Black Ice (6 page)

He'd picked up the winged badge I'd found in Solrun's photo album, which was now mixed up among  my small change. He held  it up and  turned  it around in the light.  'What is it,  Mr Craven?  Please enlighten me?'

As he placed it in the palm of his  wide hand and held it out to me,  I  mumbled: 'That? Oh,  just  a  bit  of junk  I  picked  up somewhere  .. .'

It looks like a military  badge.' I could feel his eyes drilling into me. 'What are these letters? AC. What  do they stand for?'

'Afrika  Corps,' I  said  in  a  blaze  of inspiration. 'Military badges, I pick them up for a friend's  little  boy.'

'Really.' His  eyes didn't leave  my face. 'Wouldn't AK  be more  accurate for Afrika  Korps?  And  why  would  they  want wings? Forgive  me,  but  my memory  is that  they relied rather more on tanks  than  on aircraft?'

I made  a show of inspecting the badge.  Sorry - you're quite right. That's an air-raid warden's badge from the last war. The initials stand  for "All  Clear". Quite a collector's item.'

With a leisurely  movement, he closed his hand  over it and put it in his pocket. 'In that  case, perhaps it would be wise if I look after it until  you are leaving  the country.'

What could I do? Nothing except thank him. So I did. And I was still wondering how he'd managed to outflank  me like that when  I stepped outside.

'Over here.'  I heard  a whistle,  and  then saw a taxi parked down  the side of the building. Bell's head was poking out of the window.  'Got  your  message,  but  they wouldn't let me in, I'm afraid. Whatever was it all about?'

I told him - or at least an outline  of what  had  happened.

'My  word! Stirring times, as they say. They are taking  you seriously, aren't  they?'

'Why?'

'Petursson's the top chap.  Chief spy-catcher.'

'What is that  place anyway?'

'Rannsoknarlogrella Rikisins. Literally, Investigative Police of the State.'

'Sort  of Special  Branch  and  MI  whatsit?'

'Yes.  With  Miss  Marple and  Odd job thrown  in.  Did they give you a bad  time?'

'Not  really. Well, they didn't throw their bowler hats at me, anyway.'

11

Maybe it's because I was brought up in dormitories that I don't like sleeping in modern  hotels. I always have the feeling that the bedroom  walls will fall down  and  I'll find myself sleeping  in a vast five-star  dormitory for lost American Express  boys.

That's why I always stayed at Hulda's and not at the Saga.  I liked a bit of a clutter around me, and  there was no shortage of that  at Hulda’s.

She lived in a barujarns hus - one of the lovely old houses clad  in corrugated iron - and  the  whole  place  was plastered with evidence of her existence for the last seven decades. There wasn't a surface,  horizontal or vertical, that  wasn't covered  in pictures   of  human  beings  on  their  way  from  cot  to  coffin: children, grandchildren, and  no doubt great grandchildren,  in prams,  playing,  on  bikes, in uniforms,  on holidays, and  then proudly  holding  produce  of their own. And, since they all had Hulda's clear open forehead, it was like looking down  a hall of mirrors.

There were other reasons  for staying there,  too. Hulda, as frail and  perky as a sparrow, knew everything and everyone on the island.

The disadvantage was that she still considered it her duty to introduce me to Viking delicacies- and she wouldn't even let me  have  a  blindfold.  She sat  there,  the  light  from  the  half shuttered windows  glinting on  the glass  of the  photographs, watching every mouthful.

'Delicious,' I lied, gagging on the last bite. I don't know what it  was.  I  would've  said  it  had  been  kicked  out  of a  badly frightened penguin, but I could  be wrong.

And Hulda said  what  she always  says at  that  point  in the conversation. She  nodded  her  lovely old  head,  the grey  hair pinned  back in a tight  bun: 'It is my pleasure  and  my duty.'

It  was coming  up for noon.  A few hours' sleep  and  I was restored, but  I had a lot to do. For a start, I wished that  Batty had at least given me an emergency number to ring.  I'd no idea what  to do about  a vanishing client. And I wanted to find Ivan and  see what  he was doing  in town.  I wouldn't have thought Moscow  was interested in Sexy Eskies.

And,  now  that  I'd  had  more  time  to think  about  it,  I was comforted  by the way Bell had turned  out so readily.  I couldn't really believe that British intelligence services, inept as they are supposed to be, would send a bumbling amateur like me to do anything more complicated than  post a letter.  But they might want  to use my personal influence- as Batty had said- so long as they had a trade-tested pro keeping an eye on me. As far as I was concerned, they could keep as many eyes on me as they wanted.

