One touch on the door handle tells him he’s entering a sort of panic room strengthened on every dimension in case hostiles were to board the ship or decide to fire on her. Inside, he discovers daddy bear’s bed. Everything screams at him that the citadel is the inner sanctum and exclusive preserve of Dr Arthur himself.
Bruno goes across to the small mightily reinforced porthole and looks out. He can see no boarding pirates, no lights of any kind approaching – the world outside the yacht remains utterly black; he could be in outer space.
In a corner of the cabin, he spots an inlaid wooden cabinet stocked with liquor and sharp-edged glasses – tempting but under the circumstances, maybe not.
As he turns away, a shiny object catches his eye. It looks like a fancy gadget for opening wine. Something’s been engraved along one side.
Bruno picks it up and holds it to the light: “To the Viktor belong the spoils”.
In his head Magnus Jónsson informs him that this is a quote, that William L. Marcy said it of Andrew Jackson’s victory in the 1828 American election; the spoils being the prestigious positions the new president would bestow on his supporters.
He weighs the opener in his hands then turns it over. The hallmarks tell him it’s solid silver. Interesting that the word Victor is spelt like the name and has a capital letter. This is definitely somebody’s private joke.
Tiredness is catching up on him. Bruno can’t help yawning several times. The gentle rocking soothes him and the vast bed and its silky covers and pillows call to him but first he intends to make full use of Dr Arthur’s personal “head”. Under different circumstances, he’d be tempted to leave the good doctor a nice fat calling card.
Opening his eyes, Bruno is immediately aware of lights shining in through the porthole. He’s only wearing underpants – the bulky suit is lying on the floor beside the bed. Like a softly purring cat, a vibration begins to run through the structure of the yacht. There’s definitely another vessel out there and she’s closing in fast.
He rifles through his backpack to find trousers, a t-shirt, jumper and socks. Once he’s dressed he pulls on his boots. Dragging his arm through the sleeve of his jacket, he runs along the corridor and scrambles up the stairs to the rear deck.
More lights come at him through the mist. From her shape and size, it’s easy to recognise the approaching boat. Bruno waves – an exaggerated, above the head gesture like a drowning man.
One of the boat’s searchlights swings round to dazzle him. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he can still see nothing but its blinding glare.
Beside him, the air whistles. He looks down to see a coiled rope has landed on the deck right in front of him. Poor old Naglfar is about to be boarded.
Bruno picks up the rope, which is surprisingly heavy. Looking around, he spots several t-shaped cleats to one side of the deck. He pulls on the rope until it’s reasonably taut and then wraps it around the anchorage point in a figure of eight.
He finds he knows exactly what he has to do next. Bruno runs through the lounge and galley, past the cockpit and out onto the forward deck. This time, he manages to catch the rope in mid-air before passing it around an anchorage point near the prow of the yacht. He pulls hard.
A person comes at him through the lights and lands on the deck with a thud. Less than a metre in front of him, Kass is straightening up. Placing her hands on her hips she says, ‘Heave ho, me hearty.’
‘Well, shiver me timbers,’ Bruno says, ‘if it isn’t a wench!’
As the others are uncertain about how the derrick operates, Bruno volunteers to man it. He clambers over onto the police boat. Once he’s sitting in the operator’s bare metal seat he’s able to understand the technique straight away. It’s not exactly rocket science. The air temperature is dropping fast and the bitter cold is already penetrating his clothing.
‘Want to borrow my gloves?’ Nero must have noticed his bare, trembling hands.
‘Tempting, but that would weaken the connection. It’s okay, I’ll be fine.’
‘Take your time,’ Nero says. ‘Maybe have a few practice goes first. We don’t want to lose any overboard – not at this stage.’
After several rotations and grabs, the hydraulic arm and its huge hand start to feel like an extension of his. ‘Okay, I’m ready,’ Bruno tells them. ‘Can we get a move on because I’m literally freezing my arse off here?’
