Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘Yes.’ I thought of how I had mistrusted Jack Case and left him unconscious near Kennikin’s house. Perhaps he had not been untrustworthy at all because I had no illusions about who had killed him. Kennikin had the sgian dubh and Kennikin had the Volkswagen—and probably Kennikin had stumbled across Case in his search for me.

  But why had Case been killed?

  ‘This is dreadful,’ said Elin. ‘Another man killed.’ Her voice was filled with despair.

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said baldly.

  She picked up the paper. ‘How did the police know about the Volvo?’

  ‘Standard procedure,’ I said. ‘As soon as Case was identified the police would dig into whatever he’d been doing since he entered the country. They’d soon find he hired a car—and it wasn’t the Volkswagen he was found in.’

  I was glad the Volvo was tucked away out of sight in Valtyýr’s garage in Vik. ‘When is Valtyýr going back to Vik?’ I asked.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Elin.

  It seemed as though everything was closing in on me. Lee Nordlinger had given me a twenty-four hour ultimatum; it was too much to hope that Valtyýr wouldn’t check on the Volvo as soon as he got back to Vik—he might even go to the Reykjavik police if he felt certain it was the car they were searching for. And when the police laid hands on Sigurlin then the balloon would certainly go up—I couldn’t see her keeping silent in the face of a corpse parked in her home.

  Elin touched my arm. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Right now I just want to sit and think.’

  I began to piece the fragments together and gradually they made some kind of sense which hinged around Kennikin’s sudden switch of attitude after he had captured me. At first he had been all for extracting the gadget from me and he was looking forward with unwholesome delight to the operation. But then he lost interest in the gadget and announced that my death was the more important, and that was just after he had received a telephone call.

  I ticked off the sequence of events. At Geysir I had told Case of my suspicions of Slade, and Case had agreed to pass them on to Taggart. No matter what happened Slade would then be thoroughly investigated. But I had seen Slade talking to Case just before Kennikin took me. Suppose that Case had aroused Slade’s suspicions in some way? Slade was a clever man—a handler of men—and maybe Case had shown his hand.

  What would Slade do? He would contact Kennikin to find if I had been captured. He would insist that his cover next to Taggart should remain unbroken at all costs and that this was more important than the gadget. He would say, ‘Kill the bastard!’ That was why Kennikin had switched.

  And it would be just as important to kill Jack Case before he talked to Taggart.

  I had played right into Slade’s hands and left Case for Kennikin to find, and Kennikin had stabbed him with my knife. Kennikin had traced where the Volkswagen had come from and gone looking for me, and he had left the body of Case. Terrorist tactics.

  It all tied together except for one loose end which worried me. Why, when I had been jumped at Geysir by Kennikin’s mob, had Jack Case run out on me? He hadn’t lifted a finger to help; he hadn’t fired a shot in my defence even though he was armed. I knew Jack Case and that was very unlike him, and that, together with his apparent chumminess with Slade, had been the basis of my mistrust of him. It worried me very much.

  But it was all past history and I had the future to face and decisions to make. I said, ‘Did you check on Bjarni?’

  Elin nodded listlessly. ‘He’s on the Reykjavik-Höfn run. He’ll be in Reykjavik this afternoon.’

  ‘I want him over here,’ I said. ‘And you’re to stick in this office until he comes. You’re not to move out of it even for meals. You can have those sent up. And most emphatically you’re not to go out into the concourse of the airport; there are too many eyes down there looking for you and me.’

  ‘But I can’t stay here forever,’ she protested.

  ‘Only until Bjarni comes. Then you can tell him anything you think fit—you can even tell him the truth. Then you’re to tell him what he must do.’

  She frowned. ‘And that is?’

  ‘He’s got to get you on a plane and out of here, and he has to do it discreetly without going through normal channels. I don’t care if he has to dress you up as a hostess and smuggle you aboard as one of the crew, but you mustn’t go down into the concourse as an ordinary passenger.’

  ‘But I don’t think he could do that.’

