“Jorgen, you never should have left me. I thought I would … Jorgen! Don’t go away, please! Please, Jorgen!”
He bent over her so she could see his face. Tears stood out in his eyes. “Jorgen. I’m no good. It was a game … for a restless woman. Forgive me … the Soviets …”
“What about the Soviets?” I urged her.
“… made up their mind to kill you. Or Iceland and England … they want Iceland.” Her, eyes shut. Out in the waters of the Archipelago a foghorn moaned its dirge. The sound brought her back, opened her eyes. “Laxness. He came to me. A woman scorned. A woman who could get … to you, Jorgen. They actually thought … it’s a laugh, isn’t it?… I would kill you. I was going to warn you, Jorgen. I tried to.” She stopped talking. There was only the uneven susurrus of her breathing.
Then another voice spoke, behind me. It was Freya. “I had a four day layover, between planes. I went to Washington. Jorgen Kolding and I, we were lovers. One night the Baroness met us in the hotel bar.” I turned around, looked up at Freya. She was staring straight ahead, out past the breakwater at a speedboat lacing its wake among the islands a mile or so away.
“She couldn’t hide the way she felt. Jorgen Kolding was that kind of man. They left me at the bar, went to a booth. I could tell she was pleading with him. He laughed. The more she seemed to be pleading, the more he laughed. He wouldn’t tell me what they talked about.”
“… laughed at me,” the Baroness said. “You shouldn’t have. It’s all over, you said. I never believed … I thought someday … Why?” she cried, her voice suddenly, for that one word, was loud. “Why did you make fun of me? Why did you have to hate me?”
“You took the job?” I said.
“It was a week later. I called you, Jorgen. You wouldn’t speak to me. A woman can’t … Laxness, he gave me a gun. I went to your room at the hotel. I still didn’t want to hurt you.” Her fading voice caught the refrain of Gustaf’s words to her. “I only wanted … to love you. You laughed. Brandvik, you said. Brandvik wanted to kill you. No one else. Brandvik … had wanted to kill you for twenty years. If Brandvik was the only one, you would live forever. That’s what … you said. And laughed at me.” She tried to raise herself up on her elbows, but the effort was too much and she slumped back. “And said I was as crazy as … Brandvik.” Her eyes opened wider. “Jorgen! Jorgen! I swear, I didn’t mean to shoot you. I swear!
“Brandvik. Maybe you had … seen him. I don’t know. It’s funny. He came. I left the gun and ran. The next day it was in the papers. He confessed. Brandvik confessed. I swear I didn’t mean to shoot you, Jorgen!”
She died with his name on her lips. The speedboat was circling toward the island now. It was close enough to see the uniformed figures, holding riot guns which they wouldn’t need, on the foredeck. Kolding’s head settled on the Baroness’ breast. He cried.
I stood up and went to Freya. “You were Maja’s friend,” I said. “You came with me because you wanted to help Maja.”
“That’s the truth. It’s how I met her father.”
“You came with me because you wanted to be with me.”
“That’s the truth too. But I also wanted to find Jorgen Kolding’s murderer.”
“You found her,” I said.
“Don’t you see, Chet? Sure, she was a Communist, like another woman might join a—a bridge club. But in Sweden her name is important. She would have fought extradition. She had to pay for killing Jorgen Kolding.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Who am I to stand in judgment on you?”
The police boat drifted past the wreck of the cabin cruiser foundering at the end of the breakwater. It stopped long enough for, someone to take Einar Laxness aboard.
Freya came against me, her arms circling my neck, her warm body pliantly insistent. “That night in Reykjavík,” she said, her lips close to mine, her breath mingling with my breath, “I wasn’t acting. I want you to know that, Chet. I wasn’t acting.”
But I think she knew it couldn’t be the same between us ever again. When the speedboat anchored and the first police waded ashore, she stepped back away from me.
I went up to the house with the police, remembering the feel of her body.
26
IF YOU READ THE NEWSPAPERS you know the rest of it. Einar, Laxness had a double compound fracture of the arm and was suffering from shock. They wanted to hold him in Sweden for the murder of narrow-face, but Washington wanted him extradited to stand trial for killing Brandvik and Wally Baker. That’s still up in the air, but Washington will probably get its way.
