Once In, Never Out Read online

  “Why would the Irish do that? They don’t have much of a fishing fleet.”

  “Just to piss the Brits off, I guess. Smythe-Douglass did some research and was afraid the Irish might have a valid claim. Rockall is closer to Ireland than it is to either Iceland or Great Britain, and the medieval Irish monks were a seafaring lot. Since they were the first ones to arrive in Iceland, he felt it was possible they had also discovered Rockall.”

  “But they have no documentation of such a visit, do they?” Thor asked.

  “Not as far as he knew, but he was afraid the World Court might side with them.”

  “I see. So he sneaks in here to take care of things with us before taking on the Irish.”

  “I’m sure that’s what he had in mind, but that’s not the way it worked out. If Rockall must be owned by any nation, it should be us. I was able to convince him of that and we arrived at an accommodation over ownership.”

  “Do you think the IRA planted the bomb?”

  “Nobody’s claimed credit for it, yet, but Irish national interests are involved. I’m assuming it’s their work, but I don’t see how it’s possible.”

  “Because of the secrecy of the visit?” Thor asked.

  “Yes, that and the fact that it was so hastily arranged. The IRA simply wouldn’t have had the time to formulate a plan and then get a bomb into the Saga.”

  “Exactly who knew the foreign secretary was in town?”

  “Chatwick’s trying to find out who knew on their end, but here the list is very small. Should I give you the scenario?”

  “Please.”

  “Chatwick went to see Vigdís yesterday morning to arrange the meeting. Since it was Sunday, she didn’t even tell her secretary about it. She knew what he wanted to talk about, so she called me and said that she’d bring them over to my place after dinner with her. I told no one about it, and that’s just the way it worked out.”

  “Not exactly, or they’d still be alive. Were they noticed by anyone at the airport?”

  “Chatwick says no, says they didn’t attract any attention at all. They were traveling on diplomatic passports, so immigration and customs were no problem for them. They were out of the airport in five minutes.”

  “And what then? Straight to Vigdís’s house?”

  “No, that’s where it got complicated. Chatwick had reserved the presidential suite for them and they went to the hotel first to change before dinner. Got there about four, stayed less than an hour, and were at Vigdís’s house by five. After dinner they came to my house.”

  “Vigdís, too?”

  “No, just the Brits. Got there at seven and left at ten-forty-five. They got back to the hotel at eleven and Chatwick stayed there until midnight. The bombs went off at seven minutes after one.”

  “Bombs?”

  “Yeah, two of them. Thorough bastards, whoever did this. Put one in the master bedroom and another in the servant’s room.”

  “And they went off at exactly the same time?”

  “Yep. Got the foreign secretary in the servant’s room and his wife in the master bedroom.”

  “The British foreign secretary was sleeping in the servant’s room?” Thor asked.

  “Yeah, but let’s keep that off the record as long as we can. I asked their ambassador about it and all he said was that they didn’t appear to be getting on exceptionally well last night.”

  “What was your take on them?” Thor asked.

  “They seemed fine to me. A very cordial couple. Penelope Smythe-Douglass was apparently a woman of some breeding and it seemed that we all enjoyed her company.”

  Frieda came in carrying the coffee and the heated croissants on a tray. Conversation stopped while Frieda added the cream and sugar for Erík and Thor. “Am I interrupting?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” Thor said. “Have a seat.”

  Frieda looked pleased as she settled next to Erík on the sofa. She kept her eyes on Thor as she sipped her coffee, waiting for the conversation to resume. He knew Frieda’s curiosity and was sure she had been listening from the kitchen, but she managed to appear very nonchalant.

  “Did Chatwick drive them from place to place?” Thor asked.

  “Yes, in his own car.”

  “Make any other stops?”

  “He says no.”

  “Did we provide any security?”

  “Yes. I called Janus at nine and asked him to provide a man at the Saga, basically just to keep the press away in case they found out about the visit.”

  “Who did he send?”

