The video was still pretty disturbing, but the incident would be easier to dismiss as part of the confusion of war. Possibly a downgrade from ‘war crime’ to ‘war accident’. That would be an important distinction.
‘Who faked it? Not Freeflow?’
‘No, definitely not Freeflow,’ Bryant said.
‘The Palestinians?’ Magnus said.
‘Could be. Obviously they want to make the Israelis look bad. Or it could be the Israelis themselves – or rather right-wing extremists in Israel.’
‘Why?’
‘There are a number of elements within Israel who don’t like the peace process. You remember I told you that the Israeli government and the Palestinians are close to a peace accord?’
Magnus nodded.
‘Well, there are some concessions in there from the Israelis about halting settlement on the West Bank. Some on the Israeli right wing think that those concessions go too far. If the video is released, the peace process is screwed, and Jews can continue to settle the West Bank.’
‘You guys don’t make things simple,’ said Magnus.
Bryant smiled. ‘Welcome to my world.’
‘So is there any chance that Mossad is behind Nico Andreose’s death?’
‘You tell me. Mossad are pros. Was the guy who killed Andreose a pro?’
Magnus thought of the botched attack on the volcano. The failure to kill Erika again the day before. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not professionals. We’re dealing with an amateur here. What about the Italians? You are saying it is more than just the minister Tretto involved?’
‘Oh, yes. It’s one of the Italian mafia organizations. Not as professional as Mossad, of course, but still professionals.’
That still didn’t quite fit. ‘Thank you, Tom,’ said Magnus. ‘Now, can you give me a lift back to my car?’
‘Can you tell me when Freeflow is going to publish the video?’
‘No,’ said Magnus.
‘Why not?’ said Bryant, his voice edged with anger.
‘They don’t know themselves. Whenever the volcano lets them, I guess.’
‘They are planning a press conference?’
Magnus shrugged. ‘I think this conversation is over now. Thanks for your help.’
They drove back to Magnus’s car in silence. Bryant paused at the bottom of Thórsgata to let Magnus out. ‘Remember what I said. About the video. You may want to tell Freeflow.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Magnus.
Erika, Dieter and Apex were online in the chat room. She was ten feet away from Dieter and many thousands of miles away from Apex.
Erika began to type: did dieter tell you about asta?
She found it very hard to type that last word. She stared at the line she had just written and was overwhelmed by a desire to burst into tears. She tried to press Send but she just couldn’t.
She pushed her chair back from the desk and hurried over to the window. She stared out at the house’s scrappy yard, her back to the others, and took some deep breaths.
She was finding it really difficult to hold it together. She was used to high-pressure situations, to high stakes; she thrived on them. Freeflow had received all sorts of threats over the years and she had never backed down. Never.
But this time . . .
She had been able to handle the murder of her lover. It had been hard, but she had dealt with it. But then there was the attack on herself. And the discovery that Nico had betrayed her all along. And finally the death of Ásta.
Ásta was innocent. She reminded Erika of a more innocent version of herself. Ásta hadn’t deserved to die.
Erika’s credo was that however much pressure Freeflow came under, they would always publish.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
She felt a touch on her shoulder. She wanted to shrug it off, but she took one last deep breath and turned.
It was Dieter. ‘Are you OK, Erika?’
His face was full of concern. Of tenderness. Dieter was always there for her, for Freeflow. He would do anything for the cause, her cause.
She couldn’t let him down. Not now. Couldn’t show weakness.
She took another breath. Somehow, miraculously, she had been able to hold back the tears. ‘Yes. Yes, Dieter, of course I am.’
She pushed past him and back to her desk, sending her last message on its way as she sat down. She only waited a few seconds for a response.
Apex: yes. presumably the police haven’t found who killed her.
Erika: the police are useless. they asked whether she might have submitted her own leak in the last couple of days. anyone seen anything?
Apex: i checked the new stuff last night. yet another fraternity handbook. cornell. and something about waste dumping in the amazon in peru.
