by Mark Parragh
The horses saw them coming now. They looked curious, not particularly afraid. There was some snorting and whinnying going on between them and Halla’s horse. Halla called out to them softly in Icelandic, as if she was calming an upset baby. The horses stood their ground as they approached.
To Crane’s amazement, Halla walked up to one of the horses, a dark brown mare, and reached out and let the horse sniff at her fingertips. She kept talking to it in Icelandic, and slung the rifle over her shoulder so she had both hands free. Crane watched her talk softly to the horse, stroke its neck, move beside it. The horses didn’t seem at all threatened by them. Perhaps because there was nothing dangerous in this land, only people who protected them. Crane wondered if it is was normal to just walk up to one when you needed a ride, like some Icelandic bike share program. The idea seemed outrageous to him.
But then Halla was up on the horse, clutching its body with her thighs. It started and cantered a bit, but soon settled down and she steered it back around toward Crane.
“Like that,” she said, and Crane detected a note of pride in her voice. “Easy. Can you manage Agnarögn with a saddle and bridle?”
Crane sighed and shook his head. “I guess so,” he said. He walked slowly toward Halla’s horse, and Halla called out to her in Icelandic.
Crane stroked the horse’s mane, the color of pale straw. Then he put his foot in the stirrup and hefted himself up. The horse waited patiently.
“See?” said Halla. “Not so hard.”
“Her name,” said Crane. “What does it mean?”
Halla smiled at him for the first time. “Tiny thing. All right, let’s go. I’ll still shoot you if you give me any trouble. Don’t think I won’t.”
“Your horse likes me,” Crane said, grinning despite himself.
“Pff. She’s just well behaved. Let’s go.”
Crane nudged the horse forward, and Halla fell in beside him. Together they set off across the meadows toward the road and the river.
Their progress was slow, largely because of Crane’s inexperience on a horse, but it was faster than walking. It wasn’t long before Crane heard the helicopter again. It was louder this time. It must have crossed over to their side of the ridge. Crane glanced over at Halla. She’d heard it as well and was craning around on the back of her horse, looking for it.
“They’re not the police,” Crane said. “If you want to take me to the police, take me to people you know. At the station. In Blönduós.”
Halla didn’t answer. They rode on, and the clatter of the helicopter echoed off the hills.
“Who are they?” she asked some minutes later. “If that isn’t the police out searching for you, who are they?”
“They work for an Internet company in Reykjavik called Datafall. That’s the English name anyway. They have an Icelandic name, but I don’t think I can pronounce it.”
“And what is an Internet company doing out here, beating up the countryside looking for you?”
He debated for a moment how much to tell her. Keep it simple, he decided. “They’re up to some things they shouldn’t be,” he said at last. “They’re breaking the law. Breaking it badly, and they know I have proof. If it gets out, they’ll be ruined. So they’ll do anything to stop me from getting out of Iceland.”
He glanced over and their eyes met. Hers were a steely grey and they were assessing him, weighing what he said against her judgment of him.
“If they find us out here, they’ll kill us,” he said. “They’ve already killed one man. A trucker picked me up on the Ring Road. He was taking me to Akureyri. They blew up his truck, and he was killed. Did you hear about a truck fire on the Ring Road? On the radio maybe?”
“I don’t listen,” she said quietly, half to herself, and Crane wondered if she meant the radio or him.
“That’s how desperate they are,” he went on. “They won’t stop there. They’ll kill you, they’ll kill the police, anybody that gets in their way.”
The helicopter was growing louder, he realized. Had they been spotted? Would they pass by two people on horseback, or would they land? If he thought they’d been made, Crane realized, their only chance would be for him to try to take Halla’s rifle away from her.
Halla stopped her horse and looked back. The helicopter was a dot in the distance, but it was definitely heading toward them. What if she didn’t believe him? If she really thought Crane was a bank robber or something, and the helicopter was a police manhunt, then she’d signal them.
“You know the police in Blönduós, don’t you?” he said. “Trust them.”
The horses grew nervous, especially Halla’s. It stamped and sidestepped as the helicopter flew over them at a few hundred feet. Whether it was because she was trying to control the horse or because he’d introduced enough doubt to make her cautious, Halla didn’t wave them down. The helicopter continued on to the north. Eventually the sound of its rotors faded. Crane let out a long breath. The wind ruffled his hair, and he watched Halla calm her jittery horse.
Eventually the horse settled. She patted its neck reassuringly, then looked over at Crane.
“So those are ruthless killers, and you’re the good guy in this,” she said. “That’s your story?”
“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” said Crane.
She shook her head and laughed. “What a crock of shit. Come on, keep moving. The police will sort it out.”
Chapter 18
They had to awaken Einar to take the next call. The helicopter was on the ground to refuel, and Einar needed sleep. He’d been in the air for nearly two full days now, and it was counterproductive for him and his crew to continue without rest.
They were at a tiny fuel depot in the middle of nowhere. One of the crew had refueled the helicopter and was keeping watch. Einar was asleep on the sofa in the small, battered building that served as the depot supply office. The rest of the crew had crashed wherever they could find a spot. The man on watch gently shook Einar’s shoulder, showed him the phone with its screen lit up in a call. Einar was instantly awake.
