FOREIGN MINISTRY, REYKJAVÍK,
THURSDAY 28 JANUARY, AFTERNOON
Kristín closed her
eyes. She felt the headache throbbing in her forehead. This was the
third time the man had come to her office and launched into a
diatribe against the ministry, blaming them for the fact that he
had been cheated. On the first two occasions he had attempted to
browbeat her, threatening that if he did not receive compensation
for what he regarded as the ministry’s mistake he would take the
matter to court. Twice now she had listened to his tirade and twice
struggled to keep herself under control, answering him clearly and
objectively, but he did not seem to hear a word she said. Now he
was sitting in her office once again, embarking on the same cycle
of recriminations.
She guessed he was
around forty, ten years or so older than her, and this age
difference apparently licensed him to throw his weight about in her
office, making threats and referring to her as ‘a girl like you’.
He made no attempt to hide his contempt for her, though whether for
the sin of being a woman or a lawyer she could not tell. His name
was Runólfur Zóphaníasson. He had a carefully cultivated three-day
beard and thick, black hair, slicked back with gel. He wore a dark
suit with a waistcoat, and a small silver chain attached to a
watch. This he extracted from his waistcoat pocket every now and
then with long, thin fingers, flicking it open self-importantly as
if he did not have time to waste on ‘this crap’ – as he put it
himself.
He’s right about the
crap, she thought. He sold mobile freezing plants to Russia, and
both the ministry and the Icelandic Trade Council had assisted him
in making business contacts. He had sent four units to Murmansk and
Kamchatka, but had not received so much as a rouble in return and
now claimed that the ministry’s lawyer, who no longer worked there,
had suggested he dispatch the units and charge for them later, in
order to smooth the way for further contracts. He had done so, with
the result that goods belonging to him to the tune of more than
thirty million krónur had disappeared
in Russia. He had tried in vain to trace them, and now looked to
the Trade Council and trade department of the Foreign Ministry for
support and compensation, if nothing else. ‘What kind of idiot
consultants does this ministry employ?’ he asked repeatedly at his
meetings with Kristín. She had contacted the lawyer who could not
remember giving him any advice but warned her that the man had once
threatened him.
‘You must have
realised that doing business with Russia these days is very risky,’
she had said to him at their first meeting, and pointed out that
although the ministry endeavoured to help Icelandic companies set
up deals, the risk always lay with the companies themselves. The
ministry regretted what had happened and would happily help him
make contact with Russian buyers through the embassy in Moscow, but
if he could not extract payment, there was little the ministry
could do. She had repeated this message in different words at their
next meeting and for a third time, now, as he sat before her with
an expression of petulance and ill temper and that pretentious
silver chain in his waistcoat pocket. The meeting was dragging on.
It was late and she wanted to go home.
‘You won’t get off so
easily,’ he said. ‘You trick people into doing business with the
Russian mafia. You probably even take backhanders from them. What
do I know? One hears things. I want my money back and if I don’t
get it . . .’
She knew his diatribe
off by heart and decided to cut it short. She did not have time for
this.
‘We’re sorry,
naturally, that you’ve lost money in your dealings with Russia but
it’s not our problem,’ she said coolly. ‘We don’t make decisions
for people. It’s up to them to evaluate the situation for
themselves. If you’re so stupid as to export goods worth tens of
millions without any securities, you’re even more of a fool than
you look. I’m now asking you, please, to leave my office and not to
bother me in future with any more rubbish about what you imagine to
be the ministry’s responsibilities.’
He gawped at her, the
words ‘stupid’ and ‘fool’ echoing in his head. He opened his mouth
to say something but she got in first.
‘Out, now, if you
please.’
She saw his face
swell with rage.
He stood up slowly
without taking his eyes off her, then suddenly seemed to lose
control. Picking up the chair he had been sitting on, he hurled it
at the wall behind him.
‘This isn’t
finished!’ he yelled. ‘We’ll meet again and then we’ll see which of
us is the fool. It’s a conspiracy. A conspiracy, I tell you! And
you’ll suffer for it.’
‘Yes, yes, dear, off
you go now,’ she said as if to a six-year-old. She knew she was
goading him but could not resist it.
‘You watch yourself!
Don’t think you can talk to me like that and get away with it!’ he
shouted and swept to the door, slamming it behind him so the walls
shook.
