The Valkyrie Project, page 8
His phone rang only two times. Peterson and Sonja were home, entertaining a houseguest from—as always—Iceland. Peterson feigned outrage at learning that Spencer was going to Iceland without him, that he was leaving the very next day, that he would not come at once to join them for a farewell dinner.
“You simply have to meet Elisabet,” Peterson said. “She’s said to be the most beautiful woman in Iceland—now that Sonja’s left.”
Spencer heard embarrassed laughter in the background. Baltimore was only forty miles away, and the thought of an evening with the Petersons and someone beautiful named Elisabet intrigued him, but he feared how it might end. He had one more meeting with Laidlaw in the morning—on the mall outside the Smithsonian, of all places—and then he had to leave for the airport.
“There’s nothing I’d like more,” Spencer said. “But I’ve a lot of work to do tonight, and I … I’ll need a clear head in the morning. I’m leaving on the afternoon flight from BWI.”
“Why the rush?” said Peterson, his voice much quieter. “You haven’t explained why you’re going.”
“It’s a rush assignment that just came up,” Spencer said. “An obscure magazine is paying me a small fortune to come up with only eight million words on Icelandic energy resources in time for their next issue.”
There was a pause. “What about your job?”
“I still have it,” said Spencer. “I’m on leave. My precarious health, you know.”
“I really should go with you.”
“That would be terrific, George, but there just isn’t time.”
“There are some depositions I need to take in Reykjavik sometime this year. Maybe I’ll fly out in a few days and join you.”
“I’ll be fine, George. Save the six hundred dollars. But I need a favor. They want to mail me some things after I get there and I need an address. I’d use a hotel but I’ll probably be moving around.”
“They?”
“The editors of this magazine. Some research material.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Hotel Thor, I guess. Isn’t that where we stayed in 1976? Right on the main square?”
“Yes,” said Peterson. “Austurvollur Square. But why not just have them send it there? The desk people will hold it for you. I once left a hundred dollars in cash on a dresser and it was waiting for me in an envelope when I came back a month later.”
“I just don’t want to lose this material,” Spencer said. “I can’t … I can’t write this article very well without it.”
Peterson paused again, a longer time. “I have a client there who takes mail for me,” he said. “Just mark it for me. I’ll call ahead and let her know it’s coming.”
Spencer wrote down the address Peterson gave him, being careful to get the exact Icelandic spelling.
“I’m serious about coming out to join you,” Peterson said.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Spencer said. “This may not take very long at all.”
“You’ll get to meet Elisabet, anyway. She’s going back on that afternoon flight, too. She’s a stewardess. Used to fly with Sonja.”
“I never seem to do very well with stewardesses. They insist on waiting on all the other passengers, too.”
“I’ll have her look out for you.”
“Great,” said Spencer. “Thanks.”
Peterson paused yet again.
“Jack,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“Just trying to scare up some extra cash. Really. If you’d done your job right I wouldn’t have such large alimony payments.”
“The judge was less than impartial. Never divorce a beautiful woman.”
“Tak,” said Spencer, remembering the Icelandic word for thanks.
“Skal,” said Peterson.
“Skal.”
Spencer hung up. The sudden silence made him feel lonely. For a moment, he fought an impulse to call Peterson back and say he was coming for dinner after all. No. He took what remained of his drink to the living room and settled into his leather chair, opening the folder Laidlaw had given him. The papers inside included a history of Iceland’s Workers’ and Farmers’ Party; a biography of Erikisson, the party leader; a longer biography and notes on Geir Krog; suggested places to look for Krog; and full translations of Icelandic newspaper accounts of the murder.
He read each page three times to memorize it, then tore each up and dropped the shreds into a bucket. He’d burn them before he left. All he’d keep was the English-Icelandic dictionary Laidlaw had given him.