  “You know a constable named Haarold Sigmarsson?”

  “Yes, a very good choice. One of our sharpest and toughest. Did Janus send Brandy to check out the room?”

  “Brandy?”

  “Our bomb dog. She’s trained to sniff out most types of explosives.”

  “No, he didn’t. I asked him about the bomb dog and he said there hadn’t been enough time. Her handler went to Akureyi yesterday for the weekend and she’s with him.”

  “That’s too bad,” Thor commented. “We have the first bombing in our history and our only bomb-sniffing dog is two hundred and thirty kilometers away.”

  “Bad luck,” Erík agreed.

  “What time did Haarold get to the hotel?”

  “Ten o’clock. He met them all in the hotel lobby when they arrived, then stood guard outside the room. Handled himself very well when the bombs went off.”

  “Was he injured?” Frieda asked, concerned. She knew both Haarold and his wife and was one of the few people who liked the taciturn and easily irritated constable.

  “No. It wasn’t much of a blast because the folks at the front desk didn’t even hear it. He got soaked, but he wasn’t injured.”

  “The sprinkler system?” Thor asked.

  “Yes. Haarold heard the blast, but he didn’t have the code key to get into the suite. So he put a few shots into the lock and then kicked the door in. The lights were blown out in the master bedroom and the sprinkler system was dousing the place, but he used his flashlight and saw the wife’s body on the bed. She was dead, so he looked around. Found the foreign secretary in the servant’s room.”

  “Burn damage to the bodies?”

  “I don’t know. Haarold wouldn’t let anybody into the suite except Janus. Not the medical examiner, not the British ambassador, not even me. The fire alarm had gone off, but Haarold wouldn’t even let in the firemen. Said he didn’t want us destroying the crime scene.”

  “I guess Janus backed him up.”

  “Yes, and that was that. Without the medical examiner, those bodies aren’t even officially dead yet.”

  “Who turned the sprinklers off?” Thor asked.

  “Nobody. They’re pretty sophisticated and they went off by themselves while Haarold was still inside.”

  Thor silently sipped his coffee for a few minutes as he contemplated the disaster he had just been assigned. Haarold was the one bright spot in the affair and his presence outside the room meant a few things. One was that the bombs had been placed before Haarold’s assignment to the post because the astute and singularly unfriendly constable would never fall for any kind of ruse and would let no unauthorized person into the presidential suite. Because of Haarold, he knew he would be dealing with as pure a crime scene as possible under the circumstances, unmuddled by the firemen.

  Still, Thor recognized that there was quite a task in front of him. He had known that Iceland would eventually fall victim to the terrorist madness gripping the rest of the world and he had tried to train himself through reading, seminars, and courses. Besides being the homicide investigator, he was also recognized as the nation’s best crime scene technician and its only bomb expert. But he had never handled a bombing and he would be under intense scrutiny. “Is the press at the Saga now?”

  “A few reporters were arriving as I left, but they didn’t see me.”

  “Who else is there?”

  “Janus and the British ambassador.”

/>   “Who’s going to giving the press a statement?”

  “I’m going to be making myself unavailable until the British make their announcement, so it’ll be you or Janus.”

  So the police are elected to be the liars, Thor thought. We’re to emphasize the investigation and dummy-up when reporters ask us the reasons for the British visit. Not a good position for us. “I don’t like it,” Thor said.

  “But you’ll do it?”

  “I can’t speak for Janus, but I’ll do it if I have to. Reluctantly do it.”

  It was what Erík wanted to hear. “Good,” he said and stood up. The visit was over, but Frieda’s curiosity wasn’t satisfied. “How did you manage to convince the British that Rockall is ours?”

  Thor was surprised to see that Erík appeared pleased by the inquiry.

