Running Blind

TWO

Elin rang up as I was finishing breakfast. From the static and the slight fading I could tell she was using the radiotelephone in the Land-Rover. Most vehicles travelling long distances in Iceland are fitted with radio-telephones, a safety measure called for by the difficult nature of the terrain. That’s the standard explanation, but not the whole truth. The fact is that Icelanders like telephoning and constitute one of the gabbiest nations on earth, coming just after the United States and Canada in the number of calls per head.

She asked if I had slept well and I assured her I had, then I said, ‘When will you get here?’

‘About eleven-thirty.’

‘I’ll meet you at the camp site,’ I said.

That gave me two hours which I spent in walking around Akureyri like a tourist, ducking in and out of shops, unexpectedly retracing my steps and, in general acting the fool. But when I joined Elin at the camp site I was absolutely sure that I didn’t have a tail. It seemed as though Slade had been telling the truth when he said he had no further use for me.

I opened the door of the Land-Rover, and said, ‘Move over; I’ll drive.’

Elin looked at me in surprise. ‘Aren’t we staying?’

‘We’ll drive a little way out of town and then have lunch. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

I drove along the north road by the coast, moving fast and keeping a close check behind. As it became clear that no one was following I began to relax, although not so much as to take the worry from Elin’s eyes. She could see I was preoccupied and tactfully kept silent, but at last she said, ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’

‘You’re so damn right,’ I said. ‘That’s what I want to discuss.’

Back in Scotland Slade had warned me about involving Elin in the operation; he had also invoked the Official Secrets Act with its penalties for blabbermouths. But if my future life with Elin was going to mean anything at all I had to tell her the truth and to hell with Slade and to hell with the Official Secrets Act.

I slowed down and left the road to bump over turf, and stopped overlooking the sea. The land fell away in a rumble of boulders to the grey water and in the distance the island of Grimsey loomed hazily through the mist. Apart from the scrap of land there wasn’t a damned thing between us and the North Pole. This was the Arctic Ocean.

I said, ‘What do you know about me, Elin?’

‘That’s a strange question. You’re Alan Stewart – whom I like very much.’

‘Is that all?’

She shrugged. ‘What else do I need to know?’

I smiled. ‘No curiosity. Elin?’

‘Oh, I have my curiosity but I keep it under control. If you want me to know anything, you’ll tell me,’ she said tranquilly, then hesitated. ‘I do know one thing about you.’

‘What’s that?’

She turned to face me. ‘I know that you have been hurt, and it happened not long before we met. That is why I keep my questions to myself – I don’t want to bring the hurt back.’

‘You’re very perceptive,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think it showed. Would it surprise you to know I was once a British agent – a spy?’

She regarded me curiously. ‘A spy,’ she said slowly, as though rolling the word about her mouth to taste it. ‘Yes, it surprises me very much. It is not a very honourable occupation – you are not the type.’

‘So someone else told me recently,’ I said sardonically. ‘Nevertheless, it is true.’

She was silent for a while, then she said, ‘You were a spy. Alan, what you were in the past doesn’t matter. I know you as you are now.’

‘Sometimes the past catches up with you,’ I said. ‘It did with me. There’s a man called Slade … ’ I stopped, wondering if I was doing the right thing.

‘Yes?’ she prompted me.

‘He came to see me in Scotland. I’ll tell you about that – about Slade in Scotland.’

II

The shooting was bad that day. Something had disturbed the deer during the night because they had left the valley where my calculations had placed them and had drifted up the steep slopes of Bheinn Fhada. I could see them through the telescopic sight – pale grey-brown shapes grazing among the heather. The way the wind was blowing the only chance I had of getting near them was by sprouting wings and so, since it was the last day of the season, the deer were safe from Stewart for the rest of the summer.

At three in the afternoon I packed up and went home and was scrambling down Sgurr Mor when I saw the car parked outside the cottage and the minuscule figure of a man pacing up and down. The cottage is hard to get to – the rough track from the clachan discourages casual tourists – and so anyone who arrives usually wants to see me very much. The reverse doesn’t always apply; I’m of a retiring nature and I don’t encourage visitors.

