‘At the entrance to Asbyrgi?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and closed his eyes again. I took his pulse and found it very much fainter. I turned to Elin. ‘Start to load; leave enough room for Graham to lie in the back on top of the sleeping bags.’ I stood up and checked the load in the carbine.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Maybe I can get close enough to Slade to talk to him,’ I said. ‘To tell him his boy is badly hurt. Maybe I won’t – in that case I’ll talk to him with this.’ I held up the carbine.
She whitened. ‘You’ll kill him?’
‘Christ, I don’t know!’ I said exasperatedly. ‘All I know is that apparently he doesn’t mind if I’m killed – and you, too. He’s sitting at the entrance to Asbyrgi like a bloody cork in a bottle and this is the only corkscrew I’ve got.’
Graham moaned a little and opened his eyes. I bent down. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Bad.’ The trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth had increased to a rivulet which ran down his neck. ‘It’s funny,’ he whispered. ‘How did Slade know?’
I said, ‘What’s in the package?’
‘Don’t … know.’
‘Who is bossing the Department these days?’
His breath wheezed. ‘Ta … Taggart.’
If anyone could pull Slade off my back it would be Taggart. I said, ‘All right; I’ll go and see Slade. We’ll have you out of here in no time.’
‘Slade said … ’ Graham paused and began again. He seemed to have difficulty in swallowing and he coughed a little, bringing bright red bubbles foaming to his lips. ‘Slade said …’
The coughing increased and there was sudden gush of red arterial blood from his mouth and his head fell sideways. I put my hand to his wrist and knew that Graham would never tell me what more Slade had said because he was dead. I closed his staring eyes, and stood up. ‘I’d better talk to Slade.’
‘He’s dead!’ said Elin in a shocked whisper.
Graham was dead – a pawn suddenly swept from the board. He had died because he followed orders blindly, just as I had done in Sweden; he had died because he didn’t really understand what he was doing. Slade had told him to do something and he had tried and failed and come to his death. I didn’t really understand what I was doing, either, so I’d better not fail in anything I attempted.
Elin was crying. The big tears welled from her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She didn’t sob but just stood there crying silently and looking down at the body of Graham. I said harshly, ‘Don’t cry for him – he was going to kill you. You heard him.’
When she spoke it was without a tremor, but still the tears came. ‘I’m not crying for Graham,’ she said desolately. ‘I’m crying for you. Someone must.’
II
We struck camp quickly and loaded everything into the Land-Rover, and everything included the body of Graham. ‘We can’t leave him here,’ I said. ‘Someone will be sure to stumble across him soon – certainly within the week. To quote the Bard, we lug the guts into the neighbour room.’
A wan smile crossed Elin’s face as she caught the allusion. ‘Where?’
‘Dettifoss,’ I said. ‘Or maybe Selfoss.’ To go over a couple of waterfalls, one the most powerful in Europe, would batter the body beyond recognition and, with luck, disguise the fact that Graham had been stabbed. He would be a lone tourist who had had an accident.
So we put the body in the back of the Land-Rover. I picked up the Remington carbine, and said, ‘Give me half an hour, then come along as fast as you can.’
‘I can’t move fast if I have to be quiet,’ she objected.
‘Quietness won’t matter – just belt towards the entrance as fast as you can, and use the headlights. Then slow down a bit so I can hop aboard.’
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