Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

then you see the shooting.
    Erika: what about tamara wilton? can’t they see she’s a woman?
    Nico: just as they are firing, the controller tells the helicopter they’ve found the truck with the anti-tank unit. it’s a different truck. the pilot sees the woman moving and
tells the gunner to shoot her. they can tell she is a woman. the gunner questions this, but the pilot says they don’t want witnesses, and besides, the united nations are a bunch of
interfering bastards. then in the chatter afterwards the helicopter tells the controller that the people getting out of the truck were armed and one of them escaped with an anti-tank missile
launcher.
    Erika: but no one escaped!
    Nico: precisely.
    Erika: i remember this. it was supposed to have been investigated by the israeli authorities. i’m pretty sure they cleared the soldiers of any blame.
    Dieter: how can they have done that! these guys are murderers. it’s that simple.
    Erika: and that’s what we will tell the world. we’ll ream them with this.
    The screen was still as the four of them digested what Nico had said. Behind Erika the professor of strategic studies grunted and rolled over in the hotel bed. Disturbed by her furious tapping
on the keyboard, perhaps.
    Nico: what do we do?
    Erika: we publish, of course! but we do it carefully. this is one of those situations where the cover-up is as important as the crime itself. the israelis will want to quash this, and if they
can’t quash it they will discredit it. we’ll need full transcription, analysis, verification. release the video online and the transcript through selected newspapers. the washington
post. the guardian, maybe der spiegel. are we sure it’s genuine?
    Apex: not yet.
    Erika: okay we’ll have to check that out. we need to be one hundred per cent.
    Dieter: it’s going to be difficult to do this remotely.
    Erika: yes. we should meet somewhere. just for a few days. get a team together. just like we did last year in stockholm for the zimbabwe arms leak.
    Nico: this is bigger.
    Dieter: so where do we go?
    Apex: i’m not coming.
    Erika: okay apex. Apex never came anywhere. He stayed in his room somewhere in a time zone a long way away. None of them had seen him apart from Dieter, and that was almost twenty years
before, and no one even knew his real name. Erika had spoken to him on a voice link over the Internet frequently; he had a rapid Australian accent. So, no, Apex wouldn’t be coming.
    They were waiting for her to suggest somewhere. Technically she was nothing more than the Spokesperson for Freeflow. The organization had no hierarchy, at least in theory. Most decisions were
taken by the four of them: Apex and Dieter were the technical guys; Nico did finance and general organization.
    In practice Erika was the leader. They all followed Erika. Anywhere.
    Erika: what about iceland?
    Dieter: but that’s the middle of nowhere.
    Erika: when I went with nico in november they were really friendly. they treated us like stars. and they seem dead serious about protecting the press.
    Nico: iceland might work. we have some good guys there we can trust.
    Dieter: yeah duddi is good. i rate him.
    Nico: i’ll organize it. hey you know there’s a volcano erupting at the moment?
    Dieter: cool. i’ve never seen a live volcano.
    Nico: i did my masters in geology. i’ll give you a guided tour.
    Erika: guys we won’t have time for any sightseeing.
    Nico: you’re no fun erika. so when do we go?
    Erika thought a moment. It was Saturday morning. She could work on the transcript and do some background research in London over the weekend. There were people she could stay with whom she
trusted in London, the man in the bed behind her not being one of them. There were people she could stay with in lots of cities.
    Erika didn’t really live anywhere. Her few possessions were strewn all over the globe: in her parents’ place just outside New York; with Dieter in Cologne; some with Nico in Milan;
some of her most personal stuff with her grandmother in Queens. But most of what she needed she kept in her small backpack. And in her computer backed up and encrypted remotely in several servers
dotted around the world.
    She would need to borrow a warmer coat for Reykjavík.
    She resumed typing: when can you get things ready nico?
    Nico: tuesday?
    Erika: monday.
    Nico: monday.
    Erika: great. see you all in reykjavik on monday. and we need a name for this project. see what you can come up with.
    Monday 12