So I was very careful as I approached and stopped under cover of the rocks by the burn. I unslung the rifle, checked it again to make sure it was unloaded, and set it to my shoulder. Through the telescopic sight the man sprang plainly to view. He had his back to me but when he turned I saw it was Slade.

I centred the cross-hairs on his large pallid face and gently squeezed the trigger, and the hammer snapped home with a harmless click. I wondered if I would have done the same had there been a bullet up the spout. The world would be a better place without men like Slade. But to load was too deliberate an act, so I put up the gun and walked towards the cottage. I should have loaded the gun.

As I approached he turned and waved. ‘Good afternoon,’ he called, as coolly as though he were a regular and welcome guest.

I stepped up to him. ‘How did you find me?’

He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t too hard. You know my methods.’

I knew them and I didn’t like them. I said, ‘Quit playing Sherlock. What do you want?’

He waved towards the door of the cottage. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me inside?’

‘Knowing you, I’ll bet you’ve searched the place already.’

He held up his hands in mock horror. ‘On my word of honour, I haven’t.’

I nearly laughed in his face because the man had no honour. I turned from him and pushed open the door and he followed me inside, clicking his tongue deprecatingly. ‘Not locked? You’re very trusting.’

‘There’s nothing here worth stealing,’ I said indifferently.

‘Just your life,’ he said, and looked at me sharply.

I let that statement lie and put up the rifle on its rack. Slade looked about him curiously. ‘Primitive – but comfortable,’ he remarked. ‘But I don’t see why you don’t live in the big house.’

‘It happens to be none of your business.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, and sat down. ‘So you hid yourself in Scotland and didn’t expect to be found. Protective coloration, eh? A Stewart hiding among a lot of Stewarts. You’ve caused us some little difficulty.’

‘Who said I was hiding? I am a Scot, you know.’

He smiled fatly. ‘Of a sort. Just by your paternal grandfather. It’s not long since you were a Swede – and before that you were Finnish. You were Stewartsen then, of course.’

‘Have you travelled five hundred miles just to talk of old times?’ I asked tiredly.

‘You’re looking very fit,’ he said.

‘I can’t say the same for you; you’re out of condition and running to fat,’ I said cruelly.

He chuckled. ‘The fleshpots, dear boy; the fleshpots – all those lunches at the expense of Her Majesty’s Government.’ He waved a pudgy hand. ‘But let’s get down to it, Alan.’

‘To you I’m Mr Stewart,’ I said deliberately.

‘Oh, you don’t like me,’ he said in a hurt voice. ‘But no matter – it makes no difference in the end. I … we … want you to do a job for us. Nothing too difficult, you understand.’

‘You must be out of your mind,’ I said.

‘I know how you must feel, but …’

‘You don’t know a damn thing,’ I said sharply. ‘If you expect me to work for you after what happened then you’re crazier than I thought.’

I was wrong, of course; Slade knew perfectly well how I felt – it was his business to know men and to use them like tools. I waited for him to put on the pressure and, sure enough, it came, but in his usual oblique manner.

‘So let’s talk of old times,’ he said. ‘You must remember Kennikin.’

I remembered – I’d have to have total amnesia to forget Kennikin. A vision of his face swam before me as I had last seen him; eyes like grey pebbles set above high Slavic cheekbones, and the scar ran from his right temple to the corner of his mouth standing out lividly against the suddenly pale skin. He had been angry enough to kill me at that moment.

‘What about Kennikin?’ I said slowly.

‘Just that I hear he’s been looking for you, too. You made a fool of him and he didn’t like it. He wants to have you … ’ Slade paused as though groping for a thought. ‘What’s that delicate phrase our American colleagues of the CIA use? Oh, yes – Kennikin wants to have you “terminated with extreme prejudice.” Although I daresay the KGB don’t employ that exact wording.’

A damned nice term for a bullet in the back of the head one dark night. ‘So?’ I said.

