Running Blind

I

I got into Laugarvatn just before five in the morning and parked the car in the drive. As I got out I saw the curtains twitch and Elin ran out and into my arms before I got to the front door. ‘Alan!’ she said. ‘There’s blood on your face.’

I touched my cheek and felt the caked blood which had oozed from a cut. It must have happened when the butane cylinder went up. I said, ‘Let’s get inside.’

In the hall we met Sigurlin. She looked me up and down, then said, ‘Your jacket’s burnt.’

I glanced at the holes in the fabric. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was careless, wasn’t I?’

‘What happened?’ asked Elin urgently.

‘I had... I had a talk with Kennikin,’ I said shortly. The reaction was hitting me and I felt very weary. I had to do something about it because there was no time to rest. ‘Do you have any coffee?’ I asked Sigurlin.

Elin gripped my arm. ‘What happened? What did Kenni...?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

Sigurlin said, ‘You look as though you haven’t slept for a week. There’s a bed upstairs.’

I shook my head. ‘No. I... we... are moving out.’

She and Elin exchanged glances, and then Sigurlin said practically, ‘You can have your coffee, anyway. It’s all ready — we’ve been drinking the stuff all night. Come into the kitchen.’

I sat down at the kitchen table and spooned a lot of sugar into a steaming cup of black coffee. It was the most wonderful thing I’ve ever tasted. Sigurlin went to the window and looked at the Volvo in the drive. ‘Where’s the Volkswagen?’

I grimaced. ‘It’s a write-off.’ The big Russian had said that Ilyich was taking it to pieces, and from the fleeting glimpse I had of it he had been right. I said, ‘What’s it worth, Sigurlin?’ and put my hand in my pocket for my chequebook.

She made an impatient gesture. ‘That can wait.’ There was an edge to her voice. ‘Elin told me everything. About Slade — about Kennikin — everything.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that, Elin,’ I said quietly.

‘I had to talk about it to someone,’ she burst out.

‘You must go to the police,’ said Sigurlin.

I shook my head. ‘So far this has been a private fight. The only casualties have been among the professionals — the men who know the risks and accept them. No innocent bystanders have been hurt. I want to keep it that way. Anyone who monkeys around with this without knowing the score is in for trouble — whether he’s wearing a police uniform or not.’

‘But it needn’t be handled at that level,’ she said. ‘Let the politicians handle it — the diplomats.’

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. ‘When I first came to this country someone told me that there are three things which an Icelander can’t explain — not even to another Icelander: the Icelandic political system, the Icelandic economic system, and the Icelandic drinking laws. We’re not worried about alcohol right now, but politics and economics are right at the top of my list of worries.’

Elin said, ‘I don’t really know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m talking about that refrigerator,’ I said. ‘And that electric coffee-grinder.’ My finger stabbed out again. ‘And the electric kettle and the transistor radio. They’re all imported and to afford imports you have to export — fish, mutton, wool. The herring shoals have moved a thousand miles away, leaving your inshore herring fleet high and dry. Aren’t things bad enough without making them worse?’

Sigurlin wrinkled her brow. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There are three nations involved — Britain, America and Russia. Supposing a thing like this is handled at diplomatic level with an exchange of Notes saying: “Stop fighting your battles on Icelandic territory.” Do you really think a thing like that could be kept secret? Every country has political wild men — and I’m sure Iceland is no exception — and they’d all jump on the bandwagon.’

I stood up. ‘The anti-Americans would shout about the Base at Keflavik; the anti-communists would have a good handle to grab hold of; and you’d probably restart the Fishing War with Britain because I know a lot of Icelanders who aren’t satisfied with the settlement of 1961.’

I swung around to face Sigurlin. ‘During the Fishing War your trawlers were denied entry to British ports, so you built up a fair trade with Russia, which you still have. What do you think of Russia as a trading partner?’

‘I think they’re very good,’ she said instantly. ‘They’ve done a lot for us.’

I said deliberately, ‘If your government is placed in the position of having to take official notice of what’s going on then that good relationship might be endangered. Do you want that to happen?’

Her face was a study in consternation. I said grimly, ‘If this lark ever comes into the open it’ll be the biggest cause cýlèbre to bite Iceland since Sam Phelps tried to set up Jorgen Jorgensen as king back in 1809.’

Elin and Sigurlin looked at each other helplessly. ‘He’s right,’ said Sigurlin.

I knew I was right. Under the placid level of Icelandic society were forces not safe to tamper with. Old animosities still linger among the longer-memoried and it wouldn’t take much to stir them up. I said, ‘The less the politicians know, the better it will be for everybody. I like this country, damn it; and I don’t want the mud stirred up.’ I took Elin’s hand. ‘I’ll try to get this thing cleaned up soon. I think I know a way.’

‘Let them have the package,’ she said urgently. ‘Please, Alan; let them have it.’

‘I’m going to,’ I said. ‘But in my own way.’

There was a lot to think about. The Volkswagen, for instance. It wouldn’t take Kennikin long to check the registration and find out where it came from. That meant he’d probably be dropping in before the day was over. ‘Sigurlin,’ I said. ‘Can you take a pony and join Gunnar?’

She was startled. ‘But why...?’ She took the point. ‘The Volkswagen?’

‘Yes; you might have unwelcome visitors. You’d be better out of the way.’

‘I had a message from Gunnar last night, just after you left. He’s staying out another three days.’

‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘In three days everything should be over.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Don’t ask,’ I warned. ‘You know too much already. Just get yourself in a place where there’s no one to ask questions.’ I snapped my fingers. ‘I’ll shift the Land-Rover too. I’m abandoning it, but it had better not be found here.’

‘You can park it in the stables.’

‘That’s a thought. I’m going to move some things from the Land-Rover into the Volvo. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

I went into the garage and took out the electronic gadget, the two rifles and all the ammunition. The guns I wrapped in a big piece of sacking which I found and they went into the boot. Elin came out, and said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Not we,’ I said. ‘Me.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘You’re going with Sigurlin.’

That familiar stubborn, mulish look came on to her face. ‘I liked what you said in there,’ she said. ‘About not wanting to cause trouble for my country. But it is my country and I can fight for it as well as anyone else.’

I nearly laughed aloud. ‘Elin,’ I said. ‘What do you know about fighting?’

‘As much as any other Icelander,’ she said evenly.

She had something there. ‘You don’t know what’s going on,’ I said.

‘Do you?’

‘I’m beginning to catch on. I’ve just about proved that Slade is a Russian agent — and I loaded Kennikin just like a gun and pointed him at Slade. When they meet he’s likely to go off, and I wouldn’t like to be in Slade’s position when it happens. Kennikin believes in direct action.’

‘What happened last night? Was it bad?’

I slammed the boot closed. ‘It wasn’t the happiest night of my life,’ I said shortly. ‘You’d better get some things together. I want this house unoccupied within the hour.’ I took out a map and spread it out.

‘Where are you going?’ Elin was very persistent.

‘Reykjavik,’ I said. ‘But I want to go to Keflavik first.’

‘That’s the wrong way round,’ she pointed out. ‘You’ll get to Reykjavik first — unless you go south through Hveragerdi.’

‘That’s the problem,’ I said slowly, and frowned as I looked at the map. The web of roads I had visualized existed all right but not as extensively as I had imagined. I didn’t know about the Department’s supposed manpower shortage, but Kennikin certainly wasn’t suffering that way; I had counted ten different men with Kennikin at one time or another.

And the map showed that the whole of the Reykjanes Peninsula could be sealed off from the east by placing men at two points — Thingvellir and Hveragerdi. If I went through either of those towns at a normal slow speed I’d be spotted; if I went through hell-for-leather I’d attract an equivalent amount of attention. And the radio-telephone which had worked for me once would now work against me, and I’d have the whole lot of them down on me.

‘Christ!’ I said. ‘This is bloody impossible.’

Elin grinned at me cheerfully. ‘I know an easy way,’ she said too casually. ‘One that Kennikin won’t think of.’

I looked at her suspiciously. ‘How?’

‘By sea.’ She laid her finger on the map. ‘If we go to Vik I know an old friend who will take us to Keflavik in his boat.’

I regarded the map dubiously. ‘It’s a long way to Vik, and it’s in the wrong direction.’

‘All the better,’ she said. ‘Kennikin won’t expect you to go there.’

The more I studied the map, the better it looked. ‘Not bad,’ I said.

Elin said innocently, ‘Of course, I’ll have to come with you to introduce you to my friend.’

She’d done it again.

II

It was an odd way to get to Reykjavik because I pointed the Volvo in the opposite direction and put my foot down. It was with relief that I crossed the bridge over the Thjòrsà River because that was a bottleneck I was sure Kennikin would cover, but we got across without incident and I breathed again.

Even so, after we passed Hella I had a belated attack of nerves and left the main road to join the network of bumpy tracks in Landeyjasandur, feeling that anyone who could find me in that maze would have to have extrasensory perception.

At midday Elin said decisively, ‘Coffee.’

‘What have you got? A magic wand?’

‘I’ve got a vacuum flask — and bread — and pickled herring. I raided Sigurlin’s kitchen.’

‘Now I’m glad you came,’ I said. ‘I never thought of that.’ I pulled the car to a halt.

‘Men aren’t as practical as women,’ said Elin.

As we ate I examined the map to check where we were. We had just crossed a small river and the farmstead we had passed was called BergthČrshvoll. It was with wonder that I realized we were in the land of Njal’s Saga. Not far away was Hlidarendi, where Gunnar Hamundarsson was betrayed by Hallgerd, his wife, and had gone down fighting to the end. Skarp-Hedin had stalked over this land with death on his face and his war-axe raised high, tormented by the devils of revenge. And here, at BergthČrshvoll, Njal and his wife, BergthČra, had been burned to death with their entire family.

All that had happened a thousand years ago and I reflected, with some gloom, that the essential nature of man had not changed much since. Like Gunnar and Skarp-Hedin I travelled the land in imminent danger of ambush by my enemies and, like them, I was equally prepared to lay an ambush if the opportunity arose. There was another similarity; I am a Celt and Njal had a Celtic name, nordicized from Neil. I hoped the Saga of Burnt Njal would not be echoed by the Saga of Burnt Stewart.

I aroused myself from these depressing thoughts, and said, ‘Who is your friend in Vik?’

‘Valtyýr Baldvinsson, one of Bjarni’s old school friends. He’s a marine biologist studying the coastal ecology. He wants to find out the extent of the changes when Katla erupts.’

I knew about Katla. ‘Hence the boat,’ I said. ‘And what makes you think he’ll run us to Keflavik?’

