Danger Is My Line

by Stephen Marlowe

  I kept running, zig-zagging up the slope. He fired a third time. I fell down and rolled over, crying out hoarsely. I wanted him to think he had hit me, wanted him to leave cover.

  First it was just a rock, thirty yards from me at the far side of the narrow valley. Then it sprouted a head and shoulders. Prone, I fired twice. The first shot struck sparks off the rock. The second shoved the man back and out of sight like a giant hand. A Magnum .357 packs more muzzle velocity than even a forty-five. When it hits you, it moves you.

  I ran toward where he had fallen. Kolding and the Baroness came up and went by behind me, heading for Ollie Meer and Maja. I found him behind the rock, on his back, with the heavy stock and barrel of a long-range rifle across his chest as if pinning him down. He wore a suede windbreaker zipped halfway up. He had a wool stocking-hat on his head. My bullet had entered his body three inches below the left collar bone, just above the heart. He was still breathing. When he exhaled, dark blood pumped from the hole in his chest. He had a mustache and on his right cheek was a large mole.

  I had never seen him before in my life.

  It hadn’t entered my mind that Einar Laxness might have had a confederate here in Iceland.

  I shoved the Magnum back into its holster and picked up the rifle. It was a breech-loading, bolt-action job. I slammed the bolt home, ejecting a spent shell and reloading. He had fired three times. That left me four bullets in the magazine plus the one I had bolted into the chamber. Carrying the rifle, I ran toward the pocket of snow at the head of the valley.

  “Get him?” Kolding called when I got close enough to hear.

  “It wasn’t Laxness. Keep down behind these rocks.”

  Panting, I hunkered down alongside the Baroness. Kolding was bending over Ollie Meer. The little man had taken a slug in the shoulder. He was moaning softly, his eyes wide with fear.

  “It’s all right, Ollie,” Kolding said. “He winged you. He just winged you.”

  “It hurts,” Meer cried. “Oh God, it hurts.” His eyes filled with tears and he started to cry. “I’m going to bleed to death. I know it.” Pain and self-pity squeezed his eyelids shut and dragged down the corners of his mouth. “I’m going to bleed to death.”

  “Can you move the arm?” I asked him.

  “No. I can’t do anything. Leave me alone.” But he moved it some, and clenched his fingers. The slug had missed the bone. It was just a flesh wound. I tore away the sleeve of his sweater, the cloth of his shirt. He cried out. The slug had only raked his shoulder. A half inch higher and it would have missed him entirely. The wound was bleeding freely but not dangerously. He would be okay. I told him this and at first he didn’t believe me. When he finally did, he asked, “What happened to Maja?”

  On his knees, Kolding had gone to her. She sat on the bare ground with her back to a rock. The Baroness squatted on her shapely hams alongside of her. Kolding said something in Icelandic to his sister.

  She just looked at him, her eyes wide. Kolding repeated his words. Maja stared at him and then at the Baroness in confusion. Despite her wide eyes she looked drowsy. Her face was slack. Then she saw me.

  “I know you,” she said in English. “I know who you are. You’re Chester Drum.” She said it like a chant. “I know you.” She blinked. Her eyes went out of focus as if she was staring right through me, and the moment of clarity was gone. “Who are you?” she asked. “Who are you? Please don’t. Please don’t hurt me. I’m tired. I’m so tired. I want to go back. Please don’t hurt me. I want to sleep.”

  “Is it safe to go down?” Kolding asked me.

  I shook my head. “Laxness is still out there.”

  “You think,” the Baroness said. “You. haven’t seen him. What do you know about Einar Laxness?”

  “What do you know about him?”

  The Baroness shrugged.

  “That he would come after you to Iceland?” I suggested. “To kill Maja?”

  “No. Of course not. Einar Laxness wouldn’t—”

  Kolding rubbed his face with a big, tired hand. He said three words. “Why wouldn’t he?”