Ministry employees
had collected outside her office, drawn by the sound of the chair
hitting the wall and the man shouting. They saw him emerge, purple
in the face, and storm away. Kristín appeared in the
doorway.
‘It’s all right,’ she
told her colleagues calmly, adding: ‘he’s got problems,’ then shut
the door carefully. Sitting down at her desk, she began to tremble
and sat quietly until she had regained her composure. They did not
teach you how to deal with this at law school.
Kristín was petite
and dark, with short, black hair, strong features in a thin face
and sharp brown eyes that shone with decisiveness and
self-confidence. She had a reputation for firmness and obstinacy,
and was known within the ministry for not suffering fools
gladly.
The phone rang. It
was her brother. He immediately felt her tension.
‘Is everything okay?’
he asked.
‘Oh, it’s nothing.
There was a man in here just now. I thought he was going to throw a
chair at me. Apart from that, everything’s fine.’
‘Throw a chair! What
sort of lunatics are you dealing with?’
‘The Russian mafia,
or so I’m told. It’s some kind of conspiracy, apparently. How are
things with you?’
‘Everything’s great.
I just bought this phone. Do I sound clear?’
‘No different from
usual.’
‘No different from
usual!’ he mimicked. ‘Do you know where I am?’
‘No.
Where?’
‘Just outside
Akureyri. The team’s on its way to Vatnajökull.’
‘Vatnajökull? In the
middle of winter?’
‘It’s a winter
exercise. I’ve already told you. We reach the glacier tomorrow and
I’ll call you again then. But you must tell me how the phone
sounds. It’s clear, isn’t it?’ he repeated.
‘Great. You stick
with the others. You hear me? Don’t attempt anything by
yourself.’
‘Sure. It cost
seventy thousand krónur, you
know.’
‘What
did?’
‘The phone. It’s got
NMT’s long-distance communication system.’
‘NMT? What are you on
about? Over and out.’
‘You don’t need to
say over . . .’
She put down the
receiver. Her brother Elías was ten years younger than her, forever
immersed in one new hobby or another, mostly outdoor activities
which involved travelling in the uninhabited interior. One year it
had been hunting, when he filled her freezer with goose and
reindeer meat. Another year it was skydiving, and he pestered her
to jump with him, without success. The third year it was river
rafting in rubber dinghies, then jeep trips across the highlands,
glacier trips, skiing trips, snowmobiling – you name it. He was a
member of the Reykjavík Air Ground Rescue Team. And it was just
like him to buy a mobile phone for seventy thousand krónur. He was a technology junkie. His jeep looked
like the flight deck of an aircraft.
In this respect
brother and sister could not be more different. When winter
arrived, her instinct was to crawl into hibernation and not emerge
until spring. She never ventured into the highlands, and avoided
travelling in Iceland altogether during winter. If she went for a
summer holiday, she kept to the country’s ring road and stayed at
hotels. But generally she went abroad; to the US, where she had
studied, or London, where she had friends. Sometimes, during the
darkest period of the Icelandic winter, she would book a week’s
escape somewhere hot. She hated the cold and dark and had a
tendency to suffer from depression during the blackest months when
the sun rose at eleven and crawled along the horizon, to set after
only five meagre hours of twilight. At this time of year she was
overwhelmed by the realisation that she was trapped on a small
island in the far north of the Atlantic, in cold, dark
isolation.
But regardless of
their differences, brother and sister got on very well. They were
their parents’ only children, and despite the ten-year age gap, or
perhaps because of it, had always been extremely close. He worked
for a large garage in Reykjavík, converting jeeps into customised
off-roaders; she was a lawyer with a degree in international law
from the University of California, had been working at the ministry
for two years and was very happy to be doing a job which made use
of her education. Fortunately, encounters like today’s were the
exception.
As long as he takes
care up on the glacier, thought Kristín as she made her way home.
The memory of her meeting with Runólfur would not go away. As she
walked down Laugavegur shopping street, through the centre of
Reykjavík and home to Tómasarhagi in the west of town, she had a
prickling sensation of being watched. She had never experienced
this before and told herself it was because she was still on edge.
Looking around, she saw nothing to be concerned about and mocked
herself for being so neurotic. But the feeling persisted. Come to
think of it, she had never been accused of accepting bribes from
the Russian mafia before either.