Operation Napoleon (17 page)

‘Jesus, Kristín! What’s going on?’ he burst out when he saw her standing at the door of his office.

‘What have you heard?’ she asked.

‘All I know is that you’re wanted by the police because of a dead man in your apartment,’ he said, rising from his desk. ‘What on earth have you done?’

‘I haven’t done anything,’ she assured him.

‘That’s not how it sounded. Why are you on the run from the police? Surely it’s some misunderstanding?’

‘Calm down,’ Kristín said, closing the door. ‘I need to ask you a favour.’

‘A favour?’

‘Yes, I’d like to borrow your jeep.’

‘My jeep?’

‘Yes. Look, I’ll fill you in on the whole story as soon as I have time but I’m in a terrible hurry and there’s no one else I can turn to. You have to help me.’

He stood staring at her as if she was a complete stranger; a tall, good-looking man with attractive brown eyes who had caught her off her guard at a Law Society party and been part of her life for the next three years.

‘I’m desperate,’ she said. ‘You’d be doing me an incredible favour.’

‘Are you in some kind of danger?’ he asked in a gentler tone, and she remembered that for all his faults he could be considerate at times.

‘No,’ she lied. ‘And I am going to get in touch with the police just as soon as I can but there’s something I have to do first and you can help me.’

‘What are you planning to do with the jeep?’

‘I have to take a short trip into the countryside – I won’t be long, trust me.’

Ómar wavered. He could see that Kristín was desperate and had no good reason to refuse her request.

‘Just for today?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘And you’ll leave it in front of the office by the end of the day?’

‘Yes. Thank you so much, “mar. I knew I could rely on you.’

‘If you don’t return it, I’ll be on to the police straight away.’

‘No problem,’ Kristín said, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’

‘Did you really kill that man?’

‘Of course not. Don’t be silly. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. I promise.’

Now she and Steve were sitting in a handsome, brand-new blue Pajero. The jeep was equipped with a car-phone and tinted windows; apart from her brief respite in the library, it was the first time Kristín had not felt hunted in the last eighteen hours. She fought down the instinct not to leave the jeep’s warm, leathery interior.

She had found a parking space in front of a florist near the restaurant, from where they could monitor the comings and goings around the pub. It was getting on for four o’clock, dusk was falling. A group of men clad in thick jumpers, leather jackets and jeans – trawlermen, Kristín guessed – stopped outside the pub and, after a loud altercation, went inside. A young couple followed them. A fat man in a thick windcheater came out. Everything seemed calm.

It was ten past four when Steve nudged Kristín.

‘There’s Monica,’ he said, pointing to a tall, slim woman in her early forties, with dark hair, wearing a thick, beige overcoat and a belt around her waist. She hurried inside. They waited to see if anyone was following her, then stepped out of the car. Looking through the window Steve saw that Monica had taken a seat at the back, in a corner. The fishermen were now lining the bar and making a racket, roaring with laughter and shouting to one another. Four men sat by one of the large windows facing the street, trying to ignore the fishermen. Otherwise, only the odd table was occupied. The interior was wood-panelled and furnished with rustic wooden tables and heavy chairs in a forlorn attempt to evoke an Irish pub ambience, and a small staircase led to an upstairs room where they sometimes had live music. Kristín and Steve made their way over to the corner and sat down beside Monica.

‘What’s happening, Steve? What the hell’s going on?’ Monica asked the moment she saw them. The words came tumbling out; she was agitated and tiny pearls of sweat beaded her upper lip.

‘I don’t know,’ Steve said. ‘I swear I don’t know.’

They described the events of the previous evening and night for her and she listened, tense and restless, rubbing her hands together as if she was finding it hard to concentrate. Steve noticed her continually looking over his shoulder as he was speaking. While they were waiting outside in the jeep, Steve had explained to Kristín that he and Monica used to work together when she lived on the base, before she got her job with the Fulbright Commission.

‘Did you find anything out?’ Steve asked, when he had finished his story.

