Black Ice (2 page)

It certainly isn't clear now.'

He shrugged and dabbed at his face with the hankie. 'We're offering you rather a splendid opportunity, Mr Craven.'

'Are you?'

'I think so. You could have the chance  to give history a bit of a nudge  in the right direction. Tempting, don't you think?'

I'd never seen myself as a history-nudger. Personally, I had every confidence that  the professionals  in charge  of our affairs could find the shortest route  to Armageddon without  any help from me.

'Hang on,'  I said,  doing a recap  to try to straighten it out in my mind.  'You want me to go to Iceland  as a sort of temporary diplomat ...'

'Dear me, no. No, no, no.' He shook his head so quickly that his  moustache nearly  flew off.  'For   us, you  see,  the  whole attraction of employing someone  like yourself is that  you are not traceable. To us, of course.'

For a moment I had a chilling vision of myself in a mortuary drawer with a question mark on the tag tied to my toe. He must have picked up my reaction because he quickly went on: 'What I mean  is that  no one will know you're  working for us.'

'Ah,' I said, wagging  a finger at his beaming  face. 'If you're in the line of work I think you're in, Mr Batty, shouldn't you be coming striding out  of the sea  half-naked  with  a  bloody  big knife strapped to your sunburned thigh?'

He straightened in his chair. 'Should I? Why ever do you say that?'

'Ursula Andress did.'

A crafty  little smile twisted  his lips. 'Really?  Was she a civil servant too, Mr Craven?'

'Mr Batty,' I said.  'I do believe you're  a bit of a tease.'

3

Just for a  minute   there,   I  wasn't   sure  who  was  taking  the mickey out of who. Or whom, as we diurnalists like to say. By way of celebrating this new rapport, Mr Batty agreed to risk a mug of tea as he told me about his plans for my future.

Not all that surprisingly, I suppose, he had it all worked out. They- his department, presumably- would arrange for one of the Fleet Street  newspapers to send  me  to Iceland  on a job. That should give me enough justification to go round asking questions and generally making a nuisance of myself.

'Which one?'   I offered   him a turn   with   the  sugar-bag containing a damp spoon.  He declined. Our new rapport wasn't that good.

'One of the pops,  we thought,' he replied.  'We have a little pull with  them,  and  they'd  be rather fun to work for, wouldn't you say?'

I worked mostly for magazines and the heavies.  I'd steered clear of the tabloids ever since they'd taken to printing fiction. Still, this wasn't really work, was it?

'Of course, we'd cover your basic costs and  I think we could arrange to put, say, five hundred in your bank account now.'

'That should bring my early  retirement forward  a couple of seconds.'

'It's all taxpayers' money,  Mr Craven,' he said,  with some indignation. 'We do have to spend it responsibly. Do you know, I'm convinced  that tea tastes much better out of a mug like this, but  my secretary won't  hear of it.'

I shook my head  at  him. 'Great mistake, getting physically involved  with your secretary.'

'I do assure   you ... let  me  make  it  clear  immed  ... ah, you're joking again  I do believe, Mr Craven.'

'Caught me, Mr Batty. Tell me one thing- how can you be sure  I won't  nudge  history  in the wrong direction?'

'Excellent point.' He looked at  me  as,  with  one  stiffened finger, he stroked  his sad moustache as though  he expected  it to bolt for cover  down  his throat. 'Yes, excellent question. You see, we rather assume that  you have the usual sort of loyalty to your  country.'

'You could be making a mistake.'

The moustache  twitched into a small smile. 'I don't think so.'

'Well.' I looked around my crumbling cabin of an office. 'It's only fair to tell you that I don't feel any sentimental bond  to a particular acreage just  because  that's where  my parents succumbed to an attack  of lust.'

He went on smiling.

'If they'd had the same attack in the South Seas, we might be having this conversation on the  beach  over  a glass  of fresh coconut juice. If you take my point.

His smile still hadn't shifted.

'Look, let me put it this way. My sole concern is to get this admittedly pathetic little   body   through from   breakfast   to bedtime each day with minimum damage. That's my only serious commitment to a philosophical ideal.'

'But you don't have any loyalties which might, shall we say, conflict. It was more  of a statement than  a question and  I realised, foolishly,  that  of course  he would've had  me checked out,  even for this errand-boy sort of job.

'Not really.'