Elin tossed her head. ‘He will if I ask him to.’

I grinned. ‘Who is this fascinating woman with a fatal power over men? Can it be none other than Mata Hari, girl spy?’

She turned pink but her voice was equable as she said, ‘You’ll like Valtyýr.’

And I did. He was a square man who, but for his colouring, looked as though he had been rough-hewn from a pillar of Icelandic basalt. His torso was square and so was his head, and his hands had stubby, spatulate fingers which appeared to be too clumsy for the delicate work he was doing when we found him in his laboratory. He looked up from the slide he was mounting and gave a great shout. ‘Elin! What are you doing here?’

‘Just passing by. This is Alan Stewart from Scotland.’

My hand was enveloped in a big paw. ‘Good to meet you,’ he said, and I had the instant feeling he meant it.

He turned to Elin. ‘You’re lucky to have caught me here. I’m leaving tomorrow.’

Elin raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh! Where for?’

‘At last they’ve decided to put a new engine into that relic of a longship they’ve given me instead of a boat. I’m taking her round to Reykjavik.’

Elin glanced at me and I nodded. In the course of events you have to be lucky sometimes. I had been wondering how Elin was going to cajole him into taking us to Keflavik without arousing too many suspicions, but now the chance had fallen right into our laps.

She smiled brilliantly. ‘Would you like a couple of passengers? I told Alan I hoped you could take us to have a look at Surtsey, but we wouldn’t mind going on to Keflavik. Alan has to meet someone there in a couple of days.’

‘I’d be glad to have company,’ Valtyýr said jovially. ‘It’s a fair distance and I’d like someone to spell me at the wheel. How’s your father?’

‘He’s well,’ said Elin.

‘And Bjarni? Has Kristin given him that son yet?’

Elin laughed. ‘Not yet — but soon. And how do you know it won’t be a daughter?’

‘It will be a boy!’ he said with certainty. ‘Are you on holiday, Alan?’ he asked in English.

I replied in Icelandic, ‘In a manner of speaking. I come here every year.’

He looked startled, and then grinned. ‘We don’t have many enthusiasts like you,’ he said.

I looked around the laboratory; it appeared to be a conventional biological set-up with the usual rows of bottles containing chemicals, the balance, the two microscopes and the array of specimens behind glass. An odour of formalin was prevalent. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

He took me by the arm and led me to the window. With a large gesture he said, ‘Out there is the sea with a lot of fish in it. It’s hazy now but in good weather you can see Vestmannaeyjar where there is a big fishing fleet. Now come over here.’

He led me to a window on the other side of the room and pointed up toward Myýrdalsjökull. ‘Up there is the ice and, under the ice, a big bastard called Katla. You know Katla?’

‘Everybody in Iceland knows of Katla,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Good! I’ve been studying the sea off this coast and all the animals in it, big and small — and the plants too. When Katla erupts sixty cubic kilometres of ice will be melted into fresh water and it will come into the sea here; as much fresh water as comes out of all the rivers of Iceland in a year will come into the sea in one week and in this one place. It will be bad for the fish and the animals and the plants because they aren’t accustomed to so much fresh water all at once. I want to find out how badly they will be hit and how long they take to recover.’

I said, ‘But you have to wait until Katla erupts. You might wait a long time.’

He laughed hugely. ‘I’ve been here five years — I might be here another ten. but I don’t think so. The big bastard is overdue already.’ He thumped me on the arm. ‘Could blow up tomorrow — then we don’t go to Keflavik.’

‘I won’t lose any sleep over it,’ I said drily.

He called across the laboratory, ‘Elin, in your honour I’ll take the day off.’ He took three big strides, picked her up and hugged her until she squealed for mercy.

I didn’t pay much attention to that because my eyes were attracted to the headline of a newspaper which lay on the bench. It was the morning newspaper from Reykjavik and the headline on the front page blared: GUN BATTLE AT GEYSIR.

I read the story rapidly. Apparently a war had broken out at Geysir to judge from this account, and everything short of light artillery had been brought into play by persons unknown. There were a few eye-witness reports, all highly inaccurate, and it seemed that a Russian tourist, one Igor Volkov, was now in hospital after having come too close to Strokkur. Mr Volkov had no bullet wounds. The Soviet Ambassador had complained to the Icelandic Minister of Foreign Affairs about this unprovoked assault on a Soviet citizen.

I opened the paper to see if there was a leading article on the subject and, of course, there was. In frigid and austere tones the leader writer inquired of the Soviet Ambassador the reason why the aforesaid Soviet citizen, Igor Volkov, was armed to the teeth at the time, since there was no record of his having declared any weapons to the Customs authorities when he entered the country.

I grimaced. Between us, Kennikin and I were in a fair way to putting a crimp into Icelandic-Soviet relations.

III

We left Vik rather late the next morning and I wasn’t in a good mood because I had a thick head. Valtyýr had proved to be a giant among drinkers and, since I was suffering from lack of sleep, my efforts to keep up with him had been disastrous. He put me to bed, laughing boisterously, and woke up himself as fresh as a daisy while I had a taste in my mouth as though I had been drinking the formalin from his specimen jars.

My mood wasn’t improved when I telephoned London to speak to Taggart only to find he was absent from his office. The bland official voice declined to tell me where he was but offered to pass on a message, an invitation which I, in my turn, declined to accept. The curious actions of Case had led me to wonder who in the Department was trustworthy, and I wouldn’t speak to anyone but Taggart.

