She took a deep breath and tried to think clearly, tried to persuade herself that she was worrying unnecessarily, that her brother was fine and would phone her any minute to tell her what he had seen; that there was some perfectly reasonable explanation. She counted slowly up to ten, then up to twenty, and felt her heartbeat gradually steadying.
She was just about to ring the police when she heard a knock at the door. Dropping the telephone, she went and put her eye to the peephole.
‘Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ she sighed. ‘At a time like this!’ She must be polite.
The instant she opened the door, two men barged inside. One clamped his hand over her mouth and forced her ahead of him into the living room. The other followed close behind, shut the door and conducted a swift search of the flat, checking the other rooms and kitchen to ensure she was alone. Meanwhile, the man who was holding Kristin pulled out a small revolver and put a finger to his lips to indicate that she should keep quiet. They were both wearing white rubber gloves. Their actions were methodical, calculated and practised, as if they had done this countless times before. Focused and purposeful, they got straight down to business.
Kristin could not make a sound. She stared at the two men in stunned bewilderment.
White rubber gloves?
Bateman found her passport in a drawer in the sideboard, walked over to Kristin and compared her face with the photo.
‘Bingo,’ he said, dropping the passport on the floor.
‘Do exactly what I tell you,’ Ripley said in English as he levelled the revolver at her head, ‘and sit down here at the desk.’ He shoved her towards the desk and she sat down with the gun still wedged against her temple. She could feel its muzzle, cold, heavy and blunt, and her head hurt from the pressure.
Bateman came over and joined them. He switched on Kristin’s computer, humming gently to himself as it warmed up, then created a new file and began quickly and methodically to copy something from a sheet of paper he had taken from his pocket. They conversed in English while this was going on, saying something she did not catch. Yet although they gave the impression of being American, to Kristin’s astonishment the man was writing in Icelandic.
She tried addressing them, first in Icelandic, then in English, but they did not answer. She knew that robberies had been on the increase lately but she had never heard of a burglary like this. At first she had taken it for some kind of joke. Now she was sure they were burglars. But why this unintelligible message on the computer?
‘Take what you like,’ she said in English. ‘Take anything you like, then get out. Leave me alone.’ She felt herself growing numb with terror at the thought that they might not be thieves, that they might have some other form of violence in mind for her. Later, when she replayed the events in her head, as she would again and again in the following days, she had difficulty remembering what thoughts had raced through her mind during those chaotic minutes. It all happened so fast that she never had time to take in the full implications of her situation. It was so absurd, so utterly incomprehensible. Things like this did not happen; not in Iceland, not in Reykjavik, not in her world.
‘Take whatever you like,’ she repeated.
The men did not answer.
‘Do you mean me?’ she asked, still speaking English, pointing at the computer screen. ‘Is it me who can’t go on living any longer?’
‘Your brother’s dead and you can’t go on living any longer. Simple as that,’ Bateman replied. He smiled as he added to himself sarcastically: ‘What poets they are at the embassy.’
‘My brother? Elias? What do you mean, dead? Who are you? Are you friends of Elias? If this is supposed to be a joke…’
‘Hush, Kristin. Don’t alarm yourself,’ Ripley said. The accent was definitely American.
‘What’s going on?’ Kristin demanded to know, her terror suddenly giving way to blazing anger.
‘A grand conspiracy involving the Reykjavik police, the Icelandic foreign ministry and the ministry of justice,’ Bateman said gravely, catching Ripley’s eye. He looked for all the world as though he was enjoying himself.
‘A conspiracy?’ Kristin repeated in Icelandic. ‘The foreign ministry? Elias? What kind of joke is this? What kind of bullshit is this?’ She was shouting now.
‘She’s lost it,’ Bateman said, taking in her flushed face and heaving chest. ‘Let her have it,’ he added, and retreated a couple of steps.
Out of the corner of her eye Kristin saw the barrel of the gun and Ripley tightening his finger on the trigger. She closed her eyes. But instead of the shot she expected, there was a sudden violent banging on the door.
Ripley removed the revolver from her temple and clamped his gloved hand over Kristin’s mouth. She struggled for air and could taste the plastic. Bateman went to the door and peered through the peephole, then returned to the living room.
‘A male, fortyish, unaccompanied, medium height.’
‘Let him in,’ Ripley said. ‘We’ll take him too. Turn it into a murder. Ratoff needn’t know.’
Bateman returned to the door. The banging resumed, even louder than before. A man was yelling Kristin’s name. She recognised the voice and the hectoring tone but could not place them. In an instant, Bateman had opened the door, grabbed the man by the lapels and dragged him into the flat. As the door opened and Ripley’s attention was momentarily distracted by the struggle in the hall, Kristin seized her chance. Leaping to her feet, she shoved Ripley away, sending him crashing into the table, and fled to the door. Now she could see who the visitor was: Runolfur.
‘Look out!’ she screamed. ‘They’re armed!’
Runolfur did not have time to reply. He saw Kristin rushing towards him, panic written on her face. Glancing beyond her into the living room he saw Ripley stagger into the table. There was a dull report and a tiny red hole appeared in Runolfur’s forehead as Kristin dodged past him. She saw him collapse noiselessly into Bateman’s arms. As she ran out of the flat, the next bullet tore past her ear and smacked into the door. She sped across the hall, through the front door, out into the snow and round the corner of the building with Ripley and Bateman hard on her heels.
Although Kristin had been on her way out when her brother called from the glacier, she had not got as far as putting on her shoes. She was wearing only thin socks, baggy tracksuit bottoms and a vest-top under her anorak as she hurtled across the back garden. The temperature had dropped below freezing and the snow was covered with a thin crust of ice that cracked beneath her weight, plunging her feet into soft wetness with every step. The cold was so painful that she wanted to cry out. Not daring to look back, she took a flying leap over the garden fence, sprinted across the road, into another garden, across it and over the next fence, vanishing into the darkness.
Later, when she had time to unravel the chaos in her mind, she would decide that her life had been saved by the fact that Ripley and Bateman were ill-equipped for running in snow. They never had a chance of catching her in their slippery, leather-soled shoes and by the time they had jettisoned them, she had disappeared. After observing where her tracks in the snow met and mingled with countless others, the two men turned and headed back to Kristin’s flat. In spite of the gunfire and the commotion of the chase there was no sign of the occupants of the flat upstairs.
Bateman and Ripley shut the door behind them, re-emerged from the flat five minutes later and climbed wordlessly into the Explorer.
Chapter 7
VATNAJOKULL GLACIER,
FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 1930 GMT
