Running Blind / The Freedom Trap

Elin looked up. ‘Of course. We contact Gufunes Radio and they connect us into the telephone system.’

I said dreamily, ‘Isn’t it fortunate that the transatlantic cables run through Iceland? If we can be plugged into the telephone system there’s nothing to prevent a further patching so as to put a call through to London.’ I stabbed my finger at the Land-Rover with its radio antenna waving gently in the breeze. ‘Right from there.’

‘I’ve never heard of it being done,’ said Elin doubtfully.

I finished the sandwich. ‘I see no reason why it can’t be done. After all, President Nixon spoke to Neil Armstrong when he was on the moon. The ingredients are there – all we have to do is put them together. Do you know anyone in the telephone department?’

‘I know Svein Haraldsson,’ she said thoughtfully.

I would have taken a bet that she would know someone in the telephone department; everybody in Iceland knows somebody. I scribbled a number on a scrap of paper and gave it to her. ‘That’s the London number. I want Sir David Taggart in person.’

‘What if this … Taggart … won’t accept the call?’

I grinned. ‘I have a feeling that Sir David will accept any call coming from Iceland right now.’

Elin looked up at the radio mast. ‘The big set in the hut will give us more power.’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t use it – Slade might be monitoring the telephone bands. He can listen to what I have to say to Taggart but he mustn’t know where it’s coming from. A call from the Land-Rover could be coming from anywhere.’

Elin walked over to the Land-Rover, switched on that set and tried to raise Gufunes. The only result was a crackle of static through which a few lonely souls wailed like damned spirits, too drowned by noise to be understandable. ‘There must be storms in the western mountains,’ she said. ‘Should I try Akureyri?’ That was the nearest of the four radiotelephone stations.

‘No,’ I said. ‘If Slade is monitoring at all he’ll be concentrating on Akureyri. Try Seydisfjördur.’

Contacting Seydisfjördur in eastern Iceland was much easier and Elin was soon patched into the landline network to Reykjavik and spoke to her telephone friend, Svein. There was a fair amount of incredulous argument but she got her way. ‘There’s a delay of an hour,’ she said.

‘Good enough. Ask Seydisfjördur to contact us when the call comes through.’ I looked at my watch. In an hour it would be 3:45 p.m. British Standard Time – a good hour to catch Taggart.

We packed up and on we pushed south towards the distant ice blink of Vatnajökull. I left the receiver switched on but turned it low and there was a subdued babble from the speaker.

Elin said, ‘What good will it do to speak to this man, Taggart?’

‘He’s Slade’s boss,’ I said. ‘He can get Slade off my back.’

‘But will he?’ she asked. ‘You were supposed to hand over the package and you didn’t. You disobeyed orders. Will Taggart like that?’

‘I don’t think Taggart knows what’s going on here. I don’t think he knows that Slade tried to kill me – and you. I think Slade is working on his own, and he’s out on a limb. I could be wrong, of course, but that’s one of the things I want to get from Taggart.’

‘And if you are wrong? If Taggart instructs you to give the package to Slade? Will you do it?’

I hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’

Elin said. ‘Perhaps Graham was right. Perhaps Slade really thought you’d defected – you must admit he would have every right to think so. Would he then …?’

‘Send a man with a gun? He would.’

‘Then I think you’ve been stupid, Alan; very, very stupid. I think you’ve allowed your hatred of Slade to cloud your judgment, and I think you’re in very great trouble.’

I was beginning to think so myself. I said, ‘I’ll find that out when I talk to Taggart. If he backs Slade … ’ If Taggart backed Slade then I was Johnny-in-the-middle in danger of being squeezed between the Department and the opposition. The Department doesn’t like its plans being messed around, and the wrath of Taggart would be mighty.

And yet there were things that didn’t fit – the pointlessness of the whole exercise in the first place, Slade’s lack of any real animosity when I apparently boobed, the ambivalence of Graham’s role. And there was something else which prickled at the back of my mind but which I could not bring to the surface. Something which Slade had done or had not done, or had said or had not said – something which had rung a warning bell deep in my unconscious.

I braked and brought the Land-Rover to a halt, and Elin looked at me in surprise. I said, ‘I’d better know what cards I hold before I talk to Taggart. Dig out the can-opener – I’m going to open the package.’

