The Chill Factor

by Richard Falkirk

  ‘That’s true,’ Sigurdson said. ‘You’re not.’ He dropped Thorarinsson back on to the armchair which emitted dust again. He said to me: ‘I think he’s telling the truth this time. Hafstein could be anywhere in Iceland. Husavik, Grenivik, even Reykholt.’

  ‘What’s at Reykholt?’ I asked.

  ‘It was where Snorri Sturluson lived,’ he said. ‘A hot spring called Snorri’s bath still exists there.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’d quite forgotten.’

  Thorarinsson stood up and asked if he could go.

  ‘Tell us a bit about Hafstein,’ I said. ‘What did he do when he was here?’

  Thorarinsson kept his eyes on the money. ‘Kept himself to himself. He would either be in his study or in the hothouse. He was having two books published, you know. One about birds and one about churches.’

  ‘Who was publishing them?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some firm in Sweden. I know he was very upset because he had to pay for the publication – no one would publish them otherwise. He had been working on the book about churches for about twenty years. He was very upset. He changed a lot after that.’ His voice became conspiratorial. ‘I think he was a little mad.’

  Sigurdson shuffled the notes in his hand. ‘In what way was he mad?’

  ‘He talked a lot about the unfairness in the world. About the wrong values.’

  ‘I thought you said he kept himself to himself,’ I said. ‘He seems to have been unusually talkative to an employee.’

  ‘It was just one evening.’ Thorarinsson smiled at Sigurdson because we were all collaborating so nicely. ‘Can I have my money back now?’

  Sigurdson’s smile was equally friendly. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe when you’ve told us all you know,’ I said. ‘What did he say that one evening?’

  ‘Nothing very much. We followed the pipeline into the hills because he thought the steam was losing power. It wasn’t, in fact. He stood there looking down into the valley talking about all the worthless people who were getting away with dishonesty and deceit and how he would get his revenge. I didn’t take much notice of what he said. He always paid me regularly and that was all that bothered me. But I think it turned him a little crazy when his book was rejected.’

  ‘Anything else that evening?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing much. He did say that he would make sure that he found the money to get his books published.’

  Sigurdson leaned forward. ‘By helping the Communists?’

  Thorarinsson looked surprised. ‘Not as far as I know.’ He put out his lumpy hand. ‘Can I have the money now?’

  Sigurdson threw it at him and the notes scattered over his lap, over the floor. He knelt to pick them up.

  I walked into the study and stared at the birds. You know the answer, I thought. Why don’t you open your bloody beaks and squawk?

  On the way back we made a diversion to the springs from which Hafstein was getting his steam. From one pipe, steam roared out forty feet or so in impotent fury. Elsewhere pools bubbled and steamed, and beside the path blisters of grey mud rose and popped like bubblegum. A stream ran down the hillside to the road where we had parked the Volvo: its bed was yellow with crystallised sulphur, a miniature yellow glacier.

  On one side of the stream lay a pool of boiling hot mud with a board warning you not to get too close. The mud was grey and heaving. Now and again the heave of mud was stronger – like the theory of the seventh wave – and a small laborious fountain arose.

  Above us stood the church. ‘Old, Roman Catholic, situate adjacent mud pools and hot springs, one km from Hveragerdi. Now disused.’

  It was probably the sight of the church that had ignited Hafstein’s anger that evening. Disused, deserted, treated with the same contempt that his books had been. But how was he going to exact his revenge?

  Sigurdson was not particularly interested in disused Roman Catholic churches. Or any other churches. ‘Let us get back to Reykjavik,’ he said. ‘I have alerted police all over Iceland to watch for Hafstein. There is little else we can do. Perhaps we will have a drink when we get back?’ He looked at me hopefully.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  ‘And after this is all over we must find some girls and have a party.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘After we’ve found some spies.’

  I drove up to the base, and Sigurdson went to his office, stopping, perhaps, at the Hotel Borg bar on the way.

