Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

She had suddenly developed an aggressive, blunt manner.
    ‘It has nothing to do with any Icelandic issues,’ Erika said.
    ‘Then what issues does it have to do with?’ the reporter asked.
    ‘As you may know, Freeflow has no headquarters,’ Erika replied with a smile. ‘But every now and then we need to get together. We admire Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative,
so Reykjavík seemed a good place to choose. But we are not working on anything in particular.’
    ‘We have information that the leak you are working on is related to Israel.’
    Erika felt a spark of anger flash inside her. ‘What part of “we are not working on anything in particular” do you not understand?’ she said. ‘That’s all I
have time for. Goodbye.’
    With that she turned on her heel and strode back into the house, ignoring the shouted questions following her.
    She clapped her hands. ‘OK, people, let’s get to it! Quit messing about. Let’s get this video downloaded.’

CHAPTER TWELVE
    ‘I DIOT MACHINE!’ ÁSTA swore. That wasn’t really good enough, so she switched to English.
‘Fucking thing!’
    It still didn’t fix her all-in-one printer and scanner. A blinking light demanded that the red cartridge be changed even though she was only scanning something in black and white. Why did
the stupid machine care?
    She sat back at her desk in her tiny studio apartment and took a couple of breaths. She had scurried home after the Freeflow team had got down to work on the video. She had her own affairs to
attend to. If her damned scanner would let her.
    She looked over towards the familiar church opposite. It was new, Iceland’s newest. It was named after Gudrídur the Wanderer, who not only had travelled to Iceland, Greenland,
America and Rome in the eleventh century, but was also one of the earliest female Icelandic scholars. It was a rectangular block of concrete, and instead of a tower or spire at the eastern end, it
had a walled garden with a reflective pond, visible through a glass wall behind the altar. Ásta loved it. Her ambition was one day to be its vicar.
    No chance of that in the foreseeable future. Like just about every other institution in Iceland, the Church was short of money, and finding a job if you didn’t already have one was hard.
Very hard.
    It had been a long day, a mix of horror and excitement. She couldn’t get Nico’s cold pale face out of her mind, his eyes staring meaninglessly into the snow under frosted lashes. The
image would never leave her, she knew. But she was impressed by the Freeflow team and their dedication to what they were doing. She was particularly impressed by Erika. Clearly Nico’s murder
had hit her badly, but she was brave enough and strong enough to continue with Project Meltwater.
    Or was she just so driven by her own obsessions that she wouldn’t let anything knock her off her chosen path, even the death of a colleague?
    Perhaps both were true. Ásta was convinced that publishing the Gaza video was right, as Nico had been, she was sure. Did his death make it more or less right that Freeflow should go
ahead?
    Her instinct was that Erika was doing the right thing. And she couldn’t deny that the danger and the secrecy made the whole experience exhilarating.
    Unlike the document she was scanning.
    It was a journal. She had read and reread it at least three times, and each time it made her sad and it made her angry. The handwriting was small and spiky. Ásta remembered the girl who
had written it. Soffía was the daughter of a neighbour, several years older than Ásta, who used to babysit her sometimes. Ásta remembered her as a pious girl; Ásta
herself had had little interest in religion when she was a child. But it was Soffía’s mother, Berglind, who was a good friend of Ásta’s own mother, who had given
Ásta the journal.
    Berglind had discovered it among Soffía’s things after Soffía had died. She thought its contents should be made public.
    Ásta agreed.
    She had probably scanned in about forty pages of the 120. Fortunately Soffía’s handwriting was in thick black ink and the pages scanned legibly. When it was all in her computer
Ásta would figure out the best way to send it to Freeflow. An anonymous CD in the post as Erika had advised wasn’t strictly necessary. Once she read what the journal said, Erika would
know it came from Ásta. Maybe the best thing was just to email it to the Freeflow website.
    Ásta knew she could trust Erika to treat