The Valkyrie Project, page 26
“Fair enough. My word on that.”
“Okay. Let’s go join the U.S. navy. Maybe they know what they’re doing.”
One of the naval airmen in the hangar immediately took them to the flight operations room, where another enlisted man summoned Commander Richards, as Spencer requested. He arrived very quickly, smiling, his manner almost like that of a party host. “We were expecting you,” he said, escorting them down a corridor.
“How’s that?” Spencer asked.
“We watched you crossing the field.”
There was another officer in the room Richards led them to, a shorter, much older man who stood with his back to them, staring out the window at the darkening sky. Despite his age, he looked to be only a lieutenant commander. His uniform was ill-fitting—worse even than Richards’.
“There goes your plane,” he said, over the sound of distant jet engines. “Why aren’t you on it?”
He turned around. It was Laidlaw. “Why aren’t you?” he repeated.
“I haven’t finished here,” Spencer said.
“I believe you have. What can you tell me that I don’t know?”
“Karin Nielsen’s dead.”
“I am extremely unhappy about that.”
“We got to Krog. At least by telephone. George here—”
“I am familiar with Mr. Peterson, and his sideline.”
“We got Krog’s papers,” Spencer said. “They substantiate everything, the quid pro quo with Erikisson, the particle beam weapon in the aluminum plant. The head KGB man here is a Polish engineer named Rozkowski.”
“His name is Emil Jahn,” Laidlaw said. He seated himself gently in a wooden chair next to Richards’ desk. “He is a KGB colonel.”
“He killed Karin—and Evi Kekkonen, and that girl.”
“Yes.”
“I sent the story to my bureau in Washington hours ago.”
Laidlaw took off his glasses, staring at Spencer grimly.
“You put it all in a news story?” he asked.
“Yes. And I gave Krog’s papers to a columnist friend at Kvoldbladid. I’m sure he’s done a story, too.”
Laidlaw began cleaning his glasses with his handkerchief. “You gave them to a columnist at Kvoldbladid,” he said.
“He’s dependable,” Peterson interjected. “He won’t compromise you.”
Laidlaw glanced at him, moving only his eyes, saying nothing.
“Whelan’s the mole,” Spencer said. “Karin went after him. I suppose he’s dead. Or escaped.”
“He’s not,” Richards said. “We picked him up. We’re holding him just down the hall.”
Spencer stepped toward the door.
“Sit down,” said Laidlaw, carefully putting on his glasses again. “I have enough problems without any more of your impulsiveness.”
“Now look—”
Laidlaw raised his hand.
“I’m being churlish,” he said. “Please forgive me. The situation is not pleasant. As Karin may have told you, Washington has become very nervous about this operation and ordered everything shut down. We’re as good as fugitives—from our own government.”
“I got a telex from my headquarters,” Richards said unhappily. “They’re very serious about this. If we run across you, we’re supposed to flash Washington immediately. If we can, we’re supposed to put you on ice until they can get a plane here for you.”
“I’ve lost Karin,” Laidlaw said, looking from Spencer to Peterson, “and gained you two. A regrettable trade.” He turned to Richards. “I need time. How much can you give me, Commander?”
“Not much,” Richards said. “Whelan’s an entry in one log book and these two in another. If you were to leave immediately, I’d still have a lot of explaining to do. And, reading between the lines, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a plane from Langley here in the morning. The best I can do is slip you off the base tonight, and the sooner the better.”
“I need time,” Laidlaw said, “and a haven. Yet all that’s out there is police, KGB, lava rock, and the sea.”
“There’s your answer,” said Spencer.
“What do you mean, Mr. Spencer?”
“The sea. We’ll find a haven on the sea.”
“I’m afraid the navy can’t help you out on that one,” Richards said.
“No, but the Icelandic Coast Guard can,” Spencer said. “One of the captains is a friend of mine, someone we can trust.” He looked at Richards. “If you can get a message to the patrol vessel Heimdallur, I think we may have a place to go. For a while.”