  The military policeman and I were old buddies now. ‘Just hold on, sir, while I call Commander Martz.’ I thought I heard a groan on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Jesus,’ Martz said in his friendly way, ‘you’re all I need.’

  ‘Are you interested in spies right now?’

  ‘Nope. All I’m interested in right now is stopping about two thousand angry young Icelanders marching on this base. At the moment they’re holding off until midnight because tomorrow is their National day and they’ll have all the time in the world to wreck the joint.’

  Charlie Martz, I thought, wasn’t so different from Einar Sigurdson. The same heartiness that disconcertingly hardened into shrewdness when there was business to be done, the same chunky competence. Except that Martz was softer when it came to hurting the innocent; and was the better operator.

  ‘Are you still holding on to Shirey?’

  ‘Just about. The Ambassador’s been on to the Admiral and the Admiral’s been on to me. And do you know what I said? I said, “See here, Admiral, sir, Mr William Conran of British Intelligence has asked me to hold on to Airman First Class Shirey for just as long as I can because Mr William Conran believes he is innocent.” And do you know what he said?’

  ‘I can guess.’

  ‘He said, “Tell Mr William Conran of British Intelligence to go fuck himself.”’

  ‘I’m not a contortionist,’ I said mildly.

  A glimpse of gold tooth. A small reward. The phone sounded and I wondered if he had ever checked to see if it was bugged. He did a lot of listening, then hung up.

  ‘Trouble?’ I asked unnecessarily.

  Martz said that the demonstrators would start assembling at Reykjavik coach station at 10 p.m. They were coming by coach, bus, car, motorcycle. They would be at the main gate by midnight. By then the Icelandic police would have a formal charge ready to enable them to hold Shirey. If the Americans refused to hand him over there would be an official protest not to mention an invasion by the young people of Iceland. But, in fact, there would be neither protest nor invasion because by that time they would have handed Shirey over.

  ‘And there’s nothing I can do to stop it,’ Martz said, ‘unless you or Sigurdson can dig something up.’ He added: ‘In any case I’m not so darn sure that Sigurdson wants any developments that will stop Shirey being handed over. I reckon that guy wants to get rid of the Americans as much as the Russians.’

  ‘Can I see Shirey again?’

  ‘Sure, if you want. Why are you so concerned about this kid, anyway?’

  ‘Because he’s an innocent kid. And I don’t want to see him used as cannon fodder for international politics.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ He looked at me shrewdly. ‘Like you were?’ ‘Maybe. Except that I wasn’t an innocent kid.’

  Martz nodded sagely. ‘I guess not. But it seems to me that you’re getting yourself a little too emotionally involved. However, that’s your business. I don’t want to see Shirey victimised.’ He did a rapid patrol around his office. ‘How is the spy-catching business?’

  ‘Hafstein’s skipped,’ I said.

  ‘Has he by Christ. When?’

  I told him all about it.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Work Magnusson over maybe.’

  He picked up a flight report from his desk. ‘There was another Soviet trawler in this morning. Same place again. So we’ve probably got another Russian wandering around some place.’

  ‘I wonder they didn’t try and stake a claim
to Surtsey,’ I said.

  Martz grinned. ‘They were too late. Paris-Match got there first and claimed it for the French.’ He completed his office patrol. ‘By the way, who’s this guy Jefferey?’

  ‘A shit,’ I said.

  ‘I figured that. He’s been asking a few questions about you.’

  ‘And did you answer them?’

  ‘I told him to do what the Admiral thought yot1 should do,’ Charlie Martz said.

  I really did like Charlie Martz.

  Shirey had been moved to a room in an unoccupied married quarter. It was furnished with a dressing table, a double bed and a wardrobe. A TV set had been installed and Shirey was reading the programmes in The White Falcon, the base’s weekly paper. There were some comics on the bed, a Playboy and a skiing magazine. The tin ashtray was cluttered with cigarette butts.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  He looked up from the paper and grunted. ‘What’s on television?’