Erika: none of that sounds like asta.
Apex: what are we going to do?
Erika: what do you think we should do?
Apex: i think you should get the hell out of iceland.
Dieter: we can’t. the volcano.
Apex: you could fly west. to america. get the hell out of there.
Erika: if we leave now, these people will have died for nothing.
Apex: if you don’t leave you will die for nothing.
Erika stared at her screen. Apex had a point. But so had she. She wished she could get out of the damn house, go for a run or something, get some perspective.
Erika: let’s leave tomorrow. the websites are ready, the video is edited. we can publish on sunday.
Apex: we haven’t verified it properly yet. presumably gareth hasn’t got to iceland?
Dieter: no flights. no it hasn’t been properly verified.
Erika: and we could use gareth’s help to identify some of the objects in the stills. but he isn’t here. we have to do the best we can.
Apex: if it isn’t verified, we shouldn’t publish.
Erika: have you checked out the helicopter noise?
Apex: i’ve tried: i can’t find any proof that there’s anything wrong. it just doesn’t sound right to me.
Erika: we’ve come this far. we have to publish. it really would be abandoning nico and asta just to drop everything and run away. i couldn’t do that. could you?
Dieter: erika’s right, apex. this is the biggest leak freeflow has ever had. we have been working for something like this for four years. we have to take the risk.
The screen was still for a minute.
Apex: ok. we do it. what about the press conference?
Erika: we’ll do something in london with samantha wilton if I can get there. otherwise let’s fly west as apex suggested. do a press conference in washington.
Apex: they think there’s a chance airspace might be opened up over the north of britain and norway.
Erika: it will be tough to get tickets though.
Apex: i can help with that.
Erika: thanks apex.
Erika knew what Apex meant: he would hack into the airline reservation systems to get them seats.
Erika: okay. it’s decided. i’ll get hold of alan in london to see what he can do about a press conference either there or in washington, depending on the volcano. and we will have the video ready tomorrow, ready for publication sunday. agreed?
Dieter: agreed.
Apex: agreed.
Erika: thanks guys.
Erika picked up the phone to call Alan in London. She felt better. Her breathing was steady, her eyes still dry. Only one more day holed up here in Iceland.
She could manage that.
Ollie staggered out of the house on to Njálsgata. He and Katrín had been out late the night before, had had a good time, and he had missed his brother entirely. He thought he had heard a door banging shortly after he had gone to sleep, Katrín beside him, but he wasn’t sure. She had abandoned him earlier that morning, claiming she had to go to work somewhere. Ollie had had trouble believing that she could actually have something as mundane as a day job, but everyone had to earn money and sh
e seemed pretty determined to leave the house by nine.
A stiff breeze was blowing and the sky was divided into complicated layers of clouds, underneath which a tight ball of grey was rolling towards him. Ollie climbed the hill to where the great penis-shaped church stood and scurried inside when the cloud burst. The shower only lasted a few minutes, and once it had gone, he escaped the church and headed down the other side of the hill.
Ollie had dreaded coming to Iceland, but he had to admit it wasn’t so bad. All those brightly coloured little tin houses were cute, and the people were cool. He had met a load of random strangers in the bar the night before, many of them female, all of them friendly. Katrín had woman-handled him away from a couple of promising situations, but that was fair enough, he supposed.
The country wasn’t the cold, bleak, cruel place he had remembered. Or rather that he had chosen to forget.
Ollie loved America. From the moment he had arrived at the age of ten he had had one aim: to become a normal American kid. And he had achieved it within a year. Strangely, his father, for all his talk of Iceland and endless readings of the sagas and reciting of poetry, had understood. There was no doubt that Magnus was his father’s favourite, with his insatiable desire for all things Icelandic, but Ragnar had helped Ollie become an American kid. They had gone to Fenway Park together countless times, with Ollie explaining each time what was going on on the baseball field. If Magnus was the expert on long-dead Vikings, Ollie was the expert on the Sox. Ragnar always seemed to listen attentively, but Ollie could never figure out why such an intelligent man, a math professor no less, could never quite understand the intricacies of the game no matter how many times he was told.