After two weeks of hospital care in Stockholm and Reykjavík, Maja Kolding was as good as new. My arm in a sling, I flew back to Iceland with Freya. We were friends—nothing more. The Bureau sent Fielding Norstad to Iceland, where the officials, urged on by a cantankerous Gunnar Fridjonsson, cooperated. Maja Kolding filled in the details for them.
Brandvik had had this bug in his ear about Jorgen Kolding, and after being acquitted, mostly because he couldn’t account for the murder weapon, which was traced to an illegal dealer in Baltimore with whom he could not have had contact, he sold his phony confession to View. But he decided to carry his deception one logical step further. Twenty years ago Jorgen Kolding had made Brandvik’s fiancée kill herself, and now Brandvik found himself in a position to make Kolding’s ex-sweetheart suffer. It must have seemed ironically apt to him.
He wrote her a note, left it at the Icelandic Consulate in Washington. “I found the note,” Maja Kolding told Fridjonsson, Norstad and me. “It wasn’t addressed to anyone. There was no salutation or anything. I thought it was for my brother, because I knew how Gustaf—hated our father. I was frantic. The note said someone, I thought it was Gustaf, had killed him. It said Brandvik would talk, unless he received fifty thousand dollars.
“I—I didn’t know what to do. I confronted Gustaf, and he denied it. I didn’t know what to think. But I never showed Gustaf the note. Maybe I was afraid he would break down and confess, and I wanted to believe him.”
“What did you do about it?” Norstad asked her.
“Something foolish. I knew this man Baker was writing a story about Brandvik, so I went to see him. I wanted to find out if he thought Brandvik was insane, if he thought the note was a hoax.”
“You showed it to him?” Norstad asked.
“No. But I told him about it. I didn’t intend to be so specific, but he was so persuasive, so calm and confident that I—just did. He said he wanted to see it. When I went back to the Consulate, it was gone.”
“The Baroness must have destroyed it,” I said.
“I was all confused,” Maja went on. “If my brother had killed … if Gustaf had killed our father …” Her voice broke.
“Easy, child,” Norstad said. “There’s no rush.”
“Let me take it from there,” I suggested. “Maja can stop me if I’m wrong. She decided to see Brandvik himself, to make a threat on his life.”
“I never really meant to kill him. Never.”
“I know you didn’t. But you thought if you scared him enough you might learn whether he had killed your father or, not—and if not, whether he knew who did. Is that right?”
Maja nodded.
“When Maja arrived I was talking to Brandvik,” I said. “But that part you already know, Mr. Norstad. One thing none of us will ever know is how Laxness learned Wally Baker knew about the note. But he found out somehow. Maybe Wally talked to the Baroness.”
“He did,” Maja said. “He spent a lot of time with her and with Gustaf, interviewing them for his story.”
“So figure he put out feelers about the note. Figure it scared hell out of the Baroness. It would have.”
“But you mentioned Einar Laxness,” Fridjonsson said. “Where does he fit in?”
“That’s easy. The Baroness had killed Kolding for him.” I looked at Maja. Her lips were trembling. “And suddenly, thanks to Brandvik, she was in trouble.”
“She kille
d my father on a—on a whim!” Maja said bitterly.
Fridjonsson gave her the pitch about love and hate being two sides of the same coin. It didn’t help. It rarely does.
“So Laxness, ordinarily a hatchetman who this one time had contracted for a murder which someone else was to execute, was also up to his ears in trouble. He had to take out Wally Baker. He used dynamite for the job.”
“I saw it happen,” Maja said. “I was there. I was going back to Mr. Baker’s place, to tell him I couldn’t find the note.”
“And he had to take out Brandvik most of all,” I went on.
Maja’s eyes were big with remembered terror. “I was there. I had to find out about Gustaf. I went back to the hotel to try again. You had stopped me the first time, Mr. Drum. Then … in the bathroom …”
“Easy, child,” Norstad said again. “We know all that now. You needn’t go into it.”
“I … I remember that man—the way he looked at me. I knew he was going to kill me too. I just knew it. I tried to scream. I couldn’t make a sound. Then there was a noise outside. Laxness ran.”
“By then he was convinced he had to kill Maja too,” I said. “He was a cold-blooded killer, but the Baroness wasn’t. Maybe she chanced going upstairs to see Maja. I don’t know for sure, but she could have. Laxness had knocked out your man Huggins on the fire stairs, Mr. Norstad. She had time.”
