Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘When you make a call on open radio to London you can expect people to listen,’ he said.

  ‘You listened and you told Kennikin.’

  He half-turned his head. ‘How do you know it wasn’t Kennikin who listened?’

  ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ I said sharply.

  ‘All right, Stewart,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in fencing. I admit it all. You’ve been right all along the line. Not that it will do you much good; you’ll never get out of Iceland.’ He coughed. ‘What gave me away?’

  ‘Calvados,’ I said.

  ‘Calvados!’ he repeated. He was at a loss. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You knew that Kennikin drinks Calvados. No one else did, except me.’

  ‘I see! That’s why you asked Taggart about Kennikin’s drinking habits. I was wondering about that.’ His shoulders seemed to sag and he said musingly, ‘It’s the little things. You cover every possibility; you train for years, you get yourself a new identity—a new personality—and you think you’re safe.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘And then it’s a little thing like a bottle of Calvados that you saw a man drink years before. But surely that wasn’t enough?’

  ‘It started me thinking. There was something else, of course. Lindholm—who was conveniently in the right place at the right time—but that could have been coincidence. I didn’t get around to suspecting you until you sent in Philips at Asbyrgi—that was a bad mistake. You ought to have sent Kennikin.’

  ‘He wasn’t immediately available.’ Slade clicked his tongue. ‘I ought to have gone in myself.’

  I laughed gently. ‘Then you’d be where Philips is now. Count your blessings, Slade.’ I looked ahead through the windscreen and then leaned forward to check the position of his hands and feet to make sure he wasn’t conning me—lulling me with conversation. ‘I suppose there was a man called Slade once.’

  ‘A boy,’ said Slade. ‘We found him in Finland during the war. He was fifteen then. His parents were British and had been killed in a bombing raid by our Stormoviks. We took him into our care, and later there was a substitution—me.’

  ‘Something like Gordon Lonsdale,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised you survived inspection in the turmoil after the Lonsdale case.’

  ‘So am I,’ he said bleakly.

  ‘What happened to young Slade?’

  ‘Siberia perhaps. But I don’t think so.’

  I didn’t think so either. Young Master Slade would have been interrogated to a fare-thee-well and then dispatched to some anonymous hole in the ground.

  I said, ‘What’s your name—the real Russian one, I mean?’

  He laughed. ‘You know, I’ve quite forgotten. I’ve been Slade for the better part of my life, for so long that my early life in Russia seems like something I once dreamed.’

  ‘Come off it! No one forgets his name.’

  ‘I think of myself as Slade,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll stick to it.’

  I watched his hand hovering over the button of the glove compartment. ‘You’d better stick to driving,’ I said drily. ‘There’s only one thing you’ll find in the glove compartment and that’s a quick, sweet death.’

  Without hurrying too much he withdrew his hand and put it back where it belonged—on the wheel. I could see that his first fright was over and he was regaining confidence. More than ever I would have to watch him.

  An hour after leaving Reykjavik we arrived at the turnoff to Lake Thingvallavatn and Kennikin’s house. Watching Slade, I saw that he was about to ignore it, so I said, ‘No funny business—you know the way.’

  He hastily applied the brakes and swung off to the right and we bumped over a road that was even worse. As near as I could remember from the night drive I had taken with Kennikin along this same road the house was about five miles from the turn-off. I leaned forward and kept one eye on the odometer, one eye on the countryside to see if I could recognize anything, and the other on Slade. Having three eyes would be useful to a man in my position, but I had to make do with two.

  I spotted the house in the distance or, at least, what I thought was the house, although I could not be entirely sure since I had previously only seen it in darkness. I laid the gun against Slade’s neck. ‘You drive past it,’ I said. ‘You don’t speed up and you don’t slow down—you just keep the same pace until I tell you to stop.’

  As we went past the drive that led to the house I glanced sideways at it. It was about four hundred yards off the road and I was certain this was the place. I was absolutely sure when I spotted the lava flow ahead and to the left where I had encountered Jack Case. I tapped Slade’s shoulder. ‘In a little while you’ll see a level place to the left where they’ve been scooping out lava for road-making. Pull in there.’