He made a brave  try at drinking his tea and  leaned  forward to slide the mug on to my desk. 'Very fair of you to try to explain your position. These   days,  I  think  we're   inclined   to  trust someone with your sort of healthy cynicism rather than an old fashioned  patriot. And you do have the incentive of wishing  to see that  your  friend  Solrun  makes  the right decision.  Oh, no, Mr Craven. We've made the right choice. You must trust us to do that.'

'In  that  case .. .'

He was halfway out of the door before I realised  what  I'd  let myself in for.

'One thing,' I said, before he vanished down the stairs.  'This job  for  the  paper  - will it  be  real  or  is it just ... window dressing?'

Well, I couldn't say 'cover', could I? Normal people don't go round talking  about  cover.

'Oh, yes, definitely. We shall see that it's put into their minds to give you a commission up there. You will have to do it, I'm afraid, but no doubt you will be generously paid for it.' He gave my arm a sympathetic pat.  'From what little I've seen of the popular papers, it shouldn't be anything too intellectually demanding. You'll cope,  Mr Craven, you'll  cope.'

The  last  I heard  of him  was a vast  sneeze  echoing  up  the stairs. I made another pot of tea  and  watched  the gold dust dance  in the one beam of sunlight I was permitted by city by laws.

That was when it struck me. However they dressed it up in homely jargon, the British  Government were employing me -  at least, indirectly- to go up to Iceland to see what Solrun  was getting up to. And, presumably,  to do something about it. That made me a spy. Okay, only Acting,  Temporary, and  Without Pension   Rights,   but  I  was  still  a  spy.  I looked  around  my broken-down  office.  At  least  I  had  one  qualification - the ribbon  on my typewriter was so worn  I could use it as invisible ink.

But exactly what did they expect me to do about  it? That was the big puzzle.  If Batty had checked  me out, which  he must've done,  then  he'd  know that  I wouldn't be likely to have a deep sense of historic  continuity. You don't have a lot of that  if you haven't got a mum or dad,  like me.

No man is an island? You want  to bet? This one is. A private island, and  I don't allow picnickers either.

4

Shurring shurring shurring shurring shurring. Shurring shurring. Shurring shurring shurring shurring shurring shurring.

Am I  doing  this  properly?  It seems so stupid  sitting bolt upright in the office saying  one word  over and  over again  to myself. Anyway, here goes. In threes  this time.

Shurring shurring shurring. Shurring shurring shurring. Shurring shurring shurring.

Am  I  meditating yet? I don't feel as though  I am.  On  the other  hand, the night  I fell down  three flights of stairs  I didn't feel as though  I was drunk. A few more. In  pairs this time.

Shurring shurring. Shurring shurring. Shurring shurring. Just keep saying the mantrap - sorry, mantra-so the teacher said  at  the  class,  and  my system  would  sink  into  the  resting state  and  my mind  would  be empty  of thoughts. Right.  Is the mind empty?  Whoops,  no, there's a sneaky  little thought appertaining to an unpaid gas bill. And another about  picking up  my  laundry. I  chase  those  two off and  in  slips  another thought about  that  bendy-looking blonde  in the office down stairs.

Oh,   hell,   shuring,  shurr-bloody-ing,  and   my   mind   is wriggling like an ant hill with unauthorised thoughts. The astral plane  of selflessness  which  lies beyond  the  void didn't seem to have any  membership vacancies  at the moment.

Shurring shurring ... I'm  not doing all that  again.  Then I realised. It was the phone.

'Craven?'

'Speaking.'

"Ere. I like this  idea  you've  put  up  for a feature  piece in Iceland.'

Suddenly I knew who it was. Batty hadn't been kidding when he said one of the pop papers.  The editor didn't bother to introduce himself because  he assumed everyone  knew him. He was right. Throughout the newspaper business, he was known as  Grimm, on  account of  the  fact  that   his  paper  consisted almost   entirely   of  fairy   tales.  He was  a  frenzied young northerner who'd  found- that  the streets of London  were paved with  gold,  so  long  as  you  didn't mind  wading   through   the sewers first.

'Idea?'

'Yeah,  this  memo  you  sent.  Secrets of  the Sexy  Eskies. Brilliant. You're on.'

'Good. I mean, great. Secrets  of the what?'

'Sexy Eskies. That's my headline. So you work to that, right?'

