Shadow Read online

  He held his breath and counted off the distance until, with a juddering crash, the Airbus’s undercarriage hit the tarmac hard and it skidded into a crosswind. Engines howled as the flight crew compensated and Marc felt the lurch as they started to slow. A scattered round of uneasy applause rose up from some of the passengers, and the businessman at Marc’s side let go of the armrests with a jolt. He opened his eyes, blinking and pale, glancing around.

  “Welcome to Reykjavík,” said Marc, with a wan smile.

  The man gave a weak nod and pulled a tiny bottle of vodka from the seat pocket in front of him, twisting off the cap and downing the entire contents in a single, shaky pull.

  Everyone was eager to disembark swiftly, and Marc trailed the businessman on to the jet bridge, pausing as he adjusted the bag on his shoulder. Through the elevated walkway’s windows, the light had a strange quality to it, as if the sun was being attenuated through a gray filter. Marc turned and saw the reason why. The storm front was still bearing down, a wall of slate-colored cloud advancing even as he watched. Specks of windblown ice were already flickering off the glass. Behind him a young guy in a ground crew hi-vis vest gave a chuckle and said something wry in Icelandic.

  “Pardon me?” Marc glanced back at him.

  The guy in the vest pointed at the storm, and grinned with the kind of gallows-humor relish that only a local could have.

  “It’s going to be a big one!” Then he added another thought. “You should buy a hat. You’ll need it.”

  * * *

  By Lucy’s reckoning, the local time was around mid-morning, but everything about the Icelandic sky and the angle of the sun was telling her different. She knew that this far north the length of daylight hours were a little weird, but it was still unsettling. The heat and humidity of Singapore was quite literally a world away, and the biting cold was finding its way through the heavy, purple ski jacket she wore.

  Hauling her gear bag and a steel camera case, she left the airport terminal building and found the minibus that would take her into Reykjavík. The icy wind tugged at her faux-fur lined hood as she trudged across the snow-patterned asphalt.

  Going through passport control, she stood behind a queasy-looking American couple animatedly discussing the weather they had barely escaped. It was shaping up to be one of the worst storms Iceland had experienced all year, a fact confirmed when Lucy looked up at the arrivals boards in passing, and saw that the flights following theirs had been delayed or diverted. Reading the board had also given her the opportunity to surreptitiously check the faces in the airport lounge for anyone who looked like an obvious watcher.

  She came up empty. Lucy hoped that was a good sign. It was either that, or the watchers were so accomplished she didn’t see them. In the end, it made no difference. This was an undercover infiltration, and that meant operating as if she was in enemy territory at all times.

  Moscow Rules, she thought, going back to the old Cold War espionage rubrics. Go with the flow. Vary your pattern. Maintain cover.

  The bus was half-empty, and as she boarded the vehicle started up. The driver, like the new arrivals, was eager to get back to the city before the storm hit. Lucy dragged her luggage to the back of the vehicle and made it look like a random choice when she sat down in the seats behind Marc. As they set off along the highway, he was feigning disinterest, staring blankly out of the window from beneath a dark blue winter cap.

  She followed his line of sight, out over the bleak wilderness of brown-black earth and scrub.

  “I like the hat,” she said quietly. “It’s a cute look for you.”

  “Cheers,” he said, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “Bought it in the gift shop. Don’t ask how much it was, I nearly died of fright.”

  “I didn’t make anyone in the terminal,” she went on. “You?”

  “Nope. If the Lion’s Roar have someone watching the incoming flights, it’ll probably be a digital interdict, scanning the passport logs.”

  “Our pal Ticker?”

  “Yeah.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “I was thinking on the flight … about what doesn’t add up.”

  Marc nodded. “Same here.”

  “The Lion’s Roar, they have muscle and good reach, I’ll give them that. But I’ve dealt with these kinds of assholes before, and they seldom come this well organized.”

