The Chill Factor

by Richard Falkirk

  ‘God save us,’ I said.

  ‘So you won’t co-operate?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You consider your own aspirations to be more important than curbing the Russian menace?’

  ‘You’re more naïve than anyone has any right to be. Do you realise I have no confirmation whatsoever of anything you’ve told me? Do you realise that you’re asking me to hand over secret information just because you tell me that the Russians are wise to me and that London will probably recall me?’ I sighed. ‘Jefferey, old son, get the bum-fluff shaved off your cheeks.’

  They were dancing now to Strangers in the Night. Staggering, cuddling, caressing, propositioning. The women had all given us up as a bad English joke.

  Jefferey said: ‘What does German Church mean?’

  ‘Who the hell told you about that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who told me. What does it mean?’

  ‘Ask me another.’ I thought about it. ‘I suppose that scientist told you?’

  ‘He did as it happens. What does it mean?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘Then I shall have to send a message to London asking them to expedite instructions to you.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘you sound as if you’re reading from a manual. Anyway, off you go to report back to His Excellency or whoever has the misfortune to receive your reports. And watch for the bullets as you drive past Stapi.’

  We walked out into the bright evening. Two men were having a fight, watched with desultory interest by some youths and a couple of taxi drivers.

  Jefferey had brought his own car this time. A red, hardtop MG which didn’t somehow partner his pin-stripe and suede shoes.

  He took off at great speed, turning a corner with squealing tyres, just missing an old woman carrying a basket of fish. Surely the Foreign Office was jesting?

  I walked back to Gudrun’s apartment. She mixed me a weak whisky and said: ‘Perhaps you have had enough to drink already?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, sipping it.

  ‘Bill,’ she said, making a business of lighting a cigarette and then staring across the bay at the crumpled mountains.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have some bad news for you.’

  Jesus, I thought – I shall always remember the eve of Iceland’s National day. ‘How bad?’

  ‘Oh, not very bad. Just a temporary badness.’ She sat on the arm of the chair. ‘Do you love me, Bill?’

  I made a vague motion with my head and mumbled into my Scotch. She waited until I couldn’t decently hold the glass to my lips any longer and said: ‘Do you?’

  ‘I’m very fond of you.’ How many times had that escape route been used?

  ‘Only fond?’

  ‘More than fond.’

  ‘How fond?’

  There wasn’t really much you could do about Icelandic girls. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I love you.’ I could understand why some girls preferred Latin lovers. ‘Now, what’s the bad news?’

  ‘Johann has come back from the sea.’

  She made it sound as if he had come back from the dead.

  ‘So you want me to leave?’

  ‘Just for two hours. That’s all. I want to explain to him what has happened.’ She stroked my cheek. ‘Then you can return and we will make the love again.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But do me one favour.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Don’t give him my address.’

  I was about to be relieved of my assignment, Shirey would be handed over and I was powerless to intervene … all I needed was a punch-up with a brawny fisherman in my boarding house and the landlady smelling my breath.

  Gudrun kissed me. ‘Come back at midnight,’ she said. ‘I will be waiting.’

  I walked to the cab rank outside the bar. The two men were still fighting. As I walked past, the mature lady who had been sitting at our table came out and waved delightedly at me. I jumped in a cab and told the driver to take me into town.

  15

  The London End

  There was a message at Baragata that there was a cable for me awaiting collection. A recall? Whatever happened I wouldn’t hand anything over to Jefferey. For the sake of world peace.

  My landlady met me on the way out. ‘Soon,’ she said, ‘it will be our National day. I am so pleased that you will be here.’

  ‘I’m pleased, too,’ I said.

  ‘There will be processions and amusements and much dancing in the parks. You will dance in the parks?’ she said, as if she were asking me for the first waltz.

  ‘I am a little old for dancing in parks,’ I said.

  ‘You are not old, Mr Conran. You are young. Many womens would like to dance with you.’

  ‘Why, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘We have many good vacations here. You would like the ninth day of October for instance. In Reykjavik we celebrate the day Leif Ericsson discovered North America and we pay homage at his statue.’

  ‘Do the Russians pay homage?’

  She smiled vaguely. ‘I do not know, Mr Conran. Should they?’

  ‘They should,’ I said, ‘because I don’t know what they would do with themselves if someone hadn’t discovered it.’

  I walked briskly through the toytown streets to the cable office where they had instructions to hold any cables for me. But it wasn’t a recall: it was a cable telling me that there was a courier at the Hotel Borg with a dispatch for me.

  I walked across the square to the Borg and asked for Mr Willard.

  Mr Willard presented himself at reception with an envelope cunningly concealed in a newspaper. He was a worried-looking man in a baggy, expensive suit – like a bank manager with too many overdrafts. He handed me the envelope in the toilet, then waited and worried.

  He said he wouldn’t have a drink and rather thought he would have an early night. I signed for the envelope, recommended the valet service for pressing his suit and went to the bar. It was 10 p.m. – two hours to Shirey’s deadline.