Maja shook her head. “I don’t remember seeing her.”
“What do you remember?” I asked. “Do you remember me coming in?”
“No-o. The next thing I remember, I was on a plane. Heading here, to Iceland.”
“Then the Baroness must have made a shrewd guess about your condition that night in Brandvik’s room,” I told Maja. “She drove over to my place, figuring I could keep the cops out of your hair.”
I stood up. “That about winds it up, Mr. Norstad. But here’s where you and Mr. Fridjonsson have an option. You can either believe the Baroness really wanted to brain-wash Maja and convince Laxness she wouldn’t be any further trouble—”
“That makes sense,” Norstad pointed out. “After all, she did use the drug on Maja. L.S.D.”
—“or you can believe the Baroness was playing both ends against the middle.”
“How do you mean?” Norstad asked me.
“Convincing Gustaf that she wanted to help Maja, but driving Laxness into a corner where he couldn’t do anything else but kill her. That way her hands would be clean.”
“Poor Gustaf,” Maja Kolding said. “He never really knew what was going on.”
“The Baroness had him all mixed up, Maja. He believed Brandvik had killed your father, but that wasn’t enough once you began to get the scent. So the Baroness must have told him that Brandvik, who had wanted to murder Jorgen Kolding for years, finally did it under Laxness’ orders. That would have made sense to him. Then she must have told him that you had uncovered the connection between Brandvik and Laxness. That would explain why they had to get you out of the States in a hurry, and again it would have made sense to him.
“So she told him most of the truth about Laxness, enough to scare the hell out of him, enough to convince him they had to make you forget what you knew and sell the idea to Laxness. Then, later, when Gustaf was beginning to get ideas that maybe the Baroness had killed your father, she switched her story, giving Laxness the role of hatchetman.”
Fridjonsson nodded slowly. “What you have suggested, Mr. Drum, agrees essentially with the deposition Gustaf Kolding made on his return to Iceland.”
“So he knows now,” I told Maja. “It’s just as well he didn’t know sooner. He loves you. He’s your brother. And he loved the Baroness. It would have torn him apart—the way it finally tore Ollie Meer apart. The Baroness was a casual Red, but Meer must have been dedicated. The only trouble was, from his point of view, he fell in love with you. He wanted to quit, but he knew what Laxness would do to him.”
“And—and they killed him,” Maja said.
“Those were the Baroness’ orders, not Laxness’. After what had happened in Akureyri, she knew Meer had to get it. Whether she was trying to save you or trying to drive Laxness into a corner so he’d have to kill you didn’t matter. Either way Meer had to go.”
Norstad grinned bleakly at Fridjonsson. “Have you selected your option?” he asked.
“I do not know what to think about the Baroness,” Fridjonsson admitted. “Except that she was born to a world she couldn’t understand, with a title that had lost its meaning. No, I do not think we will ever understand women like the Baroness.” He beamed suddenly. “But anyway, my Freya was—how do you say—a heroine. From your story, Mr. Drum, it was my Freya who prevented the Baroness’ escape.”
All that got from me was a nod, and then Fridjonsson told us how he would stuff a rapprochement with England down the Icelandic Parliament’s throat. “After what the Communists have done,” he said, “my people will turn back to the West. This I can promise.”
I shook hands all around, Maja kissed me on the cheek, and I caught a taxi out to the airport.
Freya was waiting there to say goodbye. We felt a stiffness in each other’s presence while they were fueling the big silver plane. Freya wasn’t flying that day, but had come down in uniform to see me off anyway. It is the way I always like to remember her, the pert peaked cap, the blue uniform clinging to her trim figure, the wind ruffling the white silk scarf around her hair.
But as the other passengers climbed the flight stairs, something of what had been between us came back. “I didn’t know there were any brunettes in Iceland,” I said, remembering the first words I had spoken to her.
She smiled. “There are brunettes just about everywhere. Thakka ydur fyrir, Chet. Many thanks—for everything.”
One item never got into the papers. The first thing I did when I reached Washington was call the Maternity Hospital. But Marianne Baker had already gone home.
I went to see her. She didn’t ask me what had happened. Maybe someday she will, and then I’ll tell her. There was sadness in her eyes, but a quiet maternal radiance too.
She had twin boys. They looked exactly like Wally.
THE END
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Danger Is My Line Page 18