  ‘Christ!’ I said. ‘If he can smuggle in crates of Carlsberg from Greenland he can smuggle you out. Come to think of it, going to Greenland might not be such a bad idea; you could stay in Narsassuaq until all this blows over. Not even Slade, clever though he is, would think of looking there.’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘You’re going,’ I said. ‘I want you from underfoot. If you think things have been rough for the last few days then compared to the next twenty-four hours they’ll seem like an idyllic holiday. I want you out of it, Elin, and, by God, you’ll obey me.’

  ‘So you think I’m useless,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘No, I don’t; and you’ve proved it during the last few days. Everything you’ve done in that time has been against your better judgment, but you’ve stuck by me. You’ve been shot and you’ve been shot at, but you still helped out.’

  ‘Because I love you,’ she said.

  ‘I know—and I love you. That’s why I want you out of here. I don’t want you killed.’

  ‘And what about you?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m different,’ I said. ‘I’m a professional. I know what to do and how to do it; you don’t.’

  ‘Case was a professional too—and he’s dead. So was Graham, or whatever his name really was. And that man, Volkov, was hurt at Geysir—and he was a professional. You said yourself that the only people hurt so far have been the professionals. I don’t want you hurt, Alan.’

  ‘I also said that no innocent bystanders have been hurt,’ I said. ‘You’re an innocent bystander—and I want to keep it that way.’

  I had to do something to impress the gravity of the situation upon her. I looked around the room to check its emptiness, then quickly took off my jacket and unslung Case’s shoulder holster complete with gun. I held it in my hand and said, ‘Do you know how to use this?’

  Her eyes dilated. ‘No!’

  I pointed out the slide. ‘If you pull this back a bullet is injected into the breech. You push over this lever, the safety catch, then you point it and pull the trigger. Every time you pull a bullet comes out, up to a maximum of eight. Got that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Repeat it.’

  ‘I pull back the top of the gun, push over the safety catch and pull the trigger.’

  ‘That’s it. It would be better if you squeezed the trigger but this is no time for finesse.’ I put the pistol back into the holster and pressed it into her reluctant hands. ‘If anyone tries to make you do anything you don’t want to do just point the gun and start shooting. You might not hit anyone but you’ll cause some grey hairs.’

  The one thing that scares a professional is a gun in the hands of an amateur. If another professional is shooting at you at least you know he’s accurate and you have a chance of out-manoeuvring him. An amateur can kill you by accident.

  I said, ‘Go into the loo and put on the holster under your jacket. When you come back I’ll be gone.’

  She accepted the finality of the situation along with the pistol. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The worm is turning,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of running, so I’m going hunting. Wish me luck.’

  She came close to me and kissed me gently and there were unshed tears in her eyes and the gun in its holster was iron-hard between us. I patted her bottom and said, ‘Get along with you,’ and watched as she turned and walked away. When the door closed behind her I also left.

  NINE

  Nordling
er’s Chevrolet was too long, too wide and too soft-sprung and I wouldn’t have given a thank you for it in the Óbyggdir, but it was just what I needed to get into Reykjavik fast along the International Highway which is the only good bit of paved road in Iceland. I did the twenty-five miles to Hafnarfjördur at 80 mph and cursed when I was slowed down by the heavy traffic building up around Kopavogur. I had an appointment at midday in the souvenir shop of the Nordri Travel Agency and I didn’t want to miss it.

  The Nordri Travel Agency was in Hafnarstraeti. I parked the car in a side street near Naust and walked down the hill towards the centre of town. I had no intention at all of going into Nordri; why would I when Nordlinger had the gadget tucked away in his safe? I came into Hafnarstraeti and ducked into a bookshop opposite Nordri. There was a cafĂ above the shop with a flight of stairs leading directly to it so that one could read over a cup of coffee. I bought a newspaper as cover and went upstairs.