  There were a couple of young men at the bar. Shaggy hair, bell-bottomed corduroy slacks and pendants hanging at their chests. The uniform of protest – or drugged defeat. They were away from their territory because the bar was usually inhabited by businessmen or tourists.

  I ordered a Scotch. I felt a little drunk. The envelope crackled in my pocket but I was scared of taking it back to Baragata because I thought I knew what it contained. I smiled at the two young men because I liked their bravado. One of them smiled back and I said: ‘Are you getting tanked up for tomorrow?’ Or the Icelandic equivalent of that.

  He said in English: ‘Are you American?’ He looked very self-conscious about his gear.

  ‘No, British.’

  That silenced them briefly because they had decided that I was American.

  The other one rolled a cigarette and asked me for a light. Half the cigarette went up in flame, endangering his hair. ‘What do you think about all this?’ he asked.

  ‘All what?’

  ‘All this cover up by the Yanks about the girl?’

  ‘I didn’t know they were covering anything up.’

  ‘Not covering up, perhaps.’ He stared into his glass and blinked more slowly than I thought it possible to blink. ‘Holding out on?’ He looked at me hopefully.

  ‘I didn’t know they were holding out.’

  His companion who wore a sweatshirt dyed mauve beneath a blue corduroy blouse said: ‘Very soon we shall be marching on the base. We shall demand that the American murderer be handed over. If they do not hand him over then we shall enter the base and take him.’ He pounded his chest carefully. ‘We do not care if they shoot, we shall take him. Already we have penetrated their base and showed what we think of their television.’

  ‘But you have American programmes on your own television, don’t you?’

  ‘That is quite different,’ his friend said firmly. His sweatshirt was orange with a black skull-and-crossbones inked on the back.
‘Will you march with us?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s your march. I wouldn’t want to spoil it. Are all the young people of Iceland taking part?’

  ‘They will if it doesn’t rain,’ said mauve shirt.

  The dispatch was in response to the cable I sent to London shortly after my arrival in Reykjavik. For a while it kept me in suspense with its bureaucratic formality. ‘In reply to your di-da-di-da of the da-di-da.’ Then I got down to the meat. My reading became slower in the whitewashed bedroom as I approached the information that I didn’t want to know. But there was no escape; just as there hadn’t been any escape from my divorce from the moment the Russian cameraman got me in focus.

  ‘… in response to your request we arranged for the subject to be followed from London Airport. She went straight to her hotel with the rest of the crew. She was allotted Room 212. She stayed there for about an hour and made one telephone call which we intercepted. The call was to a friend of hers at the Icelandic Tourist Office in Piccadilly. The conversation was confined to female gossip during which the subject talked about meeting a wonderful Englishman who was staying in Reykjavik. Bracket, the operator intercepting the conversation took it upon himself to identify the Englishman as yourself, unbracket.’

  I smiled and lay back on the bed for a moment. Outside I saw a group of youths walking towards the coach station carrying folded banners. I could just make out the word ‘American’ on one of the folds.

  ‘After the phone call she was visited by the pilot of the aircraft …’

  For how long? I thought. For how long did the lecherous, world-weary bastard touch down in Room 212?

  ‘… He stayed only two minutes and left looking somewhat ill-tempered, according to a female operative who was working as a maid in the corridor at the time. The pilot subsequently called at the room of another stewardess where he was allowed to stay for approximately an hour. He left looking much happier …’

  The author of the cable had a sense of humour, which was unusual.

  ‘… The subject stayed in her room for another half hour during which time she asked Room Service to send her up a Club Sandwich and a glass of milk. She left one hour and thirty-five minutes after arrival and caught a bus to Hounslow. From there she caught the underground to High Street Kensington. She had changed into civilian clothes’ – as if the red uniform put her on a war footing – ‘and was wearing a green costume and a silk headscarf with a leopard-skin pattern …’

  A man’s description of fashion. But now we were approaching the guts of it.

  ‘… She went first to a coffee shop opposite the underground station. She had a cup of coffee and a Swedish pastry. She read Nova magazine and appeared to acknowledge the presence of a man who entered the coffee shop by rolling up her magazine as if it were a pre-arranged signal. Shortly after this she left the coffee shop. So did the man. She walked down High Street Kensington in the direction of Olympia. Our operative anticipated that she would be picked up by some kind of vehicle and hired a taxi. About 200 yards past the Odeon cinema another taxi slowed down and stopped in front of her. She climbed in. Our operative was able to identify the other passenger as the man whom she had acknowledged in the coffee shop.

  ‘The taxi proceeded in the direction of Olympia, then doubled back along the High Street. Before reaching Knightsbridge it turned into Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park and emerged in Bayswater Road. It stopped outside a public house in the Bayswater Road and the subject and her companion went inside. After about fifteen minutes they were joined by a man whom the operative identified as one of the newcomers to the staff of the Russian Embassy …’

  ‘I’m very fond of you.’

  ‘Only fond?’

  ‘More than fond.’

  ‘How fond?’

  ‘Okay, I love you.’

  ‘… The three people under surveillance stayed together for approximately twenty minutes during which time they each consumed one whisky. At one stage the subject handed over a large envelope which the representative of the Russian Embassy put in his briefcase …’

  The prying, prosaic message proceeded as inexorably and regularly as a policeman’s footsteps.

