invitation which I, in my turn, declined to accept. The curious actions
of Case had led me to wonder who in the Department was trustworthy, and
I wouldn’t speak to anyone but Taggart.
Valtyr’s boat was anchored in a creek, a short distance from the open
beach, and we went out to it in a dinghy. He looked curiously at the two
long, sackcloth-covered parcels I took aboard but made no comment, while
I hoped they did not look too much like what they actual y were. I
wasn’t going to leave the rifles behind because I had an idea I might
need them.
The boat was about twenty-five feet overal , with a tiny cabin which had
sitting headroom and a skimpy wooden canopy to protect the man at the
wheel from the elements. 1 had checked the map to find the sea distance
from Vik to Keflavik and the boat seemed none too large. I said, ‘How
long wil it take?’
‘About twenty hours,’ said Valtyr, and added cheerful y, ‘If the bastard
engine keeps going. If not, it takes forever. You get seasick?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never had the chance to find out.’
‘You have the chance now.’ He bel owed with laughter.
We left the creek and the boat lifted alarmingly to the ocean swel s and
a fresh breeze streamed Elin’s hair. ‘It’s clearer today,’ said Valtyr.
He pointed over the bows. ‘You can see Vestmannaeyjar.’
I looked towards the group of islands and played the part which Elin had
assigned me. ‘Where is Surtsey from here?’
‘About twenty kilometres to the south-west of Heimaey – the big island.
You won’t see much of it yet.’
We plunged on, the little boat dipping into the deep swel s and
occasional y burying her bows in the water and shaking free a shower of
spray when she came up. I’m not any kind of a seaman and it didn’t look
too safe to me, but Valtyr took it calmly enough, and so did Elin. The
engine, which appeared to be a toy diesel about big enough to go with a
Meccano set, chugged away, aided by a crack from Valtyr’s boot when it
faltered, which it did too often for my liking. I could see why he was
pleased at the prospect of having a new one.
It took six hours to get to Surtsey, and Valtyr circled the island,
staying close to shore, while I asked the appropriate questions. He
said, ‘I can’t land you, you know.’
Surtsey, which came up thunderously and in flames from the bottom of the
sea, is strictly for scientists interested in finding out how life gains
hold in a sterile environment. Natural y they don’t want tourists
clumping about and bringing in seeds on their boots. ‘That’s al right,’
I said. ‘I didn’t expect to go ashore.’
Suddenly he chuckled. ‘Remember the Fishing War?’
I nodded. The so-cal ed Fishing War was a dispute between Iceland and
Britain about off-shore fishing limits, and there was a lot of bad blood
between the two fishing fleets. Eventual y it had been settled, with the
Icelanders making their main point of a twelve-mile limit.
Valtyr laughed, and said, ‘Surtsey came up and pushed our fishing limit
thirty kilometres farther south. An English skipper I met told me it was
a dirty trick – as though we’d done it deliberately. So I told him what
a geologist told me: in a mil ion years our fishing limit wil be pushed
as far south as Scotland.’ He laughed uproariously.
When we left Surtsey I abandoned my pretended interest and went below to
lie down. I was in need of sleep and my stomach had started to do
flip-flops so that I was thankful to stretch out, and I fel asleep as
though someone had hit me on the head.
Chapter IV
My sleep was long and deep because when I was awakened by Elin she said,
‘We’re nearly there.’
I yawned. ‘Where?’
‘Valtyr is putting us ashore at Keflavik.’
I sat up and nearly cracked my head on a beam. Overhead a jet plane
whined and when I went aft into the open I saw that the shore was quite
close and a plane was just dipping in to land. I stretched, and said,
‘What time is it?’
‘Eight o’clock,’ said Valtyr. ‘You slept wel .’
‘I needed it after a session with you,’ I said, and he grinned.
We tied up at eight-thirty, Elin jumped ashore and I handed her the
wrapped rifles. ‘Thanks for the ride, Valtyr.’
He waved away my thanks. ‘Any time. Maybe I can arrange to take you
ashore on Surtsey – it’s interesting. How long are you staying?’
‘For the rest of the summer,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know where I’l be.’
‘Keep in touch,’ he said.
We stood on the dockside and watched him leave, and then Elin said,
‘What are we doing here?’
‘I want to see Lee Nordlinger. It’s a bit chancy, but I want to know
what this gadget is. Wil Bjarni be here, do you think?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Elin. ‘He usual y flies out of Reyjkavik Airport.’
‘After breakfast I want you to go to the Icelandair office at the
airport here,’ I said. ‘Find out where Bjarni is, and stay there until I
come.’ I rubbed my cheek and felt unshaven bristles. ‘And stay off the
public concourse.
Kennikin is sure to have Keflavik Airport staked out and I ?. . . /i/
don’t want you seen.
‘Breakfast first,’ she said. ‘I know a good cafe here.’
When I walked into Nordlinger’s office and dumped the rifles in a corner
he looked at me with some astonishment, noting the sagging of my pockets
under the weight of the rifle ammunition, my bristly chin and general
uncouthness. His eyes flicked towards the corner. ‘Pretty heavy for
fishing tackle,’ he commented. ‘You look beat, Alan.’
‘I’ve been travel ing in rough country,’ I said, and sat down. ‘I’d like
to borrow a razor, and I’d like you to look at something.’
He slid open a drawer of his desk and drew out a battery-powered shaver
which he pushed across to me. ‘The washroom’s two doors along the
corridor,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to look at?’
I hesitated. I couldn’t very wel ask Nordlinger to keep his mouth shut
no matter what he found. That would be asking him to betray the basic
tenets of his profession, which he certainly wouldn’t do. I decided to
plunge and take a chance, so I dug the metal box from my pocket, took
off the tape which held the lid on, and shook out the gadget. I laid it
before him. ‘What’s that, Lee?’
He looked at it for a long time without touching it, then he said, ‘What
do you want to know about it?’
‘Practical y everything,’ I said. ‘But to begin with – what nationality
is it?’
He picked it up and turned it around. If anyone could tel me anything
about it, it was Commander Lee Nordlinger. He was an electronics officer
at Keflavik Base and ran the radar and radio systems, both ground-based
and airborne. From what I’d heard he was damned good at his job.
‘It’s almost certainly American,’ he said. He poked his finger at it. ‘I
recognize some of the components – these resistors, for instance, are
standard and are of American manufacture.’ He turned it around again.
‘And the input is standard American voltage and at fifty cycles.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Now – what is it?’
‘That I can’t tel you right now. For God’s sake, you bring in a lump of
miscel aneous circuitry and expect me to identify it at first crack of
the whip. I may be good but I’m not that good.’
‘Then can you tel me what it’s not?’ I asked patiently.
‘It’s no teenager’s transistor radio, that’s for sure,’ he said, and
frowned. ‘Come to that, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.’ He
tapped the odd-shaped piece of metal in the middle of the assembly.
‘I’ve never seen one of these, for example.’
‘Can you run a test on it?’
‘Sure.’ He uncoiled his lean length from behind the desk. ‘Let’s run a
current through it and see if it plays “The Star-spangled Banner.”‘
‘Can I come along?’
‘Why not?’ said Nordlinger lightly. ‘Let’s go to the shop.’ As we walked
along the corridor he said, ‘Where did you get it?’
‘It was given to me,’ I said uncommunicatively.
He gave me a speculative glance but said no more. We went through swing
doors at the end of the corridor and into a large room which had long
benches loaded with electronic gear. Lee signal ed to a petty officer
who came over. ‘Hi, Chief; I have something here I want to run a few
tests on. Have you a test bench free?’