Running Blind / The Freedom Trap (13 page)

‘Yes. Gunnar left it at the stables.’

‘When will he be back?’

‘In two days—providing the party doesn’t get saddle-sore.’

‘When I go to Geysir I’d just as soon not use the Land-Rover,’ I said.

‘You want the car? All right—but I want it back in one piece.’ She told me where to find it. ‘You’ll find the key in the glove locker.’

After breakfast I regarded the telephone seriously and wondered whether to ring Taggart. I had a lot to tell him but I thought it would be better to let it go until I heard what Jack Case had to say. Instead I went out to the Land-Rover and cleaned Fleet’s rifle.

It really was a good tool. With its fancy hand-grip and freestyle stock it had obviously been tailor-made to suit Fleet, whom I suspected of being an enthusiast. In every field of human endeavour there are those who push perfection to its ultimate and absurd end. In hi-fi, for example, there is the maniac who has seventeen loud-speakers and one test record. In shooting there is the gun nut.

The gun nut believes that there is no standard, off-the-shelf weapon that could be possibly good enough for him and so he adapts and chisels until he finally achieves something that looks like one of the more far-out works of modern sculpture. He also believes that the ammunition manufacturers know damn-all about their job and so he loads his own cases, carefully weighing each bullet and matching it with an amount of powder calculated to one-tenth of a grain. Sometimes he shoots very well.

I checked the ammunition from the opened box and, sure enough, found the telltale scratches from a crimping tool. Fleet was in the habit of rolling his own, something I have never found necessary, but then my own shooting has not been of the type necessary to get a perfect grouping at x-hundred yards. It also explained why the box was unlabelled.

I wondered why Fleet should have carried as many as fifty rounds; after all, he was a good shot and had brought us to a standstill with one squeeze of the trigger. He had loaded the rifle with ordinary hunting ammunition, soft-nosed and designed to spread on impact. The closed box contained twenty-five rounds of jacketed ammunition—the military load.

It’s always seemed odd to me that the bullet one shoots at an animal is designed to kill as quickly and as mercilessly as possible, whereas the same bullet shot at a man is illegal under the Geneva Convention. Shoot a hunting load at a man and you’re accused of using dum-dum bullets and that’s against the rules. You can roast him to death with napalm, disembowel him with a jump mine, but you can’t shoot him with the same bullet you would use to kill a deer cleanly.

I looked at the cartridge in the palm of my hand and wished I had known about it earlier. One of those going into the engine of Kennikin’s jeep was likely to do a hell of a lot more damage than the soft-nosed bullet I had used. While a .375 jacketed bullet with a magnum charge behind
it probably wouldn’t drill through a jeep from end to end at a range of a hundred yards, I wouldn’t like to bet on it by standing behind the jeep.

I filled the magazine of the rifle with a mixed load, three soft-nosed and two jacketed, laid alternately. Then I examined McCarthy’s Smith & Wesson automatic pistol, a more prosaic piece of iron than Fleet’s jazzed-up rifle. After checking that it was in order I put it into my pocket, together with the spare clips. The electronic gadget I left where it was under the front seat. I wasn’t taking it with me when I went to see Jack Case, but I wasn’t going empty-handed either.

When I got back to the house Elin was awake. She looked at me drowsily, and said, ‘I don’t know why I’m so tired.’

‘Well,’ I said judiciously. ‘You’ve been shot and you’ve been racketing around the
Óbyggdir
for two days with not much sleep. I’m not surprised you’re tired. I haven’t been too wide awake myself.’

Elin opened her eyes wide in alarm and glanced at Sigurlin who was arranging flowers in a vase. I said, ‘Sigurlin knows you didn’t fall on any rock. She knows you were shot, but not how or why—and I don’t want you to tell her. I don’t want you to discuss it with Sigurlin or anyone else.’ I turned to Sigurlin. ‘You’ll get the full story at the right time, but at the moment the knowledge would be dangerous.’

Sigurlin nodded in acceptance. Elin said, ‘I think I’ll sleep all day. I’m tired now, but I’ll be ready by the time we have to leave for Geysir.’

Sigurlin crossed the room and began to plump up the pillows behind Elin’s head. The heartless professionalism spoke of the trained nurse. ‘You’re not leaving for anywhere,’ she said sharply. ‘Not for the next two days at least.’

‘But I must,’ protested Elin.

‘But you must not. Your shoulder is bad enough.’ Her lips compressed tightly as she looked down at Elin. ‘You should really see a doctor.’