Valtyýr’s boat was anchored in a creek, a short distance from the open beach, and we went out to it in a dinghy. He looked curiously at the two long, sackcloth-covered parcels I took aboard but made no comment, while I hoped they did not look too much like what they actually were. I wasn’t going to leave the rifles behind because I had an idea I might need them.

The boat was about twenty-five feet overall, with a tiny cabin which had sitting headroom and a skimpy wooden canopy to protect the man at the wheel from the elements. I had checked the map to find the sea distance from Vik to Keflavik and the boat seemed none too large. I said, ‘How long will it take?’

‘About twenty hours,’ said Valtyýr, and added cheerfully, ‘If the bastard engine keeps going. If not, it takes forever. You get seasick?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never had the chance to find out.’

‘You have the chance now.’ He bellowed with laughter.

We left the creek and the boat lifted alarmingly to the ocean swells and a fresh breeze streamed Elin’s hair. ‘It’s clearer today,’ said Valtyýr. He pointed over the bows. ‘You can see Vestmannaeyjar.’

I looked towards the group of islands and played the part which Elin had assigned me. ‘Where is Surtsey from here?’

‘About twenty kilometres to the south-west of Heimaey — the big island. You won’t see much of it yet.’

We plunged on, the little boat dipping into the deep swells and occasionally burying her bows in the water and shaking free a shower of spray when she came up. I’m not any kind of a seaman and it didn’t look too safe to me, but Valtyýr took it calmly enough, and so did Elin. The engine, which appeared to be a toy diesel about big enough to go with a Meccano set, chugged away, aided by a crack from Valtyýr’s boot when it faltered, which it did too often for my liking. I could see why he was pleased at the prospect of having a new one.

It took six hours to get to Surtsey, and Valtyýr circled the island, staying close to shore, while I asked the appropriate questions. He said, ‘I can’t land you, you know.’

Surtsey, which came up thunderously and in flames from the bottom of the sea, is strictly for scientists interested in finding out how life gains hold in a sterile environment. Naturally they don’t want tourists clumping about and bringing in seeds on their boots. ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I didn’t expect to go ashore.’

Suddenly he chuckled. ‘Remember the Fishing War?’

I nodded. The so-called Fishing War was a dispute between Iceland and Britain about off-shore fishing limits, and there was a lot of bad blood between the two fishing fleets. Eventually it had been settled, with the Icelanders making their main point of a twelve-mile limit.

Valtyýr laughed, and said, ‘Surtsey came up and pushed our fishing limit thirty kilometres farther south. An English skipper I met told me it was a dirty trick — as though we’d done it deliberately. So I told him what a geologist told me; in a million years our fishing limit will be pushed as far south as Scotland.’ He laughed uproariously.

When we left Surtsey I abandoned my pretended interest and went below to lie down. I was in need of sleep and my stomach had started to do flip-flops so that I was thankful to stretch out, and I fell asleep as though someone had hit me on the head.

IV

My sleep was long and deep because when I was awakened by Elin she said, ‘We’re nearly there.’

I yawned. ‘Where?’

‘Valtyýr is putting us ashore at Keflavik.’

I sat up and nearly cracked my head on a beam. Overhead a jet plane whined and when I went aft into the open I saw that the shore was quite close and a plane was just dipping in to land. I stretched, and said, ‘What time is it?’

‘Eight o’clock,’ said Valtyýr. ‘You slept well.’

‘I needed it after a session with you,’ I said, and he grinned.

We tied up at eight-thirty, Elin jumped ashore and I handed her the wrapped rifles. ‘Thanks for the ride, Valtyýr.’

He waved away my thanks. ‘Any time. Maybe I can arrange to take you ashore on Surtsey — it’s interesting. How long are you staying?’

‘For the rest of the summer,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know where I’ll be.’

‘Keep in touch,’ he said.

We stood on the dockside and watched him leave, and then Elin said, ‘What are we doing here?’

‘I want to see Lee Nordlinger. It’s a bit chancy, but I want to know what this gadget is. Will Bjarni be here, do you think?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Elin. ‘He usually flies out of Reyjkavik Airport.’

‘After breakfast I want you to go to the Icelandair office at the airport here,’ I said. ‘Find out where Bjarni is, and stay there until I come.’ I rubbed my cheek and felt unshaven bristles. ‘And stay off the public concourse. Kennikin is sure to have Keflavik Airport staked out and I don’t want you seen.’

‘Breakfast first,’ she said. ‘I know a good café here.’

When I walked into Nordlinger’s office and dumped the rifles in a corner he looked at me with some astonishment, noting the sagging of my pockets under the weight of the rifle ammunition, my bristly chin and general uncouthness. His eyes flicked towards the corner. ‘Pretty heavy for fishing tackle,’ he commented. ‘You look beat, Alan.’

‘I’ve been travelling in rough country,’ I said, and sat down. ‘I’d like to borrow a razor, and I’d like you to look at something.’

He slid open a drawer of his desk and drew out a battery-powered shaver which he pushed across to me. ‘The washroom’s two doors along the corridor,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to look at?’

I hesitated. I couldn’t very well ask Nordlinger to keep his mouth shut no matter what he found. That would be asking him to betray the basic tenets of his profession, which he certainly wouldn’t do. I decided to plunge and take a chance, so I dug the metal box from my pocket, took off the tape which held the lid on, and shook out the gadget. I laid it before him. ‘What’s that, Lee?’

