Operation Napoleon (4 page)

‘Fine. Get in touch when you find the plane.’

TÓMASARHAGI, REYKJAVÍK,

FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 0600 GMT

Kristín woke up in the early hours with a sinking feeling about the day ahead. She knew the matter with the businessman was not over and that she was bound to encounter him again, maybe even later that day. Another source of worry was the knowledge that her brother was out on Vatnajökull in the middle of winter; he was experienced but you never knew how extreme the weather might become. After a bad night’s sleep, she got up shortly before six, took a quick shower and put on the coffee. Sometimes she missed having someone there to share her worries with.

Not that she minded living alone. She had lived for three years with a man she met after coming home from university in the States, a lawyer like her. But once the honeymoon period was over he had become increasingly domineering and she was relieved not to have to put up with his overbearing behaviour any longer. He had been so different when they first met, so witty and entertaining. He used to make her laugh and spoiled her with gifts and surprises. But all that had gradually dried up once they had moved in together; he had landed his fish, and at times she felt as if he was tearing out the hook.

Although she had always been independent, she was by nature quiet, somewhat introverted, protective of her privacy, and did not mind the absence of a man about the house. The sex had been nothing to write home about either, so she did not miss that. If she felt the urge, she could satisfy herself and she enjoyed the freedom that gave her. Enjoyed having the flat on Tómasarhagi to herself; only one toothbrush in the bathroom; no need to tell anyone where she was going. She could go out whenever she liked and come home when it suited her. She loved being alone, not having to pander to anyone else’s whims.

She had been so relieved when it was over that she was not sure she ever wanted to share her home again. Perhaps it was too great a sacrifice. Children had not crossed her mind. Maybe she was afraid of turning out like her parents. It had come as a surprise when, after they had lived together for a while, the lawyer had brought up the subject of children, saying they should think about starting a family. She had stared at him blankly and admitted that she had not given the matter much thought.

‘Then maybe you could stop fussing over Elías all the time,’ he said. ‘He is not your child, after all.’

What an extraordinary statement.
Is not your child
, she thought. She had no idea what he was getting at.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you treat him like a baby.’

‘Like a
baby
?’

‘You ring him ten times a day. He’s forever round here. You’ve always got some reason to go to town together. He hangs out here in the evenings. Sleeps on the sofa.’

‘He’s my brother.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You’re not jealous of Elías, are you?’

‘Jealous!’ he snorted. ‘Of course not. But it’s not natural, such an incredibly close relationship.’

‘Not natural? There are only the two of us. We’re close. What’s unnatural about that?’

‘Well, not unnatural exactly . . . it’s just he’s your brother not your child. I know he’s much younger than you but he’s almost twenty, he’s not a kid.’

She was silent for such a long time that he seized the chance to get up and claim he had some work to finish at the office.

Shortly afterwards, their relationship started to go downhill and by the end she had almost developed an aversion to him. Perhaps he had touched a nerve, opened her eyes to something she did not want to confront. She had met other men since but those had been nothing but brief flings and she had no regrets about any of them, with perhaps one exception. She regretted the way she had ended that relationship, the way they had parted. It was her fault and she knew it. Her sheer bloody ineptitude.

Just occasionally, when she was alone at home with time on her hands, she would have a vision of her future stretching out before her, saw herself growing older in lonely monotony, shrivelling up and dying; no children, no family, no nothing. Growing old in the oppressive silence of long summer evenings when she had nothing to do but read documents from the office. These moments tended to occur when she was disturbed by the shouts of children outside in the street or when she lay down in the evenings, feeling the weariness spreading through her body. Sometimes she thought the process was already happening, felt as if she were trapped inside time: all those long days, all those long, suffocating days, passed in solitary silence. At times she appreciated them, at others she wished her life were more eventful, presented more challenges, required more of her than merely sitting behind a desk all day and returning to an empty flat in the evenings.

Elías was her family. Their mother was dead, they had little contact with their father and few relatives to speak of. They had coped alone, she and Elías; taken care of one another. Perhaps the lawyer was right about him taking up too much of her time, but she had never minded.

She sat lost in a reverie over her coffee, leafing absently through the morning paper until it was time to leave for work. There was not much in the news. The national bank was in the process of being privatised and the minister for trade and industry was quoted as dismissing the need for legislation to diversify share ownership. The site of a Viking Age farm had been uncovered in the west of the country, and the Russian president Boris Yeltsin was due to celebrate his sixty-eighth birthday. It was quarter to nine when she left home. Sunrise was still nearly two hours off and the snow was falling thickly. She toiled slowly through the drifts. The traffic was heavy; people were in a hurry to get to work once they had dropped off their youngest children at the day nursery and seen the older ones off to school. The snow muffled the noise of the cars but a thick haze of exhaust fumes hung over the city. Kristín did not have a car; she preferred to walk, especially when the snow was deep like this. Distances were short in Reykjavík compared to California where she used to live; there you could talk about distance. Reykjavík had a population of only just over a hundred thousand but there were times when the locals behaved as if they lived in a giant metropolis, refusing to go anywhere without a car, even if it took only five minutes on foot.