‘No one will say a word,’ Monica answered, running her hand through her hair. ‘The embassy is in a state of siege. I’ve never seen guns in there before but now everyone is armed. They’re special forces, I think. It’s like living in a time-bomb that could go off any minute. Most of the embassy staff have been forced to take leave. When I asked what was going on, I was sent to see some officer who said that the situation would be sorted out in a few days and that everything would then go back to normal. He asked me to be patient. He was very polite but I got the impression he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me given half a chance.’

‘In a few days?’ Kristín repeated. ‘They’ll have left the glacier by then and presumably the country too.’

‘What about this Ratoff?’ Steve asked. ‘Did you find anything on him?’

‘Nothing. Not that I’ve had much chance to look. Obviously, if he works for the secret services, it won’t be easy to track him down. I don’t even know if it’s a Christian name or a family name, or even his real name at all.’

‘Nor do we,’ Kristín interjected impatiently. ‘It’s just something I overheard. So what do you know about troop movements on the glacier?’

‘I spoke to a friend on the base, Eastman. He’s one of the guys in charge of the hangars and he told me the situation there is very mysterious. The word is that special forces troops arrived on a C-17 transport plane that’s now waiting on standby on one of the runways. It’s almost unheard of: no one’s allowed near the plane – they have their own guards. The troops who arrived on it must be the men your brother saw on the glacier. Eastman didn’t know where they were heading. The whole thing’s shrouded in the utmost secrecy.’

‘What about the two men who tried to kill Kristín?’ Steve asked.

‘The embassy’s crawling with dubious characters. For all I know, any one of them could be a paid assassin.’

‘Are they tapping the phones?’

‘Yes, Steve. They’re tapping the phones.’

‘So they know who makes calls, both to and from the embassy?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’

‘What do you mean, trying to tell us? Jesus Christ, so they know about you and me, about us! Have you sold us down the river, Monica?’ Steve said slowly in disbelief. ‘Is this a trap?’ He was on his feet now, tugging at Kristín, who had not yet absorbed the implications of what Monica was telling them. Following the line of Monica’s gaze Steve glanced around to see Ripley entering the pub, dressed in a padded, white ski-suit. He strolled unhurriedly over to their corner. Steve looked back at Monica.

‘They threatened my boys,’ Monica said desperately; she too was on her feet.

Kristín could not believe what she was seeing when she looked over at the door and spotted Ripley making his way towards them, and out of the corner of her eye glimpsed Bateman coming down the stairs. He was dressed like Ripley; they no longer looked like religious salesmen; now they might have been tourists. She could see no way out of the trap – she and Steve were in a back corner of the pub, in the place chosen by Monica. There was no escape route.

‘Third time lucky,’ Ripley said, pushing Kristín down into her seat again. She stared at him, her knees buckled and she fell rather than sat. Ripley took a seat beside Monica, and Bateman pulled up a chair and joined them, indicating to Steve to return to his chair.

‘Well, isn’t this cosy?’ Ripley said, beaming. ‘Is the beer good here? Before you try anything silly, I should point out that we’re both armed and won’t hesitate to shoot, so perhaps we can do this in a civilised way.’

‘We have a car outside and we’re going to invite you – not you, Monica – to come for a drive,’ Bateman added.

‘And if we refuse to go with you?’ Steve said, still searching Monica’s face.

‘Ah, you’re the knight in shining armour that she found on the base, aren’t you?’ Ripley said, smiling to reveal a row of improbably even white teeth.

‘What a charming couple,’ Bateman continued, looking at Kristín. ‘Do you make a habit of screwing Americans from the base or is Steve here the exception?’ He reached out a hand as if to caress her cheek.

Kristín jerked her head back. Steve sat stock still. Monica lowered her eyes in shame.

‘Well, it’s been delightful but regrettably we’d better get moving,’ Bateman said. ‘Monica, here, who’s ready to betray her friends at the drop of a hat, will leave first and make herself scarce. I’ll go next and escort our political scientist. We’re going to stand up very slowly and walk out of here very calmly. Ripley and Kristín will follow, and that’ll be that. It couldn’t be simpler.’