The headache struck as abruptly as a gunshot, a shaft of pulsing pain stabbing from the base of his skull to the back of his eyes. At first he thought he’d suffered a stroke, but there was no numbness, no paralysis, just pain—as bad as that first terrifying headache he’d suffered in the summer. His body responded to it with nausea, panting, a rapid heartbeat, and cold sweat pouring over his face, hands, and back. He hung his head back over the arm of the chair, gritting his teeth and clenching his eyes shut tight.
When, after what might have been fifteen minutes or an hour, he did not die, he slowly sat up and opened his eyes. The pain had not abated much, but his body was adjusting. Dealing with pain was supposed to be Spencer’s forté. Had he not once calmly poured disinfectant onto the back of his hand after an automobile crash had ripped it open to the bone?
The medication he had been given was for prevention of symptoms, not treatment. The only instruction he had been given for such an eventuality was to get to a doctor at once. But a doctor—especially his doctor—would only lock him away in a hospital, and there was no time for that.
All his life he had treated headaches the same way. This might be the worst and deadliest of them all, but he would use the same remedy, the universal one. He drained his glass. After another drink, he finished reading and burning the papers. After four more drinks, he staggered to bed.
In the morning he was still alive.
Laidlaw noticed the hangover, of course. He made it clear to Spencer that he noticed and that he was not pleased, but he did not speak about it and went through their business as though nothing were amiss. For his part, Spencer offered no explanation. They just walked along the mall among all the tourists and the joggers, talking quietly.
“Karin will join you soon,” Laidlaw said.
Spencer nodded. Elisabets and Karins. He would be a long tune between American women.
“You’ve memorized the addresses and telephone numbers I want you to use?”
Again Spencer nodded. “I hadn’t expected one in New York,” he said.
“They’ll reach me quickly,” said Laidlaw. He stopped and watched for a moment as a jetliner climbed from National Airport past the pinnacle of the Washington Monument. “I’ll contact you in a few days,” he added. “Sooner if necessary.”
They resumed their walk, continuing toward the west.
“I’m running short of time,” Spencer said, smiling faintly. “My plane.”
“We appreciate this, Mr. Spencer. And I assure you, it’s not a trivial business.”
“Just stay in touch.”
“I mean it. We really do appreciate this.”
With his leather bag and portable typewriter secure beneath the row of seats in front of him, and the Icelandair DC-8 leveling out from its slow climb to cruising altitude, Spencer ordered his first drink of the flight—two miniature bottles of Johnnie Walker Red Label poured over ice, with a little bit of water added to the top. He had no idea which of the stewardesses was Elisabet, and although one of them seemed unusually attractive, he did not care. He only wanted to drink, slowly and carefully, drink his way through the black of night above the dark ocean, until he was brought to daylight and Iceland and, for a few weeks at least, a different life.
He picked at his dinner. He read a large part of a paperback novel. He drank. At length, he slept again.
Spencer awoke to a sense of dawn. The cabin lights had been turned off except for the faintest of glows along the ceiling, and the sky outside was still black, but there was a suggestion of pale gray at the forward horizon. Spencer closed his eyes and listened to the comforting, rhythmic hum of the engines. He seemed to be not a mere thirty-eight thousand feet above the sea but hurtling through space, as though outside this world, outside life itself. As though he could look out through that small window and see all of time.
He opened his eyes to see that the gray had spread and was becoming tinged with pink. He would have a brandy. He pushed the stewardess call button. After several minutes, he saw movement at the forward end of the long cabin as one of the stewardesses rose and put on her blue jacket. It was the tall one with long brown hair, the very attractive one. She came silently down the aisle with practiced ease and leaned over the seatback. Even in the cabin darkness, her wide gray eyes were filled with light.
“Yes?”
“A Bisquit, please.”
She started to move and then hesitated. He wondered whether she thought he was asking for something else. Bisquit was the quite good brand of cognac Icelandair served.
“A Bisquit, please,” Spencer repeated. “A cognac.”
“You’ve already had very much to drink on this flight, sir,” she said. Her voice was still near a whisper, but her tone was firm, almost sharp.
