broken the rules as far as I was concerned – it was as though a chess
player had knocked off one of his own pieces to checkmate the king, and
that’s not in the rules.’
Elin said in a shaking voice, ‘Are there any rules in your dirty world?’
‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘There aren’t any rules. But I thought there
were. I tried to raise a stink.’ I knocked back the undiluted whisky and
felt it burn my throat. ‘Nobody would listen, of course – the job had
been successful and was now being forgotten and the time had come to go
on to bigger and better things. Slade had pulled it off and no one
wanted to delve too deeply into how he’d done it.’ I laughed
humourlessly. ‘In fact, he’d gone up a notch in the Department and any
muck-raking would be tactless – a reflection on the superior who had
promoted him. I was a nuisance and nuisances are unwanted and to be got
rid of.’
‘So they got rid of you,’ she said flatly.
‘If Slade had his way I’d have been got rid of the hard way –
permanently. In fact, he told me so not long ago. But he wasn’t too high
in the organization in those days and he didn’t carry enough weight.’ I
looked into the bottom of the glass. ‘What happened was that I had a
nervous breakdown.’
I raised my eyes to Elin. ‘Some of it was genuine – I’d say about
fifty-fifty. I’d been living on my nerves for a long time and this was
the last straw. Anyway, the Department , runs a hospital with tame
psychiatrists for cases like mine. Right now there’s a file stashed away
somewhere ful of stuff that would make Freud blush. If I step out of
line there’l be a psychiatrist ready to give evidence that I suffer
everything from enuresis to paranoic delusions of grandeur. Who would
disbelieve evidence coming from an eminent medical man?’
Elin was outraged. ‘But that’s unethical! You’re as sane as I am.’
‘There are no rules – remember?’ I poured out another drink, more gently
this time. ‘So I was al owed to retire. I was no use to the Department
anyway; I had become that anomaly, the wel -known secret service agent.
I crept away to a Scottish glen to lick my wounds. I thought I was safe
until Slade showed up.’
‘And blackmailed you with Kennikin. Would he tel Kennikin where you are?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him, on his past record. And it’s quite true
that Kennikin has a score to settle. The word is that he’s no good to
the girls any more, and he blames me for it. I’d just as soon he doesn’t
know where to find me.’
I thought of the last encounter in the dimness of the Swedish forest. I
knew I hadn’t kil ed him: I knew it as soon as I had squeezed the
trigger. There is a curious prescience in the gunman which tel s him if
he has hit the mark at which he aims, and I knew the bullet had gone low
and that I had only wounded him. The nature of the wound was something
else, and I could expect no mercy from Kennikin if he caught up with me.
Elin looked away from me and across the little glade which was quiet and
stil in the fading light apart from the sleepy chirrup of birds bedding
down for the night. She shivered and put her arms about her body. ‘You
come from another world – a world I don’t know.’
‘It’s a world I’m trying to protect you from.’
‘Was Birkby married?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘One thing did occur to me. If I
Slade had thought that Birkby had a better chance of getting next to
Kennikin, then he’d have told him to kil me, and for the same reason.
Sometimes I think it would have been better that way.’
‘No, Alan!’ Elin leaned forward and took my hand in hers. ‘Never think
that.’
‘Don’t worry; I’m not suicidal y minded,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you now know
why I don’t like Slade and why I distrust him – and why I’m suspicious
of this particular operation.’
Elin looked at me closely, stil holding my hand. ‘Alan, apart from
Birkby, have you kil ed anyone else?’
‘I have,’ I said deliberately.
Her face seemed to close tight and her hand slipped from mine. She
nodded slowly. ‘I have a lot to think about, Alan. I’d like to take a
walk.’ She rose. ‘Alone ? if you don’t mind.’
I watched her walk into the trees and then picked up the bottle hefting
it in my hand and wondering if I wanted another drink. I looked at the
level of liquid and discovered that four of my unmeasured slugs had
nearly half-emptied the bottle. I put it down again – I have never
believed in drowning any problems and this was no time to start.
I knew what was wrong with Elin. It’s a shock for a woman to realize
that the man accepted into her bed is a certified kil er, no matter in
how laudable a cause. And I had no il usions that the cause for which I
had worked was particularly commendable – not to Elin. What would a
peaceful Icelander know about the murkier depths of the unceasing
undercover war between the nations?
I col ected the dirty dishes and began to wash them, wondering what she
would do. All I had going for me were the summers we had spent together
and the hope that those days and nights of happiness would weigh in the
balance of her mind. I hoped that what she knew of me as a man, a lover
and a human being would count for more than my past.
? I finished cleaning up and lit a cigarette. Light was slowly ebbing
from the sky towards the long twilight of summer in northern lands. It
would never real y get dark -it was too close to Midsummer Day – and the
sun would not be absent for long.
I saw Elin coming back, her white shirt glimmering among the trees. As
she approached the Land-Rover she looked up at the sky. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘Yes.’
She stooped, unzipped the sleeping bags, and then zipped them together
to make one large bag. As she turned her head towards me her lips curved
in a half-smile. ‘Come to bed, Alan,’ she said, and I knew that nothing
was lost and everything was going to be al right.
Later that night I had an idea. I Unzipped my side of the bag and rolled
out, trying not to disturb Elin. She said sleepily, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t like Slade’s mysterious box being in the open. I’m going to
hide it.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere under the chassis.’
‘Can’t it wait until morning?’
I pulled on a sweater. ‘I might as wel do it now. I can’t sleep – I’ve
been thinking too much.’
Elin yawned. ‘Can I help – hold a torch or something?’
‘Go back to sleep.’ I took the metal box, a roll of insulating tape and
a torch, and went over to the Land-Rover. On the theory that I might
want to get at the box quickly I taped it inside the rear bumper. I had
just finished when a random sweep of my hand inside the bumper gave me
pause, because my fingers encountered something that shifted stickily.
I nearly twisted my head off in an attempt to see what it was. Squinting
in the light of the torch I saw another metal box, but much smal er and
painted green, the same colour as the Land-Rover but definitely not
standard equipment as provided by the Rover Company. Gently I grasped it
and pulled it away. One side of the smal cube was magnetized so it
would hold on a metal surface and, as I held it in my hand, I knew that
someone was being very clever.
It was a radio bug of the type known as a ‘bumper-bleeper’ and, at that
moment, it would be sending out a steady scream, shouting, /’Here I am!
Here I am!’/ Anyone with a radio direction finder tuned to the correct
frequency would know exactly where to find the Land-Rover any time he
cared to switch on.
I rolled away and got to my feet, stil holding the bug, and for a
moment was tempted to smash it. How long it had been on the Land-Rover I
didn’t know – probably ever since Reykjavik. And who else could have
bugged it but Slade or his man, Graham. Not content with warning me to
keep Elin out of it, he had coppered his bet by making it easy to check
on her. Or was it me he wanted to find?
I was about to drop it and grind it under my heel when I paused. That