  He looked as if he wanted to say, ‘What’s it to you?’ Instead he said: ‘Nothing till four. Then it’s the Bob Cummings Show.’

  I gave him a cigarette. ‘You must be pretty nervous.’

  ‘Yeah.’ No sirs now that Martz wasn’t present: I was just another interfering foreigner. I didn’t blame him.

  ‘I met some of the Icelanders who invited you to that party.’

  ‘Yeah? What did they say?’

  ‘They said they didn’t meet anyone answering your description in the Trod. The waitress told me they did meet you.’

  ‘Lying bastards,’ Shirey said. ‘Just because I’m an American.’ He stood up in front of the TV set, fair hair falling over his forehead, bright blue eyes shadowed. ‘I’ll tell you something, mister. I’m proud to be American. I wouldn’t want it any other way. If it wasn’t for us Americans the whole shitty world would be in the hands of the Communists by now. I wonder how they’d like it then – all these snide sons of bitches who want us out.’ He paused and pointed a finger with a bitten nail in my direction. ‘They’re all jealous. That’s what’s wrong – all these stinking little countries are jealous.’

  ‘No one likes being helped,’ I said. ‘They never have.’

  He sat down in the chair again and went back to being scared. ‘Anyway, what’s in this for you?’

  ‘I’m just trying to help. Something like this happened to me once.’ I sounded like the visiting preacher at reform school.

  ‘Yeah?’ Interest flickered. ‘Did you get caught screwing the Ambassador’s wife or something?’

  I remembered the Ambassador’s wife. ‘Nothing quite as unpleasant as that,’ I said.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I was framed with a Russian girl in Moscow. Photographed. You’ve probably read about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I read about it.’

  ‘It nearly cost me my career. It did cost me my wife.’

  ‘Gee,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So you see what I mean?’

  ‘I don’t see why it makes you want to help me.’

  ‘I don’t want to see the same sort of injustice happen twice. I was used just as you’re being used now.’

  ‘I guess so.’ He began to shiver again, tensing his muscles to try and hide it. ‘But what the hell can you do? I hear the Icelanders are marching on the base or something. They’ll have to hand me over.’

  ‘We can stall.’

  ‘For how long? No one in their right mind is going to come forward and say they were responsible for the girl’s death.’

  ‘They might,’ I said without conviction. ‘It isn’t rape or murder. The Icelandic people are pretty honest.’

  ‘Yeah? Like those guys who invited me to the party?’ He had given up trying to control the trembling. ‘I appreciate your help, mister. But there ain’t nothing you can do.’

  There wasn’t much more to say. Except, perhaps, to turn my collar round and tell him to have faith and not to give up hope. Even though there wasn’t much hope.

  ‘You didn’t do anything to that girl, did you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing more than I told you.’ He looked much younger than his years at that moment.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said, even more inadequately.

  I picked up The White Falcon. At 6 p.m. after Bob Cummings and a couple of other shows, there was a show called Wanted Dead or Alive.

  There was a message on my bed. ‘Mr Sigurdson asked that you telephone him at once. It is very urgent.’

  I phoned Sigurdson’s office but he had left for the Westman Islands where a police officer had reported seeing Hafstein.

  I drove to the city airport and chartered a small aircraft from a firm called Flugthjonustan. While they filled in the papers I called on Laxdal and told him to cancel our flight over Hekla; because I reckoned that if we got into trouble and there was only one parachute it wouldn’t be strapped on my back.

  ‘Where are you going now?’ he asked.

  I told him because he would find out anyway from flight control.

  Twenty minutes later I was airborne, on my way to the Westman Islands, also known as The Grenadiers.

  11

  The Grenadiers

  The Westman Islands lie seven miles south of the mainland of Iceland and one hundred miles by sea from Reykjavik. Fifteen tiny islands of tuff and basalt thrown up by volcanic action and nicknamed The Grenadiers by trawlermen because they resemble a line of guardsmen.