'You   are   seeing   Solrun?'  Hulda   asked,  her   hawk-eyes searching my plate for signs of leftovers.

'That's the idea.'  Even Hulda’s information service couldn't have got hold of Sopron’s disappearance so quickly.

'She  is a most lovely girl.' She sighed  as though  for her own lost youth. Perhaps it was. Her own beauty  was there to see, in the pictures  on the walls.

'Is she still single?'  I asked,  and instantly regretted  it. From the look on her face, I knew Hulda  had taken it as a reflection on Solrun's desirability, and  thus  the desirability of all Icelandic women,  and  by implication the entire  nation.

'She   could   have endless   many   men,'   she  said.   'Endless many.'

That was  another of her  charming  idiosyncrasies: endless many.

'Oh, I know, I know.'

'But she has many opportunities for life itself. All the famous magazines  wish  to  take  her  photograph  because   she  is so beautiful. Yes, that is true. She wishes also to win this title of the most  beautiful woman  in the world  to bring  honour  on us all. She has men,  naturally. Women  must  have men. But she also has her own life, I think.'

'Quite right  too. She's  a gorgeous  girl.'

'You should  know that,  Sam.'

'I do, I do. And you're the most gorgeous of them all, Hulda.'

I kissed the top of her head as I passed.  'Don't wait  up.'

'And  what  about  you?' she called  after  me. 'When are  you getting  married  again?'

'The day you say "yow", and  not before.'

12

The Vikings fixed on Reykjavik  by the traditional, off chance, method of chucking their furniture over the side of the longboat and setting  up house where it landed. If you let your  dining table do your house-hunting, then I suppose you shouldn't complain  too much if you end up in an odd sort of place.

And  Iceland  is an  odd  sort  of place.  For  over  a  thousand years after that,  they staggered  on through  blizzards  and  Black Death,  frozen one minute, roasted  by volcanoes  the next, scratching out a living on a hot cinder  still sizzling among the ice at the edge of the Arctic Circle.

Then, after the last war, they suddenly hit the jackpot with their fishing. By the seventies, when  I first went  there,  it was one of the most prosperous countries on earth.

I walked down  through  the  town  to see how  much  it  had changed in the past two years. Quite a bit, as it turned out. The pop-fashion explosion  had hit them  the same as everyone  else. Down Laugavegur, blow-ups  of Bogart  and  Monroe smould erred in the shop windows, and on the walkway at Austurstraeti the pavement  was knee-deep  in Bowie flooding from the shop doorways.

At some secret signal, discernible only  to people  under  the age  of  twenty,  the  kids  there  had  changed   from  skin-tight clothes  to floppy, crinkly  bags four sizes too big - just like the kids everywhere  in the Western  world. They lolled in the pale sunshine and  tried to feel Mediterranean while they read each other's tee-shirts.  Yet  they  still  nibbled   the hardfiskur they bought from  the pavement stall with one hand,  while drinking

Coke with  the other.

On the  hillside  opposite, the little  toy-town  houses  in their bright coats  of paint  looked daintily impermanent. Dress it up how you like, Reykjavik  still has the air of the Yukon about  it. Only  they didn't find gold  here. This  is a fish-rush  town.

I had  a coffee in a smart  cafe overlooking  the square and wrote a card  to Sally. In a doomed attempt to impress the nuns, I'd  bought one with a picture of one of the spouting geysers. But I'd   spoiled   it by  writing on  the  back:  'As  you  can  see,  the plumbing here is an absolute disgrace. And guess who's here?  � Uncle  Ivan.'

Then, in one of those coincidences we deride  on the telly but never  question in real  life, I looked down  into the square and saw  Ivan. He  was sitting on a low wall surrounding a flower garden. Next  to him was Christopher  Bell.

I was so surprised that  when  I paid  for my coffee I hardly noticed  that it cost only slightly  less than the down-payment on a five-bedroomed house  in Kensington. Icelandic prices rate high on the wince scale.

'Here he is,'  Ivan   said,   as  I  walked  over  to  them.  'My favourite diurnalist.' He was the pal who'd done the writing on my office window.

'How did you two find each other?'

'Simple  really,'   Christopher  said,   a  smile   breaking   out beneath his banana nose.  'I heard this gentleman asking  for you at  the desk of the hotel.