  It was still before the midday rush so I got a seat at the window and ordered pancakes and coffee. I spread open the paper and then glanced through the window at the crowded street below and found that, as I had planned, I had a good view of the travel agency which was on the other side of the street. The thin gauze curtains didn’t obstruct my view but made it impossible for anyone to recognize me from the street.

  The street was fairly busy. The tourist season had begun and the first hardy travellers had already started to ransack the souvenir shops and carry home their loot. Camera-hung and map in hand they were easy to spot, yet I inspected every one of them because the man I was looking for would probably find it convenient to be mistaken for a tourist.

  This was a long shot based on the fact that everywhere I had gone in Iceland the opposition had shown up. I had followed instructions on arrival and gone the long way around to Reykjavik and Lindholm had been there. I had gone to earth in Asbyrgi and Graham had pitched up out of the blue. True, that was because of the radio bug planted on the Land-Rover, but it had happened. Fleet had lain in wait and had shot up the Land-Rover in a deliberate ambush, the purpose of which was still a mystery. Yet he, like Lindholm, had known where to wait. Kennikin had jumped me at Geysir and I’d got away from that awkward situation by the thickness of a gnat’s whisker.

  And now I was expected to call at the Nordri Travel Agency. It was a thin chance but it seemed logical to suppose that if past form was anything to go on then the place would be staked out. So I took a more than ordinary interest in those below who window-shopped assiduously, and I hoped that if Kennikin was laying for me I’d be able to recognize his man. He couldn’t have brought a whole army to Iceland and, one way or another, I’d already laid eyes on a lot of his men.

  Even so, it was a full half-hour before I spotted him, and that was because I was looking at him from an unfamiliar angle—from above. It is very hard to forget a face first seen past the cross hairs of a telescopic sight, yet it was only when he lifted his head that I recognized one of the men who had been with Kennikin on the other side of the Tungnaá River.

  He was pottering about and looking into the window of the shop next to Nordri and appeared to be the perfect tourist complete with camera, street map and sheaf of picture postcards. I whistled up the waitress and paid my bill so that I could make a quick getaway, but reserved the table for a little longer by ordering another coffee.

  He wouldn’t be alone on a job like this and so I was interested in his relationship with the passers-by. As the minutes ticked on he appeared to become increasingly restless and consulted his watch frequently and, at one o’clock exactly, he made a decisive move. He lifted his hand and beckoned, and another man came into my line of sight and crossed the street towards him.

  I gulped my coffee and went downstairs to lurk at the newspaper counter while observing my friends through the glass doors of the bookshop. They had been joined by a third man whom I recognized immediately—none other than Ilyich who had unwittingly provided me with the butane bomb. They nattered for a while and then Ilyich stuck out his arm and tapped his wrist-watch, shrugging expressively. They all set off up the street towards Posthusstraeti and I followed.

  From the bit of action with the watch it seemed that they not only knew the rendezvous I was supposed to keep but the time I was to keep it. They had pulled off duty at one o’clock like workmen clocking off the job. It wouldn’t have surprised me overmuch if they knew the passwords as well.

  At the corner of Posthusstraeti two of them got into a parked car and drove away, but Ilyich turned smartly to the right across the street and headed at a quick clip towards the Hotel Borg, into which he disappeared like a rabbit diving into its hole. I hesitated for a moment and then drifted in after him.

  He didn’t stop to collect a key at the desk but went immediately upstairs to the second floor, with me on his heels. He walked along a corridor and knocked at a door, so I did a smart about-turn and went downstairs again where I sat at a table in the lounge from where I had a good view of the foyer. This meant another obligatory cup of coffee with which I was already awash, but that’s the penalty of a trailing job. I spread my newspaper at arm’s length and waited for Ilyich to appear again.

  He wasn’t away long—a matter of ten minutes—and when he came back I knew triumphantly that all my suspicions had been correct and that everything I had done in Iceland was justified. He came downstairs talking to someone—and that someone was Slade!