Captain Ragnarsson’s signal came back almost immediately. He named a rendezvous point up the coast and promised to be there within four hours. Procuring a van from the motor pool, Richards got everyone through a rear gate and drove them up the coast to a point where the road left the shoreline and cut across the peninsula toward the town of Sandgerdi. He stopped the van, then turned it so that the headlights shone down toward the sea.
“This is the rendezvous,” Richards said, handing Laidlaw a flashlight. “He’ll signal and send in his inflatable. You’re lucky; the surf’s low tonight.”
Laidlaw, Spencer, and Peterson got out. Whelan, his hands bound behind him, sat sullenly in the rear seat.
“I forgot to ask,” Richards said. “Are any of you armed?”
“I am,” said Spencer. He pulled out his pistol. It was the first time he had held it in his hand with any degree of purpose since he had arrived in Iceland.
Richards shoved Whelan out the door with such force that he fell face down in the mossy dirt.
“Good luck,” Richards said.
Ragnarsson’s gunboat was late, and then later. They bore its tardiness patiently, sitting huddled in the dark. Because they did not want to talk in front of Whelan, they bore it silently. Laidlaw, hunched in his naval officer’s overcoat, staring out at the deeper darkness that was the sea, would not have been very talkative in any case. He reminded Spencer of a historian’s description of Frederick the Great sitting at a campfire with his troops, except there was no fire, and few troops.
Peterson took out one of his Dutch cigars and lit it with a long wooden match. Laidlaw paid no attention. Spencer kept his eyes on the match, wondering from how far it could be seen. Whelan quietly got to his feet and began to run. He was yards away before anyone noticed.
Laidlaw whirled around, the flashlight on in an instant, its small circle of illumination dancing on Whelan’s receding back.
“Get after him!” Laidlaw said.
Spencer scrambled, trying to run before he fully stood. He stumbled, lurching into Peterson, the collision knocking them both to the ground.
“Shoot him!” said Laidlaw. “It means our lives!”
Spencer gripped his pistol with both hands, sighting it with both eyes. The dancing circle of light was now quite large, but very faint.
There it was, a human life. A squeeze of the trigger and a small lead projectile would fly into that human back at supersonic speed; flattening; tearing through muscle; shattering the spine; rupturing spleen, kidneys, and liver; emerging in an explosion of bone, blood, and tissue. Spencer was a very good shot, a function of his boyhood in the wooded countryside of upstate New York. He had scored “expert” with both rifle and pistol in the army.
“Shoot, damn it!” said Peterson. “Shoot!”
Spencer’s finger trembled, but the muscle would not contract. He put the sight of Karin’s body in his mind, but by then Whelan was all but out of range.
Peterson snatched the pistol out of Spencer’s hand, dropped to one knee, and fired two quick rounds. Whelan had vanished into the dark. In the echo of the gunshots, there was no cry or scream, no sound of a body dropping. Spencer thought he heard the sound of hurried footsteps on the gravel road.
Suddenly, surprisingly far away, a car’s headlights were turned on. A small silhouette that could only be Whelan halted in front of them, spun around clumsily, and, arms behind him, ran toward the edge of the road. A tall figure got out of the car and fired one shot. Whelan dropped. The man from the car walked quickly up to him and fired five more shots in rapid succession. Lowering his gun, he seemed to turn in Spencer’s direction.
“Come along, Jacko!” he shouted. “Everything is all ticketyboo!”
They hurried up to the road and the car’s headlights, old Laidlaw moving the fastest. He flicked the flashlight over Whelan’s contorted body, then on the newcomer.
“Well, now, what a bloody fine reunion,” said Molyneaux. “Hugh Laidlaw. Been a few years, hasn’t it? Thought you were retired. Shouldn’t have thought I’d run into you here among the Icies.”
“Good evening, Mr. Molyneaux,” Laidlaw said. “I seem to be in your debt once again.”
He turned the flashlight back on the body.
“The face’ll need a bit of tidying up,” Molyneaux said. “We ought to soak it for a time in the sea.” Whelan no longer had a face. Molyneaux’s five rounds had turned it into a bloody pulp.
“Jacko,” Molyneaux said. “Sorry about the wee bairn.”