  He nodded again. “We’ve heard this song, haven’t we? A mid-league bunch of scrotes with a manifesto and an axe to grind, getting ideas above their station.” Marc tapped the window with a finger. “Who’s funding them? Where’s the unseen hand?”

  She considered that as the bus rumbled over the road.

  “You wanna say it, or shall I?”

  “The Combine aren’t behind all the bad that happens in the world.” Hearing the name of the shadowy group of power brokers always made Lucy tense up. “Even if they would like to be.”

  “No,” she admitted, “but you can’t deny this is their usual MO. Co-opt an active terror cell, use them in a bigger action for their own gains.”

  “It would explain how Ticker’s contact knew about Rubicon,” Marc allowed. “In Singapore, they knew who we were. And everything that happened there was about targeting Rubicon’s assets.”

  Lucy lost herself staring into the distant storm cell.

  “I want to know who gave up Park to them.” Her eyes narrowed. “I made that woman a promise. I told her she would be safe. Some motherfucker out there has made me a liar, and that will not stand.”

  She remembered Ji-Yoo’s eyes as she had said those words, the two of them hiding on a cold rooftop as a cadre of soldiers were hunting them through the streets below. Park had escaped that life and made a new one, a better one. The other woman didn’t deserve to be dragged back into this game.

  “A bunch of thugs couldn’t get that kind of intel,” Lucy concluded, “but someone rich and well-connected could.” At length, she let out a low sigh, and glanced at Marc’s reflection on the inside of the window. “So, coming out here was your call. I’m guessing that means you have a move in mind?”

  “I know a guy,” said Marc, fishing his smartphone from an inner pocket of his padded jacket. He worked the tiny screen, typing out a message on the encrypted email app that would ghost its way into the web and seek out a recipient before erasing all trace of itself. “A native. If the Lion’s Roar have people operating out of Iceland, he’s going to know about it.”

  Twists of blown snow were coiling off the roadway around the bus, the ice crystals ticking across the window as the storm picked them up. Overhead, the strangely frozen half-daylight was fading as the dark clouds swallowed what little there was of the sun. The barren landscape outside turned gloomy, becoming threatening and alien.

  Lucy gave an involuntary shiver and pulled her ski jacket tighter.

  * * *

  As the day drew on, the sky turned into a cauldron of ominous black that lashed Reykjavík with intermittent blasts of icy, driving rain. The locals shrugged it off, though, and Marc tried to follow their example as he made his way toward the harbor. Keeping their covers intact, he and Lucy were staying in two different hotels along the Laugavegur, the main drag through the middle of the town. She would have set off first to scout the meeting point they had chosen, while Marc followed protocol by thoroughly “washing” his route—taking a circuitous, almost aimless path to make sure that no one was following him. He deliberately followed a track up the hill to the Hallgrímskirkja, the great cathedral that dominated most views of the town, pausing in the rain-mist to gaze up at the stratified shape of the building and its high tower. Nestled in the haze and the cold, the church resembled something out of myth and legend—a doorway to Asgard, he thought, with a smirk.

  Out in front of the cathedral, it was easy to sift the people braving the rain for some cool holiday photos from those who might have had other business there. Marc glimpsed a stocky man in a dark coat near the statue of the great No
rdic explorer Leifur Eiríksson, and he seemed to be paying a bit too much attention to where Marc was going.

  Reykjavík was a grid of criss-crossing roads, and that had its uses. Marc had committed as much of the layout to memory as he could. He took random turns into the residential backstreets, and seemed to lose the man within a few minutes. Glancing at his battered dive watch, Marc saw that the clock was running against him, and took the direct path the rest of the way to the meet site. If he was late, he didn’t expect his contact to wait around. The man he was to see was a precise type, he recalled, not given to wasting time.

  Marc would never have admitted it to Lucy or the others, but it was a 50–50 gamble that his contact would even respond to the cryptic email he had sent. The fact that the meet was happening confirmed to Marc that for now at least, his good fortune was holding.

  He emerged on the shoreline and followed the line of the town’s edge until his path led him toward a gigantic glass box.

