‘Elías is alive,’ Steve said carefully. ‘He’s still alive. There’s hope.’
‘They didn’t succeed in killing him,’ Kristín said. ‘They won’t get away with it. We’ll meet Monica, then head up to the glacier.’
‘Then we’ll need equipment. A guide. A four-wheel drive. Where are we going to find all that?’ Steve asked apprehensively.
‘We have to find those brothers Thompson mentioned. Surely they’ll help us if they’re still alive? Failing them, the people who live there now. And I think I know where I can get hold of a four-wheel drive.’
‘Kristín, we need to think seriously about what we can achieve against a bunch of soldiers.’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ Kristín answered, ‘but I have to see what’s going on with my own eyes. I have to find out what they’re up to.’
Desperate as she felt about Elías, it was no longer simply about her brother. She was driven by an inner compulsion and by other forces impelling her forward that she could not put a name to. Her normal reserves of energy exhausted, she had reached a place that was beyond fatigue. She wanted to know what the plane contained and she intended to find out. And when she found out she was going to tell people, expose the bastards who had tried to kill her brother and succeeded in killing his friend.
‘But first I have to check out what was going on in 1967.’
The reading room of the National Library was deserted and the only noise was made by Kristín turning a heavy wheel to scroll through microfilms of newspapers from the 1960s. She sat in front of the clumsy microfiche reader watching the pages roll past, one after the other. The number of editions on each microfilm depended on the physical size of the newspaper; with some titles, two years’ worth could fit on the same film. Kristín watched the headlines fly by, history being replayed on fast-forward: the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the student uprising in Paris in ’68, Nixon’s presidential candidacy.
She savoured this brief interval of solitude, the silence that reigned in the reading room. Of course she was grateful to Steve for coming to her assistance and appreciated his help and his calm reactions, but at last she had time to catch her breath, to think about what had happened over the last few hours and to plan what to do next.
In the meantime, Steve had gone to a small hostel on a backstreet nearby. He said he only needed the room for part of the day and had some dollars on him, so the warden was quick to pocket the money and did not bother to enter him into the guest book. He and Kristín were planning to travel east to the glacier later that day but before that he intended to gather more information about the operation on the glacier; ring some people, find out whatever they could tell him. He had hardly had time to think since Kristín rang his doorbell yesterday evening and now he took the chance to go over the events of the night, trying to form a picture of what he had experienced. Clearly, Kristín was in real danger and he was glad to be able to help her; even though he could not work out exactly what was going on, as long as she needed him, he was content.
Kristín found the astronauts’ visit in 1967. There were twenty-five of them and the press had followed their every move. One of the pilots with them was called Ian Parker, the name Thompson had mentioned, the man who used to fly Scorpions. He had also been a member of the earlier group; the newspapers reminded their readers that eight astronauts had come to Iceland on a training mission in 1965. On that occasion the group had been taken into the uninhabited interior, to the volcanic desert around Herdubreidarlindir and Askja, a trip that was repeated when Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts visited the country. He was the only member of the team to have been awarded his astronaut wings, the only one who had actually been in space, having piloted the Gemini 8 in 1966 during the first successful manned docking of two spacecraft in orbit.
Unsurprisingly, Armstrong attracted the most column inches. The article described him as a very reserved man with a short back and sides haircut; quiet, serious, interested in the technological challenges of space flight, and quoted as saying that the only drawback with the US space programme was the huge amount of attention he attracted wherever he went.
‘The huge amount of attention he attracted wherever he went,’ Kristín repeated to herself.
Her ex-boyfriend, “mar the lawyer, had no intention of lending her the car at first. In fact, he was more inclined to call the police when Kristín appeared without warning at his office in the centre of town. He had heard the radio announcements. Later, surely, pictures of her would be broadcast on the TV news that evening and in tomorrow’s papers.
‘Jesus, Kristín! What’s going on?’ he burst out when he saw her standing at the door of his office.
‘What have you heard?’ she asked.
‘All I know is that you’re wanted by the police because of a dead man in your apartment,’ he said, rising from his desk. ‘What on earth have you done?’
‘I haven’t done anything,’ she assured him.
‘That’s not how it sounded. Why are you on the run from the police? Surely it’s some misunderstanding?’
‘Calm down,’ Kristín said, closing the door. ‘I need to ask you a favour.’
‘A favour?’
‘Yes, I’d like to borrow your jeep.’
‘My jeep?’
‘Yes. Look, I’ll fill you in on the whole story as soon as I have time but I’m in a terrible hurry and there’s no one else I can turn to. You have to help me.’
He stood staring at her as if she was a complete stranger; a tall, good-looking man with attractive brown eyes who had caught her off her guard at a Law Society party and been part of her life for the next three years.
‘I’m desperate,’ she said. ‘You’d be doing me an incredible favour.’
‘Are you in some kind of danger?’ he asked in a gentler tone, and she remembered that for all his faults he could be considerate at times.
‘No,’ she lied. ‘And I am going to get in touch with the police just as soon as I can but there’s something I have to do first and you can help me.’
‘What are you planning to do with the jeep?’
‘I have to take a short trip into the countryside – I won’t be long, trust me.’
Ómar wavered. He could see that Kristín was desperate and had no good reason to refuse her request.
‘Just for today?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘And you’ll leave it in front of the office by the end of the day?’
‘Yes. Thank you so much, “mar. I knew I could rely on you.’
‘If you don’t return it, I’ll be on to the police straight away.’
‘No problem,’ Kristín said, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’
‘Did you really kill that man?’
‘Of course not. Don’t be silly. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. I promise.’
Now she and Steve were sitting in a handsome, brand-new blue Pajero. The jeep was equipped with a car-phone and tinted windows; apart from her brief respite in the library, it was the first time Kristín had not felt hunted in the last eighteen hours. She fought down the instinct not to leave the jeep’s warm, leathery interior.
She had found a parking space in front of a florist near the restaurant, from where they could monitor the comings and goings around the pub. It was getting on for four o’clock, dusk was falling. A group of men clad in thick jumpers, leather jackets and jeans – trawlermen, Kristín guessed – stopped outside the pub and, after a loud altercation, went inside. A young couple followed them. A fat man in a thick windcheater came out. Everything seemed calm.
It was ten past four when Steve nudged Kristín.
‘There’s Monica,’ he said, pointing to a tall, slim woman in her early forties, with dark hair, wearing a thick, beige overcoat and a belt around her waist. She hurried inside. They waited to see if anyone was following her, then stepped out of the car. Looking through the window Steve saw that Monica had taken a seat at the back, in a corner. The fishermen were now lining the bar and making a racket, roaring with laughter and shouting to one another. Four men sat by one of the large windows facing the street, trying to ignore the fishermen. Otherwise, only the odd table was occupied. The interior was wood-panelled and furnished with rustic wooden tables and heavy chairs in a forlorn attempt to evoke an Irish pub ambience, and a small staircase led to an upstairs room where they sometimes had live music. Kristín and Steve made their way over to the corner and sat down beside Monica.