He looked at it for a long time without touching it, then he said, ‘What do you want to know about it?’

‘Practically everything,’ I said. ‘But to begin with — what nationality is it?’

He picked it up and turned it around. If anyone could tell me anything about it, it was Commander Lee Nordlinger. He was an electronics officer at Keflavik Base and ran the radar and radio systems, both ground-based and airborne. From what I’d heard he was damned good at his job.

‘It’s almost certainly American,’ he said. He poked his finger at it. ‘I recognize some of the components — these resistors, for instance, are standard and are of American manufacture.’ He turned it around again. ‘And the input is standard American voltage and at fifty cycles.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now — what is it?’

‘That I can’t tell you right now. For God’s sake, you bring in a lump of miscellaneous circuitry and expect me to identify it at first crack of the whip. I may be good but I’m not that good.’

‘Then can you tell me what it’s not?’ I asked patiently.

‘It’s no teenager’s transistor radio, that’s for sure,’ he said, and frowned. ‘Come to that, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’ He tapped the odd-shaped piece of metal in the middle of the assembly. ‘I’ve never seen one of these, for example.’

‘Can you run a test on it?’

‘Sure.’ He uncoiled his lean length from behind the desk. ‘Let’s run a current through it and see if it plays “The Star-Spangled Banner.”‘

‘Can I come along?’

‘Why not?’ said Nordlinger lightly. ‘Let’s go to the shop.’ As we walked along the corridor he said, ‘Where did you get it?’

‘It was given to me,’ I said uncommunicatively.

He gave me a speculative glance but said no more. We went through swing doors at the end of the corridor and into a large room which had long benches loaded with electronic gear. Lee signalled to a petty officer who came over. ‘Hi, Chief; I have something here I want to run a few tests on. Have you a test bench free?’

‘Sure, Commander.’ The petty officer looked about the room. ‘Take number five; I guess we won’t be using that for a while.’

I looked at the test bench; it was full of knobs and dials and screens which meant less than nothing. Nordlinger sat down. ‘Pull up a chair and we’ll see what happens.’ He attached clips to the terminals on the gadget, then paused. ‘We already know certain things about it. It isn’t part of an airplane; they don’t use such a heavy voltage. And it probably isn’t from a ship for roughly the same reason. So that leaves ground-based equipment. It’s designed to plug into the normal electricity system on the North American continent — it could have been built in Canada. A lot of Canadian firms use American manufactured components.’

I jogged him along. ‘Could it come from a TV set?’

‘Not from any TV I’ve seen.’ He snapped switches. ‘A hundred ten volts — fifty cycles. Now, there’s no amperage given so we have to be careful. We’ll start real low.’ He twisted a knob delicately and a fine needle on a dial barely quivered against the pin.

He looked down at the gadget. ‘There’s a current going through now but not enough to give a fly a heart attack.’ He paused, and looked up. ‘To begin with, this thing is crazy; an alternating current with these components isn’t standard. Now, let’s see — first we have what seems to be three amplification stages, and that makes very little sense.’

He took a probe attached to a lead. ‘If we touch the probe here we should get a sine wave on the oscilloscope...’ He looked up. ‘...which we do. Now we see what happens at this lead going into this funny-shaped metal ginkus.’

He gently jabbed the probe and the green trace on the oscilloscope jumped and settled into a new configuration. ‘A square wave,’ said Nordlinger. ‘This circuit up to here is functioning as a chopper — which is pretty damn funny in itself for reasons I won’t go into right now. Now let’s see what happens at the lead going out of the ginkus and into this mess of boards.’

He touched down the probe and the oscilloscope trace jumped again before it settled down. Nordlinger whistled. ‘Just look at that spaghetti, will you?’ The green line was twisted into a fantastic waveform which jumped rhythmically and changed form with each jump. ‘You’d need a hell of a lot of Fourier analysis to sort that out,’ said Nordlinger. ‘But whatever else it is, it’s pulsed by this metal dohickey.’

‘What do you make of it?’

‘Not a damn thing,’ he said. ‘Now I’m going to try the output stage; on past form this should fairly tie knots into that oscilloscope — maybe it’ll blow up.’ He lowered the probe and we looked expectantly at the screen.

I said, ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘I’m waiting for nothing.’ Nordlinger looked at the screen blankly.

‘There’s no output.’

‘Is that bad?’

He looked at me oddly. In a gentle voice he said, ‘It’s impossible.’

I said, ‘Maybe there’s something broken in there.’

‘You don’t get it,’ said Nordlinger. ‘A circuit is just what it says — a circle. You break the circle anywhere you get no current flow anywhere.’ He applied the probe again. ‘Here there’s a current of a pulsed and extremely complex form.’ Again the screen jumped into life. ‘And here, in the same circuit, what do we get?’

I looked at the blank screen. ‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing,’ he said firmly. He hesitated. ‘Or, to put it more precisely, nothing that can show on this test rig.’ He tapped the gadget. ‘Mind if I take this thing away for a while?’

‘Why?’

‘I’d like to put it through some rather more rigorous tests. We have another shop.’ He cleared his throat and appeared to be a little embarrassed. ‘Uh... you won’t be allowed in there.’