  Angrily the Baroness spoke to him in Icelandic. Kolding listened, sulking. She mentioned Laxness’ name several times. I got the idea both of them were afraid of him—and it couldn’t be explained entirely by him waiting out there somewhere in the gathering darkness. It was a deeper fear, and older. It was what Laxness stood for to them. I saw that in their faces, as if they were expected to obey Einar Laxness, only to find themselves rashly disobeying him.

  “Please,” Maja said. “I’m tired. We walked and walked. It was nice. I love it here. Ollie? Ollie, don’t you just love it here?”

  Meer’s self-pity melted before the stronger feelings he had for her. “The poor kid,” he said. “She’s still—like that, Mr. Kolding. For a while I thought she was better, but she doesn’t even know what’s going on. She doesn’t know she’s been shot at.”

  “That’s enough, Ollie,” Kolding said.

  “She doesn’t even know what’s going on,” Meer repeated.

  “Do you?” I asked him quickly.

  “You said Laxness. You said Einar Laxness. I didn’t know Laxness would—”

  “Shut up, Ollie,” the Baroness said.

  “I would have called the cops in the States, if I knew. I wouldn’t have let you take her here. You told me it would be all right. I didn’t know he’d come gunning for her. I never thought you’d let that happen, Mr. Kolding. Your own sister. Your own flesh and blood.” Meer propped himself up on his good elbow. “I’ve never been shot at before. I don’t intend to be shot at again. That changes things.” He shook his head. His eyes were hooded with fatigue, but his lips made a thin, stubborn line.

  “I’m warning you,” the Baroness said.

  “Nuts to you, Baroness. I’m going to see the cops, right here in Akureyri.”

  The Baroness smiled. “What good would that do you? We’re not in the States now.”

  “He tried to kill us.”

  “You’re still alive.”

  “No thanks to you. No thanks to you, Baroness.”

  Margaretha looked at Kolding. “You better talk to him.”

  But the big man only shook his head.

  “Are you crazy?” the Baroness asked him.

  “Maybe Ollie’s right.”

  Kolding’s words gave Meer the courage he needed to go with his stubbornness. “Drum,” he said, “do you want to help her? Maja? Can I trust you?”

  The Baroness swung on him. Her open hand caught the side of his face hard. His supporting elbow gave way and the back of his head hit the ground.

  Just then I heard a noise down the slope. I stood up with the rifle, crouched behind a rock with it.

  “Gustaf Kolding!” a voice called.

  Meer wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His lips were bloody. “That’s him,” he said. “That’s Laxness.”

  After hailing Kolding, Laxness began to talk in Icelandic. I tried to pin-point the direction of his voice, tried to gauge the distance. It was getting dark now, the Arctic green of the sky encroaching on the fading twilight. Then suddenly there was silence. When Laxness spoke again, I thought he had moved. He was playing it safe, never staying in one spot for long. He moved again. Once I thought I saw a blur of motion, but by the time I brought the rifle barrel around, it was gone.

  “What’s he saying?” I whispered to Ollie Meer.

  Meer’s voice was hoarse with rage. “He wants us to leave Maja.” He sobbed. “The son of a bitch wants us to leave Maja and go back down the mountain.”

  I took a quick look at Kolding. In the dying light his face was bleak. “It looks like here’s where you make your stand,” I said.

  But Kolding either hadn’t heard me or ignored me.

  “Yeah?” said Meer. “You don’t know Laxness the way he does. The Baroness told him all about Laxness.”

  Meer sat up painfully, his lips twisting with the effort. Laxness had finished speaking. My ea
rs strained in the silence.

  “He’s alone now,” I urged Kolding. “Talk to him. Stall him, but make him answer you. I’ll slip down there for him.”

  “No,” Baroness Margaretha said. “No you won’t.”

  “If we try anything but what he says,” Meer told me, “we sign our own death warrants. That’s what he says.”

  “He’s bluffing. He can’t take all of us. He can’t take any of you if you do what I say. Chances are he’s got a hand gun. I have the rifle.”

  Meer said, “Who’s talking about now? They’ll get to us. They’ll kill us. The organization. They’ve got people all over.”

  “You all work for him? For Laxness?”

  “Shut up, Ollie,” the Baroness said.