They roll back the tarp. Each pallet is encased in webbing – like some giant spider has been wrapping them up. Beginning at the nearest, Kass hooks handfuls of these cords over the metal hooks making up the “fingers” of the grab. ‘That ought to do it,’ she says.
Bruno closes the grab. He lifts the pallet a fraction to make sure it’s fully secured and then swings the arm out and over to the deck of the yacht where Nero is waiting to guide it into place.
Once he’s unhooked the first pallet, Nero gives him the thumbs-up and he swings the arm back across to pick up the next one.
For stability, they decide to split the load between the rear and fore decks, which means manoeuvring the police boat into a different position halfway through the operation.
The final pallet to be transferred is the one Nero had broken into to extract the suits they’d all worn. There’s a chance it will come apart but by doubling over the webbing he manages to successfully attach it to the grab arm.
It’s taken them almost an hour to load the deck of yacht with all the suits. Bruno climbs back across to the Naglfar. Blowing hard, he tries to breathe warmth back into his fingers.
While the other two attach the pallets to the yacht’s anchorage points, he stands back to look at what they’ve achieved. The additions look incongruous – ridiculous even and for a moment he feels like protesting at the way all those rough pallets are wedged into the seating areas and stacked up against the hot tub on the forward deck. What he wouldn’t give for a half hour in that hot tub.
‘Just so you know, my suit’s down there in one of the cabins and the one Kass wore is next to it in my backpack,’ he tells Nero. ‘Which just leaves the last four suits.’
‘Don’t look so worried.’ Nero hooks an arm around his neck as if he’s about to wrestle him to the floor. ‘It’s all fine.’ He ruffles Bruno’s hair before releasing him. ‘They’re on the police boat inside the two backpacks we picked up on our way. Can’t believe I’m saying this but so far it’s all gone according to plan.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to give me a hand with them,’ Kass says.
Bruno shrugs. ‘Sure.’
Between them, they land the backpacks onto the deck of Naglfar. ‘That’s it,’ Kass says, ‘we’re done.’
‘I just want to say well done everyone.’ Nero opens his arms. ‘Take a look at what we’ve achieved tonight. All you two need to do is get those weapons back to shore. The rest is down to me.’ His smile drops away. He looks at Bruno ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not trying to burst anyone’s bubble or whatever that stupid expression is. I may be totally wrong about this, but–’
‘Oh shit!’ Nero smashes his fist down on top of the nearest bundle. ‘Those other suits. That’s what Freyja was doing.’
Brandishing Quentin’s pack, he upends it littering the deck with stones. ‘Dammit, I should have known.’ Nero kicks the side of the police boat hard enough for it to really hurt. ‘I knew those two had to be up to something.’ He slaps himself on the forehead. ‘Why the fokk didn’t I check both packs?’
Bruno decides it might be best to stay silent whilst the man is literally beating himself up. Pity he’d opened his mouth – he could have let the two of them enjoy their moment of triumph.
‘Even if you had, at that point we couldn’t and wouldn’t have risked turning back,’ Kass says. ‘Besides, you really need to keep things in perspective – it’s only two suits. The same number those decoys had before all this started.’
‘Yes, but those were only the prototypes. Freyja’s taken two of the upgraded ones – the same ones
we all wore.’
Nero passes a hand over his face as if it might change the picture when he looks again. ‘God alone knows what those two are planning to do next.’
Kass won’t let it rest. ‘You need to stop this self-flagellation and focus.’ She grabs his shoulders. ‘Nero!’ She stands on tiptoes so she can push her face up into his. ‘Right now, my job is to get all those weapons safely to the marine police. Yours is to figure out how you’re going to dump these suits without leaving a trail those decoys, or anyone else, will be able to follow.’
She lets her hands fall away. They all stare out at nothing while the two boats rub up against each other, creaking and groaning like they’re impatient to be off.
‘You’re right,’ Nero says.