‘Oh — secret stuff.’ That would be in one of the areas to which Fleet’s pass would give access. ‘All right, Lee; you put the gadget through its paces and I’ll go and shave. I’ll wait for you in your office.’

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Where did you get it, Alan?’

I said, ‘You tell me what it does and I’ll tell you where it came from.’

He grinned. ‘It’s a deal.’

I left him disconnecting the gadget from the test rig and went back to his office where I picked up the electric shaver. Fifteen minutes later I felt a lot better after having got rid of the hair. I waited in Nordlinger’s office for a long time — over an hour and a half — before he came back.

He came in carrying the gadget as though it was a stick of dynamite and laid it gently on his desk. ‘I’ll have to ask you where you got this,’ he said briefly.

‘Not until you tell me what it does,’ I said.

He sat behind his desk and looked at the complex of metal and plastic with something like loathing in his eyes. ‘It does nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Come off it,’ I said. ‘It must do something.’

‘Nothing!’ he repeated. ‘There is no measurable output.’ He leaned forward and said softly, ‘Alan, out there I have instruments that can measure any damn part of the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves of such low frequency you wouldn’t believe possible right up to cosmic radiation — and there’s nothing coming out of this contraption.’

‘As I said before — maybe something has broken.’

‘That cat won’t jump; I tested everything.’ He pushed at it and it moved sideways on the desk. ‘There are three things I don’t like about this. Firstly, there are components in here that are not remotely like anything I’ve seen before, components of which I don’t even understand the function. I’m supposed to be pretty good at my job, and that, in itself, is enough to disturb me. Secondly, it’s obviously incomplete — it’s just part of a bigger complex — and yet I doubt if I would understand it even if I had everything. Thirdly — and this is the serious one — it shouldn’t work.’

‘But it isn’t working,’ I said.

He waved his hand distractedly. ‘Perhaps I put it wrong. There should be an output of some kind. Good Christ, you can’t keep pushing electricity into a machine — juice that gets used up — without getting something out. That’s impossible.’

I said, ‘Maybe it’s coming out in the form of heat.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I got mad and went to extreme measures. I pushed a thousand watts of current through it in the end. If the energy output was in heat then the goddamn thing would have glowed like an electric heater. But no — it stayed as cool as ever.’

‘A bloody sight cooler than you’re behaving,’ I said.

He threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘Alan, if you were a mathematician and one day you came across an equation in which two and two made five without giving a nonsensical result then you’d feel exactly as I do. It’s as though a physicist were confronted by a perpetual motion machine which works.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘A perpetual motion machine gets something for nothing — energy usually. This is the other way round.’

‘It makes no difference,’ he said. ‘Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.’ As I opened my mouth he said quickly, ‘And don’t start talking about atomic energy. Matter can be regarded as frozen, concentrated energy.’ He looked at the gadget with grim eyes. ‘This thing is destroying energy.’

Destroying energy! I rolled the concept around my cerebrum to see what I could make of it. The answer came up fast — nothing much. I said, ‘Let’s not go overboard. Let’s see what we have. You put an input into it and you get out...’

‘Nothing,’ said Nordlinger.

‘Nothing you can measure,’ I corrected. ‘You may have some good instrumentation here, Lee, but I don’t think you’ve got the whole works. I’ll bet that there’s some genius somewhere who not only knows what’s coming out of there but has an equally involved gadget that can measure it.’

‘Then I’d like to know what it is,’ he said. ‘Because it’s right outside my experience.’

I said, ‘Lee, you’re a technician, not a scientist. You’ll admit that?’

‘Sure; I’m an engineer from way back.’

‘That’s why you have a crew-cut — but this was designed by a long-hair.’ I grinned. ‘Or an egghead.’

‘I’d still like to know where you got it.’

‘You’d better be more interested in where it’s going. Have you got a safe — a really secure one?’

‘Sure.’ He did a double-take. ‘You want me to keep this?’

‘For forty-eight hours,’ I said. ‘If I don’t claim it in that time you’d better give it to your superior officer together with all your forebodings, and let him take care of it.’

Nordlinger looked at me with a cold eye.’ I don’t know but what I shouldn’t give it to him right now. Forty-eight hours might mean my neck.’

‘You part with it now and it will be my neck,’ I said grimly.

He picked up the gadget. ‘This is American and it doesn’t belong here at Keflavik. I’d like to know where it does belong.’

‘You’re right about it not belonging here,’ I said. ‘But I’m betting it’s Russian — and they want it back.’

‘For God’s sake!’ he said. ‘It’s full of American components.’

‘Maybe the Russians learned a lesson from Macnamara on cost-effectiveness. Maybe they’re shopping in the best market. I don’t give two bloody hoots if the components were made in the Congo — I still want you to hold on to it.’

He laid the gadget on his desk again very carefully. ‘Okay — but I’ll split the difference; I’ll give you twenty-four hours. And even then you don’t get it back without a full explanation.’

‘Then I’ll have to be satisfied with that,’ I said. ‘Providing you lend me your car. I left the Land-Rover in Laugarvatn.’

‘You’ve got a goddamn nerve.’ Nordlinger put his hand in his pocket and tossed the car key on the desk.

‘You’ll find it in the car park near the gate — the blue Chevrolet.’

‘I know it.’ I put on my jacket and went to the corner to pick up the rifles. ‘Lee, do you know a man called Fleet?’

He thought for a moment. ‘No.’