  “He runs the show. You want a name for it, I’ll give you one. He’s the chief hatchetman for the Reds. He can make men dance on five continents.”

  “You’re going to regret this, Ollie,” the Baroness vowed.

  “I’m washed up,” he said. “I know that. I don’t give a goddamn. You got another gun, Drum? Give me it. He’ll have to take Maja over my dead body.”

  “Answer him,” I urged Kolding. “Keep him talking. I can work my way down there and get him.”

  Kolding was silent for a moment, finally said: “Then what? Sleep in fear the rest of our lives? Only we wouldn’t live very long.”

  “She’s your sister,” I said.

  “Just let me get my hands on that gun,” Meer pleaded.

  But the Baroness started talking urgently to Kolding in Icelandic, and I waited.

  “She says there’s another way,” Meer told me. “She’s been saying that right along. She’s got him wrapped around her little finger.”

  “What other way?”

  “I don’t know,” Meer admitted.

  Kolding took a deep breath. He moved over to me.

  “Gustaf,” Margaretha said.

  But Kolding said, “I’ll talk, Drum. I’ll keep him busy. Get going.”

  That was when Laxness made another move. I saw him more distinctly this time, a blacker shadow in the darkness. Out from behind a rock forty yards down the slope. And forward. He was working his way toward us. I leaned down on my elbows on the rock in front of me, swung the barrel of the rifle with him. The moving shadow rested on the front sight, was framed by the rear sight. I squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle jammed.

  I tried to work the bolt. It was stuck. Laxness ducked down behind another rock, closer. Kolding shouted to him and started talking. I dropped the rifle in disgust, removed the Magnum from its holster and a handful of .357 bullets from my jacket pocket, and thumbed a pill in each empty chamber.

  Crouching, the Magnum low at my side, I took a step away from the rock. Kolding stopped talking, and Laxness said something. Kolding answered him. I took another step, ready for trouble ahead of me. Not behind me.

  “Drum!” Ollie Meer cried.

  I started to turn. Saw movement behind me.

  Baroness Margaretha had picked up the rifle. She held it by the metal barrel and was swinging it like a baseball bat. I dove for the ground and got halfway down before the heavy walnut stock took the top of my head off.

  17

  A VOICE SAID, “Have you had concussion before?”

  A croak of a voice replied, “Yeah. Two, three times.”

  “You need complete rest.”

  “I’ve got to …”

  Something stung my arm. I slept.

  A light hit my left eye, then my right. I struggled to push them open. I looked around. The room had green walls. Hospital green. There was a folding screen against one wall. A white metal night stand. Bright daylight at the single small window.

  “Feeling better?”

  I had the biggest head in the world. I reached up and out with my hand. I felt air, and drew my hand back. My head was in the right place after all, and the right size. I felt bandages.

  “No! Don’t try to sit up!”

  Again something stung my arm, and again I slept.

  The third time I awoke it was better. My head still ached, but it was just a headache. If I had to I could learn to live with it. A buxom nurse in crisp whites brought me a bowl of hot broth and began spooning it into my mouth.

  “Hey,” I said, “I can feed myself.” I had what the. drama critics call a very small voice. It was the best I could manage at the moment. The nurse smiled, said something in Icelandic, and kept on feeding me. The soup tasted fine.

  Later a round-faced, bearded doctor came in. He shined lights in my eyes, thumped my chest, prodded my head.

  “You have the constitution of an elephant,” he said.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Three days this morning.”

  Then I asked a very original question. I asked, “Where am I?”

  “Akureyri Sanatorium. They brought you in with a severe brain concussion. Twelve stitches had to be taken in a gash in your scalp. At first we feared a fractured skull, but that wasn’t the case. It has been good experience for us. We don’t generally take accident cases. But a member of the Althing intervened through his daughter, and—”

  “Freya! She here?”

  “Miss Fridjonsson is outside, yes.”

  “I want to see her.”

  A grin tugged at his small rosebud of a mouth; I looked up over his shoulder and saw Freya’s head peeking in at the doorway. She looked lovely. She tried to smile, but her lips were trembling.