‘Where are you taking us?’ Steve asked.

‘We’ll find some nice quiet spot,’ Bateman said. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

‘What’s in the plane on the glacier?’ Kristín asked.

‘Now that’s the kind of curiosity that we find so stimulating,’ Bateman said. ‘But don’t you think it would be better if you let us get on with what we have to do?’

Bateman stood up to let Monica pass. She bustled away from the table, keeping her eyes on the ground as she passed them and hurried across the pub to the exit, looking neither left nor right. Opening the door, she vanished into the winter dusk.

‘Right, Stevie, on your feet,’ Bateman said, standing up himself and taking hold of Steve’s shoulder and tugging at him. Steve stood up, looking helplessly at Kristín as Bateman turned him round and pushed him along in front of him. He did nothing roughly as he did not want to attract any attention.

‘Now you,’ Ripley said. Neither the fishermen at the bar nor any of the other customers seemed to notice. Kristín rose slowly and they set off. She felt sick, her legs weak as if they did not belong to her; the whole situation seemed unreal, as if it was happening to someone else, as if time had slowed down. When they reached the bar, one of the trawlermen inadvertently blocked her way, forcing her to stop in her tracks. Ripley tried to move him aside but he would not budge or give Ripley so much as a glance. Kristín saw Steve climbing into the white Ford Explorer outside the pub. So this is how it would end: abducted from a busy pub, without so much as putting up a fight, for a lonely, unpleasant finale.

‘He called you a faggot,’ Kristín said in Icelandic, before the fisherman could say a word. She had noticed him staring at her while she sat with Steve and Monica but had tried not to catch his eye. She knew all about men who stared from a distance: they were trouble.

‘Oh, yeah? Who said that?’ the fisherman demanded, instantly squaring up.

‘Faggot. He called you a fucking faggot,’ Kristín said, pointing at Ripley.

‘Don’t say a word more,’ Ripley ordered, pulling at Kristín. ‘Your boyfriend will get shot if anything goes wrong in here.’

‘He said you were all fucking fairies,’ Kristín yelled at the bar, tearing herself away from Ripley. They now had the fishermen’s undivided attention. If Ripley meant to pull the gun out of his ski-suit, he did not manage it. She saw the barrel of a revolver glint in his hand, then watched as the fisherman who had showed an interest in her punched him hard in the face.

‘I’ll show you who’s the faggot,’ he said.

Ripley collapsed on the floor and as the trawlermen surrounded him, Kristín edged slowly out of the crowd. She glanced outside at the Explorer. Steve was in the back, Bateman behind the wheel, inevitably beginning to wonder what had delayed his partner. He craned his neck to peer into the pub but Kristín was not sure what he could see.

Noticing a door behind the bar, she vaulted over the counter and fled into what transpired to be the kitchen. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ripley trying to fend off two fishermen before he was overpowered; the Icelanders were raining down blows on his body and head. Kristín sprinted through the kitchen and out of a door that opened into a small backyard which was connected to the street via a narrow alley. Running along it then pressing her back against the wall to peer into the street, she saw that the white Explorer had not moved. Inside she could just make out Bateman and Steve.

She began to creep towards the car, then saw Bateman gesticulating at Steve and yelling something at him. Next minute he jumped out of the Explorer, slamming the door behind him, and ran into the pub. Without a moment’s hesitation she raced to the rear door on the street side and tried to open it but discovered it was locked. Noticing her, Steve banged on the window. He could not open the door on his side either; he was locked in the car.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Kristín panted. Looking round frantically she saw a small warning sign that had been erected in front of some nearby roadworks. Dragging it towards the car, she heaved it as hard as she could against Steve’s window. The glass shattered, small splinters showering the interior and the road. Immediately the car alarm went off and inside the pub she saw Ripley’s head jerk round. Bateman was supporting him. The fishermen were standing in a huddle by the bar. Bateman shouted something as Steve squeezed out of the window, ripping his jacket on the jagged edges of the glass.