‘Or McCarthy?’

‘The CPO you met in the shop is McCarthy.’

‘Not the same one,’ I said. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Lee. We’ll go fishing sometime.’

‘Stay out of jail.’

I paused at the door. ‘What makes you say a thing like that?’

His hand closed over the gadget. ‘Anyone who walks around with a thing like this ought to be in jail,’ he said feelingly.

I laughed, and left him staring at it. Nordlinger’s sense of what was right had been offended. He was an engineer, not a scientist, and an engineer usually works to the rule book — that long list of verities tested through the centuries. He tends to forget that the rule book was originally compiled by scientists, men who see nothing strange in broken rules other than an opportunity to probe a little deeper into the inexplicable universe. Any man who can make the successful transition from Newtonian to quantum physics without breaking his stride can believe anything any day of the week and twice as much on Sundays. Lee Nordlinger was not one of these men, but I’d bet the man who designed the gadget was.

I found the car and put the rifles and the ammunition into the boot. I was still wearing Jack Case’s pistol in the shoulder holster and so now there was nothing to spoil the set of my coat. Not that I was any more presentable; there were scorch marks on the front from the burning peat of Kennikin’s fire, and a torn sleeve from where a bullet had come a shade too close at Geysir. It was stained with mud and so were my trousers, I was looking more and more like a tramp — but a clean-shaven tramp.

I climbed into the car and trickled in the direction of the International Airport, thinking of what Nordlinger hadn’t been able to tell me about the gadget. According to Lee it was an impossible object and that made it scientifically important — so important that men had died and had their legs blown off and had been cooked in boiling water because of it.

And one thing made me shiver. By Kennikin’s last words just before I escaped from the house at Thingvallavatn he had made it quite clear that I was now more important than the gadget. He had been prepared to kill me without first laying his hands on it and, for all he knew, once I was dead the gadget would have been gone forever with me.

I had Nordlinger’s evidence that the gadget was of outstanding scientific importance, so what was it about me that made me even more important than that? It’s not often in this drear, technological world that a single man becomes of more importance than a scientific breakthrough. Maybe we were returning to sanity at last, but I didn’t think so.

There was a side entrance to the Icelandair office which one could use without going through the public concourse, so I parked the car and went in. I bumped pleasantly into a hostess, and asked, ‘Is Elin Ragnarsdottir around?’

‘Elin? She’s in the waiting-room.’

I walked into the waiting-room and found her alone. She jumped up quickly. ‘Alan, you’ve been so long!’

‘It took longer than I expected.’ Her face was strained and there seemed to be a sense of urgency about her. ‘You didn’t have trouble?’

‘No trouble — not for me. Here’s the newspaper.’

I took it from her. ‘Then what’s the matter?’

‘I think you’d better... you’d better read the paper.’ She turned away.

I shook it open and saw a photograph on the front page, a life-size reproduction of my sgian dubh. Underneath, the black headline screamed: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS KNIFE?

The knife had been found embedded in the heart of a man sitting in a car parked in the driveway of a house in Laugarvatn. The man had been identified as a British tourist called John Case. The house and the Volkswagen in which Case had been found belonged to Gunnar Arnarsson who was absent, being in charge of a pony-trekking expedition. The house had been broken into and apparently searched. In the absence of Gunnar Arnarsson and his wife, Sigurlin Asgeirsdottir, it was impossible to tell if anything had been stolen. Both were expected to be contacted by the police.

The knife was so unusual in form that the police had requested the newspaper to publish a photograph of it. Anyone who had seen this knife or a similar knife was requested to call at his nearest police station. There was a boxed paragraph in which the knife was correctly identified as a Scottish sgian dubh, and after that the paragraph degenerated into pseudo-historical blather.

The police were also trying to find a grey Volvo registered in Reykjavik; anyone having seen it was requested to communicate with the police at once. The registration number was given.

I looked at Elin. ‘It’s a mess, isn’t it?’ I said quietly.

‘It is the man you went to see at Geysir?’

‘Yes.’ I thought of how I had mistrusted Jack Case and left him unconscious near Kennikin’s house. Perhaps he had not been untrustworthy at all because I had no illusions about who had killed him. Kennikin had the sgian dubh and Kennikin had the Volkswagen — and probably Kennikin had stumbled across Case in his search for me.

But why had Case been killed?

‘This is dreadful,’ said Elin. ‘Another man killed.’ Her voice was filled with despair.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said baldly.

She picked up the paper. ‘How did the police know about the Volvo?’

‘Standard procedure,’ I said. ‘As soon as Case was identified the police would dig into whatever he’d been doing since he entered the country. They’d soon find he hired a car — and it wasn’t the Volkswagen he was found in.’

I was glad the Volvo was tucked away out of sight in Valtyýr’s garage in Vik. ‘When is Valtyýr going back to Vik?’ I asked.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Elin.

It seemed as though everything was closing in on me. Lee Nordlinger had given me a twenty-four hour ultimatum; it was too much to hope that Valtyýr wouldn’t check on the Volvo as soon as he got back to Vik — he might even go to the Reykjavik police if he felt certain it was the car they were searching for. And when the police laid hands on Sigurlin then the balloon would certainly go up — I couldn’t see her keeping silent in the face of a corpse parked in her home.

Elin touched my arm. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Right now I just want to sit and think.’