  Nestled between two concrete jetties extending out into the water, the Harpa was a concert hall and conference center, an impressive piece of modernist design that resembled a mathematical construct forged into physical reality.

  It reminded Marc of a crystal lattice glimpsed through an electron microscope. The building was made up of hundreds of rectangular glass cells, each one illuminated from within, and waves of color shimmered across the exterior as he entered, joining a crowd who were on their way to see an early afternoon performance of Ravel’s Piano Trio. Marc blended into the concertgoers as they moved deeper into the building, and looked around, taking it in.

  Inside, the Harpa was wide open from its basement level below to the walkways four stories above, each floor accessed by lifts or long sloping stairways. The ceiling was patterned with mirrored hexagonal tiles, and with the inner structure of the building so exposed, there were few places someone could hide. Marc had picked it as a rendezvous point for this reason, and as his gaze crossed over one of the upper galleries, he spotted Lucy leaning casually on a glass barrier. She pretended to be taking in the view, but her position was perfect for observing the larger part of the Harpa’s interior.

  The concertgoers went their way and Marc disconnected from the group. A short distance away, he saw the man he was looking for, sitting alone at a table in front of the ground-floor coffee bar. The café’s trade was sparse, just the contact and a couple of tourists a few meters away engaged in quiet discussion over a guide book. Marc used the mirrors and the reflective glass to check around him, and there was the man in the dark coat again, off near the gift shop. He tensed.

  If I see one guy, then there have to be others that I don’t.

  The contact was toying with an app on his phone and he had yet to look up. Aborting the meet would have been easy. All Marc had to do was keep walking, out through the other exit, but there was too much at stake. If he ghosted now, he would lose this opportunity.

  Marc bought a coffee and approached the table. His contact looked up and something like mild surprise flickered briefly in his eyes.

  Andri Larsson was short for an Icelander, a fact he didn’t help with his taste in bulky raincoats. The sand-colored mackintosh hung off his slight shoulders and pooled around him like it was a cloak, making him look even smaller than he was. He had close-cropped hair and a matching beard in the same metallic-flaxen hue. Hard, unblinking eyes fixed Marc with a severe stare. He had always found Larsson to be bit too intense for his liking, always blunt and painfully direct. In Marc’s experience, shorter guys always had that aggressive streak.

  “It actually is you,” said Larsson. “I wasn’t entirely certain until now.” He sighed. “I am marginally disappointed. I thought it might be someone using your identity to covertly make contact with me.”

  “Sorry.” Marc’s lip curled and he took the seat that afforded him the best view of their surroundings. “Lovely to see you too, Andri. How’s your pooch?”

  “She’s had another litter.” Larsson gestured with the phone. “Would you like to see some pictures?”

  Marc recalled that the man shared his home with a pedigree fårehund, a kind of Icelandic sheepdog that was the closest thing Larsson had to family.

  “Maybe later.”

  Larsson nodded sagely. “You’re more of a cat person, I remember.” He took a breath. “Why are you not in prison?”

  It was less a question and more a demand.

  “Should I be?”

  Marc removed his hat, using the action to glance toward the gift shop. The man in the dark coat was coming their way.

  “The last thing I heard about Marc Dane was an Interpol alert with your face on it. I recall something about you being suspended from duty, something to do with undertaking an unsanctioned investigation? When the alert was lifted, I assumed they had arrested you.”

  Larsson sipped the dark tea in front of him, waiting for an explanation.

  Marc gave a heavy sigh. “Yeah. It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Larsson took another sip, still waiting patiently for the full story.

  The stocky man in the dark coat was almost on them now, making no attempt to conceal the fact he was heading in their direction. Marc saw a flicker of purple from the corner of his eye. Lucy was vectoring in as well, having made the man’s approach from her high vantage point, and she was a few steps behind him.

  Marc put his hand around the bottom of his coffee cup and angled his wrist. If it came to it, he could flick it up and douse the man with searing hot fluid, give Lucy the all-important seconds she would need to neutralize him before he could draw a weapon.

