Black Ice (32 page)

'Sally.  They're going to kill Sally.'

In   the   police   car   on   the   way   back,   I   wouldn't  take Petursson's  word  for  it.  He  radioed   Reykjavik.  They   telephoned  England. But it wasn't until  they'd  done it again,  and the police operator in town had assured  me personally  that  the nuns  had been up to the dormitory themselves,  that  I believed them.  Sally was asleep  in bed.

50

'It was a bluff then?'  Bottger  said.

I still called him Bottger. It didn't seem worth  breaking in a new name  at  this point.  What  I couldn't get used to was him having  no  accent. He  spoke  fee-paying  English,  like Christopher.

'Yes, apparently,' I replied.

'Of course, if you don't know any better,  a bluff is every bit as effective as  the  real  thing' The  stewardess was hovering. 'A drink?  We don't want  that  disgusting brennivin stuff that  Bell inflicted  on us, do we? Let's  be civilised and  have a Scotch.'

I tipped all mine into the glass and I didn't wait for the water.

I'd  had  quite  a few of those  in the  twenty-four hours  it had taken  to tidy up the loose ends for Petursson before leaving.

Most  of them  had  been  necessary  when  I was writing  my piece for Grimm. I owed him that.  However  you looked at it, I was representing his paper and it was a hell of a big story. But it was far from painless to do, with her death so vivid in my mind. My fingers were still sore where I'd  had to scrub  them together blood  from  behind  my finger-nails. And  having  my arm  in a sling didn't help much,  come to that.

Anyway,  one way or another I'd  managed to get it written. Grimm was so overjoyed he even offered me a staff job, at which point  I  became   too  overwhelmed  to  give  him  any  answer.

Distressed  as I was, I could see why he was so pleased. He'd got an exclusive on a major international story. He jibbed  a little at my  approach to  it - I'd  done  it  straight down  the  middle, emphasising  the   political   significance    and   playing   down Solrun's part personally- but in the end said not to worry, he'd get one of his word-mechanics to sharpen it up.

Our flight  rose into  the  clouds  almost immediately. I was glad I wasn't able to look down on that wild country. I'd  never go back again.

'I'd like to think you were keeping an eye on me all the time,'

I said  to Bottger.

He shook his head.  'Hardly at all. It wasn't possible most of

the time. And I must say you seemed  to be coping  admirably. Admirably.'

'It didn't feel like that.'

'I was telling Batty  that  this morning and  he rather thought he might  have some  more work to put your  way. Interested?'

'What- nudging history  again?'

He laughed. 'Did  he say that  to you? Nudging history?  It's one of his favourite expressions. What  shall  I tell him?'

'Tell  him I'll leave it.'

'Just as  you .like.'  He  crossed  his  long  legs,  an  awkward operation with restricted knee-room. 'I can't say I came out of it with a great  deal of glory.'

'You  weren't to know we'd done a deal.'

'Still,' he pulled  a face at  the  thought of it and  brushed a crumb off his trousers. It was the first time I'd seen him with his legs covered ..In some odd way, it made him seem younger. 'I'll! sorry  about the puffin, by the way.'

I had it on my knee in a: carrier  bag. Bottger  had insisted  on beheading it. Sure enough, he'd  found  a bug inside. That was how  they  knew Solrun  had  been  to my  room  that  night. I'd fastened  the head back on with sticky tape, but it didn't look the same.  I wasn't at all sure why I'd  brought it with m. I wasn't planning to give it to Sally- not now.

That reminded me. For about  the tenth  time I took the slip of paper  out  of my pocket.  Petursson had  given  it  to me at  the airport. It was the birth  certificate they'd  found  on Solrun.

There it  was.  'Asta  Samsdottir.' She'd   promised it  would

make  me  laugh. It didn't, not  then,  but  perhaps one day  it would    make   me   smile.   Dear   God.   Daughters.  Fathers. Families. What a mess!

'And  your chum  Ivan  has gone back to Moscow?'

'So  they say.'

'That hardly  seems fair, does it? Getting away scot-free like

that.'

'Maybe not.'  I  couldn't begin  to explain  how  much  Ivan

would  hate  it.  I'd  die,  he'd  said.  Dry  up  and  die.  When  I thought about it,  I  still  felt sorry  for  him.  Emotions don't always  change as quickly  as experience instructs them.

Once  we'd  cleared  customs, Bottger  and  I stood  together,

uncertain how to end it.

He checked  his watch.  'I hope Ursula's cut the lawn. That's the  one job  I  loathe.  Well,  Hammersmith, did  you say? It's more or less on my way. A lift any  use?'

'No,  thanks. I'm  not going straight home.'

'Not  to the office, I hope. You've had a rough time, you must take it easy. How's the arm?'

I wagged the sling and immediately regretted  it. 'Only a flesh thing. Not too serious,  but rather painful.'

'Be careful.  Any bullet wound is serious,  I can assure you. It

isn't  like those  cowboy  films where  they all get  up and  walk away afterwards, you know. The  real thing is a good deal more disagreeable.'

