Black Ice (31 page)

The centre of the geyser is a four-foot hole which shows black and deep when the water is sucked  back down.  Then  it slowly builds  up for another blast, and  this is what  it was doing now. The   water,   diamond-clear,  was  swirling   busily   and   then angrily  around, until  it flooded over  the hard  lip of the hole. From there it spilled out over a dish of rock burned  bare by the boiling water,  and  spread  to the craggy surround.

Horrified, fascinated, we all watched  as the baby, like a large pink tortoise, crossed on to the rock: hand, foot, hand, foot. Her hand went in a tiny pool, not half a cupful of water, left from the last burst.  It must have been very hot. She snatched her hand back and  sat  up looking  at  her fingers,  a  high wail  breaking from her lips. Then, in fear and  pain, she dropped again  onto all fours and set off again.

Down  the  slope.  Across  the  rock.  Towards the  swirling waters.

Solrun's cry tore the heavens apart and it was a few seconds before I understood what she was saying.

'She's yours,  Sam. She's  your daughter. She's  your  baby.' Christopher pointed  one finger at  me. 'Sally,' he shouted. But I ran, I ran like hell, I snatched the kid up under my arm and  as  I  dived  off the  rock  I  heard   the  terrifying   rush  of hundreds of gallons of water  boiled up in the guts of the world come bursting out.

As I looked up, I saw Oscar Murphy coming down  the hill.

He was riding his Triumph. And he was holding his big Colt .45 in his left hand.

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The  baby was dangling over my left arm,  kicking and shouting. I never did know how to hold the damned things. Behind  me I could hear  the rush and gush of the steaming geyser. Suddenly I  knew they were all looking at  me.

They  hadn't seen Oscar. Stocking  mask high up on his head, brandishing  his  gun   like  a  cowboy,   he  came   bucking  and rearing down  the hillside at a rare old rate- but they couldn't hear  the bike for the noise from the waterhole.

My first thought was that  he'd  really flipped  this time. You can't ride a bike over rough  country like that one-handed, and you certainly can't hope to aim a big hand-gun like that.  Even so, it might  just give us a chance.

'The car,'  I shouted to Solrun. 'Run  for the car.'

'Stay  where  you .are.'  Christopher sounded  crisp  and commanding. 'Remember Sally.'

Fleetingly, I did.  Sally  in  her  straw-hat, with  all  her silly chatter about  her giggling friends.  And Asta: this pink bundle in my arms. Two daughters. One  to live, one to die. And I had to make  the choice.

Solrun  was struggling to break  free from  the  trawler  thug who'd  been our driver. He'd  got her by the arm  and collar and was shaking her to subdue her.         .

Then  it was his turn.  He glanced  up, past where the camera crew and  Ivan  were  backing  towards  the helicopter, and  saw Oscar charging down  on us. Instantly the driver  flung Solrun from him so that she sprawled on the ground. Crab-like, he scuttled past Christopher and  I could see the grin on his face. He knew the chances of being hit by a pistol, one-handed, from a bouncing bike. So he was smiling as he pulled a revolver from inside  his jacket,  and  that  was as far as he got. The  first shot spun  him  to one side and  the second  kicked him six-feet down. the hill. Those  big Colts do that.  He died grinning. All the odds were on his side, but he was dead,  just  the same.

The other  thug, the one with the bruised face, had rushed  up from the cars and  dropped to one knee. With  both  hands,  he fired. Once,  twice.

The  crazy glee on Oscar's face switched  to hurt  surprise as the bullets caught  him. He rose in the saddle  like a stunt-man. The  bike roared  and slid away from beneath  him, skidding on its side and finally coming to rest with the rear wheel in a brown mud  pool.

Bellowing  oaths,   Oscar  staggered  to  his  feet  and   came rocking  towards  us, firing the gun.  Some shots  went  into  the ground, some into the sky. His limbs were all over the place.

He  crashed   to  his  knees  with  a  jolt,  still  with  his  torso upright, and I saw his eyes fix on the pink bundle  in my arms.

'Baby,' he shouted, in a voice that echoed all the way to the mountains. He stretched out one long arm,  pointing. Then  he crashed  forward  on to his face. The  squared-away marine.

The  engine of the bike phutted weakly to a halt. The  baby was silent. Only  the water still gurgled.

