The Worst Thing

by Aaron Elkins

  And after that, he just might cut back on his assignments—perhaps one a year, just to keep his hand in—while he was still young and hale enough to enjoy the many pleasures that came with a fancy, two-stateroom yacht in the marina at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

  Unlike Camano, the majority of his clients had a deep and foolish distrust of banking wire services, and when it came to the rewards for their own labor, they almost always wanted a ransom they could actually see and hold and count; a big bundle of cash; paper money. Camano thought of it as his duty to tell them they were being stupid, but then left it to them. It was no affair of his. By the time a cash ransom was delivered, he would be gone.

  In this way, he kept well clear of the most dangerous phase of the process: ransom delivery. If anything were to go wrong—not that it ever had before, but not wildly improbable, given what he had to work with here in Iceland—it would go wrong for the client. For him, the worst that could happen would be the loss of the $500,000 in escrow—and the Callisto—a bitter pill, but a lot easier to swallow than a term in prison.

  Chapter 8

  GlobalSeas was putting us up at the Hilton Nordica Reykjavik, the same hotel in which the training sessions would be held. When we checked in, a little before seven a.m. on Friday morning, the night clerk was still on duty, a skinny kid of twenty, the very height of grunge fashion, circa 1990: spiked green and orange hair, tie-dyed T-shirt, ring in nose, safety pin in lip, etc. But he looked friendly, so I smiled at him and tried out two of the twenty or so words of Icelandic I’d managed to learn. “Godann dagit,” I said confidently. Good morning.

  Whether he was pleased because I got it right, or amused because I screwed it up, I don’t know, but he laughed with real delight. “Godann dagit, dude!” he yelled back and offered a high-five, which, of course, I accepted.

  Other than the clerk, everything about the hotel was as advertised: sleek, up-to-date, and businesslike. Our ninth-floor “executive suite” room, ready for us despite the early hour, had blond hardwood floors, immaculate, minimalist, modern furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the harbor area, the gray, uninviting waters of the bay, and snow-streaked, table-topped Esja Mountain beyond.

  So far, things had gone more smoothly than expected. No problems at all, in fact, except a minor one at the very start, back at Sea-Tac, as we were boarding our flight to Boston. I’d pushed things a bit by deciding to try out Zeta’s total immersion technique then and there, simply facing the terror head-on and analyzing the hell out of it. That had lasted about three minutes; by the time the plane started taxiing I had a Xanax inside me, but for once it didn’t do its job; I’d begun to hyperventilate. By the time we lifted off, though, I’d had a second, and that had done the trick. To my great relief, no one seemed to have noticed my distress.

  At our stopover in Boston, a long one, we’d had a decent dinner at the airport, where Lori ordered scrod, bringing forth the following from our waiter: “Okay, you ready for this? Woman arrives at Logan, asks the cabbie to take her someplace where she can get scrod. Driver turns around and stares at her, amazed. ‘Gee, lady, that’s the first time I ever heard anybody say it in the past pluperfect.’ ”

  Lori smiled politely but I was goofy enough from the tranquilizers to be still snickering over coffee and dessert. Three hours later we caught our Icelandair plane to Reykjavik. Since it was an overnight flight (as were all flights from the US to Iceland) we’d each done what half the other passengers had apparently done as well: taken a sleeping pill and conked out for the duration. The coffee service with which we were awakened five hours later, twenty minutes before descending to Keflavik Airport, got our blood flowing again, and by the time we stepped off the plane, we were both reasonably refreshed and wonderfully relaxed.