Blowing on his frozen hands, Bruno tries to think of a way to help, ‘Look, why don’t I make us all a nice hot drink?’
‘There’s no time for that.’ Nero looks out at the pitching sea. ‘You two should head back now. I need to get going while this tide is still heading in the right direction.’
Watching the yacht disappear into mist, Bruno regrets several things at once. He regrets not being on board with Nero and especially not being at the controls of that amazing boat. Most of all he wishes that he could roll back time – why hadn’t he kept his big mouth shut?
As it is, Kass has hardly said a word to him since the two boats had gone their separate ways. From various readouts, he can see they’re heading east into open waters. ‘Shouldn’t we be on our way back to Eldísvík?’ he asks.
‘Seeing as you know everything, I didn’t imagine I would need to explain my route.’
She’s right. Kass is planning to approach the harbour in a big loop so that when the hydrophones pick them up, they won’t be alerted to where they’ve just been. ‘Only making conversation,’ he says.
‘Why don’t you make us that hot drink you mentioned earlier,’ she says. ‘And maybe find something we can eat. I could really do with a snack or something; the more calories the better. I’m pretty sure the people who normally operate this boat get hungry.’
‘Yeah – they’re a greedy lot. D’you know they – ’ Her expression silences him.
He’d much rather be the person in charge of the boat than the one in charge of refreshments. ‘She’s handling much better without those suits,’ Kass says. ‘I guess the weight made her a bit top heavy.’
Should he ask if he can have a turn at the controls? Seeing the stony expression on her face, he thinks better of it.
Seven
Looking through the cockpit’s salt-smeared glass, Nero keeps an eye on the stacked-up pallets for any sign they might be shifting against the ropes holding them in place.
The navigation screen informs him that Naglfar is travelling with the tide at around her top speed of 32 knots, on a heading that’s roughly north-northwest. The seabed is now some 2,800 metres below and she’s almost fifteen nautical miles from both the west and east cardinal buoys marking the mouth of the fjord.
He watches the schematic until the distance hits the fifteen-mile point and decides it’s far enough. He kills the motor and then the lights; it’s important that, from this point onwards, she won’t give off the slightest heat signature.
Now he’s able to leave the controls, he walks out onto the deck. His eyes adjust and he can see the moon’s pale reflection repeated in each and every ice fragment floating on the surface. Under different circumstances this would all look quite magical. The reality is that, without an emersion suit, a person would last no more than minutes if they were unlucky enough to fall into this freezing water.
With the motor stopped, the yacht has sunk down and is wallowing. Just as he’d hoped, the strength of the tide is continuing to push Naglfar further away from the land. Spray is coming over the sides with every new wave and wetting the decking at his feet.
A wave of nausea runs through him. Before today, he’d refused to step onto the deck of any boat; in fact, he’d done his best to avoid all contact with open water. The opportunity had seldom arisen. It’s more than half a lifetime since he was adrift on a vessel in the open sea, packed in with so many others with no surety of where they might be heading or if they’d make landfall at all.
Nero’s hand finds the torch he’d brought with him – the one he’d borrowed from Svensson. Will he get the opportunity to return it? In the narrow galley, he searches out biscuits that look as if they might be dry enough to settle his stomach. He traces the origins of a small drinking spout to find it’s connected to a canister labelled “fresh water”. How fresh is fresh? Regardless, he gulps down a few mouthfuls to help him digest the biscuits. It doesn’t seem to help much.
Nero’s thrown from one side to the other as he squeezes through the galley and the lounge area and out onto a rear deck that’s been transformed by the addition of all those stacked-up pallets. None of them appears to have moved.
His original plan had been to dump the suits at sea. He’d assumed their weight alone would make them sink to the bottom. Knowing more about these things, Kass had pointed out that he would struggle to unload all those pallets by himself and that, even if he managed it, the slightest amount of trapped air in those bundles would make them float on or just below the surface. Any drifting pallets would act like a beacon to any passing ships.