‘Is that wise? You said yourself that it might be better not to know.’

‘You may be right. But if you play stud poker without looking at your hole card you’ll probably lose. I think I’d better know what it is that everyone wants so much.’

I got out and went to the rear bumper where I stripped the tape from the metal box and pulled it loose. When I got back behind the wheel Elin already had the can-opener – I think she was really as curious as I was.

The box was made of ordinary shiny metal of the type used for cans, but it was now flecked with a few rust spots due to its exposure. A soldered seam ran along four edges so I presumed that face to be the top. I tapped and pressed experimentally and found that the top flexed a little more under pressure than any of the other five sides, so it was probably safe to stab the blade of the can-opener into it.

I took a deep breath and jabbed the blade into one corner and heard the hiss of air as the metal was penetrated. That indicated that the contents had been vacuum-packed and I hoped I wasn’t going to end up with a couple of pounds of pipe tobacco. The belated thought came to me that it could have been booby-trapped; there are detonators that operate on air pressure and that sudden equalization could have made the bloody thing blow up in my face.

But it hadn’t, so I took another deep breath and began to lever the can-opener. Luckily it was one of the old-fashioned type that didn’t need a rim to operate against; it made a jagged, sharp-edged cut – a really messy job – but it opened up the box inside two minutes.

I took off the top and looked inside and saw a piece of brown, shiny plastic with a somewhat electrical look about it – you can see bits of it in any radio repair shop. I tipped the contents of the box into the palm of my hand and looked at the gadget speculatively and somewhat hopelessly.

The piece of brown plastic was the base plate for an electronic circuit, a very complex one. I recognized resistors and transistors but most of it was incomprehensible. It had been a long time since I had studied radio and the technological avalanche of advances had long since passed me by. In my day a component was a component, but the microcircuitry boys are now putting an entire and complicated circuit with dozens of components on to a chip of silicon you’d need a microscope to see.

‘What is it?’ asked Elin with sublime faith that I would know the answer.

‘I’m damned if I know,’ I admitted. I looked closer and tried to trace some of the circuits but it was impossible. Part of it was of modular construction with plates of printed circuits set on edge, each plate bristled with dozens of components; elsewhere it was of more conventional design, and set in the middle was a curious metal shape for which there was no accounting – not by me, anyway.

The only thing that made sense were the two ordinary screw terminals at the end of the base plate with a small engraved brass plate screwed over them. One terminal was marked ’ + ’ and the other ’ - ‘, and above was engraved, ‘110 v. 60~.’ I said, ‘That’s an American voltage and frequency. In England we use 240 volts and 50 cycles. Let’s assume that’s the input end.’

‘So whatever it is, it’s American.’

‘Possibly American,’ I said cautiously. There was no power pack and the two terminals were not connected so that the gadget was not working at the moment. Presumably it would do what it was supposed to do when a 110 volt, 60 cycle current was applied across those terminals. But what it would do I had no idea at all.

Whatever kind of a whatsit it was, it was an advanced whatsit. The electronic whiz-kids have gone so far and fast that this dohickey, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, could very well be an advanced computer capable of proving that eVmc2 or, alternatively, disproving it.

It could also have been something that a whiz-kid might have jack-legged together to cool his coffee, but I didn’t think so. It didn’t have the jack-leg look about it; it was coolly professional, highly sophisticated and had the air of coming off a very long production line – a production line in a building without windows and guarded by hard-faced men with guns.

I said thoughtfully, ‘Is Lee Nordlinger still at the base at Keflavik?’

‘Yes,’ said Elin. ‘I saw him two weeks ago.’

I poked at the gadget. ‘He’s the only man in Iceland who might have the faintest idea of what this is.’

‘Are you going to show it to him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly. ‘He might recognize it as a piece of missing US government property and, since he’s a commander in the US Navy, he might think he has to take action. After all, I’m not supposed to have it, and there’d be a lot of questions.’

I put the gadget back into its box, laid the lid on top and taped it into place. ‘I don’t think this had better go underneath again now that I’ve opened it.’

‘Listen!’ said Elin. ‘That’s our number.’

