Authors: Michael Ridpath
Erika:
we publish, of course! but we do it carefully. this is one of those situations where the cover-up is as important as the crime itself. the israelis will want to quash this, and if they can’t quash it they will discredit it. we’ll need full transcription, analysis, verification. release the video online and the transcript through selected newspapers. the washington post. the guardian, maybe der spiegel. are we sure it’s genuine?
Apex:
not yet.
Erika:
okay we’ll have to check that out. we need to be one hundred per cent.
Dieter:
it’s going to be difficult to do this remotely.
Erika:
yes. we should meet somewhere. just for a few days. get a team together. just like we did last year in stockholm for the zimbabwe arms leak.
Nico:
this is bigger.
Dieter:
so where do we go?
Apex:
i’m not coming.
Erika:
okay apex.
Apex never came anywhere. He stayed in his room somewhere in a time zone a long way away. None of them had seen him apart from Dieter, and that was almost twenty years before, and no one even knew his real name. Erika had spoken to him on a voice link over the Internet frequently; he had a rapid Australian accent. So, no, Apex wouldn’t be coming.
They were waiting for her to suggest somewhere. Technically she was nothing more than the Spokesperson for Freeflow. The organization had no hierarchy, at least in theory. Most decisions were taken by the four of them: Apex and Dieter were the technical guys; Nico did finance and general organization.
In practice Erika was the leader. They all followed Erika. Anywhere.
Erika:
what about iceland?
Dieter:
but that’s the middle of nowhere.
Erika:
when I went with nico in november they were really friendly. they treated us like stars. and they seem dead serious about protecting the press.
Nico:
iceland might work. we have some good guys there we can trust.
Dieter:
yeah duddi is good. i rate him.
Nico:
i’ll organize it. hey you know there’s a volcano erupting at the moment?
Dieter:
cool. i’ve never seen a live volcano.
Nico:
i did my masters in geology. i’ll give you a guided tour.
Erika:
guys we won’t have time for any sightseeing.
Nico:
you’re no fun erika. so when do we go?
Erika thought a moment. It was Saturday morning. She could work on the transcript and do some background research in London over the weekend. There were people she could stay with whom she trusted in London, the man in the bed behind her not being one of them. There were people she could stay with in lots of cities.
Erika didn’t really live anywhere. Her few possessions were strewn all over the globe: in her parents’ place just outside New York; with Dieter in Cologne; some with Nico in Milan; some of her most personal stuff with her grandmother in Queens. But most of what she needed she kept in her small backpack. And in her computer backed up and encrypted remotely in several servers dotted around the world.
She would need to borrow a warmer coat for Reykjavík.
She resumed typing:
when can you get things ready nico?
Nico:
tuesday?
Erika:
monday.
Nico:
monday.
Erika:
great. see you all in reykjavik on monday. and we need a name for this project. see what you can come up with.
Monday 12 April 2010
Erika emerged through the double doors of the arrivals hall and scanned the dozen or so people waiting. She knew Nico would have arranged for someone to pick her up, but she had no idea who it would be.
There were a couple of signs in the hall, and one of them had her name scrawled on it, with a smiley face. She approached the young woman holding the scrap of cardboard. ‘Hi, I’m Erika.’
The woman smiled and held out her hand. She was thin with short dark hair, pale skin and big blue eyes. She was wearing jeans and a thick tan coat. And a clerical collar around her throat.
‘Ásta,’ she said. ‘Welcome to Iceland.’
The woman led Erika out of the terminal to a beaten-up old Peugeot, which needed a wash. Erika wasn’t entirely surprised by her host – Freeflow’s volunteers came in all shapes and sizes – but this was the first priest she had come across. Certainly the first female one. Erika checked to see whether anyone was following them; she didn’t think so, but it was hard to tell.
‘I’ll take you to the house,’ Ásta said in flawless English. ‘It’s right downtown. A great location.’
‘I doubt we’ll be going outside much,’ said Erika. ‘Who does it belong to?’
‘The owners live abroad. We’ve rented it for a couple of weeks.’
‘We won’t need it that long. A week at most.’ Ásta eased the Peugeot out of the car park and on to the road to Reykjavík. Forty-six kilometres, according to the yellow road sign.
‘You speak very good English,’ Erika said.
‘Thank you. You’ll find most Icelanders speak English, especially the younger ones.’
‘Yeah, I remember that from last time I was here,’ said Erika. ‘Do you always wear that thing?’
‘What thing?’
‘The dog-collar thing.’
‘Oh, no. But I want to while I’m helping you out. I think what you are doing is good. There should be more openness in Iceland, and more in the Icelandic Church. I guess I’m making a point. Christians believe in telling the truth.’
‘So do Muslims and Jews,’ said Erika. ‘And atheists. Or the majority of them do anyway: their governments are a different matter.’
Erika was wary. All kinds of people tried to win Freeflow over to their cause. But independence was everything. Independence from any one country, any political ideology and any religion.
Ásta smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I won’t try to influence what you are doing. I saw you on
Silfur Egils
when you were here last year, by the way. I was impressed. A lot of people here were.’
Silfur Egils
was the biggest TV chat show in Iceland. Erika had used her appearance to encourage the Icelanders to set up a haven for free information. The idea seemed to have gone down well. ‘I’m glad you remember it,’ Erika said.
‘I might have something for you,’ Ásta said.
‘About the banks?’ Freeflow received information from all over the world, some of it big, some of it small. It had published the details of one of the Icelandic bank’s loans several months before, but had also received several pieces of unsubstantiated gossip that it had left unpublished.