  I kicked the side of the door and swore loudly as though I had hurt myself. All I wanted to do was to make noise enough to cover the sound of my taking the clip out of the pistol and working the slide to eject the round in the breech. That would leave me unarmed and it wouldn’t do for Slade to know it. I was going to hit him very hard with the butt of the pistol and to do that with a loaded gun was to ask for a self-inflicted gut shot.

  He pulled off the road and even before the car rolled to a halt I let him have it, striking sideways in a chopping motion at the base of his neck. He moaned and fell forward and his feet slipped on the foot pedals. For one alarming moment the car bucked and lurched but then the engine stalled and it came to a standstill.

  I dipped into my pocket and put a full clip into the pistol and jacked a round into the breech before I examined Slade at close quarters. What I had done to him was in a fair way towards breaking his neck, but I found that his head lolled forward because I had merely knocked him cold. I made sure of that by taking the hand which had a bullet hole through the palm and squeezing it hard. He didn’t move a muscle.

  I suppose I should have killed him. The knowledge in his head culled from his years in the Department was a deadly danger, and my duty as a member of the Department was to see that the knowledge was permanently erased. I didn’t even think of it. I needed Slade as one hostage to set against another and I had no intention of exchanging dead hostages.

  E. M. Forster once said that if he had to choose betweenbetraying his country and betraying his friend then he hoped he would have the guts to betray his country. Elin was more than my friend—she was my life—and if the only way I could get her was to give up Slade then I would do so.

  I got out of the car and opened the boot. The sacking which was wrapped around the rifles came in handy for tearing into strips and binding Slade hand and foot. I then put him in the boot and slammed the lid on him.

  The Remington carbine I had taken from Philips I hid in a crevice of the lava close to the car, together with its ammunition, but Fleet’s piece of light artillery I slung over my shoulder as I walked towards the house. It was very likely that I would need it.

  II

  The last time I had been anywhere near this house it had been dark and I had plunged away not knowing the lie of the land. Now, in the daylight, I found I could get to within a hundred yards of the front door without breaking cover. The ground was broken and three big lava flows had bled across the landscape during some long-gone eruption and had hardened and solidified while in full spate to form jagged ridges full of crevices and holes. The ever-present moss grew thickly, covering the spiky lava with soft vegetable cushions. The going was slow and it took me half an hour to get as close to the house as I dared.

  I lay on the moss and studied it. It was Kennikin’s hideaway, all right, because a window was broken in the room where I had been kept captive and there were no curtains at that window. The last time I had seen them they had been going up in flames.

  A car stood outside the front door and I noticed that the air over the bonnet shimmered a little. That meant that the engine was still hot and someone had just arrived. Although my own journey had been slow, Kennikin had farther to travel from Kefl
avik—there was a good chance that whatever he intended to do to Elin to get her to tell him where I was had not yet begun. And, possibly, he would wait for Slade before starting. For Elin’s sake I hoped so.

  I loosened a big slab of moss and pushed Fleet’s rifle out of sight beneath it, together with the ammunition for it. I had brought it along as insurance—it was useless in the boot of the car, anyway. It would also be useless in the house too, but now it was tucked away within a fast sprint of the front door.

  I withdrew and began a painful retreat across the lava beds until I reached the driveway, and the walk towards the house was the longest distance I have ever walked, psychologically if not physically. I felt as a condemned man probably feels on his way to the scaffold. I was walking quite openly to the front door of the house and if anyone was keeping a watch I hoped his curiosity would get the better of him enough to ask why I was coming instead of shooting me down ten paces from the threshold.

  I crunched my way to the car and casually put out my hand. I had been right; the engine was still warm. There was a flicker of movement at one of the windows so I carried on and walked to the door. I pressed the bell-push and heard the genteel peal of chimes inside the house.