Ragnar was easier on Ollie too, perhaps because he realized that Ollie’s pain in Iceland had been greater. Magnus was expected to get into an Ivy League College, Ollie could go where he liked. Magnus was also expected to carry the torch of his father’s Icelandic heritage, to read and learn the sagas and the poems, even to travel to Iceland with his father, whereas Ollie could watch TV and fool around at school. Ragnar had taken him to see a nice lady in Brookline every week, who Ollie had subsequently realized was a shrink. With the help of subsequent shrinks, Ollie had figured out what his father was doing. Ragnar thought Ollie was screwed up and he felt guilty that he was responsible for it.
So Ollie knew he was screwed up. Which explained the drugs, the failed relationships, the drinking. Maybe even his lack of ability to pull off the big real estate coup that always seemed just around the corner. And he knew it was his father’s fault, along with his evil grandfather. But he had found his own way of dealing with things. Live for the present, enjoy yourself, and leave the bad stuff well behind you.
He reached the bottom of the hill, crossed a busy road and came to the pond in the middle of town. Fancy houses lined its shores, and a dozen different kinds of bird squealed and squabbled on its water. The base of a rainbow rested on the metal roofs on the hill behind him, chopped off at the beginning of its curve.
He sat down on a bench, ignoring the damp, to watch the birds.
All had been hunky-dory until his father had been murdered that summer afternoon in Duxbury. Ollie had been at the beach with a girl, and they had been the ones who discovered his father’s body when they returned to the house. The following days and weeks had been hell for Ollie, for Magnus and for their stepmother, Kathleen, who had even been suspected of the crime for a while. The girl had lost no time in dropping Ollie.
Ollie knew how to deal with it. Forget it. Deny it. Obliterate it. Why couldn’t Magnus do the same thing?
But Magnus couldn’t. He had to stir and stir. Which was why Ollie was in Iceland.
At first Ollie had regretted his decision to come to the lunch in the Culture Institute the day before. But he had listened closely to what the old schoolteacher Jóhannes had said, especially those words from the saga of Thor the Tub-Thumper or whoever he was: ‘I would rather lose you than have a coward son.’
He pulled out the scrap of paper on which the schoolteacher had written his address and phone number and stared at it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
MAGNUS HAD INTENDED to see Viktor at his office after leaving Thórsgata, but it turned out that the lawyer was at police headquarters, offering himself for interview.
All the bluster was gone. It was clear that Viktor had been very fond of his niece and blamed himself for her murder.
‘Have you seen much of Ásta over the last few days?’ Magnus asked him.
‘Not really. Not since we were both in the house in Thórsgata on Sunday afternoon, getting it ready. I probably haven’t spoken to her alone at all since then.’
‘And how do you think she got on with the members of the Freeflow team?’ Magnus asked.
‘Very well. They seemed to like her. She’s good with people. She would have made a very good pastor.’
‘She would have,’ said Magnus, remembering his own conversation with her on the drive back from the volcano. ‘Why was she so interested in Freeflow?’
‘She bought into the ideal. You know, freedom of information, transparency. She was a political idealist as well as a religious one. I remember talking to her about it at my brother’s house just after Erika and Nico had visited Iceland last year. She said then that she would like to help in any way she could. So I called her last week when I heard Freeflow were on their way. She had time on her hands, she was willing, and I knew she would be useful. Which she was. A bunch of geeks like that need someone normal to look after them.’
‘It seems strange to me that she was the one who was killed,’ Magnus said. ‘I mean she was on the periphery of Freeflow, wasn’t she? Did she give any indication why anyone would want to kill her? Did she have any specific information?’
Viktor frowned and shook his head. ‘You are right. She had seen the Gaza video – I take it you know about that now?’
Magnus nodded. ‘I’ve seen it.’
‘OK,’ Viktor continued. ‘But then so had everyone else.’