  “Simple. Geography and history,” Erík said proudly. “Unlike England and Ireland, both Iceland and Rockall were formed by volcanic activity. From a geographic standpoint, Rockall can’t possibly be considered part of the British Isles and shouldn’t belong to either Ireland or the United Kingdom. Then there’s a story in one of the sagas. Rockall was discovered by an Icelander named Sigmar in 1001. His ship was wrecked on a small, rocky island in the North Atlantic. From the description in the saga, it had to be Rockall. He and some of his men survived the shipwreck and were rescued a few days later. He eventually died in Iceland, so he’s officially one of ours.”

  Sort of a tenuous claim to Rockall, but better than the claims of either the United Kingdom or Ireland to the island, Thor thought. “Where is this saga kept?”

  “That’s the best part. It’s in the Norwegian National Museum in Oslo, a neutral country not party to the dispute. After I showed Smythe-Douglass an English translation of the saga, I made him an offer and he went for it.”

  “Joint fishing rights?” Frieda guessed.

  “Something like that. Rockall is our territory, but the fishing rights are to be jointly shared by Iceland and Great Britain for ten years. We set the limits on the catch and the British are entitled to fish half the limit. We also agreed that our joint sovereignty over the island is to be enforced by the Royal Navy for the next ten years.”

  “Meaning they’ll exclude fishing fleets from everywhere else?” Thor asked.

  “Exactly. What do you think?”

  “Good deal. Looks like the British Navy becomes our coast guard again.”

  Two

  Because of the number of fire engines, ambulances, police cars, and news vans in the Saga Hotel’s parking lot, Thor had to park in the rear. The firemen were blocking the entrance to the hotel as they loaded their equipment and hoses back onto their trucks, so Thor sat in his car, waiting and thinking.

  In his younger days, the police department had taken advantage of Thor’s size and appearance; he had been assigned many times to guard foreign diplomats during their visits to Iceland. Since the Saga Hotel was considered by most to be the nation’s best, he had spent many hours standing guard outside the presidential suite, just as Haarold had done. He knew all of the security precautions implemented by the hotel to safeguard the important guests who used the presidential suite, so he mentally reviewed them.

  The presidential suite was Room 730, located on the top floor of the hotel. Whenever a foreign diplomat was a guest in the suite, elevator access to the seventh floor was restricted; a security key had to be inserted into the elevator car’s control panel or the elevator wouldn’t stop on seven. To further restrict access to the seventh floor, the stairwell doors could only be opened from the hallway.

  Then there were the two motion-activated security cameras, each hidden behind small, curved, one-way mirrors mounted at ceiling corners at opposite ends of the seventh floor hallway. These cameras were monitored from the front desk and the images were preserved on videotape.

  Unauthorized access to the suite itself was also extremely difficult. The Saga used computer-coded access cards, not keys, and every time a guest checked out the access code was changed. Better yet, every time an access card was used to enter any room in the Saga, the hotel’s computer logged the date and time of entry.

  Extensive safeguards, Thor thought, but all of them had been overcome or bypassed by whomever had planted the bomb. But who knew the foreign secretary was at the Saga and who, armed with that knowledge, had the motive, expertise, and opportunity to place the bombs? Thor could reach only one conclusion. Since the foreign secretary’s visit was almost a spur-of-the-moment affair, the bomber had to be an Icelander.

  Although everything he knew at the moment pointed to that conclusion, it was still difficult for Thor to believe. Iceland prided itself on being a peaceful, nonviolent nation, a country without an army that hadn’t gone to war since the Viking days. The idea that an Icelander could have been responsible for the bomb seemed so preposterous to him that he put it out of his mind for the moment.

  After the firemen finished loading their trucks and left, Thor unloaded his crime scene kits from the trunk of his car and lugged the two suitcases of equipment to the hotel’s entrance.

  Reporters were waiting for him. He knew them all and greeted some of them by name; before they could ask him a single question, he told them that he was sure they knew more than he did.

  “Thor, will you be giving us a statement later?” one of them asked.

  “Sure, unless for some reason I’m instructed not to.”

  “Did you know the British foreign secretary was in the country?” said another.

  “No. Did you?”

  “No, no one told us about it either.”