He got to his feet, took the phone from the man’s outstretched hand, and nodded to the couch. The other man gratefully settled onto the crumpled cushions. Einar walked outside.
“Sir,” he said to the phone as he closed the door behind him. It was a crisp day, but clear. The wind was gusting so he walked around to the lee side of the building to get out of it.
“Can you give us a status update on the brushfire?” This was Arnason. Einar recognized the voice. That was indeed several steps up the hierarchy of the board. The signal was, as always, clear. The board was growing impatient to have this resolved.
“There’ve been no changes,” he said. “The man is still contained in the backcountry. The data remains isolated from the outside world.” That was about the best spin he could put on it.
“But not nearly as secure as we would like, Mr. Persson. What are you doing to recover the data? Your previous strategy has not succeeded.”
There was no denying that, Einar thought. It was time for a shift. The board needed to hear something new, a different plan. And it was appropriate, he realized. The area the man might have reached by now had grown too large to effectively search with a single helicopter. He wasn’t going to find him that way. It was time for a zone defense.
“The intruder has managed to evade our air search,” he said. “Therefore, I am ceasing flight operations.”
“Good,” said Arnason. “They’re beginning to draw unwelcome attention.”
“Our data is safe as long as the man remains in Iceland.”
“Not exactly. Our data is isolated only as long as the man remains out of communication.”
“Correct,” said Einar. “I assume the signals team is prepared to intercept any efforts to transmit the data. But I don’t believe he’ll make such an attempt. The plan was to recover the recording device and physically carry it out of the country. That plan failed, and we disrupted his esc
ape. I don’t believe he has access to a communication link that would suffice. Certainly not in the remote countryside where he is.”
“Perhaps,” said Arnason. But he didn’t sound particularly mollified.
“Our new strategy will be to screen the towns and roads. Whether he wants to leave the country himself or make a broadband connection, he must reach a more developed area. That leaves him very few choices. We have resources in Reykjavik. But I still think he’s making for Akureyri. I’m headed there to intercept him. My other teams are sweeping the farms and watching major intersections.”
“Very well, Persson. The board agrees with your analysis. Keep your men on the roads, and set your trap in Akureyri. We will expect regular updates.”
“Of course, sir.”
And then Arnason was gone. Einar swore and put the phone back in his pocket. The cool wind whipped around the corners of the building and whistled in the eaves. In the distance he could just make out a silver semi trailer moving along the Ring Road the better part of a kilometer away. Between them lay nothing but broken ground and sparse grassland.
Where the hell was the man managing to hide himself?
It didn’t matter now. Einar’s new plan was sound. There were only so many ways to move in the countryside. He had men patrolling the few road junctions, checking the remote farms. If the intruder somehow made it past them, he would head for Akureyri, and Einar himself would be waiting there for him.
It would work. It had to work. His own personal stakes were growing with each passing hour. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to him if he allowed a data breach of this scope on his watch. It wouldn’t be good.
Einar made his way back around the building. The helicopter sat waiting beside the fuel tanks, sleek, ominous, gleaming in the sun. Iceland was a small country. Einar could be in Akureyri within an hour if he left now. If his men located the intruder out here somewhere, he could be back on the scene just as quickly. Between the helicopter and the SUVs, his team had the advantage of mobility.
It was just a question of where the man would turn up. He couldn’t stay out there forever.
Chapter 19
They rode for an hour or more. Crane had nothing to say, and Halla kept her thoughts to herself. They rode through grassland spattered with pale brown and green. The terrain rolled gently. Sometimes they would pass small stands of brush or a lone sapling. Crane could see mountains in the distance, dark, craggy shapes streaked with snow.
The fence was the first human thing he saw. A line of weathered wooden posts strung with rust-colored wire. It looked like it could have been there for decades. There was no obvious indication of why this particular land was fenced off. Beyond it, the terrain rose gently to a low crest. Crane assumed there must be a farmstead on the other side. Halla turned them to the right, and Crane spotted a metal gate.
“Your place?” Crane asked.
“My friend Mori,” said Halla. “His sheep graze here. He has a Land Rover.”
Crane nodded. Halla was nothing if not simply spoken. She slid down off the wild horse and patted it affectionately. It nickered happily and wandered off to a nearby hummock of grass. Halla gestured for Crane to dismount as well. He did, feeling odd twinges in muscles he was unaccustomed to using.
Halla took Agnarögn’s reins and led her through the gate. When Crane was through, she closed it behind them and they walked up the slope. From the top, Mori’s farm was laid out below them. Crane saw a group of low buildings around a gravel driveway that led out to the road. A few dozen sheep wandered along the fence near the driveway, and a tractor sat parked outside the barn. The small river he’d seen on his map wove a sinuous path down the far side of the road. Crane saw the Land Rover Halla had spoken of. It was an antique. The black Chevy Suburban parked in front of the house, however, was not. It had tinted windows and a deeply polished finish that gleamed in the sunlight. Crane looked for people, but saw none.