  They came through the lounge on their way to the dining-room and Slade passed my table no farther away than six feet. It was to be expected that he would wait in his room for a report, positive or negative, and then head for the fleshpots. I shifted in my chair and watched where they would sit and, during the brouhaha of the seating ceremony. I left quickly and walked into the foyer and out of sight.

  Two minutes later I was on the second floor and tapping at the same door Ilyich had knocked on, hoping that no one would answer. No one did and so, by a bit of trickery involving a plastic sheet from my wallet, I went inside. That was something I had learned at school—the Department had trained me well.

  I wasn’t stupid enough to search Slade’s luggage. If he was as smart as I thought he would have gimmicked it so that he could tell at a glance whether a suitcase had been opened. Standard operating procedure when on a job, and Slade had a double advantage—he’d been trained by both sides. But I did inspect the door of his wardrobe, checking to see if there were any fine hairs stuck down with dabs of saliva which would come free if the door was opened. There was nothing, so I opened the door, stepped inside, and settled down to wait in the darkness.

  I waited a long time. That I expected, having seen the way Slade gourmandized, yet I wondered how he would take to the Icelandic cuisine which is idiosyncratic, to say the least. It takes an Icelander to appreciate hakarl—raw shark meat buried in sand for several months—or pickled whale blubber.

  It was quarter to three when he came back and by that time my own stomach was protesting at the lack of attention; it had had plenty of coffee but very little solid food. Ilyich was with him and it came as no surprise that Slade spoke Russian like a native. Hell, he probably was a Russian, as had been Gordon Lonsdale, another of his stripe.

  Ilyich said, ‘Then there’s nothing until tomorrow?’

  ‘Not unless Vaslav comes up with something,’ said Slade.

  ‘I think it’s a mistake,’ said Ilyich. ‘I don’t think Stewartsen will go near the travel agency. Anyway, are we sure of that information?’

  ‘We’re sure,’ said Slade shortly. ‘And he’ll be there within the next four days. We’ve all underestimated Stewart.’

  I smiled in the darkness. It was nice to have an unsolicited testimonial. I missed what he said next, but Ilyich said, ‘Of course, we don’t do anything about the package he will carry. We let him get rid of it in the agency and then we follow him until we get him alone.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We kill him,’ said Ilyich unemotionally.

 
‘Yes,’ said Slade. ‘But there must be no body found. There has been too much publicity already; Kennikin was mad to have left the body of Case where he did.’ There was a short silence and then he said musingly, ‘I wonder what Stewart did with Philips?’

  To this rhetorical question Ilyich made no answer, and Slade said, ‘All right; you and the others are to be at the Nordri Agency at eleven tomorrow. As soon as you spot Stewart I must be notified by telephone immediately. Is that understood?’

  ‘You will be informed,’ said Ilyich. I heard the door open. ‘Where is Kennikin?’ he asked.

  ‘What Kennikin does is no concern of yours,’ said Slade sharply. ‘You may go.’

  The door slammed.

  I waited and heard a rustle as of paper and a creak followed by a metallic click. I eased open the wardrobe door a crack and looked into the room with one eye. Slade was seated in an armchair with a newspaper on his knee and was applying a light to a fat cigar. He got the end glowing to his satisfaction and looked about for an ashtray. There was one on the dressing-table so he got up and moved his chair so that the ashtray would be conveniently to hand.

  It was convenient for me too, because the action of moving the chair had turned his back to me. I took my pen from my pocket and opened the wardrobe door very slowly. The room was small and it only needed two steps to get behind him. I made no sound and it must have been the fractional change of the quality of the light in the room that made him begin to turn his head. I rammed the end of the pen in the roll of fat at the back of his neck and said, ‘Stop right there or you’ll be minus a head.’

  Slade froze, and I snaked my other hand over his shoulder to the inside of his jacket where I found a pistol in a shoulder holster. Everyone seemed to be wearing guns these days and I was becoming exceptionally competent at disarming people.

  ‘I don’t want a move from you,’ I said, and stepped back. I worked the action of the pistol to make sure it was loaded, and threw off the safety catch. ‘Stand up.’