Spencer sighed. “Miss, there are no regulations against serving me another drink on a transatlantic flight,” he said. “It’s my habit to have a brandy at sunrise. I do it all the time, and I’ve been flying for twenty years. I am in command of my faculties. I’ve been sitting here quietly, all by myself, not bothering anybody.”
She stared at him, her face expressionless.
“Are you Elisabet?” he asked.
“I am Elisabet Bjornsdottir,” she said.
“My name is Jack Spencer. I’m a friend of George and Sonja Peterson.”
“I know,” she said, standing fully erect. “And that is the only reason I am going to bring you a cognac.”
Elisabet hurried back up the aisle, furious, glad that the other hostesses were asleep and could not see her face. Sonja and George had spent half the night telling her about this man, his exploits and adventures, the wounds he had suffered, the funny things he had done and said, how handsome he was, what he had done for Iceland. George said Spencer knew all sorts of important people in Washington, that if Senator Derwinski had been elected President, Spencer might have been made an ambassador. Elisabet had been so awed by all this that she couldn’t muster the social courage to introduce herself to him. At the beginning of the flight, she had felt shy and flustered every time she passed his seat.
And what did he turn out to be? A drunk. He had sat there steadily consuming alcohol—except for a brief sleep—the entire flight. And now he was at it again. Brandy. At dawn. And how arrogant about it! The typical demanding American. The Icelander must do as the American bids.
Magnus Andersson would be back in Reykjavik that afternoon. Perhaps at last they would have their dinner together. She would never have anything to do with an American man again.
Spencer had paid for only one cognac, but Elisabet had no wish to spend the morning fetching and carrying. For all she knew, he might start clutching at her leg. Smiling to herself, she filled the brandy glass almost to the brim, three or four times what she normally served. If he was bent on arriving in Iceland slobbering and stumbling, so be it. If he wanted to fall flat on his face at the bottom of the steps after leaving, fine.
As always, most of the passengers were young people, dressed in jeans and outdoor hiking clothes, their brightly colored backpacks scattered throughout the cabin. Some of them were beginning to stir. Embarrassed, Elisabet hurried past them with the huge brandy. When she reached him, Spencer was writing in a notebook. He closed it and set it aside, his eyebrows lifting at the size of his drink.
“We are going to be very busy serving breakfast,” Elisabet said curtly. “This should last until we land.”
He smiled—an exaggerated grin—and said thank you in Icelandic.
She avoided him for the rest of the flight, though she glanced over from time to time to note the progress of the Bisquit. Rather surprisingly, he finished it all, draining the last of it just as the DC-8 was taxiing to the civilian terminal at Keflavik. To Elisabet’s astonishment, he got to his feet without difficulty, gathered his belongings together without dropping any, and walked out of the plane and down the steps without incident, strolling to the terminal.
Spencer was the only passenger leaving the plane in Iceland. The others, mostly youths, debarked only to stretch their legs and browse in the terminal’s duty-free store, while the aircraft was refueled for the rest of the run to Luxembourg. Iceland’s tourist season was short and did not extend to October, the beginning of the darkening time.
Stopping only at the wines and spirits section for bottles of Johnnie Walker and Brennivin at half the price he would pay in town, Spencer walked quickly to customs. As he expected, he was halted only for a glance at his passport and a cheery greeting of welcome. He could have carried his pistol stuck in his belt.
He took the front seat nearest the door of the Mercedes airport bus waiting outside, wanting a clear view. He thought he might have the bus entirely to himself, but then some Icelandair hostesses climbed aboard. Apparently flight crews were changed at Keflavik, but Elisabet Bjornsdottir was not among the women. He guessed she was taking a later bus-deliberately. He didn’t care. The only woman who interested him on this trip was named Karin Nielsen.
The driver, a young man in glasses and a black jacket, clambered into his seat, and, with a slight chug, the bus was off, speeding past the yellow American barracks buildings and barely slowing for the Marine guard at the gate.