Halla had stopped cold. Crane put a hand on her arm and murmured, “down.” She nodded and led Agnarögn back down the slope until they couldn’t see the house any longer.
“Your friend has company,” said Crane. “That doesn’t look like one of the locals.”
Halla said nothing. She was looking at Crane.
“That’s not what the police drive around here either, is it?”
“It is not.”
There would be two of them, Crane guessed. They would be inside with the owner, asking if he’d seen anything. Strangers moving across the land. Signs someone had been prowling around his farm. They probably had a story about some horrible thing he’d done.
“Does your friend live alone?” he asked.
Halla nodded.
“He’ll be okay. He doesn’t know anything. If we stay out of sight, they’ll figure that out and they’ll leave. If they do find us somehow, you hand me over, do you hear me? You pretend to believe whatever they tell you, and you let them take me.”
Halla looked shaken for the first time since he’d met her.
Crane moved back up the slope in a low crouch until he could just see the edge of the house and the cement walk out to the driveway where the Suburban was parked. He lay down on the ground and watched. A moment later Halla appeared and lay beside him with her rifle. Neither spoke. The sheep moved along the edge of a pasture in front of the house. The wind rustled through the grass.
Nothing happened for perhaps five minutes. Then Crane heard the front door open. Two men in black Datafall uniforms walked out to the Suburban. It beeped as one of them unlocked the doors with the key fob. They didn’t appear to be armed, but Crane knew they would have weapons in ready reach. He glanced over at Halla but couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
They got in, and the Suburban pulled back out to the road and was gone.
“Come on,” Halla ordered. She was back in control again, moving him down the slope toward the farmhouse with small motions of the Sako’s muzzle.
They stepped up onto the porch and Halla knocked. There was no answer.
“Mori!” she shouted as she rapped at the door again. Then something in Icelandic.
A moment later, the door opened, and an older man in jeans and a battered brown sweater hurried them inside and quickly closed the door. They held a hurried conversation in Icelandic as Crane looked around. They were in a rather threadbare sitting room with a wooden floor, mismatched furniture, and walls painted a pale robin’s egg blue. Old family photographs looked sternly down at Crane from the walls—craggy-faced old women, and men with enormous white beards dressed in hand-sewn black suits. Through a doorway, Crane could see into the kitchen where a teapot was starting to whistle.
They were talking about him, obviously, both of them pointing at him from time to time, looking over at him as if he was about to explode.
“Did you kill a woman at a farm?” Halla said at last, in an accusing voice. “For food?”
So that was the role they’d chosen for him, the dangerous wanderer who would steal from you and kill you if you confronted him. He sighed and shook his head.
“I did not,” he said. “That is a lie.” He kept his words simple to be as unambiguous as possible.
“I didn’t believe them,” the man said. “They wanted me to think they were National Police. They didn’t say it, but that’s what they wanted me to think. But I knew better. They were not good men. I felt this. I am Mori,” he added, offering Crane his hand.
Crane shook his hand. “You’re a good judge of people, Mori,” Crane said, with a snarky glance toward Halla. “What was it about them that set off your instincts? What did they do?”
“I am making tea for my lunch when they drove up,” Mori said. “They were very…” he searched for a word, finally saying, “dónalegur.”
“Rude,” said Halla.
“Yes, that’s the word,” Mori said. “I told them no one was here, but I thought they would search the house. Who are these men?”
“He says they
are a company from the city,” Halla said. “Doing something bad, and he can prove it.”
“It’s right there in my pack,” Crane said, with a nod. “If you want to see what they’re so upset about.”
Halla and Mori traded a look, then Halla opened the pack.
“Wrapped in the black cloth,” Crane offered.
Halla unwrapped it. They studied the small box epoxied to a broken piece of circuit board, copper traces ending abruptly at the edge.
“What is it?” Mori finally asked in confusion.
Crane smiled. “It’s like a thumb drive.”
Mori nodded. He’d heard of those at least.
“The data on there proves they’ve been working on a system for breaking electronic locks. For reading people’s email. Getting into bank accounts. If that thing makes it out of the country, they’re finished.”
Halla and Mori looked at each other again. Crane could see them trying to decide whether they believed him. It was just a hunk of plastic, after all. He couldn’t really prove it was what he said it was.
“This is for the police,” Mori said at last.
“That’s where we were going,” said Halla. “I came for the Land Rover.”
Mori nodded and fished a set of keys out of his pocket. “You’ll need more gas for Blönduós,” he said, handing Halla the keys. “Tank in the small barn,” he added. “Just got it filled last week.”
Halla nodded. “Keep an eye on him.” She set the rifle and Crane’s pack down on a chair and went out. Mori watched her leave, then turned to Crane.
“Have a seat, John,” he said. “I’m missing my tea.”
Crane sat down and studied the sparse, bachelor decor of the place while Mori puttered in the kitchen. He came back a few moments later with two cups of tea. Crane took his with a grateful nod.
“You know you just left me alone in here with the gun, right?”
“Pff,” Mori snorted. “You’re not going to shoot me. Halla, she…” He nodded toward the outside. “She’s just that way.”