  RELAXED and refreshed we might have felt, but the seven-hour time difference between Seattle and Reykjavik had taken its toll, and after showering and doing a little unpacking, we fell heavy-eyed into bed. We slept from eight until ten-thirty and then we had to hurry to make the only appointment on our schedule that day: a get-acquainted morning coffee with GlobalSeas President and CEO Baldur Baldursson. Fortunately, he’d picked a place that was a five-minute stroll from the hotel: Café Paris on bustling Austurvöllur Square, across from the Icelandic Parliament building. A few brave locals sat at the outdoor tables, but it was too cold for us, and we were inside, surrounded by décor that was more Danish modern than French brasserie. Baldursson was a handsome, hawk-nosed man of fifty, lanky, laid-back, and self-confident, wearing an expensive but bagged-out corduroy jacket with leather elbow pads over a bulky gray turtleneck. Like just about everybody else we’d encountered, he spoke a slightly Europeanized English with complete fluency, and with a soft, agreeable Icelandic lilt, to our ears very similar to a Danish accent. In fact, everybody under forty or so seemed to use English at least as much as Icelandic, even when speaking with each other. In Baldursson’s case, there was also a playful tongue-incheek quality to his speech, and in his manner as well, an impression of laughter just behind his words, as if he found the world around him, most definitely including you, a continuing source of entertainment.

  “I’ll say this for you, you’ve certainly come to Iceland at the right time,” he told us as we waited for our coffees and the Icelandic crêpes that we were having on his recommendation. “Late March, early April, this is the perfect time. In the fall, you see, we are all quite deranged, having been driven gaga by months of never-ending daylight. In early spring, on the other hand, we are still catatonic from the long winter darkness. But now, now for this brief moment in time, we are as normal as we get.”

  We laughed at this and chatted a little more and asked about places to visit. Baldursson named a few scenic wonders but told us by all means to stay away from the much-touted Blue Lagoon. (“All you’ll see are other tourists. By the busload.”) “And make sure you save time for Reykjavik itself. Here we have many unique sights. A good many places have monuments to their Unknown Soldier, but only in Reykjavik is there a monument to the Unknown Bureaucrat.”

  We smiled politely, not sure if he was joking, but he insisted he was serious and drew us a little map on a napkin. “It’s not far from here. A matter of great civic pride.”

  The waitress put out three absolutely wonderful-smelling cups of coffee—this was our introduction to Icelandic coffee—and our crêpes. Icelandic dessert crêpes, it turned out, were like their French namesake in that they were filled with whipped cream and jam and covered with strawberries, but the pancakes themselves had been crisped in a deep fryer and served folded in two, rather than rolled, so they looked more like whipped-cream tacos than crêpes. But just as good. Lori rolled her eyes with pleasure after the first bite.

  “Baldur,” I said, after we’d chewed for a while, “I think we should talk a little about the seminar.”

  He waved his fork in a little circle. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “When we start on Monday morning, I’d appreciate it if you introduce me and talk a bit about the importance of the training. It helps me if they know it has your backing.”

  “Of course. I’ll be happy to.” He used the fork to indicate the crêpes. “Good, huh?”

  “They’re wonderful. Once the training gets started, though, I’d like it if you more or less took a backseat, or at least let the others get in their two cents before you put in yours. Otherwise, with the boss sitting right there . . . What?” He was waving the fork again and shaking his head while chewing.

  “Oh, I won’t be staying for the training itself,” he said when the cream and strawberries had gone down. “I thought you understood that. There’s no reason for me to take it.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe it. Here was the man who only a few months ago had been the object of a kidnapping attempt—in which two people had gotten killed in a wild shootout—and there was no reason for him to take a training program in kidnapping prevention?

  Before I could ge
t any words out, Baldursson laughed. “You should see the expression on your face, Bryan.”

  “Well, I hope it shows disbelief, disapproval, and total disagreement with that decision, because that’s what I’m feeling. You of all people—”

  “Bryan, calm down and listen to reason,” he said easily. “Believe me, no one can get near me. I pay a lot of money so that I don’t need any training. In the first place, I am now guarded around the clock by a firm of armed protection specialists. Interestingly, it’s a Danish firm, because Iceland has no such—”

  “You’re here now,” I pointed out, “in a public place, and I don’t see any ‘armed protection specialists,’ Danish or otherwise.”

  He smiled and waved a hand in the general direction of an ordinary-looking guy in an unzipped parka a few tables away, coffee and pastries in front of him, but facing in a direction that took in both the entrance and our table. When I looked at him, he gave me a tiny nod.