  They are called the Westman Islands because Celts from the British Isles and Ireland were known by the Vikings – who first settled in Iceland as Westmen. And, according to the sagas, one of the Vikings, Hjorleifur, was murdered by his Irish slaves. The slaves were pursued by Hjorleifur’s foster brother, Ingolfur Arnarson, and killed in the Westman Islands. That, anyway, was one theory for the name.

  In the seventeenth century Algerian pirates raided Iceland returning home with a particularly good haul from the Westman Islands. They carried off 300 inhabitants and sold them as slaves in Africa.

  If history, climate and geography has made the people of Iceland tough and intensely patriotic then this is doubly so of the people of the Westman Isles. In 1874, when Iceland was granted a constitution, bad weather prevented the Westman Islanders from crossing to the mainland; so every year they celebrate their own National day during the first weekend in August, unlike everyone else in Iceland who celebrates it on June 17.

  Today the 5,000 or so inhabitants regard themselves as a special community and talk half-jokingly about seeing autonomy in a world where there is currently no escape from separatism.

  All the inhabitants live on Heimaey, a 4½ by 2 mile scrap of lava and grass kept verdant by the protecting masses of a precipitous crag called Heimaklettur and an extinct volcano called Helgafell. In the calm after the storms, of which there are many, these two guardians have an air of massive imperturbability which minimises human importance as effectively as an erupting volcano.

  The local sport is puffin-catching and it says little for avian intelligence that the puffins continue to nest in the holes in the cliffs. They are caught by nets on poles as they fly towards their nests and are then cooked and eaten.

  There are kittiwake, fulmar, guillemot and petrel to be seen. And many migrants bound to and from Western Europe. Which is why I should have remembered the mention of the Westman Isles in Hafstein’s notes on the knot and realised that he might seek refuge here.

  The islanders also make a sport of climbing the cliffs for eggs. And they make quite a show of it during their own national festival when a tented camp is struck and there is much merrymaking, dancing, feasting, drinking and coupling in the grass and on the lava which is very old and therefore not too sharp for that sort of thing.

  The island’s main exports are cod and herring and the little harbour jostles with fishing boats. In one year 8½ per cent of Iceland’s total catch was landed there, and the smell of herring is strong in the saline air.
/>   We flew low over the Icelandic mainland. Over mossy lava, snow-veined mountains, lakes and geysers that looked like smoking cigarette ends from the aircraft. Primeval, aloof and yet beckoning on such a crystal day. Then the crinkled sea and The Grenadiers. And to the south the newest recruit to their ranks, Surtsey, which joined up in 1963 in a fountain of smoke and lava.

  The pilot, fiftyish with many lines at the corners of his eyes, pointed at Surtsey. ‘I flew around her when she first appeared. She was throwing out lava bombs which exploded when they hit the sea. And the red-hot lava was running down from the crater – 1,000 feet in fifteen seconds – and hissing and crackling in the water.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Do you want to take a quick look?’

  There wasn’t really time. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘A quick look.’

  It looked like a green and mauve whale. A whale on which life was beginning. As perhaps it had begun on earth. Moths, mussels, grass roots, seeds, seaweed.

  On the lava beach a small boat had been landed; and half way between Heimaey and Surtsey another motor boat made an arrowhead in the water.

  The pilot pointed down. ‘Scientists,’ he. said. ‘They come from all over the world.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Now put down on Heimaey.’

  A taxi took us from the airstrip to the small police station in Heimaey.

  There was one policeman in the office. I asked him where Sigurdson was. He shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Are you the officer who spotted Hafstein?’

  The policeman, who was broad and blue-chinned – the direct descendant of an Irish slave with an Algerian additive? – looked at me suspiciously. ‘Who are you, if I may ask?’

  I showed him my card; he was not particularly impressed. ‘Sigurdson and I are working together.’ If that impressed him it didn’t show. ‘Have you seen him?’

  The policeman nodded: he was not a garrulous man.

  ‘You’ve seen him but you don’t know where he is?’

  The policeman nodded.

  ‘Are you stationed here?’