I reached up and twisted the volume control and the voice became louder. ‘Seydisfjördur calling seven, zero, five; Seydisfjördur calling seven, zero, five.’

I unhooked the handset. ‘Seven, zero, five answering Seydisfjördur.’

‘Seydisfjördur calling seven, zero, five; your call to London has come through. I am connecting.’

‘Thank you, Seydisfjördur.’

The characteristics of the noise coming through the speaker changed suddenly and a very faraway voice said, ‘David Taggart here. Is that you, Slade?’

I said. ‘I’m speaking on an open line – a very open line. Be careful.’

There was a pause, then Taggart said, ‘I understand. Who is speaking? This is a very bad line.’

He was right, it was a bad line. His voice advanced and receded in volume and was mauled by an occasional burst of static. I said, ‘This is Stewart here.’

An indescribable noise erupted from the speaker. It could have been static but more likely it was Taggart having an apoplexy. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he roared.

I looked at Elin and winced. From the sound of that it appeared that Taggart was not on my side, but it remained to be found if he backed Slade. He was going full blast. ‘I talked to Slade this morning. He said you … er … tried to terminate his contract.’ Another useful euphemism. ‘And what’s happened to Philips?’

‘Who the hell is Philips?’ I interjected.

‘Oh! You might know him better as Buchner – or Graham.’

‘His contract I did terminate,’ I said.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ yelled Taggart. ‘Have you gone out of your mind?’

‘I got in first just before he tried to terminate my contract,’ I said. ‘The competition is awful fierce here in Iceland. Slade sent him.’

‘Slade tells it differently.’

‘I’ll bet he does,’ I said. ‘Either he’s gone off his rocker or he’s joined a competing firm. I came across some of their representatives over here, too.’

‘Impossible!’ said Taggart flatly.

‘The competing representatives?’

‘No – Slade. It’s unthinkable.’

‘How can it be unthinkable when I’m thinking it?’ I said reasonably.

‘He’s been with us so long. You know the good work he’s done.’

‘Maclean,’ I said. ‘Burgess, Kim Philby. Blake, the Krogers, Lonsdale – all good men and true. What’s wrong with adding Slade?’

Taggart’s voice got an edge to it. ‘This is an open line – watch your language. Stewart, you don’t know the score. Slade says you still have the merchandise – is that true?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

Taggart breathed hard. ‘Then you must go back to Akureyri. I’ll fix it so that Slade finds you there. Let him have it.’

‘The only thing I’ll let Slade have is a final dismissal notice,’ I said. ‘The same thing I gave Graham – or whatever his name was.’

‘You mean you’re not going to obey orders,’ said Taggart dangerously.

‘Not so far as Slade is concerned,’ I said. ‘When Slade sent Graham my fiancée happened to be in the way.’

There was a long pause before Taggart said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Did anything …? Is she …?’

‘She’s got a hole in her,’ I said baldly, and not giving a damn if it was an open line. ‘Keep Slade away from me, Taggart.’

He had been called Sir David for so long that he didn’t relish the unadorned sound of his own name, and it took some time for him to swallow it. At last he said, in a subdued voice, ‘So you won’t accept Slade.’

‘I wouldn’t accept Slade with a packet of Little Noddy’s Rice Crispies. I don’t trust him.’

‘Who would you accept?’

That I had to think about. It had been a long time since I had been with the Department and I didn’t know what the turnover had been. Taggart said, ‘Would you accept Case?’

Case was a good man; I knew him and trusted him as far as I’d trust anyone in the Department. ‘I’ll accept Jack Case.’

‘Where will you meet him? And when?’

I figured out the logic of time and distance. ‘At Geysir – five p.m. the day after tomorrow.’

Taggart was silent and all I heard were the waves of static beating against my eardrum. Then he said, ‘Can’t be done – I still have to get him back here. Make it twenty-four hours later.’ He slipped in a fast one. ‘Where are you now?’

I grinned at Elin. ‘Iceland.’

Even the distortion could not disguise the rasp in Taggart’s voice; he sounded like a concrete-mixer. ‘Stewart, I hope you know that you’re well on your way to ruining a most important operation. When you meet Case you take your orders from him and you’ll do precisely as he says. Understand?’

‘He’d better not have Slade with him,’ I said. ‘Or all bets are off. Are you putting your dog on a leash, Taggart?’

