‘You can move back in with me if you like,’ Jói said, looking around the small apartment. ‘I don’t know, maybe you want to stay here. But if you need somewhere else...’
‘Thanks, Jói.’ For a moment, she wondered whether she would be safe in Jói’s apartment. The answer was clearly not — Krakatoa would have no problem finding her there. ‘Maybe in a week or two?’
‘What’s that?’ Jói asked, pointing to Dísa’s pink USB stick.
‘Oh, it’s my bitcoin wallet.’
‘Hot pink?’
‘I know.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Dad gave it to me. I made him promise to switch it to a silver one, but he never did.’
‘So you still have some bitcoin?’
‘Mum had some.’ Dísa lowered the lid to her computer. She didn’t want Jói seeing how much.
‘Do you have a back-up wallet?’ Jói asked. ‘Aren’t you supposed to keep one somewhere, in case you lose that?’
‘I do. But it’s up in Dalvík. In a secret hiding place.’
‘Where?’ said Jói.
‘I can’t tell you that!’ said Dísa. ‘Or it wouldn’t be secret!’
Jói grinned. ‘I guess not.’
She had made light of it. But she wondered whether she should tell Jói where her paper wallet was hidden. Originally she had stuffed it under her old Barbie doll clothes in a drawer in her bedroom, but after her mother’s death, she had moved it to Helga’s hiding place by the elf rock behind the farm. Perhaps she should even give it to Jói for safekeeping.
But there was still a chance he might try to return his father’s bitcoin to him, once he realized Dísa had taken it from him. And even if he didn’t, Dísa would be putting Jói at risk.
It was bad enough that Uncle Eggert would be in danger. One relative at a time.
But if Uncle Eggert’s answer was that he refused to help Dísa any further, maybe she should open up to Jói?
Later, half an hour after Jói had left, Eggert called.
‘OK, Dísa,’ he said. ‘You’re a brave girl. Those people deserve to get their money back, and I’ll help you do it. I’ll give you my bitcoin wallet address and you can pay them over when you’re ready. You realize you’ll be trusting me with twenty million dollars?’
Dísa smiled. ‘I trust you, Uncle Eggert.’
Thirty-Eight
KRAKATOA: Well done. One more small job.
TECUMSEH: Not if it’s in Iceland.
KRAKATOA: What do you mean?
TECUMSEH: I’m on the train from the airport.
KRAKATOA: Which airport?
TECUMSEH: It’s not Keflavik.
KRAKATOA: You didn’t tell me you were leaving the country!
TECUMSEH: Sorry. It was time to go. I’ll expect the second forty thousand in my wallet by tonight.
KRAKATOA: But I didn’t say you could leave Iceland.
TECUMSEH: You didn’t have to. Pay me. I don’t believe in outstanding debts. I have none. Everyone always pays me on time. Including you.
KRAKATOA: I understand. I’ll pay you now.
TECUMSEH: Good. I hope you appreciated the quality of my work.
KRAKATOA: Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.
TECUMSEH: You’re welcome.
Thirty-Nine
Thud, thud, thud.
Ómar’s heavy tread pounded along the pavement beside the bay, his gasps loud in his ears. A cold breeze bounded off the water, snapping at his cheeks. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on Mount Esja, a long slab of rock lurking beneath a dark cloud in the distance. No matter how hard he ran, the mountain was not getting any closer, although the grey cloud was slipping upwards, as if pulled back by a giant hand.
He switched his gaze to the sculpture of the Viking ship jutting out a couple of metres from the pavement into the bay, its bones burnished silver in the low sunlight. That at least was getting closer. And he knew there were benches there. He could do a stretch or two, like the responsible athlete he was.
God, he was unfit! This was his third day running and he wasn’t sure he was going to keep it up. But his bulging stomach taunted him every day.
A tall grey-haired guy in tight black leggings loped past him. He had to be at least ten years older than Ómar.
His thoughts turned to Dísa, as they had constantly since Jói had warned him to check his bitcoin wallet. He had driven up to the summer house immediately. The two cigar canisters were still there, stuffed beneath the tuft of grass by the elf rock, and so were the private keys inside. At first, he had found no sign of anyone taking a look, but Dísa could easily have copied down the private keys and shoved them back in their hiding place. Then he spotted part of a fresh Dísa-sized footprint a couple of metres away on some bare earth.
Jói was right. There was no other explanation. Dísa must have stolen his bitcoin. Thirty thousand dollars of it.
She had as good as warned him, that afternoon by that other rock at Blábrekka. She had urged him to give his bitcoin to Dalvík’s Thomocoin investors — more than urged him, virtually ordered him. No doubt that was what she planned to do with his hoard. And Jói’s.
He had no idea how much Jói had stashed in his bitcoin wallet. He was sure it would be more than him, a lot more.
Part of him was impressed with what Dísa had done. She had tried to make him feel guilty about the Thomocoin mess and had succeeded. The message boards suggested that Thomocoin had imploded. The price on the website hadn’t been updated since it had spiked up to five hundred dollars. There were rumours that Sharp and Jérôme were on the run, that Sharp was now in Moscow or Beijing. The believers were suggesting that the haters were trying to shut Thomocoin down, but that Sharp had escaped their clutches and, from the safety of Moscow or wherever, would resurrect the cryptocurrency.
Ómar knew it was bollocks.
So did Dísa. And she had done something about it.
It was partly for that reason, and partly because he wanted to avoid a confrontation with his daughter so soon after her mother’s death, that Ómar hadn’t demanded the bitcoin back. Yet.
Neither had he been in touch with Jói. That was another confrontation he had been avoiding.
Thomocoin had been Jói’s idea. It was Ómar who had put Jói in touch with his friend Sharp in London. Between the two of them, with some help from Sharp’s French friend from business school, Jérôme, they had transformed Jói’s original FOMOcoin into Thomocoin and turned it into what seemed to be a huge success. Ómar had kept out of it — he hadn’t the nerve for that kind of thing any more — but from the periphery, he had been impressed and proud of the way that Jói, in the guise of Krakatoa, had asserted himself as de facto boss of the organization.
Now Thomocoin was in trouble, and so too was Jói, presumably. Unless his Krakatoa alias held. Ómar had been sceptical of Jói’s insistence that Jói feign indifference towards crypto to people he knew in the real world. But now Ómar saw how smart his son had been to preserve his anonymity: Jói could look after himself, he had proved that.
Part of Ómar admired Dísa for what she had done, but a bigger part of him needed the money. The tourist season had been a complete washout that summer. Although Iceland had allowed tourists back in July, there were strict quarantine requirements, and not many had come. And those that had come had brought the virus with them. Two French tourists had just managed to infect more than ninety people after a little bar crawl in downtown Reykjavík; they hadn’t understood the quarantine rules. And with the tourists had gone Ómar’s income as a freelance guide.