The little man parked his rented Land Rover and stared at the mass of ice in front of him. Not far north of the edge, the ice cap towered 1,200 to 1,300 meters. The woman at the car rental place had told him the scenery at the top was spectacular, but he was not visiting one of Iceland’s largest glaciers as a tourist, not in the normal sense.
He looked back up the gravel road he had just traveled and saw nothing but the rocky volcanic hills that had been sculpted by millennia of ice. Nothing moved. He turned his attention to the black boulders, some bigger than houses, dotting the landscape and shook his head. Too many places from which he could be observed by unseen eyes. He sighed. Too late to worry about that now. The people he worked for wanted answers and they wanted them in a hurry.
Still, caution was called for. Taking a pair of binoculars from the seat beside him, he swept a wide arc.
Nothing.
Replacing the glasses with a cell phone, one with photographic capabilities, he stepped out onto the near-frozen ground. Even though it was summer, he was glad of the heavy sweater he had brought. These days, he was subject to chills.
No wonder. He was too old for this sort of work. But he knew no other.
He took a final look around and started walking toward a series of metal stakes near the first patch of ice. If what he had read was correct, they were markers placed by one of Iceland’s glacier societies to indicate the annual summer shrinkage of the ice cap, a foot or so of tundra that had been under tons of ice since last fall.
He stopped as he spied something protruding from the white in front of him. A stick? Some sort of growth. Could that be … ? He snapped two pictures, checked the phone to make sure he had photographed exactly what he was looking at, and stepped closer.
He squatted and reached for what was sticking out of the ice. He gave it a tug. Frozen fast. Shoving the phone into a pocket, he reached into another and produced the bone-handled jackknife he had purchased just yesterday. In less than a minute he had an inch-or-so section of a woody, sticklike object in his hand.
This was the sort of thing his employers wanted. They should be pleased. He stuffed it and the knife into a pants pocket.
He began a slow walk along the edge of the glacier, his boots squishing in the sodden moss that, along with shards of stone, were the only ground cover. He had taken just a few steps when he stopped to examine the rocks at his feet. Something had caught a ray of the sun, drawing his attention. Natural gneiss or … ?
He squatted again, using his hands to brush aside pebbles polished smooth as marbles. There it was. Bronze? Copper? Maybe simply iron burnished by ice scraping across rocks. No larger than a quarter, it had been sheared from something larger but the curved, sharpened edge was quite visible. He took another couple of pictures before picking it up and putting that in his pocket too.
He was searching the surrounding area when he heard the sound of stones being displaced as if … as if someone were walking none too carefully on them. He fought the impulse to flee, instead pretending he had not heard. He was trying to determine the direction from which the sound had come, how far away it might be.
Not that either bit of information would be of any great help, not without a weapon.
Slowly, he stood with as much nonchalance as he could muster. He took one step and then a second before he bolted.
He was not surprised at the shot that sent something buzzing past him, but his short legs churned faster. If he could reach that clump of boulders, the one resembling a church complete with square tower, he might somehow escape. He ducked as though he might somehow dodge the second bullet that sang its evil song overhead.
The rocks ahead seemed impossibly distant; they seemed to recede with every step he took.
He pivoted on one foot, swinging to his left, then back to his right. There in the open, a zigzag was his only defense.
There was no third shot.
Not yet.
The thought was more frightening than the gunfire. The shooter must be confident he was going to get close enough to make the next try successful. The theory was accurate: he could hear the footsteps behind him getting closer. There was no need to look over his shoulder. He knew who his pursuer was. Or who had sent him.
He felt the knife in his pocket. A jackknife against a gun? Absurd. But the only thing he had. If he could just reach that pile of stones, he might find a place to hide, perhaps even ambush …
The ragged sound of his own breath and the ache in his lungs required him to devote full attention to simply inhaling and exhaling. A stitch slashed at his side as painfully as any blade.
He was surprised when his hand touched rock. He climbed onto the massive formation.
He slipped behind the first boulder and squeezed through a crevice he hoped was only wide enough to accommodate his small body. Looking around for a possible hiding place, he spied a crack in the rock level with his chin. About a foot long, but deep. He couldn’t secret himself there, but the fissure would hold his discoveries. In an instant he had slid the cell phone, the stick, and the piece of metal into the crack.
Then he had an idea.
If he could scramble down the other side of the formation, maybe, just maybe, he could creep away while the other man searched for him here. No chance. Other than a scattering of boulders, the landscape was as naked as a newborn baby.
“Boris, why do you flee an old friend?” The words were in Russian.
The little man spun about to see a man holding a GSh-18 9 mm automatic pistol. The distinctly mid-Asian flat face with the flat nose, broken multiple times, was all too familiar. “Old friends do not shoot at each other, Patrivitch.”
Patrivitch glanced at the weapon in his hand. “It is my job just as it is yours to be here. Sad but true. You have been hired to find certain information; I have been paid to make sure you do not.” He extended the hand that did not hold the gun. “The cell phone. Place it at your feet.”
The man had been watching him take pictures.
Boris shrugged. “I dropped it during the chase.”
“Empty your pockets.”
Boris did so, the jackknife clattering to the stone along with a wad of Icelandic króna and the keys to the Land Rover.
Patrivitch tsk-tsked. “I would have seen the phone had you dropped it.”
“If you were looking for me to drop something, no wonder your first two shots missed.”
“I can search for it after I kill you.”
Boris shrugged. “What happens after that is of no concern to me.”
There was no warmth in Patrivitch’s smile. “You always had a smart mouth.”
He pulled the trigger.
Boris spun from the impact, a kick as though a horse’s hoof had struck his chest. His face hit the solid rock upon which they were standing, sending a jolt of pain through his entire body. Broken nose, he thought sleepily. Odd, no pain in my chest, just my nose.
Though Boris’s vision was quickly becoming dark, he recognized his assailant’s shoes level with his eyes. He sensed the man leaning over him.
The coup de grâce.
He was too drowsy to care.
Patrivitch straightened up, turning his head as though scenting the air. He had heard something… .
There it was, the bleating of a sheep.
Cautiously, he peered around the edge of a boulder facing Boris’s car. A shepherd with a dozen or so sheep. Too close not to hear the shot that would finish his victim. He mentally wavered. He could fire the fatal shot and then flee. Or he could take out the shepherd, too.
No, too risky. There might be others around. Better to report back that Boris was no longer a threat. Besides, if anyone found the phone, small chance they would look for any photographs or, if they did, have any idea as to the significance of the images they might find.
Shoving the gun into his belt, he left by the opposite side of the rock formation, keeping it between him and the shepherd. When he reached the base, he broke into a jog.