Commander Richards, drinking yet another cup of coffee, wandered about the situation watch room. Just idling, of course; another boring night in Iceland. A good night to watch the Russians, however. They had a large part of their northern fleet out and were cluttering up the maps of the Greenland Sea and the Denmark Strait on the navy computer screens with every size and shape of blip imaginable. The operations officer had put on an extra crew to cope with all the traffic.
Richards, sipping from his cup, strolled to a video display terminal being manned by a young ensign. “Switch to shore radar, Mr. Neikirk,” Richards said. “Let’s have a look at the local stuff.”
A few seconds later, the familiar outlines of the Seltjarnarnes Peninsula appeared on the screen, Keflavik at the center. A small blip was approaching the shoreline just up the coast from the base.
“He’s not making any ident, sir,” said the ensign. “Do you think he’s an intruder?”
Richards leaned close to the screen. “No,” he said. “It’s just one of the Icelandic patrol boats. By the looks of her, I’d say it’s the Heimdallur.”
“Jeez, Commander. How can you tell that?”
“It’s an acquired skill,” Richards said.
20
The beefy hand that clamped itself on Mendelsohn’s shoulder needed no introduction. Mendelsohn closed the file in front of him—Karin Nielsen’s—and looked up into Thorn’s unsmiling face. “What now?” said Mendelsohn. “Another rowboat ride? Or shall we go bicycling?”
“The deputy and I are wanted at the White House,” Thorn said. “This time we get to see number one.” He turned back the cover of the file, then let it fall closed again.
“She was quite an athlete in high school, that little waif,” Mendelsohn said. “Her father was killed in the Korean War, murdered as a prisoner of war. That’s how we got her.”
“Yeah, I know,” Thorn said. He glanced quickly about the room. Two women clerks were busy at the other end. “The stuff has hit the fan, Freddy. Our boy Spencer got to Krog, all right. But instead of sending his stuff through channels, he put it out over the news wires. It’s good stuff. Looks like he got all there was. But he put it in the newspapers. The White House is at maximum panic. The President is making nasty comments about whether the National Press Club is running the CIA.”
“What are we to do now? Send everyone back into Iceland?”
Thorn shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “Karin missed Whelan, you know. He went over the wall. I’d bet all my beans he’s in a Russian trawler or sub right now. Spencer gave the police the slip, and for all I know he’s with Krog. Hugh’s completely vanished. They may have gotten to him in Brussels. Karin sent an advisory there was a British MI 6 agent on the ground in Iceland.”
“The sum of our assets,” Mendelsohn said. “A paltry sum.”
Thorn looked at his watch. “Time to go. They’re sending a chopper from Anacostia to pick us up.”
“Have a pleasant flight. The White House lawn is very scenic this time of year.”
“You’re coming too, Freddy.”
“I? To see the President of the United States? Whatever for? I am a mere pensioner, brought back to rummage here in the dusty bins.”
“There’s a lot of high-level curiosity,” Thorn said. “How come our mole got fingered by the navy, instead of us? Who was helping him on this end? How come so much has gone wrong? Young Baker’s turned up dead, you know, in an alley behind a gay bar in Alexandria. He didn’t even have a chance to tell us how he liked his flight back from Iceland.”
Thorn clamped his hand on Mendelsohn’s shoulder again. “There’s a high-level feeling you can relieve a lot of this curiosity, Freddy.”
Ambassador Gorushchenko disliked going to the East German embassy for any reason. It was doubly unpleasant going there with Emil Jahn as his host. They ushered him, with little deference, to a small windowless room in the rear. It contained only a desk and two chairs, and Jahn, as though exercising territorial imperative, had already taken the one behind the desk. A bright but shaded light hung from the ceiling, Jahn’s newly shaven head glistening in its glare. Gorushchenko was impressed; the man had utterly transformed his face. Jahn poured refreshment: schnapps, as Gorushchenko noted with disgust. In retaliation, the Russian lit one of his cigarettes, disregarding the closeness of the room. He pulled a copy of Kvoldbladid from his coat pocket. “These meetings are unnecessary, Colonel,” he said. “To follow your activities, I need only read the Icelandic newspapers.”