Lurching the bus onto the paved highway to Reykjavik, the driver turned on the radio and settled into a comfortable slouch for the forty-five-minute drive. The record being played was Icelandic, typically mournful, a woman’s cool Nordic voice in a plaintive lament, music to be sad by, music to drink by. Spencer leaned his head against the window, fighting fatigue. Everything was remarkably as he remembered it. Meadows of black lava soil covered with the vivid green of moss. The treeless, rocky coastline. The snow-topped mountains just beyond Reykjavik. Amazingly, there was a bright sun in nearly cloudless skies, and it was warm, nearly fifty degrees.
By the time he reached Reykjavik’s Austurvollur Square, it was raining. Spencer ducked up a remembered side street to the English book store, where at unexpected expense he gathered an armload of newspapers and magazines, most of them in Icelandic, and some maps. Then he checked into the Thor. The dark-haired, middle-aged woman behind the desk, whom he vaguely remembered, vaguely remembered him. When he mentioned he had stayed here as a reporter covering the cod war, she remembered exactly.
She gave him one of the best rooms in the hotel, a high-windowed corner room overlooking the square, the Icelandic parliament building, the Althing, and the Hotel Borg. Despite Britain’s claim to “the mother of parliaments,” the Icelanders had founded theirs in the year 930, before Britain was even a country.
Spencer stood for a moment at his window, fatigue pulling at his back and shoulders like a great weight. He had remembered everything about Iceland except how brightly colored the rooftops were, painted the most vibrant greens, yellows, blues, and reds against the gloom of weather and winter darkness. Nothing seemed amiss on the square or the streets around it, no lurking, trench-coated strangers looking up at his window.
Spencer smiled. There was a considerable difference between being a journalist and being whatever it was he had become. The little work he had done on the side for the agency in the past was only a tiny bit of wading. Now he’d been thrown square into the stormy sea, sink or swim—and all alone.
He pulled a chair into the window’s light and then poured himself a scotch with a small amount of water, not wanting to bother with a call to room service for ice. He was frankly tired of drinking. The headache had been adequately drowned. But he needed to keep going for another hour, and whiskey was all he knew that would help him do it.
Reading the local newspapers was an old habit from his travels. There was nothing too interesting at hand here—in fact, his copy of the Paris Herald-Tribune was a week old. But there were a few worthwhile items, including a fact-filled article on Icelandic hydroelectric power in the English-language Iceland Review. It contained some quotations from the now-fugitive Geir Krog.
With a command of Icelandic that extended to only two dozen words, Spencer wasn’t able to learn very much from the morning Reykjavik papers, but they appeared to be filled with stories about the murder, and there was a strong sense that everyone in the country was searching for Krog. Spencer looked closely at the pictures. The dead girl had been very pretty. Krog seemed intelligent and rather likable, a big man with a beard. The file photo the agency had shown him had been of a much younger man.
Laidlaw had had no idea whether Krog was guilty of the murder. That was one of the things he wanted Spencer to find out.
Except for some stories about NATO—one illustrated with a photograph of a Russian cruiser sailing close off the Scottish coast—the English papers bored him, especially the Manchester Guardian. Spencer shoved them aside, finished his drink, and dropped onto the bed. He did not awaken until four hours later.
He then found he had no desire for a drink and put all thoughts of that from his mind. There were telephone calls to make, interview arrangements to complete for the next day. He was a newspaperman, after all, and an attribute of newspapermen was that they never wasted time, especially when they were on freelance assignment and paying for the time themselves. Within an hour, he had lined up interviews with the minister of industry and energy, the director of the National Research Council, the director of the National Power Company, and a writer for Kvoldbladid, one of Iceland’s largest newspapers—the only interview he’d probably enjoy.
Spencer stopped there. It wouldn’t do to get his work done so swiftly. There were others he should interview. For example, for a balanced treatment, he should also talk with Gunnar Erikisson, the leader of the Communist Farmers’ and Workers’ Party. He had been opposed to expanding Iceland’s industrial use of hydroelectric power because of the effect on the environment—or so it said in the article in Iceland Review. In view of Iceland’s deteriorating economic situation, did Erikisson still agree with that?