Before I even had time to think of it, Christopher was beside

Oscar's body, and  he came  up with  the Colt  in his hand.  He shouted  in  Russian  to Ivan  and  the crew  who  were  by now down by the helicopter. They  wanted  none of this rough stuff. But slowly, muttering, they began  to come back up the slope. Kirillina  turned   over  the  Russian   who'd   been  shot  and whatever  it was he said  meant  only one thing: dead.

'Now.' Christopher sucked in a deep breath  and flicked back his hair.  He'd  got everything under control  again,  but  he was still using the pistol to underline his authority. 'Now we'll have this film made, shall we?'

Solrun came over to me and took the child. 'You really didn't realise? You didn't know she was yours?'

I shook my head. 'No. I didn't realise you wanted  to come to me.'

'I said the father. I said I wanted Asta's father. Did you think I meant Oscar?' She saw the answer to that on my face and she reached   out   and   squeezed   my  arm.   'I  brought the   birth certificate  to show you. It will make you laugh.'

'Solrun.' Christopher's snappy command broke  in.  'Over there  with Kolai  now, please.'

She didn't even turn  to face him. 'What shall I do?' she asked me.

'Oscar was mad,' I said. 'They drove him mad.' She glanced at Oscar's body. Tight-lipped, she moved her eyes to show she understood me.

'They killed your mother  too. The Americans had nothing to do with it.'

The  baby  began  to cry. She patted  its back. 'Why?'

'For   this,'   I  indicated  the  waiting  camera crew,  and  the gaunt Ivan. 'And  me. It's  a great story.  Beauty flees with love child  to escape  wrath  of Yankee  spies. And  can  you imagine what  the Icelanders will think of it?'

'Cut   that  out,'  Christopher said.  He  raised  the  pistol  and gripped it with  both hands. It made a thin  bitter sound  in the open  air.  I felt my left arm  jump  like a twitched  string. But oddly,  no pain.

'You're a bloody nuisance,' he said.

A bloody nuisance. I looked around. Oscar's crumpled body face down.  One  Russian  thug on the floor with  half his head missing and the other with his revolver looking in the general direction  of  myself.   A   bloody   nuisance.  It   didn't   seem adequate, somehow.

'Kolai, get that  crew up here,' Christopher went on. He was trying again  to impose order on the scene. 'We are going to do this interview whether they want  to or not. Ivan,  get up here, man.  You're supposed to be a professional.'

'I can't,' Solrun  said. She was holding  the child tight to her and facing out across the open countryside, across the bubbling pools and the plumes of steam, to the high mountains. 'I won't.'

'She  can't,' I said  to Christopher. I had  to make him see it was impossible. 'Don't you see, she's  not being stubborn, she can't. Before she half-believed  it, but not now. She's  not going anywhere  with   him,'   and   I  pointed   to  Kirillina. 'It's  all different  now. It won't  work any more.'

I could  see in his eyes that  I'd  won. He stared  at  me, then flicked a glance over the rest of them. It had gone. It had been a great  scheme,  but  now it was in broken  bits all over this wild landscape.

'Get in the helicopter,' I added, in a friendly reasonable tone.

‘Just go.'

'He's right,' Ivan  called over. I could  hear  him try to force

some strength into his trembling voice, and I was glad. The rest of them  were listening  and  watching. They  knew a deal  was being made.

Without   warning,   Christopher  suddenly gave  one  of  his pleasing smiles. 'Fair  enough.'

Then  we all froze and  looked at each other.

A high penetrating voice called out: 'Drop those guns please. Drop your guns, all of you.'

After a moment's silence, the voice came again: 'I said, drop those guns,  and  I meant  it.'

A   rifle  cracked.   The   windscreen    of  the   Range   Rover shattered and crashed  inwards.           '

The remaining Russian  thug threw his revolver down noisily on  the   rock  and   locked   his  fingers   on   top  of  his  head. Professionals  don't   take  on  rifles  with  handguns.  But Christopher kept a grip on his, and like all of us he combed  the landscape to see who was doing  the shooting  now.    .

All except Kirillina. His eyes were on Solrun. In them  I saw passion and pleading and tragedy, and  I understood then, with a jolt, that for him it hadn't been acting.  He did love her.

'Mr  Bell now, please,'  the voice called  again.

Whoever  it was,  he was on  the side of the angels.  But  he didn't know I'd struck  a deal with Christopher, and  there was no way  I could  start  to tell him.  My  hand  felt hot.  When  I looked down  I saw it was soaked in blood. I'd  forgotten  about my arm.

'No.  I don't think  so.' This  was Christopher's reply. Once again  he'd  raised the Colt,  and he'd also taken a step forward. He pointed it now at the baby's  back, as it snuggled  against  its mother.  My baby.