‘Oh, no!’ said Elin.

‘Well, then, you’ll do as I say.’

Elin looked at me appealingly. I said, ‘I’m only going to see a man. As a matter of fact, Jack Case wouldn’t say a word in your presence, anyway—you’re not a member of the club. I’m just going to Geysir, have a chat with the man, and then come back here—and you might as well keep your turned-up nose out of it for once.’

Elin looked flinty, and Sigurlin said, ‘I’ll leave you to whisper sweet nothings into each other’s ear.’ She smiled. ‘You two are going to lead interesting lives.’

She left the room, and I said gloomily, ‘That sounds like the Chinese curse—”May you live in interesting times.”‘

‘All right,’ said Elin in a tired voice. ‘I won’t give you any trouble. You can go to Geysir alone.’

I sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s not a matter of you giving trouble; I just want you out of this. You disturb my concentration, and if I run into difficulties I don’t want to have to watch out for you as well as myself.’

‘Have I been a drag?’

I shook my head. ‘No, Elin; you haven’t. But the nature of the game may change. I’ve been chased across Iceland and I’m pretty damn tired of it. If the opportunity offers I’ll turn around and do a bit of chasing myself.’

‘And I’d get in the way,’ she said flatly.

‘You’re a civilized person,’ I said. ‘Very law-abiding and full of scruples. I doubt if you’ve had as much as a parking ticket in your life. I might manage to retain a few scruples while I’m being hunted; not many, but some. But when I’m the hunter I can’t afford them. I think you might be horrified at what I’d do.’

‘You’d kill,’ she said. It was a statement.

‘I might do worse,’ I said grimly, and she shivered. ‘It’s not that I want to—I’m no casual murderer; I didn’t want to have any part of this but I’ve been conscripted against my will.’

‘You dress it in fine words,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to kill.’

‘No fine words,’ I said. ‘Just one—survival. A drafted American college boy may be a pacifist, but when the Viet Cong shoot at him with those Russian 7.62 millimetre rifles he’ll shoot right back, you may depend on it. And when Kennikin comes after me he’ll deserve all he runs into. I didn’t ask him to shoot at me on the Tungnaá River—he didn’t need my permission—but he can’t have been very surprised when I shot back. Hell, he would expect it!’

‘I can see the logic,’ said Elin. ‘But don’t expect me to like it.’

‘Christ!’ I said. ‘Do you think I like it?’

‘I’m sorry, Alan,’ she said, and smiled wanly.

‘So am I.’ I stood up. ‘After that bit of deep philosophy you’d better have breakfast. I’ll see what Sigurlin can offer.’

I left Laugarvatn at eight that night. Punctuality may be a virtue but it has been my experience that the virtuous often die young while the ungodly live to a ripe age. I had arranged to meet Jack Case at five o’clock but it would do him no great harm to stew for a few hours, and I had it in mind that the arrangement to meet him had been made on an open radio circuit.

I arrived at Geysir in Gunnar’s Volkswagen beetle and parked inconspicuously quite a long way from the summer hotel. A few people, not many, were picking their way among the pools of boiling water, cameras at the ready.
Geysir itself—the Gusher—which has given its name to all the other spouters in the world, was quiescent. It has been a long time since Geysir spouted. The habit of prodding it into action by tossing rocks into the pool finally proved too much as the pressure chamber was blocked. However, Strokkur—the Churn—was blasting off with commendable efficiency and sending up its feathery plume of boiling water at seven-minute intervals.

I stayed in the car for a long time and used the field-glasses assiduously. There were no familiar faces to be seen in the next hour, a fact that didn’t impress me much, however. Finally I got out of the car and walked towards the Hotel Geysir, one hand in my pocket resting on the butt of the pistol.

Case was in the lounge, sitting in a corner and reading a paperback. I walked up to him and said, ‘Hello, Jack; that’s a nice tan—you must have been in the sun.’

He looked up. ‘I was in Spain. What kept you?’

‘This and that.’

I prepared to sit down, but he said, ‘This is too public—let’s go up to my room. Besides, I have a bottle.’

‘That’s nice.’

I followed him to his room. He locked the door and turned to survey me. ‘That gun in your pocket spoils the set of your coat. Why don’t you use a shoulder holster?’

I grinned at him. ‘The man I took the gun from didn’t have one. How are you, Jack? It’s good to see you.’