‘Do you think she might have had a leak of her own for Freeflow?’ Magnus asked, remembering what Erika had told him.
Viktor glanced at Magnus quickly. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. A couple of weeks ago, before I even knew Freeflow were coming to Iceland, Ásta asked me how a potential leaker might get in touch with them.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I said the details were on the Freeflow website, but the best thing was probably to post a CD to one of their PO Boxes.’
‘Did you ask her about it? Whether she had anything specific in mind?’
‘No. That didn’t occur to me. Until now.’
Once Viktor had gone, Magnus called Baldur to tell him what the MP had said, and how that corroborated Erika’s impression. He also mentioned Zivah’s feeling that Ásta knew who might be behind the attacks on Erika, or at least knew that the Israelis weren’t. Baldur was just about to search Ásta’s room, and he said he would keep a look out for possible leaked material.
There was a message from Matthías for Magnus to call him.
‘What have you got for me?’ Magnus asked the inspector.
‘A stone wall.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They said they’ve referred it to legal to see whether the Blue Notice complies with Article Three of the constitution.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means the guy in Rome is trying to tell us something. It’s politics. Article Three prohibits Interpol from taking action on political matters. Once it goes to legal it will be weeks before it comes out again. But at least they’ve told us why.’
‘They are scared of upsetting Tretto?’
‘Or his friends.’
‘Can’t you push them?’
‘Sorry, Magnús. There really is no point. That’s what the guy in Rome was telling me.’
‘All right. Thanks for trying.’ Magnus slammed the phone down in frustration. If it wa
sn’t for the ash cloud, he’d fly to Milan himself and break into Nico’s house to get a hold of that computer.
He turned to his own machine. It was nearly lunchtime and it was the first chance he had got to look at it all day.
There was a message from Apex.
i checked on nico. you are right that he was a plant. but it looks like he was just observing. the guys he was working for thought that ff had more information about gruppo cavour than we actually do. his job was just to stay in place and let them know if we picked up any further leaks. he definitely was not supposed to kill erika or help anyone else do it. apex
Magnus typed a response: How do you know?
He had to wait less than a minute for a reply. Apex had obviously set some kind of alert to tell him whenever Magnus typed anything into his machine.
i took a look at his stored e-mails.
Magnus couldn’t resist a laugh. Of course he had. He didn’t have to go through Interpol. Thanks, Apex. You heard about Ásta?
Apex replied: yes. it has us all rattled. any ideas who did it?
Magnus typed: Not yet. You?
There was no immediate response. Magnus sat back in his chair staring at his screen. He hadn’t told anyone else about his contact with Apex, and of course Apex’s hacking into Nico’s computer could not be used as formal evidence.
Nico and his Italian friends could not be ruled out as suspects completely, but they were looking less likely.
Then a message appeared: i hate to say this, but maybe dieter. he had a kind of crush on erika, always has had. he may have been jealous of nico.
Magnus typed a response: Did he ever sleep with her?
The reply came quickly. i don’t know.
Magnus typed again: Do you think Dieter is capable of murder?
no, i don’t. he went over to the dark side about fifteen years ago. stole a load of credit card numbers. after jail he sorted himself out. i really don’t believe he would kill anyone. and none of that explains asta’s death. but, you asked.
Thanks, Apex, Magnus typed.
He rubbed his eyes. Another suspect! Magnus considered Dieter, the quiet, lumbering idealist. From what he understood of the way Freeflow worked, Dieter was Erika’s right-hand man; he had been with her from the beginning. It was perfectly easy to imagine that he admired her commitment to the cause, her energy and her charisma. And although she was by no stretch of the imagination beautiful, she had a sexiness about her that Dieter would have had plenty of time to appreciate. Magnus thought it highly unlikely that they were sleeping together in the house on Thórsgata. Someone would have noticed; someone would have told him; he would have seen the signs. But in some other house in some other country in the past?
Meltwater (Fire and Ice) Page 25