'Shoot  me and you risk the child. You may get away with it, you may not. Well? Is it worth  the risk?'

You had to give it to him. His voice was level and controlled. In the silence, I saw a movement  on the hillside. He must've been lying down in some sort of cover. When  he did stand  up, I recognised  him immediately, even at  two hundred yards.  I'd know those knees anywhere. It was Bottger.

We'd all seen him, except Christopher. He wasn't moving his eyes or the gun away from Solrun  and  the baby. They were his last chance.

Only  two yards stood  between  them. But it was two yards of electric  tension.  She had  her left hand  under  the baby and  her right  behind  its head.  Her face above was burning with the will to live. Between  the two of them,  but a little to one side, stood Kirillina, his dark  eyes running from one to the other.

In tones of ringing clarity, Christopher gave his instructions to Solrun  and  to the man on the hillside he still hadn't seen.

'The girl  is coming  down  to the  helicopter now. With  me. You  know  what  will happen  if you shoot.' Still with a raised voice, so the  man  would  understand, he added: 'Come  along now, Solrun. Let's  go.'

He  stepped  towards her.  After  a  moment's hesitation she moved  back  a  step.  It  was  weird  - like watching a  patient dancing teacher with an awkward  pupil.

On  the hillside,  Bottger  had lowered  the rifle. It wasn't his battle now. It was between  these two.

At  that  moment, Strokkur blasted. With  our  own  drama, we'd  all forgotten about the  waters  grunting and  grumbling underground, and  when  the sparkling silver  column  climbed up above our heads,  we all gazed at it. Even Christopher lifted his eyes.

At that  moment  Kirillina sprang. He didn't go for the gun. He grabbed him around the shoulders and  the top of his arms, and with his weight-he was much taller than the Englishman and impetus, he ran Christopher backwards. He was shouting in Russian: let go, get off, something like that.

Maybe he'd expected  Christopher to give more resistance or perhaps he'd just caught him off-balance. Whatever the reason they stumbled down  the hill until  they were on the bare  rock which surrounded the geyser. just then, it broke. One second it was a shining pillar,  the  next  it was gallons  of boiling  water crashing back  to earth. I went staggering back as some of the hot spray, caught on the wind, touched  my face, but even then I knew  that  Christopher had  fired the Colt.  I couldn't hear  the noise  for  the   bellowing   rush   of  the  water,   but   I  felt  the disturbance in the air as the bullet  rushed  past.

Then  I saw  that  Kirillina had  flung  himself  sideways  and was rolling away from the water.  Christopher had gone.

In its rush  to get back into the hot earth, the water  raced  in furious circles over the rocks. As the last streams were sucked into  the  plughole,   I  saw  its  black  mouth   gaping. That  was where he'd  gone.

'The girl.' It was Bottger  who shouted as he ran towards us.

We  were  all  watching  the  waters   close  over  Christopher's grave.  Vanishing like that  was somehow  more complete than death.

When  I spun  and  saw  Solrun  I  knew  instantly what  had happened. She was still clasping the baby with both hands, but now she was on her knees. Her eyes and  mouth  were wide open in  an   expression   of  wonder,   like  a  child's  on   Christmas morning.

As I reached  her, she sank down on to her haunches, and if I hadn't put  my arms  around her she would  have crashed over. I'd seen the neat hole the bullet had left in the baby's pink back. My fingers told me it had blown a hell of a chunk out of Solrun's back on the other  side.

They  were still locked together, mother and daughter. So, as gently as I could I lowered them to the ground just as they were. Solrun  was  still  breathing in  fluttery  little  gasps.  Then  her mouth  closed, her top teeth bit briefly into her bottom  lip, and she died.  I sat  there,  holding  the two of them.  For a while,  a sense of time must  have left me. No thoughts passed through my  mind.  I wasn't thinking. But  I was awake  and  aware. I could smell the sulphurous air. I could  hear the waters  hissing and bubbling around me. In the distance, I could see the saw edged  mountains. Strokkur fired again,  three,  or maybe  four, times. The wind must have dropped for I no longer felt the hot spray.

I  don't think  I  would  have  noticed   the  Helix  going,  if it hadn't churned the air so that Solrun's cropped  curls lifted and moved. Gradually its clatter died away as it headed out over the sea.  I didn't even  notice  the cars  arriving. The  next  thing  I knew was Petursson's hand  on my shoulder. Then I remembered.