day after tomorrow.’
Taggart was silent and al I heard were the waves of static beating
against my eardrum. Then he said, ‘Can’t be done – I stil 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
wel on your way to ruining a most important operation. When you meet
Case you take your orders from him and you’l do precisely as he says.
Understand?’
‘He’d better not have Slade with him,’ I said. ‘Or al bets are off. Are
you putting your dog on a leash, Taggart?’
‘All right,’ said Taggart reluctantly. ‘I’l 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 hel !’ 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’l 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’l 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 usual y 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 dial ed. 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?’! shouted.
Taggart’s voice came through the crashing static like a thin ghost. ‘. .
. best of . . . knowledge . . . Kenni . . . Iceland . . . he’s . . .’
And that was al 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 Dyngjufjol .
‘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 real y breaks.’
Chapter I
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 fel 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 wal .
Some people I know get jumpy even at the thought of being inside the
crater of what is, after al , 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. Statistical y 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 gril 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 gal ons and we carried another eighteen gal ons in four
jerrycans, enough for over 600 miles on good roads. But we weren’t on
good roads and, in the /Obyggdir,/ we’d be lucky to get even ten miles
from a gal on. The gradients and the general roughness meant a lot of
low gear work and that swal ows fuel greedily, and the nearest fil ing
station was a long way south. Stil , I reckoned we’d have enough to get
to Geysir.
Miraculously, Elin produced two bottles of Carlsberg from the
refrigerator, and I fil ed a glass grateful y. 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’l 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 was there
he picked up a taste for Calvados – the Normandy applejack. Got any salt?’
Elin passed the salt cel ar, ‘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 al
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 eyebal s 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 tactful y 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 de-briefing wasn’t as thorough as it should have been, and the
fact that Kennikin drinks never got put on record. It stil isn’t on
record, as I’ve just found out.’
‘I stil don’t see the point,’ said Elin helplessly.
‘I’m just about to make it,’ I said. ‘When Slade came to see me in