  The doctor pulled his small beard down into a neat point with thumb and forefinger. He sighed. “Very well, Miss Fridjonsson,” he said. “I suppose you have waited long enough. But just a very few minutes.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Ericsson.”

  The doctor went out and Freya came in. She leaned over the bed and touched my cheek with her right hand.

  “Patient needs a shave,” she said.

  “I need a lot of things. We could start with a kiss.”

  She leaned over me. Her lips were soft and warm on my lips. Then she said: “Oh, Chet. Chet, I thought you were—going to die.”

  I smiled at her. “Got a cigarette?”

  “Not for you. No drinking and no smoking till you’re well.”

  I said: “How’d I get down here?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  I shook my head.

  “But that doesn’t make sense. You walked down.”

  I shook my head again. It ached dully now, but the movement didn’t make it any worse. “I didn’t walk anyplace.”

  “Yes you did. Three days ago. You and the Baroness and Gustaf Kolding and Maja and that little American, Ollie Meer. You even came to the cottage. Then you collapsed. Dr. Ericsson says it sometimes happens like that, even with severe concussion. You can keep going for several hours, sometimes not even aware of what you’re doing, and then you collapse. That’s what happened to you.”

  “Where’s Maja Kolding?” I said.

  “In Sweden. They flew to Stockholm. All of them.”

  “And Laxness?”

  Freya seemed surprised. “Laxness? Was he here?”

  “Who the hell do you think was up there on the mountain with us?”

  “You needn’t bite my head off. The police found someone up there. A dead man. He had been shot. His name was Gudjon Munthe.”

  “Guy with a mustache and a mole on his cheek?”

  “I don’t know. You shot him, didn’t you?”

  I said I had shot him.

  “While he hit you with his rifle.”

  “No, damn it!” I shouted.

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “The Baroness clobbered me with the rifle, not Munthe.”

  “The Baroness? But they said—”

  “And Einar Laxness didn’t show up at all?”

  “No. I already told you. By the way, my father is here in Akureyri. He’s the Assistant Chairman of the Althing Foreign Affairs Committee.”

  “You mean they’re interest
ed in this?”

  “I mean the whole country is in a stew. We’re only a hundred and sixty thousand people, Chet, sitting on the world’s most strategic island. Homicide is a rarity among us, and a man was killed up there on the mountain. It would seem to have international implications.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, the Baroness is a Swede. For another, Jorgen Kolding was murdered on a mission in the United States. For a third, you came here after Maja. It was my father’s intention to talk to everyone involved.” She added bitterly, “But he couldn’t. Gustaf Kolding and the others left the country.”

  “Couldn’t they have been stopped?”

  “How? Nobody mentioned Laxness.”

  “But what about Ollie Meer?”

  “Nobody mentioned anything about Ollie Meer. His story matched theirs, I guess.”

  I thought of the frightened little man who had almost had his moment of heroism on the mountain above Akureyri. I thought of Einar Laxness telling Kolding to leave his sister there on the mountain. Naturally, she wouldn’t have come down alive. And I thought of Baroness Margaretha saying there was another way. Whatever it was, had it satisfied Ollie Meer? And Laxness?

  “Anyway, they made their depositions to the police and drove back to Reykjavik. From there they flew to Stockholm.”

  “Did you see Maja?”

  “For a few minutes.” Freya frowned. “She didn’t know me, Chet. Not at all, and we’ve been friends for years. Chet, what are they doing to her?”

  “I’m going to find out.”

  “You? But you’re in no condition to …” Her voice trailed off. She knew that tack was useless. “If you go anywhere, I’m going with you!”

  “The hell you are.”

  “Try and stop me.”

  We had been raising our voices. Dr. Ericsson came in with another white-coated man. He was a big guy, younger; my own age. “That is enough, please,” Dr. Ericsson said. “This man needs all the rest he can get.”

  Freya looked down, her long lashes veiling her eyes. “I’m not angry with you, Chet,” she said. “But when you meet my father you’ll find out how I got to be a stubborn Icelander.”

  “Female chip off the old block?”

  “Something like that.” From the doorway she blew me a kiss. Then she was gone.