‘He’s still looking for you,’ Slade pointed out.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I’m no longer with the Department.’

‘Ah, but Kennikin doesn’t know that.’ Slade examined his fingernails. ‘We’ve kept the information from him – quite successfully, I believe. It seemed useful to do so.’

I saw what was coming but I wanted to make Slade come right out with it, to commit himself in plain language – something he abhorred. ‘But he doesn’t know where I am.’

‘Quite right, dear boy – but what if someone should tell him?’

I leaned forward and looked closely at Slade. ‘And who would tell him?’

‘I would,’ he said blandly. ‘If I thought it necessary. I’d have to do it tactfully and through a third party, of course; but it could be arranged.’

So there it was – the threat of betrayal. Nothing new for Slade; he made a life’s work out of corruption and betrayal. Not that I was one to throw stones; it had been my work too, once. But the difference between us was that Slade liked his work.

I let him waffle on, driving home the point unnecessarily. ‘Kennikin runs a very efficient Mordgruppe, as we know to our cost, don’t we? Several members of the Department have been … er … terminated by Kennikin’s men.’

‘Why don’t you just say murdered?’

He frowned and his piggy eyes sank deeper into the rolls of fat that larded his face. ‘You always were blunt, Stewart; perhaps too blunt for your own good. I haven’t forgotten the time you tried to get me in trouble with Taggart. I remember you mentioned that word then.’

‘I’ll mention it again,’ I said. ‘You murdered Jimmy Birkby.’

‘Did I?’ Slade asked softly. ‘Who put the gelignite in his car? Who carefully connected the wire from the detonator to the ignition system? You did!’ He cut me off with a chopping motion of his hand. ‘And it was only that which got you next to Kennikin, only that induced Kennikin to trust you enough so that we could break him. You did very well, Stewart – all things considered.’

‘Yes, you used me,’ I said.

‘And I’ll use you again,’ he said brutally. ‘Or would you rather be thrown to Kennikin?’ He laughed suddenly. ‘You know, I don’t think Kennikin gives a damn if you’re with the Department or not. He wants you for your own sweet self.’

I stared at him. ‘And what do you mean by that?’

‘Didn’t you know that Kennikin is impotent now?’ Slade said in surprise. ‘I know you intended to kill him with that last shot, but the light was bad and you thought you’d merely wounded him. Indeed you had, but not merely – you castrated the poor man.’ His hands, which were folded across his belly, shook with his sniggers. ‘To put it crudely – or bluntly, if you like, dear boy – you shot his balls off. Can you imagine what he’ll do to you if – and when – he catches up with you?’

I felt cold and there was a yawning emptiness in the pit of my stomach. ‘There’s only one way of opting out of the world and that’s by dying,’ said Slade with phoney philosophy. ‘You tried your way and it doesn’t work.’

He was right; I shouldn’t have expected otherwise. ‘What it comes to is this,’ I said. ‘You want me to do a job. If I don’t do it, you’ll tip off the opposition and the opposition will knock me off – and your hands will be theoretically clean.’

‘Very succinctly put,’ said Slade. ‘You always did write good, clear reports.’ He sounded like a schoolmaster complimenting a boy on a good essay.

‘What’s the job?’

‘Now you’re being sensible,’ he said approvingly. He produced a sheet of paper and consulted it. ‘We know you are in the habit of taking an annual holiday in Iceland.’ He looked up. ‘Still sticking to your northern heritage, I see. You couldn’t very well go back to Sweden – and Finland would be even more risky. Too close to the Russian border for comfort.’ He spread his hands. ‘But who goes to Iceland?’

‘So the job is in Iceland?’

‘Indeed it is.’ He tapped the paper with his fingernail. ‘You take long holidays – three and four months at a time. What it is to have a private income – the Department did very well by you.’

‘The Department gave me nothing that wasn’t mine,’ I said shortly.

He ignored that. ‘I note you’ve been doing very well for yourself in Iceland. All the home comforts down to a love-nest. A young lady, I believe, is …’

‘We’ll leave her out of it.’