  ‘Bill, there’s something I must tell you.’

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I want a divorce.’

  ‘ls there someone else?’

  ‘No. No one else. Just those damned photographs. Those damned, damned photographs.’

  ‘… The representative of the Russian Embassy left first. Then the subject and her companion hailed another taxi. The subject alighted in Piccadilly where she entered a shop selling camera equipment and binoculars. She emerged with a package. Bracket, a later check elicited the information that she bought a telescope, unbracket. She then went to Piccadilly Circus underground station and bought a ticket to Hounslow. From Hounslow she caught a bus back to her hotel …’

  All I needed now, I thought, was the return of the pilot.

  ‘… The rest of the aircraft’s crew were having a party in one of their rooms. They phoned her several times asking her to join them but she declined on each occasion. At 11.30 p.m. she hung a Do Not Disturb notice on her door and requested an early call at 7.30 a.m. on the telephone. She did not come under direct surveillance again until 8.30 a.m. the following day when she came down to the restaurant for breakfast.’

  And no doubt ate a hearty meal.

  The report concluded with a timetable of her morning. Lots of coffee, magazine reads, a drink at the bar, lunch, preparations for the return flight.

  The policeman’s feet followed her to the airport and then watched her on to the Boeing through binoculars.

  The author of the report, who was proud of the operation, said that photographs he had taken of the subject, her companion and the Russian, with a Minox camera were being studied. Also the drivers of the two taxis which the subject had used were being questioned to see if they overheard any conversation.

  I burned the report and flushed the ash down the toilet. It seemed the best place for it.

  Then I walked into the centre of town. A coach waited at the traffic lights outside the Morgenbladid offices. It was full of youths and girls with placards heading for the NATO base. Out at the base Shirey would be putting on his best uniform now to meet police, press and public.

  I glanced at my watch. It was 11 p.m. It would soon be dusk or dawn – whichever way you looked at it. It would soon be Iceland’s National day. Whoopee.

  16

  National Day

  Her face was pale, her gossamer hair uncombed. She wore a white housecoat with green piping. She was smoking a cigarette.

  ‘It’s not midnight,’ she said. ‘We said midnight.’

  ‘Where’s Johann?’

  I pushed her aside and went into the living room.

  ‘He went. I told him about us.’

  ‘Was his ship a Russian trawler?’

  ‘No, Icelandic. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Sit down,’ I said.

  ‘Bill, what is the matter?’

  ‘Everything,’ I said. ‘Everything is the matter. Sit down there.’ I pointed to a chair beside the table.

  ‘You are acting very strangely. What is the matter? Why have you come so early?’

  I lit a cigarette, contemplated the whisky bottle and decided against it: my self-pity needed no further lubricants. I sat opposite her.

  I said: ‘Your trouble, Gudrun, is that you’re not a very good actress. You over-act.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The line was too familiar. I wondered i£ she would cry.

  ‘You shouldn’t have made the pick-up quite so obvious on the plane. I don’t flatter myself, Gudrun. There wasn’t any of this instant attraction at work: you were ordered to pick me up. But I didn’t respond too well and you had to do a follow-up job at the airport.’

  She shook her head miserably. ‘I liked you. I wanted to meet you again. That’s the way it is in Iceland.’ She made an
attempt at a smile. ‘As I told you – brains first, then looks.’

  ‘It’s a pity about the brains,’ I said. ‘I have just a few, you see, otherwise I wouldn’t have sent a cable to London.’

  ‘What cable?’

  ‘There are one or two things I would like to know,’ I said. ‘Among other things I would like to know if you have ever had any feeling for me.’

  Her eyes seemed to moisten – but it might have been my imagination. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I told you that.’

  ‘Tell that to the Russian marines,’ I said. Which wasn’t very gallant.

  The moisture intensified and two diamond tears took up positions at the corners of her eyes. ‘You talk in puzzles.’

  ‘I work in puzzles. It’s odd to think that you’ve known about me all the time.’

  ‘Known what about you?’

  ‘Just about everything, I suppose. Did you know about Moscow? About the photographs?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any photographs.’

  I believed her because I wanted to.

  ‘I sent a cable arranging for you to be followed in London,’ I said.

  The tears froze. Defeat aged her face. She got up and put on a record. Sandie Shaw and There’s Always Something There to Remind Me. Too loud.

  She said softly: ‘You must go. Now. Quickly.’

  ‘Why, is Johann coming back?’

  ‘Now, please go. Someone else is coming.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot to tell me first,’ I said. ‘First of all, tell me why?’

  ‘There is no point. You wouldn’t understand. I didn’t understand …’

  Even now I wanted her to say something that would permit forgiveness.

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t understand?’ There was a slight swelling on her lip which reminded me of the dead girl. ‘You didn’t understand that your friends were using that girl’s death to create anti-American feeling? You didn’t understand that a kid out at the base is going to have his life ruined because of your friends?’

  The tears melted and slid down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t understand. I was just a Communist like many other young people in Iceland. It’s not the same …’