I was relieved to hear the headline was his. Even the Foreign Office,  with  its fathomless resources,  couldn't have  counter feited such  a classic as that.  Even as I was listening to him,   I could see the problems of actually putting this into operation.

'So, you get your interview with this Miss Iceland  lass- what she does, who with,  every  pant  and  wriggle- and  we're  there. Like I say, Secrets  of the Sexy Eskies.'

'Right. Terrific. Just one thing.'

'What?' He sounded irritated. Just one  thing sounded one too many  for him.

'Strictly speaking, Icelanders aren't Eskimos. Very, very strictly speaking, of course.'

His sigh  burned  up a few hundred yards  of telephone wire.

'Listen. I shouldn't have to explain  this to you,'  he said, in the tones of one  who  bears  a heavy  burden through life. 'How  it works is this. Maybe they are Eskimos. Maybe they're not Eskimos.  Who can say? But if I think  they're Eskimos  then our readers  will think they're Eskimos, and if our readers  think they're Eskimos,  then  bloody  Eskimos  they are. Got it?'

'Got it.'

'Thank God.  Tell you what,' he began,  in a more generous tone, 'I've seen your stuff around. It's not all crap,  you know.'

'I'm glad  to hear  that.'

'No, fair does, it's  not. What  I don't understand is why you haven't been on to me before.'

'I was waiting,' I said,  marvelling as I heard  the unplanned words slip through my lips, 'for a really  big one.'

'Love  it!'  he enthused. 'That's what  this  business  wants  - commitment, heart,  guts.  There's big  bucks  in  this,  Craven. Get on your  way. Today. Secrets of the Sexy Eskies, eh? Ring in. Ciao.'

I sat  there for a couple  of minutes  looking at the phone  and wondering if my attempts at  meditation had somehow  flung this nightmare figure  into  my imagination. But no,  I knew it wasn't. That was Grimm  all right.

It was my only experience of him first-hand, and  I must say my immediate reaction   was  to start   a  new  life in  Paraguay

Yonoder a false name. Still, I wasn't really working for him, was I? I don't know why I bothered dragging my conscience  in foran overhaul like that.  All I needed   to do was to concentrate on the prospect of seeing Solrun  again and  I could've rationalised the Crucifixion.

One phone call to Icelandair did the lot. They  put me on the evening flight, promised to book me a room with Hulda Gudmundsdottir - my,  we were  back  in opera-land, weren't we? - and  they  also promised to notify  the information office where  Solrun   worked  that  I  was  on  my  way.  After that, of course,  it was up to her.

Then   I rang  Sally's  convent  school  near  Guildford where

eventually I battered my way past the nuns' chorus and got to speak  to my daughter. Speak? Did I say speak? Got to listen to her. In  no time at all I was apprised of the facts that  Natasha had quarrelled with Fiona and she and Henrietta weren't going to bother  with them any more, not if they were going to have a  pash  on that  hateful  Rowena.

Of course, it all sounded like birdsong  to me.

My ex-wife sent her to the convent  because they wore boaters in the summer. I think she believed that straw had miracle properties when placed in close proximity to the brain.  I made a note to buy myself a straw hat sometime.

I  thought of  trying   the  old  shurring shurring again,   but decided  against. It didn't seem  to be taking  with  me. Every time I emptied my mind of the stresses  and  worries  that  were poisoning my system  (so the book  said), someone  sneaked  up with another lorry-load.

Instead, I  sauntered  up  to  the  Cheshire Cheese  where  - gurus please note- I reached  astral planes of pure  thoughtless serenity on exactly  three  pints of Marston's best bitter.

5

At first sight you might've thought the flight was a reunion  for brother-and-sister twins of a mature age.

People who fly south want  to get things:  like brown,  drunk and laid. People who fly north want to look: they want to look at flowers and birds and scenery,  and,  as a rule, they stay  white, sober  and  unlaid. They fly north  in  matching pairs,  white haired, ruddy-faced, retired  teachers, husbands and wives who have grown  alike over the years.

The flight was full of them. All wearing shirts made from that stuff Scotsmen  use for kilts.  If you'd  asked  a question about Jurassic rock formation, every  hand  in  the place  would  have been raised.

I ate what looked like a bottled brain. It was a herring which, if not actually soused,  had  certainly stopped off for a couple. Raw and  tangy,   it  tasted   delicious. Icelandair  haven't  yet mastered the  art  of making  all  their  food  taste  like wartime soap: how they get a licence beats  me.