  “That’s Petrus. There are three of them altogether. They serve as my chauffeurs as well. I don’t drive anywhere myself anymore.”

  “Okay, that’s all well and good, but there’s more than that to protecting yourself. Do you understand that the fact that they came after you once makes it more likely that they’ll try again?”

  “Yes, I do, and I’ve taken precautions.” He had bought a new home since the kidnapping, he explained, and equipped it with the finest security systems available (also from Denmark). In addition, the house was in the middle of two acres of walled lawns with motion detectors. The Grindavik plant, which housed his office and was where he spent his days, had a ten-foot, razor-wire-topped steel fence completely surrounding it, and his car was armored, was equipped with a rearview camera and bulletproof glass, and possessed Iceland’s only internal car alarm button that linked directly to the police.

  “Well, I admit, that’s pretty thorough, but I don’t see what the problem is with sitting through a few days of training. There’s a lot of new information, new approaches in it. You could pick up a single tip that could save your life.”

  “The problem,” he said with a first hint of asperity, “is that I refuse to let my entire life be consumed with keeping myself safe. I do enough. There are other things to live for.”

  That was hard to argue with. “I can understand that.”

  “Bryan,” Lori said, “isn’t there a trainee manual that goes with the course? Maybe you could make a copy for Baldur to read through.”

  “Good idea,” said Baldur, smiling again. “I suppose I can make that much time available.”

  And there we left it, except for one other issue.

  “Baldur, do you carry a gun?” The bulkiness and looseness of his jacket had seemed to me to suggest he might be wearing a shoulder holster, and I’d been trying to see if I could spot the strap when he moved one way or the other. I thought I did at one point, but I wasn’t sure.

  We had finished our crêpes. The waitress came and took them away, and Baldur ordered fresh coffee for the three of us. I got the impression he was using the time to decide how to answer.

  He decided, as I thought he might, on not answering. “Should I? What do you recommend?”

  “Have you had training? Do you know how to handle a gun? Do you practice?”

  “No. Well, a little.”

  “A little’s not enough. Having a professional armed bodyguard”—I tipped my head toward the other table—“yes, good idea. Carrying a sidearm yourself? Not a good idea. Unless, that is, you’re comfortable with it and well trained, in which case, in my opinion, it is a good idea, although a lot of experts wouldn’t agree with me. The thing is, your best chance of escaping is right there at the beginning, before they take you, and with a gun you stand a better chance of being able to do that. But you also stand a much greater chance of getting yourself killed.”

  “What would you do if you were me?”

  “If I were you? I wouldn’t carry a gun.” This was a bit deceitful, because if I were me, and I was in any danger of being a target, I’d have a sidearm on me, training or no training. But then, I’m a special case, or so I like to think. From my point of view, avoiding capture is worth just about any risk. But Baldur wasn’t me. So there you are, yet another example of Do as the teacher says.

  We wrapped up after that, without Baldur’s ever answering my question, and Lori and I went out looking for the Unknown Bureaucrat. We found him too, in a public courtyard only a block from the café: a life-sized bronze statue of a man in a business suit carrying an attaché case, with his head and shoulders encased in a giant rock. A one-of-a-kind, all right.

  THE rest of the long weekend was as advertised by Wally: interesting and enjoyable. We rented a car and drove the Golden Circle out of Reykjavik, oohing at the plumes of steam and water at Strokkur and Geysir (geysir, we were informed, is the only Icelandic word to make it into international use) and aahing at the truly magnificent two-tiered Gullfoss falls, still partly frozen. On the Reykjanes peninsula near Hafnir, we stood on the Bridge Between Two Continents and looked down at the surface rift that marks the separation between the European and North American tectonic plates. There, two different Icelanders, apparently lying in wait for foreigners, told us the same joke: Because the plates are drifting apart at the rate of one inch annually, Iceland gets an inch wider every year. So it is on its way to becoming the biggest country in the world. Just give it sixty million years.