‘All right,’ said Taggart reluctantly. ‘I’ll pull him back to London. But you’re wrong about him, Stewart. Look what he did to Kennikin in Sweden.’

It happened so suddenly that I gasped. The irritant that had been festering at the back of my mind came to the surface and it was like a bomb going off. ‘I want some information,’ I said quickly. ‘I might need it if I’m to do this job properly.’

‘All right; what is it?’ said Taggart impatiently.

‘What have you got on file about Kennikin’s drinking habits?’

‘What the hell!’ he roared. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘I need the information,’ I repeated patiently. I had Taggart by the short hairs and he knew it. I had the electronic gadget and he didn’t know where I was. I was bargaining from strength and I didn’t think he’d hold back apparently irrelevant information just to antagonize me. But he tried.

‘It’ll take time,’ he said. ‘Ring me back.’

‘Now you’re being funny,’ I said. ‘You have so many computers around you that electrons shoot out of your ears. All you have to do is to push a button and you’ll have the answer in two minutes. Push it!’

‘All right,’ he said in an annoyed voice. ‘Hold on.’ He had every right to be annoyed – the boss isn’t usually spoken to in that way.

I could imagine what was going on. The fast, computer-controlled retrieval of microfilm combined with the wonders of closed circuit television would put the answer on to the screen on his desk in much less than two minutes providing the right coding was dialled. Every known member of the opposition was listed in that microfilm file together with every known fact about him, so that his life was spread out like a butterfly pinned in a glass case. Apparent irrelevancies about a man could come in awfully useful if known at the right time or in the right place.

Presently Taggart said in a dim voice, ‘I’ve got it.’ The static was much worse and he was very far away. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Speak up – I can hardly hear you. I want to know about his drinking habits.’

Taggart’s voice came through stronger, but not much. ‘Kennikin seems to be a bit of a puritan. He doesn’t drink and, since his last encounter with you, he doesn’t go out with women.’ His voice was sardonic. ‘Apparently you ruined him for the only pleasure in his life. You’d better watch … ’ The rest of the sentence was washed out in noise.

‘What was that?’ I shouted.

Taggart’s voice came through the crashing static like a thin ghost. ‘… best of … knowledge … Kenni … Iceland … he’s …’

And that was all I got, but it was enough. I tried unavailingly to restore the connection but nothing could be done. Elin pointed to the sky in the west which was black with cloud. ‘The storm is moving east; you won’t get anything more until it’s over.’

I put the handset back into its clip. ‘That bastard, Slade!’ I said. ‘I was right.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Elin.

I looked at the clouds which were beginning to boil over Dyngjufjöll. ‘I’d like to get off this track,’ I said. ‘We have twenty-four hours to waste and I’d rather not do it right here. Let’s get up into Askja before that storm really breaks.’

FOUR

The great caldera of Askja is beautiful – but not in a storm. The wind lashed the waters of the crater lake far below and someone, possibly old Odin, pulled the plug out of the sky so that the rain fell in sheets and wind-driven curtains. It was impossible to get down to the lake until the water-slippery ash had dried out so I pulled off the track and we stayed right there, just inside the crater wall.

Some people I know get jumpy even at the thought of being inside the crater of what is, after all, a live volcano; but Askja had said his piece very loudly in 1961 and would probably be quiet for a while apart from a few minor exuberancies. Statistically speaking, we were fairly safe. I put up the top of the Land-Rover so as to get headroom, and presently there were lamb chops under the grill and eggs spluttering in the pan, and we were dry, warm and comfortable.

While Elin fried the eggs I checked the fuel situation. The tank held sixteen gallons and we carried another eighteen gallons in four jerrycans, enough for over 600 miles on good roads. But we weren’t on good roads and, in the Óbyggdir, we’d be lucky to get even ten miles from a gallon. The gradients and the general roughness meant a lot of low gear work and that swallows fuel greedily, and the nearest filling station was a long way south. Still, I reckoned we’d have enough to get to Geysir.

Miraculously, Elin produced two bottles of Carlsberg from the refrigerator, and I filled a glass gratefully. I watched her as she spooned melted fat over the eggs and thought she looked pale and withdrawn. ‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘Stiff and tender,’ she said.