  Nothing happened for a while but soon I heard boots crushing loose lava chips and I looked sideways to see a man coming around the corner of the house to my left. I looked to the right and saw another, and both were strolling towards me with intent expressions on their faces.

  I smiled at them and jabbed the bell-push again and the chimes jingled softly just as in any house in the stockbroker belt. The door opened and Kennikin stood there. He had a gun in his hand.

  ‘I’m the man from the Prudential,’ I said pleasantly. ‘How’s your insurance, Vaslav?’

  TEN

  Kennikin looked at me expressionlessly and his pistol was pointing at my heart. ‘Why shouldn’t I kill you now?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about,’ I said. ‘It really would be a bad thing if you did.’ I heard footsteps behind me as the outflankers moved in for the kill. ‘Aren’t you interested to know why I’m here? Why I walked up and rang the bell?’

  ‘It did cross my mind that it was strange,’ said Kennikin. ‘You won’t object to a slight search?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, and felt heavy hands on me. They took Slade’s gun and the clips of ammunition. ‘This is most inhospitable,’ I said. ‘Keeping me at the door like this. Besides, what will the neighbours think?’

  ‘We have no neighbours for some considerable distance,’ said Kennikin, and looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘You’re very cool, Stewartsen. I think you must have gone mad. But come in.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and followed him into the familiar room where we had talked before. I glanced at the burnt patches on the carpet and said, ‘Heard any good explosions lately?’

  ‘That was very clever,’ said Kennikin. He waved his pistol. ‘Sit down in the same chair. You will observe there is no fire.’ He sat down opposite me. ‘Before you say anything I must tell you that we have the girl, Elin Ragnarsdottir.’

  I stretched out my legs. ‘What on earth do you want her for?’

  ‘We were going to use her to get you,’ he said. ‘But it seems that is no longer necessary.’

  ‘Then there’s no need to keep her. You can let her go.’

  Kennikin smiled. ‘You’re really funny, Stewartsen. It’s a pity the English music hall has gone into eclipse; you could make quite a good living as a comedian.’

  ‘You ought to hear me wow them in the working men’s clubs,’ I said. ‘That should appeal to a good Marxist such as yourself. But I wasn’t being funny, Vaslav. She is going to walk out of this house unharmed, and you are going to let her go.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘You’d better elaborate on that.’

  ‘I walked in here on my own feet,’ I said. ‘You don’t think I’d do that unless I could trump your ace. You see, I’ve got Slade. Tit for tat.’ His eyes opened wide, and I said, ‘But I forget—you don’t know a man called Slade. You told me so yourself, and we all know that Vaslav Viktorovich Kennikin is an honourable man who doesn’t stoop to fibs.’

  ‘Even supposing I did know this Slade, what proof have you of this? Your word?’

  I put my hand to my breast pocket and stopped sharply as his gun came up. ‘Not to worry,’ I said. ‘But do you mind if I dig for a bit of evidence?’ I took the jerk of the gun as assent and extracted Slade’s passport from my pocket and tossed it to him.

  He stooped to where it had fallen and picked it up, flicking open the pages with one hand. He studied the photograph intently and then snapped the passport closed. ‘This is a passport made out in the name of Slade. It is no proof of possession of the man. To hold a passport is meaningless; I, myself, possess many passports in many names. In any case, I know of no Slade. The name means nothing to me.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s so unlike you to talk to yourself. I know for a fact that not two hours ago you spoke to a nonexistent man at the Hotel Borg in Reykjavik. This is what you said, and this is what he said.’ I recited the telephone conversation verbatim. ‘Of course, I could have been wrong about what Slade said, since he doesn’t exist.’

  Kennikin’s face tightened. ‘You have dangerous knowledge.’

  ‘I have more than that—I have Slade. I had him even as he spoke to you. My gun was in his fat neck.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Vaslav!’ I said. ‘You’re talking to me, not some muscle-bound, half-witted ape like Ilyich.’

  He shrugged. ‘I had to try.’