  And of course we ignored Baldursson’s advice and spent a happy late afternoon, as has every other tourist who has ever visited Iceland, lolling in the warm, milky blue waters of the Blue Lagoon, wreathed in veils of geothermally heated steam and surrounded by ice-covered outcroppings of lava rock, watching snowflakes spiral down around us and melt into tiny water droplets a foot or so before they hit the surface. We laughed a lot, and we made love in the middle of the afternoon for the first time in a while. At the restaurants, we tried a few Icelandic delicacies—minke whale (other than being purple, not unlike beef), smoked puffin (a cross between burnt rubber and cod liver oil), and Icelandic lamb (sensational). All very interesting, but other than the lamb, once was enough; more than enough in the case of the puffin. Other local specialties, we lacked the courage to face (singed sheep’s head, rotting shark). In general, though, the restaurant food was simple, fresh, and surprisingly bland.

  The weather wasn’t as bad as we’d feared. We both had brand-new high-tech Iditarod-approved parkas, but they were overkill. Reykjavik in late March wasn’t that much different from the Pacific Northwest in early March. No, let me take that back; the weather here was an improvement over Seattle’s. With the sun coming up at six and not going down till nine, there were almost twice as many daylight hours, which was a welcome change. It was cold but not unbearably cold—up in the mid- to high thirties in the daytime, lower at night, with snow flurries or sleety rain coming down out of a pewter sky once or twice a day, so that there was usually an inch or so of melting snow on the sidewalks (frozen over and slippery in the mornings), but no more. We wound up spending a good many hours walking on those sidewalks because, even equipped with a good city map, we were lost half the time. Mostly, it was the street names that flummoxed us.

  Who but an Icelander could pronounce, let alone keep straight, street names like Bolstaoarhlio, Braedraborgarstigur, and Vatnsmýrarvegur? And they were all like that: Frikirkjuvegur, Kringlumyrarbraut, Sjafnargata. To make it even more fun, there wasn’t one simple right-angle intersection in the whole city; every conceivable, multifaceted set of angles but. Still, it gave us plenty of excuses to stop in at a coffeehouse to warm up over a couple of steaming, aromatic cups and ask for directions. Sample of directions: “No, no, this is Laufásvegur. It’s Laugavegur you’re looking for. Just go up Njardargata, left on Skólavöroustigour, right on Klapparstígur, and you’re there—Laugavegur. Although, come to think of it, it might be called Bankastraeti by that point. But don’t worry, you can’t miss it.” Miss it we could and did, but in
the end we wound up seeing a lot more of Reykjavik than we would have otherwise. And happily drinking a lot more excellent coffee.

  At sunset on two of the three days we bundled up and sat out on the balcony of our room. The view over the bay, bleak and glowering most of the time, was stunning at day’s end, when bands of riveting, fiery orange lit up the gloomy skies and turned the snow on distant Esja to molten lava. Twilights of the gods.

  All in all, by Sunday night I was more confident than ever that accepting the assignment had been the right thing to do. I was starting to think that I’d turned a real corner. There had been no more panic attacks. Tomorrow after lunch the training would begin, and not only wasn’t I dreading it, I was looking forward to it, or at least to the opportunity to prove to myself that it was no big deal, that I could not only handle it, but handle it with ease.

  Of course, I understood that a big part of this upbeat frame of mind was the knowledge that I had the Xanax right there with me in case of need. In fact, my plan was to take one before going to bed the night before each session just to be on the safe side. It was something I didn’t like to do, but I wanted to make sure I’d be upbeat and energetic for the training, not drained from a possible panic attack the night before. I knew very well, of course, that taking the pills that way could start me on a dangerous slide. Xanax was a benzodiazepine, a central nervous system depressant, and as with all of them, there were the risks of muddle-headedness and dependence if I overdid it. It may not sound like it, but I was anything but an eager consumer of happiness pills. I was careful; I’d always been careful. Never more than that one a day—well, hardly ever—and never increasing the dosage. Well, from .25 milligram tablets to .50 milligram ones, but that had been a few years ago, and I’d stayed with the fifty ever since. Besides, I’d only be doing it for five nights, and I wasn’t going to become a dope addict in five nights; not at half a milligram a pop.