  Larsson looked directly at the man in the dark coat and made a vague, dismissive gesture. The man’s body language changed like a switch had been flipped, going from purposeful to neutral, and he threw Larsson an obedient nod before wandering off to find a table of his own.

  “What?” Larsson turned back to Marc. “You didn’t think I would have someone tracking you? The moment that message came in, I had people deployed. You were not difficult to find.” He turned to the tourists with the guidebook. “Thú mátt fara.”

  They both nodded, rose and left.

  “Oh.” Marc felt a little deflated. “Right.”

  Having left her post, Lucy committed to the moment and took the other seat at the table. Larsson gave Marc a questioning look.

  “And this is?”

  “His glamorous assistant,” she replied, with a winning smile.

  “Andri Larsson, meet Lucy Keyes.” Marc inclined his head. “She’s part of the reason I’m not in prison.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” Lucy added. “Marc says you two worked together when he was doing that analyst gig with the United Nations.”

  “That is so.” Larsson gave a nod. “At the time, he was with NSNS, the office of nuclear security. Their parent agency were collaborating with the Icelandic government to follow the money trail of a criminal cartel.”

  “Bunch of thugs trafficking toxic waste from the Middle East,” explained Marc. “Caesium slurry, laundering the cash through a shell company here in Reykjavík. Andri was instrumental in getting that nasty little enterprise shut down. This was a couple of months after I started with NSNS, though. Way before that crap with Serbians and the suitcase nuke.”

  Larsson’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The Interpol warrant,” said Marc, waving it off as if it hadn’t been a big deal. “Long story short, I stumbled on an ex-Soviet weapon of mass destruction and it got me into a lot of trouble. All sorted out now, though.”

  “I am pleased to hear it.” Larsson took that in with another nod.

  “Andri works for the Financial Intelligence Unit,” Marc told Lucy, grasping for a good analogy. “Tax law is serious business here. Think of the Internal Revenue Service crossed with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “That’s a genuinely terrifying thought,” she replied, looking at Larsson.
“So you’re an accountant with a badge?”

  He removed an identity card from his pocket and showed it to her.

  “You can call us the SR. But please don’t ask me to explain what it stands for in Icelandic, you will only make yourself look foolish trying to pronounce it.”

  Lucy shrugged. “No argument there, pal. Every word I see in this country looks like someone knocked over a Scrabble board.”

  Larsson tapped his phone with a stubby finger.

  “Catching up with former work colleagues is pleasant,” he said, in a flat tone that suggested otherwise, “but perhaps you would like to tell me why you are actually here. And why we are not having this conversation in my office.”

  “We’re tracking the victim of an abduction,” said Marc. “We suspect the woman’s family have already been killed by the people who took her, and that she’ll be next once they have what they want from her.”

  For the moment, he skated over the high points of the situation, wary of pulling Larsson in too deep. Marc believed the man was trustworthy, but the degree of need to know was very much on his mind. Larsson’s first loyalty would always be to his agency and his country, and everything else came a distant second.

  “So I need a favor.”

  He produced a tiny SD card, the same type as a memory chip for any conventional digital camera, and slid it across the table to the other man.

  “That contains data on a Bitcoin cluster here in Iceland. I need to know the real-world location, and I need it right now.”

  “In forty-eight hours it’ll be too late,” Lucy added.

  “Track down a cryptocurrency farm?” Larsson gave a humorless chuckle. “These days, it seems like that sort of thing is all my job is.” He examined the SD card, then slotted it into his phone, paging through the data on it as he went on. “You understand what you’re asking for? This kind of dark net financial malfeasance has become an epidemic here. We have more cases than we can deal with. Illegal transactions, tax evasion, wholesale theft of computers, not to mention the breaches of environmental law. The amount of electricity those server farms demand is huge and their carbon footprint is atrocious.” He shot Marc a look. “Who is the abductee and what is she to you?”