It would be. I said, ‘I’ll put another dressing on it after supper.’ I drank from the glass and felt the sharp tingle of cold beer. ‘I wish I could have kept you out of this, Elin.’

She turned her head and offered me a brief smile. ‘But you haven’t.’ With a dextrous twist of a spatula she lifted an egg on to a plate. ‘I can’t say I’m enjoying it much, though.’

‘Entertainment isn’t the object,’ I said.

She put the plate down before me. ‘Why did you ask about Kennikin’s drinking habits? It seems pointless.’

‘That goes back a long way,’ I said. ‘As a very young man Kennikin fought in Spain on the Republican side, and when that war was lost he lived in France for a while, stirring things up for Leon Blum’s Popular Front, but I think even then he was an undercover man. Anyway, it was there he picked up a taste for Calvados – the Normandy applejack. Got any salt?’

Elin passed the salt cellar. ‘I think maybe he had a drinking problem at one time and decided to cut it out because, as far as the Department is aware, he’s a non-drinker. You heard Taggart on that.’

Elin began to cut into a loaf of bread. ‘I don’t see the point of all this,’ she complained.

‘I’m coming to it. Like a lot of men with an alcohol problem he can keep off the stuff for months at a time, but when the going becomes tough and the pressures build up then he goes on a toot. And, by God, there are enough tensions in our line of work. But the point is that he’s a secret drinker; I only found out when I got next to him in Sweden. I visited him unexpectedly and found him cut to the eyeballs on Calvados – it’s the only stuff he inhales. He was drunk enough to talk about it, too. Anyway, I poured him into bed and tactfully made my exit, and he never referred to the incident again when I was with him.’

I accepted a piece of bread and dabbed at the yolk of an egg. ‘When an agent goes back to the Department after a job he is debriefed thoroughly and by experts. That happened to me when I got back from Sweden, but because I was raising a stink about what had happened to Jimmy Birkby maybe the debriefing wasn’t as thorough as it should have been, and the fact that Kennikin drinks never got put on record. It still isn’t on record, as I’ve just found out.’

‘I still don’t see the point,’ said Elin helplessly.

‘I’m just about to make it,’ I said. ‘When Slade came to see me in Scotland he told me of the way I had wounded Kennikin, and made the crack that Kennikin would rather operate on me with a sharp knife than offer to split a bottle of Calvados. How in hell would Slade know about the Calvados? He’s never been within a hundred miles of Kennikin and the fact isn’t on file in the Department. It’s been niggling at me for a long time, but the penny only dropped this afternoon.’

Elin sighed. ‘It’s a very small point.’

‘Have you ever witnessed a murder trial? The point which can hang a man can be very small. But add this to it – the Russians took a package which they presumably discovered to be a fake. You’d expect them to come after the real thing, wouldn’t you? But who did come after it, and with blood in his eye? None other than friend Slade.’

‘You’re trying to make out a case that Slade is a Russian agent,’ said Elin. ‘But it won’t work. Who was really responsible for the destruction of Kennikin’s network in Sweden?’

‘Slade master-minded it,’ I said. ‘He pointed me in the right direction and pulled the trigger.’

Elin shrugged. ‘Well, then? Would a Russian agent do that to his own side?’

‘Slade’s a big boy now,’ I said. ‘Right next to Taggart in a very important area of British Intelligence. He even lunches with the Prime Minister – he told me so. How important would it be to the Russians to get a man into that position?’

Elin looked at me as though I’d gone crazy. I said quietly, ‘Whoever planned this has a mind like a pretzel, but it’s all of a piece. Slade is in a top slot in British Intelligence – but how did he get there? Answer – by wrecking the Russian organization in Sweden. Which is more important to the Russians? To retain their Swedish network – which could be replaced if necessary? Or to put Slade where he is now?’

I tapped the table with the handle of my knife. ‘You can see the same twisted thinking throughout. Slade put me next to Kennikin by sacrificing Birkby; the Russkies put Slade next to Taggart by sacrificing Kennikin and his outfit.’

‘But this is silly!’ burst out Elin. ‘Why would Slade have to go to all that trouble with Birkby and you when the Russians would be co-operating with him, anyway?’