  One of the reporters held the door open and Thor carried his equipment into the lobby and straight to the elevator bank. A young uniformed constable was waiting with the elevator security key. Thor prided himself on knowing almost all of the three hundred Reykjavík cops by name and most of the cops in the rest of the country at least by face, but he had to search his mind for a moment. “Hello, Leifur. How’s it going upstairs?”

  “Don’t know, Thor. Haven’t been allowed up there. Whatever’s happening, apparently it’s secret stuff and nobody’s talking.” Leifur pressed the call button and the elevator doors instantly opened. The constable followed Thor into the elevator, inserted the key into the control panel, and pressed 7 before resuming his post outside.

  Janus Arnonson was waiting for Thor in the seventh floor hallway. Janus had been a cop for forty-two years and the police chief of Reykjavík for seven. Tall and broad with a long, wide nose and a mane of thick, white hair, Janus looked like a polar bear, an almost mythic creature in the Icelandic sagas. Since Janus had been around long enough to become something of a myth himself, “polar bear” was what the people of Iceland called him. He didn’t mind and had even taken to wearing white suits.

  One look at Janus told Thor that something extraordinary had happened. Janus was in full uniform, a rare event, and he had a pistol in a holster on his belt, an even rarer event since police officers in Iceland usually didn’t carry firearms unless they were guarding foreign dignitaries. But the look on his face was one Thor had never seen during their long friendship. Like Erík, Janus looked haggard and worried.

  Thor put his suitcases down and extended his hand, but the chief grabbed Thor in a hug. “So glad you’re here,” he said, which was something Thor had never heard before from Janus.

  As soon as the chief released him, Thor looked up and down the hallway and was relieved to see only Haarold, still standing guard down the hall outside the presidential suite.

  Icelanders are not known for spontaneous shows of affection and the chief’s hug was definitely out of character—the national character and his own. Fortunately, Icelanders are known for being tight-lipped, and Haarold was just so. He would never say a word and no reporter would ever learn from him just how worried Janus was.

  “I guess it’s bad,” Thor observed.

  “It’s horrible, exactly the kind of thing that could ruin our national reputati
on.”

  “You think it was an Icelander?”

  “Unless there’s a serious leak on the Brits’ end, there’s nothing else to think. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but someone connected to the hotel must be involved.”

  Another hard one to believe, Thor thought, although he himself had reached the same preposterous conclusion. “Have you spoken to Jónas yet?”

  “Yes, he’s here. He handled the arrangements for the foreign secretary and swears there was no leak on his end.”

  “How can he be sure?”

  “I don’t see how he can be, but you know Jónas.”

  Thor did know Jónas, the Saga Hotel’s general manager, a man famous in diplomatic circles for being discreet and ensuring that his staff measured up to his high standards of discretion. But the staff was the obvious first place to look. “Where is the ambassador?”

  “I have him on ice in there,” Janus said, pointing to the door of Room 728. “He’s constantly on the phone to London and sweating up a storm. I’m anticipating a request from him, but I think he’s having a hard time putting it into words.”

  “You think he wants to offer us some help from their security services?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s what he’s been instructed to do, but he doesn’t know how to make the offer without making us feel like a bunch of yokels when it comes to bombings.”

  “Let’s take a look, but can I tell you something?”

  “We are a bunch of yokels when it comes to bombings?”

  “Exactly. Between the IRA, the Palestinians, the Iranians, and Lord knows who else, the British have loads of experience in this type of thing and we have none. Between us, I’d welcome any assistance they care to offer.”

  Thor had expected a fight from the chief, but Janus looked relieved. “I was hoping you’d see it that way,” he said. “I’ll run it by Vigdís first, but it sounds like a good idea.”

  That settled, Thor was ready to get to work. He picked up one suitcase, Janus the other, and they walked down the hall to Haarold. The constable was still wet and dripping water onto the carpet at his feet, but he showed no signs of discomfort. “Is it very messy in there?” Thor asked.