  I grinned. ‘You’ll have to do a bloody sight better than that. I can tell you this, though—if you go looking for him, by the time you find him he’ll be cold meat. Those are my orders.’

  Kennikin pulled at his lower lip, thinking deeply. ‘Orders you have received—or orders you have given?’

  I leaned forward, preparing to lie heroically. ‘Let’s make no mistake about this, Vaslav. Those are orders I’ve given. If you, or anyone who even smells like you, gets close to Slade, then Slade dies. Those are the orders I have given and they’ll be followed, you may depend upon it.’

  At all costs I had to drive out of his mind any suggestion that I had been given orders. The only man who could give me orders was Taggart, and if he had issued such orders then the game was blown as far as Slade was concerned. If Kennikin believed for one minute that Taggart had penetrated Slade’s cover then he’d cut his losses by killing me and Elin, and get the hell back to Russia as fast as he could move.

  I buttressed the argument by saying, ‘I may be rapped over the knuckles when the Department catches up with me, but until then those orders stand—Slade will catch a bullet if you go near him.’

  Kennikin smiled grimly. ‘And who will pull the trigger? You’ve said you’re working independently of Taggart, and I know you’re alone.’

  I said, ‘Don’t sell the Icelanders short, Vaslav. I know them very well and I have a lot of friends here—and so does Elin Ragnarsdottir. They don’t like what you’ve been doing in their country and they don’t like one of their own being put in danger.’

  I leaned back in the chair. ‘Look at it this way. This is a biggish country with a small population. Everyone knows everyone else. Damn it, everyone is related to everyone else if you push it back far enough—and the Icelanders do. I’ve never known a people, other than the Scots, who are so genealogically minded. So everyone cares what happens to Elin Ragnarsdottir. This isn’t a mass society where people don’t even know their next-door neighbour. By taking Elin Ragnarsdottir you’ve laid yourself wide open.’

  Kennikin looked thoughtful. I hoped I had given him something to chew over for a long time, but I didn’t have the time so I pushed him. ‘I want the girl down here in this room—intact and in one piece. If any harm has come to her then you’ve made a big mistake.’

  He regarded me keenly, and said, ‘It
’s obvious you haven’t informed the Icelandic authorities. If you had, the police would be here.’

  ‘You’re so right,’ I said. ‘I haven’t, and for good reasons. Firstly, it would cause an international brouhaha, which would be lamentable. Secondly, and more important, all the authorities could do would be to deport Slade. My friends are tougher-minded—they’ll kill him if necessary.’ I leaned over and jabbed Kennikin in the knee with a hard forefinger. ‘And then they’ll blow you off to the police, and you’ll be up to your neck in uniforms and diplomats.’ I straightened up. ‘I want to see the girl, and I want to see her now.’

  ‘You talk straight,’ he said. ‘But, then, you always did…’ His voice tailed away, and he whispered, ‘…until you betrayed me.’

  ‘I don’t see you have any options,’ I said. ‘And just to screw it tighter I’ll tell you something else. There’s a time limit. If my friends don’t get the word from Elin’s own lips within three hours then Slade gets what’s coming to him.’

  I could see Kennikin visibly debating it with himself. He had to make a choice and a damned thin one it was. He said, ‘Your Icelandic friends—do they know who Slade is?’

  ‘You mean that he’s in Russian Intelligence?’ I said. ‘Or in British Intelligence, for that matter?’ I shook my head. ‘All they know is that he’s a hostage for Elin. I didn’t tell them anything else about him. They think you’re a crowd of gangsters and, by God, they’re not far wrong!’

  That clinched it. He thought he had me isolated, that only Elin and I knew the truth that Slade was a double agent. Given that premise which, God knows, was true enough since my Icelandic friends were pure invention, then he could do a deal. He was faced with the choice of sacrificing Slade, who had been laboriously built up over many years into a superlative Trojan Horse, for a no-account Icelandic girl. The choice was obvious. He would be no worse off than before he had taken her, and his weasel mind would already be working out ways of double-crossing me.