yeah, but I’m in the middle of something,” Staple said. “Give me an hour. Meet me at the statue out front of the church.”

  It was a ten-minute walk. The hour would give the police time to get set up.

  “Great,” Peter said. “Thanks so much for your help.”

  Then he called Hjálmar back. “All set. Where do you want to meet for lunch?”

  Hjálmar seemed to be in a chatty mood. “What kind of food would you like to eat? We have traditional Icelandic, of course. Thai food is always good. Let’s see, there is Gló, which has very good vegetarian . . .”

  Clearly Hjálmar would talk until Peter’s phone gave them his location. Peter laid the phone atop the quadrupled rectangle of tinfoil while Hjálmar yammered on: “. . . sushi, steak, fish, a new pizza restaurant called Flatey . . .”

  Hjálmar kept talking as Peter folded the foil around the phone. When he crimped the final edges tight, the sound abruptly cut off as the improvised Faraday cage blocked the signal and killed the connection. Next thing, Peter’d be making himself a tinfoil hat. Crazy, maybe, but even the paranoid have enemies.

  Peter had two working assumptions. Staple would tell Hjálmar they were meeting at the church. And Hjálmar hadn’t gotten a fix on Peter’s lo
cation.

  If Staple wasn’t actually at the embassy, Peter would know soon enough. If not, he’d find the man at the church. Wait out the police and take him then.

  He wondered again exactly who Staple was.

  Peter was sure that Hjálmar, as the national police commissioner and the local head of Interpol, made it his business to know the main players in the staff of every embassy, especially the American embassy. Hell, Hjálmar was probably on the invitation list to every embassy party. Staple acted like a big wheel, but Hjálmar didn’t know him.

  Which meant that Staple was new on the country team, or he wasn’t actually on the embassy staff. Which led to another question. If Staple was such a big wheel, why did he end up at a small, obscure posting like Iceland?

  Maybe he’d screwed up, Peter thought. Got sent away for his sins, whatever they might be.

  But that still didn’t account for the ambassador’s refusal to acknowledge to Hjálmar that Staple worked at the embassy. Or to officially confirm the request to refuse Peter’s entry.

  What if Staple was some kind of spook? From one of the intelligence agencies. That would account for his attitude, his credentials, and the unofficial nature of the request.

  But Staple didn’t seem like a spook. He just seemed like an asshole, and not a particularly capable one. In fact, Staple’s attitude had annoyed Hjálmar so much that he’d turned Peter loose on Reykjavík for two days.

  The embassy’s front door opened and Staple appeared. He carried a paper cup of coffee, but nothing else. He wore the same slick-soled dress shoes, his long topcoat, a scarf, but no gloves or hat. Which meant he’d been in a warm vehicle. Even Staple wasn’t self-important enough to walk in this weather without better clothes.