‘Just the point I’m making, dear boy. It would be most unwise if she became involved. It could be most dangerous for her, don’t you think? I wouldn’t tell her anything about it.’ His voice was kindly.

Slade had certainly done his homework. If he knew about Elin then he must have tapped me a long time before. All the time I thought I was in cover I’d been under a microscope.

‘Come to the job.’

‘You will collect a package at Keflavik International Airport.’ He sketched dimensions with his hands. ‘About eight inches by four inches by two inches. You will deliver it to a man in Akureyri – you know where that is?’

‘I know,’ I said, and waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. ‘That’s all?’ I asked.

‘That’s all; I’m sure you will be able to accomplish it quite easily.’

I stared at him incredulously. ‘Have you gone through all this rigmarole of blackmail just to give me a messenger boy’s job?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t use such crude language,’ he said peevishly. ‘It’s a job suitable for one who is out of practice, such as yourself. It’s important enough and you were to hand, so we’re using you.’

‘This is something that’s blown up quite quickly, isn’t it?’ I hazarded. ‘You’re forced to use me.’

Slade waggled his hand. ‘We’re a bit stretched for manpower, that’s all. Don’t get delusions of grandeur – in using you I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel.’

Slade could be blunt enough when it suited his purpose. I shrugged, and said, ‘Who is the man in Akureyri?’

‘He’ll make himself known,’ Slade took a slip of paper from his wallet and tore it jaggedly across. One piece he passed to me and it proved to be half of a 100-kronur banknote. ‘He’ll have the other half. Old ways are best, don’t you think? Effective and uncomplicated.’

I looked at the ruined Icelandic currency in my hand and said ironically, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be paid for this enterprise?’

‘Of course you will, dear boy. Her Majesty’s Government is never niggardly when it comes to valuable services rendered. Shall we say two hundred pounds?’

‘Send it to Oxfam, you bastard.’

He shook his head deprecatingly. ‘Such language – but I shall do as you say. You may depend on it.’

I studied Slade and he looked back at me with eyes as candid as those of a baby. I didn’t like the smell of this operation – it sounded too damned phoney. It occurred to me that perhaps he was setting up a training exercise with me as the guinea pig. The Department frequently ran games of that sort to train the new boys, but all the participants usually knew the score. If Slade was ringing me into a training scheme without telling me I’d strangle the sadistic bastard.

To test him, I said, ‘Slade, if you’re using me as the football in a training game it could be dangerous. You could lose some of your budding spies that way.’

He looked shocked. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that to you.’

‘All right; what do I do if someone tries to take the package?’

‘Stop him,’ he said succinctly.

‘At any cost?’

He smiled. ‘You mean – should you kill? Do it any way you want. Just deliver the package to Akureyri.’ His paunch shook with amusement. ‘Killer Stewart!’ he mocked gently. ‘Well, well!’

I nodded. ‘I just wanted to know. I’d hate to make your manpower problems more difficult. After Akureyri – what happens then?’

‘Then you may go on your way rejoicing. Complete your holiday. Enjoy the company of your lady friend. Feel free as air.’

‘Until the next time you drop by.’

‘That is a highly unlikely eventuality,’ said Slade decisively. ‘The world has passed you by. Things are not the same in the Department as they were – techniques are different – many changes you would not understand. You would be quite useless, Stewart, in any real work; but this job is simple and you’re just a messenger boy.’ He looked around the room a little disdainfully. ‘No, you may come back here and rusticate peacefully.’

‘And Kennikin?’

‘Ah, I make no promises there. He may find you – he may not; but if he does it will not be because of my doing, I assure you.’

‘That’s not good enough,’ I said. ‘You’ll tell him I haven’t been a member of the Department for four years?’

‘I may,’ he said carelessly. ‘I may.’ He stood and buttoned his coat. ‘Of course, whether he would believe it is one thing, and whether it would make any difference is yet another. He has his own, strictly unprofessional, reasons for wanting to find you, and I’m inclined to think that he’ll want to operate on you with a sharp knife rather than to ask you to share his bottle of Calvados.’