Jahn glanced down at the front page. There was a photograph of Erikisson. The Icelandic term for aluminum was in the headline. The byline read “Sverrir Axelsson,” whom Jahn remembered from his list of Spencer’s reported contacts in Reykjavik.
He dismissed the article with a small wave of his hand.
“The American, Spencer, planted it,” he said. “Das macht nichts.”
“The American seems to have gotten to Krog—as you have not Yet he was to lead you to Krog; isn’t that so?”
“Krog is all but irrelevant now, Herr Botschafter. There is nothing in the newspaper article we need fear.”
Gorushchenko sipped the sweet liqueur and made a face. Jahn seemed very pleased with himself, yet nervous, a card player on the verge of a big win that was not yet in hand.
“It suggests incompetence, Colonel,” Gorushchenko said. “I wonder at your reputation. Krog is still alive and at large, as are this American Spencer and his lawyer friend. Your sailor has been arrested and our friend Whelan is a fugitive at best. And that young woman—”
“Agent.”
“You were excessively brutal. So messy. So unprofessional.”
“It was necessary. That little killer bitch …”
“It was provocative! One of the reasons Iceland was so attractive to us was that the Americans paid such little attention to it. Now you are rubbing their noses in the place.”
“Herr Botschafter, you insist upon looking at the black side. Krog remains a fugitive. Spencer is an amateur. He is on the run and can do us no further harm. The Icelandic police are falling all over themselves trying to find those two and cope with three murders. The American sailor knew nothing. Whelan is expendable. The CIA has reacted to his case like crazy men. They’ve shut down everything they have in Iceland. The elimination of that girl, one of their best, will only disrupt them further. The American navy is preoccupied with all those vessels from our northern fleet.”
Jahn leaned closer, ignoring Gorushchenko’s cigarette smoke. “And everyone is worried solely about the election!” he said. “The newspaper article only reinforces that fixation. Everything I have done reinforces that! All is well, Herr Botschafter. All is Volkommenheit. And in twenty-four hours none of this will matter!”
Jahn was very agitated. Gorushchenko sat silently a moment, waiting for him to calm down. “I do not mean to be overly critical, Colonel,” Gorushchenko said. “About tomorrow, then. Your preparations are complete?”
“All is in order, Herr Botschafter.”
“You don’t need any more men? More weapons teams?”
“No. There is no need. Everything has been arranged.”
“The timing must be precise. Exact. We have only a few hours to put everything in place.”
“I am aware of that! All is in order!”
Gorushchenko, wheezing slightly, leaned back in his chair and gestured at the bottle of schnapps. Jahn refilled the glasses, fighting the trembling of his hand with a tight grip on the bottle.
The Russian took his glass and stood. “To success,” he said. “To our fathers.”
Jahn got to his feet and they both drank, emptying their glasses in a single swallow. Jahn wondered at the toast. His father had been killed at Stalingrad.
“I will be less nervous if you are not so complacent about Krog and the American,” Gorushchenko said. “Take some precautions. Provide us with some insurance. Good luck,” he said as he opened the door. Jahn would need it. Gorushchenko had received permission to have Jahn arrested as a dangerous psychotic at the conclusion of this operation. It would mean confinement in an institution in the Urals at the least, possibly the injection of a painless but fatal drug. If the Iceland operation failed, of course, he could have Jahn killed outright.
“Gluck, Herr Botschafter,” Jahn said as the other turned down the corridor. He smiled to himself. He had already ordered Gorushchenko’s assassination at the hands of his agent in the Russian embassy. There was no countermanding the instructions. Gorushchenko was a walking dead man.
Jahn refilled his glass, this time with vodka from a bottle hidden in the desk.
Dawn found the Heimdallur moored to the quay at Borgarnes, bow to shoreward, the cold waters of Borgarfjordur mirror-still and beginning to glimmer with a pinkish light in the first flush of the rising sun. It had rained heavily during the night, but now the pale sky was empty of clouds. Spencer went back to his cabin for a thick blue sweater before continuing up to the bridge.