On arriving at the office she was informed that the chairman of the Trade Council was waiting to see her, together with the foreign minister’s aide. What now? she wondered, bracing herself for the worst. Once the men had taken a seat in her office, they explained to Kristín that the man with the portable freezing plants, Runólfur Zóphaníasson, had made threats against the chairman of the Trade Council, which were considered serious enough for the police to be notified. He had called the chairman late last night, apparently sober but raging about the advice he had received in connection with his dealings with Russia. During the call, he had threatened the chairman with physical violence and there was reason to believe he was in earnest.

‘But what does this have to do with me?’ Kristín asked, after they had filled her in.

‘He mentioned you specifically by name,’ explained the foreign minister’s aide, a young party member with political ambitions. ‘I gather he wasn’t exactly in good humour when he stormed out of here yesterday.’

‘He did nothing but hurl abuse as usual so I chucked him out. He threw a chair at the wall. I ignored his threats, and that made him even madder. What kind of headcase is he anyway? He thinks there’s some kind of conspiracy going on. Here at the ministry.’

‘I had the police run a check on him,’ said the chairman, a plump man, with a small, kindly face. ‘Runólfur has done a lot of wheeling and dealing in his time but nothing illegal, as far as they can tell. They went and had a word with him and he promised to behave, claimed he’d just lost his temper for a moment, but they warned us to be careful anyway. They don’t put much faith in his word. I won’t repeat the language he used about you in my hearing. Apparently he’s furious about losing a large amount of money in Russia and he blames us for it.’

‘I don’t really know the ins and outs of the case,’ Kristín said, ‘though I can assure you that we never gave him any incorrect information.’

‘Of course not,’ the aide said. ‘He alleges that we encouraged him to facilitate his business by sending over goods without any securities but that’s utter nonsense. It’s not our job to give out that sort of advice. How people conduct their business deals is entirely their own responsibility.’

‘Of course,’ Kristín agreed.

‘Anyway,’ the aide continued, glancing at his watch. ‘We wanted you to be aware of developments and to warn you that it wouldn’t hurt to keep your eyes open. If this Runólfur tries to intimidate you in any way, you’re to call the police at once. They have been briefed about the case.’

The meeting ended soon afterwards and the day’s business began. Kristín did not look up from her desk until midday when she went out with a couple of colleagues to a cosy little café near the ministry where she chatted and glanced through the afternoon paper over coffee and an omelette. When she returned to the office at one, there were a number of voicemail messages, including one from her brother saying he would ring back later. Otherwise the day was entirely uneventful.

She left work early. It had stopped snowing and turned into a beautiful, mild January evening. As it was Friday, she stopped off at a shop on the way home and bought some food for the weekend. She lived in the ground floor flat of a neat little two-storey maisonette built of whitewashed concrete, with a flat roof that had a tendency to leak. On entering the shared hall she heard the phone ringing inside her flat before she could even insert the key in the lock. She hastily opened the door, rushed over to the phone and snatched up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ said a voice that she immediately recognised as her brother’s.

‘Elías!’

‘Hello,’ her brother repeated. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Loud and clear . . .’

But the connection was lost and she hung up. She waited beside the phone for a while in case Elías rang straight back but nothing happened, so she went and shut the front door, took off her coat and hung it in the cupboard. She had just sat down at the kitchen table when the phone rang again.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Is that you, Elías?’

No answer.

‘Are you on the glacier?’

No answer.

‘Elías?’

Down the line she heard the faint sound of breathing and the suspicion flashed into her mind that it might be Runólfur. She stopped talking and listened intently.

‘Who is this?’ she asked eventually but there was no answer. ‘Is that Runólfur?’ she asked, adding after a moment’s thought: ‘Pervert!’ and hung up.

She thought back over her meeting with the chairman and foreign minister’s aide as she tucked into a sandwich and drank some orange juice. Later, she took a pile of documents out of her briefcase and tried to concentrate on work. Feeling sleepy, however, she lay down on the sofa in the sitting room and thought about making coffee, until she realised that she had forgotten to buy any milk. She ought to drag herself out to the shop before it closed, but could not be bothered and tiredness overtook her.

Kristín did not know how long she had been asleep. She got up and put on her jacket and gloves. The local shop was only round the corner, she really ought to force herself out. Coffee was no good unless it was made with hot milk. She had just reached the door when the phone started ringing again, making her jump.

‘What the hell is going on?’ she asked, picking up the receiver.

‘Hi, it’s Elías. Can you hear me?’

‘Elías!’ Kristín exclaimed. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’ve . . . trying to get hold of you . . . day. I’m on the glacier . . .’

The connection was poor; her brother’s voice kept breaking up.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, still groggy from her nap. She had got up far too early that morning.

‘Everything’s grea . . . Two of us . . . taken off on snowmobiles. Per . . . weather. It’s . . . dark.’

‘What do you mean, two of you? Where are the others?’

‘We’re . . . bit of a test drive . . . fine.’

‘This is hopeless. I can only hear the odd word. Will you please go back and join the rest of the team.’

‘We’re turning round . . . lax. The phone cost seven . . . thousand. Can’t you hear me?’