‘No. About the Church here in Iceland. Certain things that happened here in the past.’
‘OK,’ Erika said. ‘But, Ásta, if you do decide to leak something to us, you should do it anonymously. Upload it to our website or mail it to us on a CD. We go to great lengths to protect our sources, and the best protection is if we don’t know their identity ourselves.’
‘But if you don’t know who they are, how can you tell if they are reliable?’
It was a common criticism of Freeflow, but one Erika had answered many times. ‘We are very careful to check and double-check the information we are given. That works much better than a subjective judgement on whether a source is reliable or not.’
‘I see,’ said Ásta.
They were out on the highway now, a long straight strip of black through the barren lava field that separated the airport at Keflavík from the capital. Checking behind her, the only vehicles Erika could see were two large trucks: not the vehicles of choice for surveillance teams. No trees anywhere, nor grass. Grey sea on one side; black mountains beyond the lava on the other. A small mountain rose up ahead in a perfect cone. Bleak. A sign to the right pointed to the Blue Lagoon and Erika saw steam leaking out from behind a fold in the lavascape a few miles in that direction. Erika had seen the posters at the airport: she could use a long soak in the geothermally heated pool.
The middle of nowhere, as Dieter had said. A long way from Israel.
‘Nico showed us the video,’ Ásta said. ‘It’s going to make quite a splash when it gets out. There was a lot of coverage here when Tamara Wilton was shot. It was a big deal.’
‘Yes, it will make a splash.’ Tamara Wilton was an ordinary British student who had decided to spend six months after graduating from university with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Gaza doing her bit for the Palestinians. Except she wasn’t ordinary – she was a pink-cheeked, fair-haired English-rose type in the mould of Princess Diana. The world knew that because she had an identical twin sister Samantha, who looked just like her and who turned out to be not just cute, but articulate and angry as well. Samantha Wilton had been all over the papers and TV, not just in Britain, but also in the rest of Europe and even the States. The story of her sister had touched all kinds of people, even Erika, who saw something of herself in the idealistic young woman willing to go to dangerous places for what she believed in. It had been a public-relations nightmare for the Israelis, which they had fought hard to contain.
But until now no one outside the Israeli Defence Force had actually seen it happen. More importantly, no one had heard it happen.
Erika had spent Saturday and Sunday holed up in an activist’s flat in East London going through everything she could find on the death of Tamara Wilton. The Israeli Defence Force investigation had been a whitewash. The recent Goldstone Report, instigated by the United Nations to examine human rights abuses by both sides in the Gaza war of the winter of 2008–9, had found no evidence to question the IDF’s version of events: that the helicopter crew’s assumption that the UN truck contained a Palestinian anti-tank unit was reasonable, as was their action to destroy it.
There were doubts, accusations, but no proof.
Until now.
As she looked out over the broad expanse of brown and grey rubble that had been spewed out of a volcano several thousand years before, Erika felt the excitement build inside her. The Icelandic priest was right, this
was
big. This was very big.
In the three years of its existence Freeflow had published many important leaks: it had started by exposing international inaction in Darfur, then corrupt arms deals in Africa, cover-ups in Belgium, political shenanigans in Italy and dodgy loans in Iceland. This video would cause the biggest stir. Which is why they had to make it objective, hard-hitting and above all unimpeachable.
This time their target was Israel.
Erika had always known that at some point Freeflow would have to publish a leak concerning Israel, and she had no doubt that this particular leak deserved to be published. But she also knew what her family would think of it. What Erika was doing would be a step too far for them.
She took a deep breath. Too bad.
CHAPTER TWO
T
HEY PASSED THROUGH
the newly built suburbs of Reykjavík into the city centre, a warren of small, brightly coloured houses with corrugated iron roofs. Ásta drove up a hill towards the tall smooth swooping church spire that Erika remembered from her previous visit to the city. From the summit by the church she could see over the roofs towards a broad mountain ridge dusted with snow to the north and sea to the west.
‘That’s Mount Esja over there,’ Ásta said. ‘It looks different every time you see it.’
They descended a pretty residential road, a little wider than the others, with small leafless trees and cars parked on one side perpendicular to the sidewalk. She caught sight of the street sign: Thórsgata. Ásta drew up outside a yellow concrete house with a metal roof. Lights glimmered behind drawn curtains. ‘Here we are.’
Inside, the house was buzzing. The ground floor was open-plan, essentially a large living area full of computer equipment, wires, folding tables and chairs, and people.
‘Hey, Erika, great to see you!’ Nico, tall, with shaven cranium and unshaven jaw, kissed her on both cheeks. Dieter looked up from a nest of cables and waved absent-mindedly.
Dúddi, a young Icelandic computer-science student, came over holding out his hand. Erika ignored it and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Hey, Dúddi. Great to see you again. How’s it been?’
Dúddi grinned. ‘It’s been good. It’s great to have Freeflow here.’
‘Let me introduce you to the other two,’ said Nico. He was wearing black designer T-shirt and jeans, and the familiar diamond earring in his left ear.
The two volunteers in question were Zivah, an Israeli student who would act as translator, and Franz, a Swiss video and sound guy. They were both in their early twenties and, like Ásta and Dúddi, full of enthusiasm.
Freeflow claimed that it had an army of volunteers all around the world. This wasn’t strictly true. People certainly put themselves forward to help, but most of them soon faded away when given the simplest tasks. Erika hoped that these two would prove more reliable.