He picked up his hat and moved over to the door. ‘You will receive further instructions about picking up the package before you leave. It’s been nice to see you again, Mr Stewart.’

‘I wish I could say the same,’ I said, and he laughed jollily.

I walked with him to his car and pointed to the rocks from where I had watched him waiting outside the cottage. ‘I had you in rifle sights from up there. I even squeezed the trigger. Unfortunately the rifle wasn’t loaded.’

He looked at me, his face full of confidence. ‘If it had been loaded you wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. You’re a civilized man, Stewart; too civilized. I sometimes wonder how you lasted so long in the Department – you were always a little too soft-centred for the big jobs. If it had been my decision you’d have been out long before you decided to … er … retire.’

I looked into his pale cold eyes and knew that if it had been his decision I would never have been allowed to retire. He said, ‘I trust you remember the terms of the Official Secrets Act.’ Then he smiled. ‘But, of course, you remember.’

I said, ‘Where are you in the hierarchy now, Slade?’

‘Quite close to the top, as a matter of fact,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Right next to Taggart. I do make the decisions now. I get to have lunch with the Prime Minister from time to time.’ He gave a self-satisfied laugh and got into the car. He rolled down the window, and said, ‘There’s just one thing. That package – don’t open it, dear boy. Remember what curiosity did to the cat.’

He drove away, bumping down the track, and when he had disappeared the glen seemed cleaner. I looked up at Sgurr Mor and at Sgurr Dearg beyond and felt depressed. In less than twenty minutes my world had been smashed to pieces and I wondered how the hell I was going to pick up the bits.

And when I woke up next morning after a broken night I knew there was only one thing to do; to obey Slade, carry out his orders and deliver the damned package to Akureyri and hope to God I could get clear without further entanglement.

III

My mouth was dry with talking and smoking. I pitched the cigarette butt from the window and it lay on a stone sending a lonely smoke signal to the North Pole. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘I was blackmailed into it.’

Elin shifted in her seat. ‘I’m glad you’ve told me. I was wondering why you had to fly to Akureyri so suddenly.’ She leaned forward and stretched. ‘But now you’ve delivered this mysterious package you have nothing more to worry about.’

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t deliver it.’ I told her about the four men at Akureyri Airport and she went pale. ‘Slade flew here from London. He was annoyed.’

‘He was here – in Iceland?’

I nodded. ‘He said that I’m out of it, anyway; but I’m not, you know. Elin, I want you to stay clear of me – you might get hurt.’

She regarded me intently. ‘I don’t think you’ve told me everything.’

‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘And I’m not going to. You’re better out of this mess.’

‘I think you’d better complete your story,’ she said.

I bit my lip. ‘Have you anywhere to stay – out of sight, I mean?’

She shrugged. ‘There’s the apartment in Reykjavik.’

‘That’s compromised,’ I said. ‘Slade knows about it and one of his men has it tagged.’

‘I could visit my father,’ she said.

‘Yes, you could.’ I had met Ragnar Thorsson once only; he was a tough old farmer who lived in the wilds of Strandasysla. Elin would be safe enough there. I said, ‘If I tell you the full story will you go and stay with him until I send for you?’

‘I give no guarantees,’ she said uncompromisingly.

‘Christ!’ I said. ‘If I get out of this you’re going to make me one hell of a wife. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand it.’

She jerked her head. ‘What did you say?’

‘In a left-handed way I was asking you to marry me.’

Things immediately got confused and it was a few minutes before we got ourselves untangled. Elin, pink-faced and tousle-haired, grinned at me impishly. ‘Now tell!’

I sighed and opened the door. ‘I’ll not only tell you, but I’ll show you.’

I went to the back of the Land-Rover and took the flat metal box from the girder to which I had taped it. I held it out to Elin on the palm of my hand. ‘That’s what the trouble is all about,’ I said. ‘You brought it up from Reykjavik yourself.’