He grunted sourly. ‘You might change your mind about that.’ With a flip of his hand he opened a suitcase lying on a chair and took out a bottle. He poured a heavy slug into a tooth glass and handed it to me. ‘What the devil have you been doing? You’ve got Taggart really worked up.’

‘He sounded pretty steamy when I spoke to him,’ I said, and sipped the whisky. ‘Most of the time I’ve been chased from hell-and-gone to here.’

‘You weren’t followed here?’ he asked quickly.

‘No.’

‘Taggart tells me you killed Philips. Is that true?’

‘If Philips was a man who called himself Buchner and Graham it’s true.’

He stared at me. ‘You admit it!’

I relaxed in the chair. ‘Why not, since I did it? I didn’t know it was Philips, though. He came at me in the dark with a gun.’

‘That’s not how Slade described it. He says you took a crack at him too.’

‘I did—but that was after I’d disposed of Philips. He and Slade came together.’

‘Slade says differently. He says that he was in a car with Philips when you ambushed it.’

I laughed. ‘With what?’ I drew the
sgian dubh
from my stocking and flipped it across the room, where it stuck in the top of the dressing-table, quivering. ‘With that?’

‘He says you had a rifle.’

‘Where would I get a rifle?’ I demanded. ‘He’s right, though; I took the rifle from Philips after I disposed of him with that little pig-sticker. I put three shots into Slade’s car and missed the bastard.’

‘Christ!’ said Case. ‘No wonder Taggart is doing his nut. Have you gone off your little rocker?’

I sighed. ‘Jack, did Taggart say anything about a girl?’

‘He said you’d referred to a girl. He didn’t know whether to believe you.’

‘He’d better believe me,’ I said. ‘That girl isn’t far from here, and she has a bullet wound in her shoulder that was given to her by Philips. He was within an ace of killing her. Now, there’s no two ways about that, and I can take you to her and show you the wound. Slade says I ambushed him. Is it likely I’d do it with my fiancĂe watching? And why in hell would I want to ambush him?’ I slid
in a trick question. ‘What did he say he’d done with Philips’s body?’

Case frowned. ‘I don’t think the question came up.’

‘It wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘The last I saw of Slade he was driving away like a maniac—and there was no body in his car. I disposed of it later.’

‘This is all very well,’ said Case. ‘But it happened after Akureyri, and in Akureyri you were supposed to deliver a package to Philips. You didn’t, and you didn’t give it to Slade either. Why not?’

‘The operation stank,’ I said, and went into it in detail.

I talked for twenty minutes and by the time I had finished Case was pop-eyed. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple jumped convulsively. ‘Do you really believe that Slade is a Russian agent? How do you expect Taggart to swallow that? I’ve never heard such a cock-and-bull story in my life.’

I said patiently, ‘I followed Slade’s instructions at Keflavik and nearly got knocked off by Lindholm; Slade sent Philips after me into Asbyrgi—how
did
he know the Russians were holding a fake? There’s the Calvados; there’s…’

Case held up his hands. ‘There’s no need to go through it all again. Lindholm might have been lucky in catching you—there’s nothing to say all the roads around Keflavik weren’t staked out. Slade says he didn’t go after you in Asbyrgi. As for the Calvados…’ He threw up his hands. ‘There’s only your word for that.’

‘What the hell are you, Jack? Prosecutor, judge and jury, too? Or have I already been judged and you’re the executioner?’

‘Don’t fly off the handle,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m just trying to find out how complicated a cock-up you’ve made, that’s all. What did you do after you left Asbyrgi?’

‘We went south in the wilderness,’ I said. ‘And then Kennikin pitched up.’

‘The one who drinks Calvados? The one you had the hassle with in Sweden?’

‘The same. My old pal, Vaslav. Don’t you think that was bloody coincidental, Jack? How would Kennikin know which track to chase along? But Slade knew, of course; he knew which way we went after we left Asbyrgi.’

Case regarded me thoughtfully. ‘You know you’re very convincing sometimes. I’m getting so I might believe this silly story if I’m not careful. But Kennikin didn’t catch you.’

‘It was nip and tuck,’ I said. ‘And the bloody Yanks didn’t help.’

Case sat up. ‘How do they come into this?’

I pulled out Fleet’s pass and skimmed it across the room into Case’s lap. ‘That chap shot a hole in my tyre at very long range. I got out of there with Kennikin ten minutes behind.’ I told Case all about it.

His mouth was grim. ‘Now you really have gone overboard. I suppose you’ll now claim Slade is a member of the CIA,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Why should the Americans hold you up just so Kennikin could grab you?’