Running Blind / The Freedom Trap. Desmond Bagley
that trouble with Birkby and you when the Russians would be co-operating with him, anyway?’
‘Because it had to look good,’ I said. ‘The operation would be examined by men with very hard eyes and there had to be real blood, not tomato ketchup – no fakery at all. The blood was provided by poor Birkby – and Kennikin added some to it.’ A sudden thought struck me. ‘I wonder if Kennikin knew what was going on? I’ll bet his organization was blasted from under him – the poor bastard wouldn’t know his masters were selling him out just to bring Slade up a notch.’ I rubbed my chin. ‘I wonder if he’s still ignorant of that?’
‘This is all theory,’ said Elin. ‘Things don’t happen that way.’
‘Don’t they? My God, you only have to read the published accounts of some of the spy trials to realize that bloody funny things happen. Do you know why Blake got a sentence of forty-two years in jail?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t read about it.’
‘You won’t find it in print, but the rumour around the Department was that forty-two was the number of our agents who came to a sticky end because he’d betrayed them. I wouldn’t know the truth of it because he was in a different outfit – but think of what Slade could do!’
‘So you can’t trust anyone,’ said Elin. ‘What a life to lead!’
‘It’s not as bad as that. I trust Taggart to a point – and I trust Jack Case, the man I’m meeting at Geysir. But Slade is different; he’s become careless and made two mistakes – one about the Calvados, and the other in coming after the package himself.’
Elin laughed derisively. ‘And the only reason you trust Taggart and Case is because they’ve made no mistakes, as you call them?’
‘Let me put it this way,’ I said. ‘I’ve killed Graham, a British intelligence agent, and so I’m in a hot spot. The only way I can get out of it is to prove that Slade is a Russian agent. If I can do that I’ll be a bloody hero and the record will be wiped clean. And it helps a lot that I hate Slade’s guts.’
‘But what if you’re wrong?’
I put as much finality into my voice as I could. ‘I’m not wrong,’ I said, and hoped it was true. ‘We’ve had a long hard day, Elin; but we can rest tomorrow. Let me put a dressing on your shoulder.’
As I smoothed down the last piece of surgical tape, she said, ‘What did you make of what Taggart said just before the storm came?’
I didn’t like to think of that. ‘I think,’ I said carefully, ‘that he was telling me that Kennikin is in Iceland.’
II
Tired though I was after a hard day’s driving I slept badly. The wind howled from the west across the crater of Askja, buffeting the Land-Rover until it rocked on its springs, and the heavy rain drummed against the side. Once I heard a clatter as though something metallic had moved and I got up to investigate only to find nothing of consequence and got drenched to the skin for my pains. At last I fell into a heavy sleep, shot through with bad dreams.
Still, I felt better in the morning when I got up and looked out. The sun was shining and the lake was a deep blue reflecting the cloudless sky, and in the clear, rain-washed air the far side of the crater seemed a mere kilometre away instead of the ten kilometres it really was. I put water to boil for coffee and when it was ready I leaned over and dug Elin gently in the ribs.
‘Umph!’ she said indistinctly, and snuggled deeper into the sleeping bag. I prodded her again and one blue eye opened and looked at me malignantly through tumbled blonde hair. ‘Stop it!’
‘Coffee,’ I said, and waved the cup under her nose.
She came to life and clutched the cup with both hands. I took my coffee and a jug of hot water and went outside where I laid my shaving kit on the bonnet and began to whisk up a lather. After shaving, I thought, it would be nice to go down to the lake and clean up. I was beginning to feel grubby – the Odàdahraun is a dusty place – and the thought of clean water was good.
I finished scraping my face and, as I rinsed the lather away, I ran through in my mind the things I had to do, the most important of which was to contact Taggart as soon as it was a reasonable hour to find him in his office. I wanted to give him the detailed case against Slade.
Elin came up with the coffee pot. ‘More?’
‘Thanks,’ I said, holding out my cup. ‘We’ll have a lazy day.’ I nodded towards the lake at the bottom of the crater. ‘Fancy a swim?’
She pulled a face and moved her wounded shoulder. ‘I can’t do the crawl, but perhaps I can paddle with one arm.’ She looked up at the sky, and said, ‘It’s a lovely day.’
I watched her face change. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The radio antenna,’ she said. ‘It’s not there.’
I whirled around. ‘Damn!’ That was very bad. I climbed up and looked at the damage. It was easy to see what had happened. The rough ground in Central Iceland is enough to shake anything loose that isn’t welded down; nuts you couldn’t shift with a wrench somehow loosen themselves and wind off the bolts; split-pins jump out, even rivets pop. A whip antenna with its swaying motion is particularly vulnerable; I know one geologist who lost three in a month. The question here was when did we lose it?
It was certainly after I had spoken to Taggart, so it might have gone during the mad dash for Askja when we raced the storm. But I remembered the metallic clatter I had heard during the night; the antenna might have been loosened enough by the bumping to have been swept away by the strong wind. I said, ‘It may be around here – quite close. Let’s look.’
But we didn’t get that far because I heard a familiar sound – the drone of a small aircraft. ‘Get down!’ I said quickly. ‘Keep still and don’t look up.’
We dropped flat next to the Land-Rover as the light plane came over the edge of the crater wall flying low. As it cleared the edge it dipped down into the crater to our left. I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t lift your head. Nothing stands out so much as a white face.’
The plane flew low over the lake and then turned, spiralling out into a search pattern to survey the interior of the crater. It looked to me like a four-seater Cessna from the brief glimpse I got of it. The Land-Rover was parked in a jumble of big rocks, split into blocks by ice and water, and maybe it wouldn’t show up too well from the air providing there was no movement around it.
Elin said quietly, ‘Do you think it’s someone looking for us?’
‘We’ll have to assume so,’ I said. ‘It could be a charter plane full of tourists looking at the Óbyggdir from the air, but it’s a bit early in the day for that – tourists aren’t awake much before nine o’clock.’
This was a development I hadn’t thought of. Damn it, Slade was right; I was out of practice. Tracks in the Óbyggdir are few and it would be no great effort to keep them under surveillance from the air and to direct ground transport by radio. The fact that my Land-Rover was the long wheelbase type would make identification easier – there weren’t many of those about.
The plane finished quartering the crater and climbed again, heading north-west. I watched it go but made no move. Elin said, ‘Do you think we were seen?’
‘I don’t know that, either. Stop asking unanswerable questions – and don’t move because it may come back for another sweep.’
I gave it five minutes and used the time to figure out what to do next. There would be no refreshing swim in the lake, that was certain. Askja was as secluded a place as anywhere in Iceland but it had one fatal flaw – the track into the crater was a spur from the main track – a dead end – and if anyone blocked the way out of the crater there’d be no getting