I began to piece the fragments together and gradually they made some kind of sense which hinged around Kennikin’s sudden switch of attitude after he had captured me. At first he had been all for extracting the gadget from me and he was looking forward with unwholesome delight to the operation. But then he lost interest in the gadget and announced that my death was the more important, and that was just after he had received a telephone call.

I ticked off the sequence of events. At Geysir I had told Case of my suspicions of Slade, and Case had agreed to pass them on to Taggart. No matter what happened Slade would then be thoroughly investigated. But I had seen Slade talking to Case just before Kennikin took me. Suppose that Case had aroused Slade’s suspicions in some way? Slade was a clever man — a handler of men — and maybe Case had shown his hand.

What would Slade do? He would contact Kennikin to find if I had been captured. He would insist that his cover next to Taggart should remain unbroken at all costs and that this was more important than the gadget. He would say, ‘Kill the bastard!’ That was why Kennikin had switched.

And it would be just as important to kill Jack Case before he talked to Taggart.

I had played right into Slade’s hands and left Case for Kennikin to find, and Kennikin had stabbed him with my knife. Kennikin had traced where the Volkswagen had come from and gone looking for me, and he had left the body of Case. Terrorist tactics.

It all tied together except for one loose end which worried me. Why, when I had been jumped at Geysir by Kennikin’s mob, had Jack Case run out on me? He hadn’t lifted a finger to help; he hadn’t fired a shot in my defence even though he was armed. I knew Jack Case and that was very unlike him, and that, together with his apparent chumminess with Slade, had been the basis of my mistrust of him. It worried me very much.

But it was all past history and I had the future to face and decisions to make. I said, ‘Did you check on Bjarni?’

Elin nodded listlessly. ‘He’s on the Reykjavik-Höfn run. He’ll be in Reykjavik this afternoon.’

‘I want him over here,’ I said. ‘And you’re to stick in this office until he comes. You’re not to move out of it even for meals. You can have those sent up. And most emphatically you’re not to go out into the concourse of the airport; there are too many eyes down there looking for you and me.’

‘But I can’t stay here forever,’ she protested.

‘Only until Bjarni comes. Then you can tell him anything you think fit — you can even tell him the truth. Then you’re to tell him what he must do.’

She frowned. ‘And that is?’

‘He’s got to get you on a plane and out of here, and he has to do it discreetly without going through normal channels. I don’t care if he has to dress you up as a hostess and smuggle you aboard as one of the crew, but you mustn’t go down into the concourse as an ordinary passenger.’

‘But I don’t think he could do that.’

‘Christ!’ I said. ‘If he can smuggle in crates of Carlsberg from Greenland he can smuggle you out. Come to think of it, going to Greenland might not be such a bad idea; you could stay in Narsassuaq until all this blows over. Not even Slade, clever though he is, would think of looking there.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘You’re going,’ I said. ‘I want you from underfoot. If you think things have been rough for the last few days then compared to the next twenty-four hours they’ll seem like an idyllic holiday. I want you out of it, Elin, and, by God, you’ll obey me.’

‘So you think I’m useless,’ she said bitterly.

‘No, I don’t; and you’ve proved it during the last few days. Everything you’ve done in that time has been against your better judgment, but you’ve stuck by me. You’ve been shot and you’ve been shot at, but you still helped out.’

‘Because I love you,’ she said.

‘I know — and I love you. That’s why I want you out of here. I don’t want you killed.’

‘And what about you?’ she demanded.

‘I’m different,’ I said. ‘I’m a professional. I know what to do and how to do it; you don’t.’

‘Case was a professional too — and he’s dead. So was Graham, or whatever his name really was. And that man, Volkov, was hurt at Geysir — and he was a professional. You said yourself that the only people hurt so far have been the professionals. I don’t want you hurt, Alan.’

‘I also said that no innocent bystanders have been hurt,’ I said. ‘You’re an innocent bystander — and I want to keep it that way.’

I had to do something to impress the gravity of the situation upon her. I looked around the room to check its emptiness, then quickly took off my jacket and unslung Case’s shoulder holster complete with gun. I held it in my hand and said, ‘Do you know how to use this?’

Her eyes dilated. ‘No!’

I pointed out the slide. ‘If you pull this back a bullet is injected into the breech. You push over this lever, the safety catch, then you point it and pull the trigger. Every time you pull a bullet comes out, up to a maximum of eight. Got that?’

‘I think so.’

‘Repeat it.’

‘I pull back the top of the gun, push over the safety catch and pull the trigger.’

‘That’s it. It would be better if you squeezed the trigger but this is no time for finesse.’ I put the pistol back into the holster and pressed it into her reluctant hands. ‘If anyone tries to make you do anything you don’t want to do just point the gun and start shooting. You might not hit anyone but you’ll cause some grey hairs.’

The one thing that scares a professional is a gun in the hands of an amateur. If another professional is shooting at you at least you know he’s accurate and you have a chance of out-manoeuvring him. An amateur can kill you by accident.

I said, ‘Go into the loo and put on the holster under your jacket. When you come back I’ll be gone.’

She accepted the finality of the situation along with the pistol. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The worm is turning,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of running, so I’m going hunting. Wish me luck.’

She came close to me and kissed me gently and there were unshed tears in her eyes and the gun in its holster was iron-hard between us. I patted her bottom and said, ‘Get along with you,’ and watched as she turned and walked away. When the door closed behind her I also left.