It wasn't all that  amazing. If you had  an expense  account and none of my funny twitches about dormitories, the Saga was the place  to stay.

'What the hell are  you doing  here?'

Ivan  ignored  the question. With  an exaggerated roll of his eyes, he replied: 'Never mind that, dear  boy. Do you realise I'm missing  Sussex at  home  to Yorkshire?'

'I say,' Christopher intervened with boyish excitement, 'are you keen on cricket?'

'Keen? I adore  it.'

'He thinks  it's  the  perfect  evocation  of man's eternal  soul, don't you,  Ivan?' I said, just to annoy  him.

He  rewarded   me  with  a  petulant  blink.   'I still find   it impossible  to  believe that  such  a  bland  race  as  the  English could  invent  a game  so rich in yearning. It's a very Russian emotion,  yearning.'

'Ah, yearning. Yes.' Christopher didn't look too convinced, but  then  he'd   probably  never  met  anyone   quite   like  Ivan before. He was an original.

In  Fleet Street,  he was known - affectionately, I hasten  to add - as the Gay Red. His parents, one Russian, one English, were academics and  he'd  split  his childhood between  the two countries. For years now he'd  been based in London  for one of the  Russian  agencies. It was generally  assumed, as  with  all Russian   journalists,  that   his  real  job   was  to  post   bits  of information back  to the boys at  home:  this,  together with his discreet  but clear use of eye-liner, gave him the nickname- and a sort of raffish glamour.

I'd  always  liked  him. When  I was  married he quite  often came  back for dinner. He used to entertain us at obscure and grubby East European restaurants which always seemed  to be above  men's  hairdressers in Muswell  Hill where  the food was invariably  a  delight.  After   my  divorce,   we  became   good boozing mates.

I knew him as well as anyone, and even I was never sure how much was affectation and how much genuine. The one thing we didn't have in common was cricket.  For all it meant to me, it might as well have been Russian. But he used to love to get out to the county games and  install  himself in a deck-chair among all  those  elderly   couples,   tartan  rugs  around  their   knees, making faint  marks  in large scorebooks as they ate damp egg sandwiches.

'And how is the wondrous Sally?' he inquired, with his usual reproving note.  He was  her  godfather. He took  his duties - including checking  up on me- very seriously.

I showed him the card. 'You'll  make the girl into one of those giggly creatures who work in dress shops in South  Ken. Tell me it's not true  that  you are working for the dreaded Grimm- oh my God,  it is.'

'What's in it for your  Moscow  masters, Ivan?'

'Perfectly obvious, surely.  The  beauty  business  is the classic example of the  exploitation of the  innocent by  the  grasping capitalists. Don't you know anything, dear boy? But I hear you have mislaid, if that's the word,  the lady in question.'

He caught my quick glance at Christopher -  I van didn't miss that sort of thing- and explained: no one had been indiscreet; he'd  picked  up  that  information from  the  Russian  Embassy. Not that  it would  matter, he added.

'I'd no idea  you chaps  co-operated so much,' Christopher said.

'Believe   me,'   Ivan   replied,  'whether  he's   in  London   or Moscow, a boss is a boss is a boss. There is surprisingly little to choose between Sam's ghastly Sexy Eskies and my dreary little pieces of propaganda. Our principal problem, I fear,  will be finding  exquisite gifts for the  wondrous Sally in this desolate dump.'

I thought we  might  give  her  one  of  Bell's  musical   loo fittings?'

Ivan's eyes rolled  to the skies. 'I declare that out of bounds immediately. Now I must go in search of a vast g and t, and you, Sam,  will no doubt wish to have a gallon of that appalling slop you drink.'

'Not  here. You can't get beer and  there  aren't any  boozers.’

‘We'll  have  to go to a restaurant.'

'They are  a bit restrictive with  the old firewater,' Christopher said,  apologetically.

'In that  case, let us waste  no further time.'  Ivan  rose, a tall stick of a man,  his greying  hair falling in curtains on either side of his bony face. 'Good Lord!'

At that moment, through a bunch  of kids playing  around, came a boy with a wad of newspapers under his arm. He looked maybe eleven or  twelve. He stopped in front of us and gave a weird  funereal  wail  that   was  presumably the  Icelandic  for Three Hurt in Polar  Bear  Horror. But that  wasn't what  made us stare. His  flat,  expressionless face  was  the  one  that  had become  an  international symbol  for suffering.  And  you don't expect  to stumble upon  a Vietnamese at  the other  end  of the world.