It was disagreeable all right.  People missed. They  shot  the wrong  people.  Like a knife in the heart,  I had a quick vision of her face when her eyes closed. Her damp lashes lay like a brush

on her cheeks. So long, so absurd, so lovely.

'Take my advice,  Craven. Have  a couple of large ones and get yourself to bed. Don't dwell on it. It doesn't do. And don't sit around by yourself,  if you can avoid it. Are you going to see friends?'

'Family actually. In Chelmsford.'

I left him and  took a cab. The  driver's paper  was stuck  up behind  his sun visor. It was Grimm's. The headline was so big I could've read  it from Reykjavik.

SEXY ESKIE- THE SPY WHO DIED FOR  LOVE

Ah well. As Grimm  always said,  that  was what  the punters wanted.

If you enjoyed
Black Ice
perhaps you may like this preview of:

Midway:

The Battle That Made the Modern World

Richard Freeman

A fleet in peril: 4 June 1942

Admiral Chester Nimitz looked at the clock. The time was 10.18 am on 4 June 1942. At his command base in Hawaii he was brooding on the disastrous news from Midway over 1000 miles distant. His three carriers – Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown – had launched their torpedo planes against three Japanese carriers and had barely scratched them. None of Hornet’s planes had returned, while four limped back to Enterprise and two to Yorktown. Defeat seemed imminent.

The road to Midway: 1931-1942

Japan had begun to expand beyond her borders at the turn of the nineteenth century. After successfully backing the winning side in the First World War, she invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. America took no action. It was Japan’s invasion of Indo-China in 1940 which finally provoked America to act with an embargo on oil exports to Japan in 1941. With no oil of her own, Japan decided to take control of the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. For this and for access to the rest of her growing empire, she needed domination of the Pacific Ocean.

To this end Japan first attempted to destroy the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 so pushing America into war. The damage inflicted by the raid was massive, including sinking four battleships, destroying 188 aircraft and damaging 159 other planes. By chance, though, the American aircraft carriers were absent. For all the Japanese success, the American Pacific Fleet remained a severe threat to any hopes of Japanese expansion in the Pacific. Naval Marshall General Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, would be forced to fight another day. The Americans could be sure that when the brains behind Pearl Harbour returned to sea they would face a formidable opponent.

In the months following Pearl Harbour the American Pacific Fleet limited itself to minor raids on ill-defended targets. These raids both bought time for the Fleet to regain its strength and helped to keep the airmen and sailors in trim. One of these minor raids produced an unexpected outcome. In April 1942 the aircraft carrier Hornet was dispatched to stand off Japan and mount an air raid on Tokyo with sixteen B-25 bombers, led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle. After successfully dropping their bomb loads the planes flew on to China, where they were to land and refuel. The landing arrangements all went awry and the planes had to ditch or crash land. All in all the raid seemed a pointless disaster, yet it produced a striking reaction from the Japanese. The official Japanese view that Japan was invulnerable to attack had been successfully challenged. One minor American bombing raid provoked the Japanese into a fearsome retaliation.

Having failed to eliminate the American threat on its home territory, the Japanese decided to take possession of Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea and so prevent the allies from using Australia as a base for Pacific operations. Yamamoto’s invasion force landed unopposed on 3 May 1942 but, unknown to him, American intelligence had discovered his intentions. While Yamamoto congratulated himself on the landing, two American carrier forces were closing in. After a vicious series of actions spread over four days the result was more or less a draw, although the Japanese had succeeded in sinking the American carrier Lexington. Critically, though, they had failed to occupy Moresby, so leaving dominance of the Pacific a still open contest. But, even while the battle was in progress, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, Admiral Osami Nagano, had issued the order to invade Midway.

Japan faced a fundamental problem in 1942: how could she inflict any major damage on her powerful enemy? America’s mainland territory was untouchable, yet few other significant targets were available. Japan needed to find one that was vital to the Americans yet not beyond the possibility of successful attack. It also needed to be feasible to hold once taken.

Positioned halfway across the Pacific Ocean, the Midway Atoll was an important refuelling post for American aircraft and a highly valued base for naval vessels. The Eastern Island held the airstrip, while all other facilities were on Sand Island. These included aircraft hangers, repair facilities, fuel and ammunition stores, a radio station, plus all the paraphernalia to support service life. If Japan could take the atoll she would seriously weaken America’s capacity to interfere with her oil tankers and other vessels plying between the East Indies and Japan.

For Yamamoto Japan’s possession of Midway would further enhance her capacity to wage war in the Pacific. As he saw it, no military objective could simultaneously deliver greater gain to Japan and greater loss to America. All he needed was a good plan and surprise. Unfortunately these two essentials were to elude him.

Implementation fell to Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, commander of the Kido Butai (the carrier strike force). Although Nagumo was amongst those who doubted the wisdom of the Midway plan, he was in no position to resist it. His opinion was worth little given that he had opposed the Pearl Harbour venture. A torpedo expert, he was considered to be passive but prone to panicking. When the Midway operation reached its climax he would be paralysed by an inability to improvise when changes to the plan were urgently needed. But he had got the job by seniority and, whatever reservations Yamamoto had about him, he was there to stay.

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