This left the only other option – to scupper the yacht itself. He assumes the extra weight she’s now carrying will help that. The easiest way to sink her must be to shoot a few holes in her sides below the waterline. Too big and there’s a risk he won’t make it up to the deck in time.
Earlier, he’d located the inflatable lifeboat stowed away on the forward deck. Given a choice, he’d rather not spend time in an inflatable vessel of any kind.
Walking back through the boat to the rear deck, his torch beam runs over a small shore-to-shore boat stacked up against the side of the yacht and held in place by elaborate metal brackets. It looks to be in excellent condition.
With everything lurching and rolling beneath him, it’s a struggle to make sense of the diagram displayed directly above the boat. As far as he can tell, it’s intended to be light enough to be launched by a single person unaided. Once the brackets are folded down, they’re designed to extend like the rails on a slipway in order to launch the boat directly onto the water. Clever. All he’d need to do after that would be to jump into the boat and cast off.
Of course, in the diagram, the sea is represented as a straight, horizontal blue line. A rolling wave hits the side spraying his trousers with seawater.
By his calculations, there’s over an hour to go before the tide will begin to slacken. Still it makes sense to start by launching the shore boat; he needs to check her motor is charged and working – his life will depend on it.
Eight
Crunching down on a biscuit, Kass slows the police boat. Through the mist the searchlights reveal the old wooden pier sticking out into the fjord. How often had she fished from that familiar little jetty?
‘So is this it?’ Brow furrowed, Bruno stops chewing. ‘Whole thing looks rotten,’ he says, ‘like it could collapse any minute.’
‘Then it’s just as well we’ll be using the slipway,’ she says. It’s hard not to smile. ‘My family have always kept a boat here. Our boat shed is that red one just there. If anything happens – if I get detained or something – just remember the key is under a rock to the right of the door.’
Bruno laughs out loud, his breath misting the air. ‘I’ve noticed your family go in for impressive security arrangements.’
‘They all know us here – this far from the CBD, everybody keeps an eye on things for others. It’s called community spirit.’
‘As long as you’re a local,’ he says.
She can’t deny it. ‘Well, in any case our old boat’s not exactly luxurious; it’s hardly a magnet for thieves. The best thing about her is she’s got a brand new outboard motor – which makes her fast. She’s also quiet.’
He offers her another biscuit and she shakes her head. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘do you actually know that – or do you just think you know that?’
Bruno is concentrating on unwrapping another biscuit. ‘It’s a grey area,’ he says before taking a bite. ‘I mean– ’
‘Not with your mouth full,’ she tells him, forgetting he’s not six years old.
Moving a step closer, he opens his mouth to reveal the half-masticated biscuit. ‘Yuck!’ Kass looks away. ‘You know, I was about to apologise for treating you like a child.’ She looks down at the near empty tin. ‘You don’t have to be a telepatico to know they’ll wonder who ate all those biscuits.’
‘They’ll just blame Hansen – they always do,’ he says. ‘Most of the time they’re right – like me.’
Kass selects a much higher speed. The boat’s instant response catches Bruno off balance. The biscuit tin goes flying and he has to clutch her shoulder for support. ‘Now who’s being childish – you did that on purpose. I’ll have to pick all those up.’
‘Good – it’ll give you something useful to do,’ she says.
She can see the promontory now, the spit of land where the Eiriksson Monument reaches up into the night sky and is lit at the base like a rocket about to blast off. ‘Nearly there,’ she says. ‘Let me do the talking.’
‘I’ve noticed you like that arrangement,’ Bruno says.
They pass below the monument and the cliff edge and approach the buildings that make up Marine Police headquarters. Despite the hour, every light appears to be on. Along the quayside, a group of uniformed officers are looking out to sea – presumably watching them.
Battling her growing apprehension, Kass tries to concentrate on steering the boat into its regular berth without making any mistakes.
Within Each Other's Shadow Page 4
