Meltwater (Fire and Ice)

absolutely right. Teresa needed a grilling, however unpleasant that would be for all concerned, and Magnus really should
have done it the day before. His instinct then was that her anger at her husband’s death was genuine, but Baldur’s suggestion was theoretically possible, and should be followed up, if
only to rule it out. ‘I’ll bring her in this morning.’
    ‘Can I join you?’
    ‘By all means,’ said Magnus.
    Magnus spent ten minutes dividing up tasks, and then the meeting broke up just in time for a press conference, which he attended with Thorkell. Lots of questions, lots of answers. Plenty of
excitement that there was a foreign killer on the loose in Reykjavík. Magnus gave a description, but didn’t mention the Vitara. If the suspect was still using that vehicle, Magnus
didn’t want him to ditch it – which he would certainly do if he heard about it on TV.
    ‘We need to find this man soon, Magnús,’ said Thorkell. ‘They’re excited today – they’ll be angry tomorrow.’
    ‘I know,’ said Magnus.
    Erika was afraid. She had worked almost all night on the video, hoping to push the fear out of her mind, but the more tired she got, the more it crept back.
    She had been in danger before, in the hellhole that was Rwanda, when she was much younger. Twice she had had the barrel of a Kalashnikov shoved into her face. Once a bunch of heavily armed Hutus
had threatened to rape her. Somehow, Guillaume, the Rwandan doctor who later briefly became her husband, had talked them out of it. She had been scared, but at the age of twenty she had somehow
always known she would come through alive.
    She was kidding herself then, of course – it was the illusion of invulnerability of youth – but she had believed it, and she had stayed in Rwanda for nine more months, returning to
the States with a husband.
    She was older now and she knew she wasn’t invulnerable. If Nico could die, so could she.
    Of the many things she felt guilty about, at least she no longer felt guilty about betraying Israel. If the Israelis had killed Nico and were trying to kill her, they deserved all they got. If
anything, it was the Israeli state who were betraying people like her grandmother, loyal Jews who believed in the Promised Land. It was up to Erika and Freeflow to expose that betrayal.
    It was always the same: the closer you looked at the secrets of a government, any government, the more filth you found.
    She wondered about protection. They could use a couple of guns. She glanced around the room. She would never trust Dieter with a firearm, but she knew how to operate a handgun. Franz seemed
capable and she had read somewhere that the Swiss did military service. As did Israeli women. That was three of them.
    She would ask Magnus when she next saw him, which would no doubt be some time that morning.
    She swigged from a can of Red Bull and touched her cheek. The doctor had said there would be a small scar, but it would fade. Erika wasn’t too bothered. She had never been a classic
beauty, and somehow she felt her allure to men would only be enhanced with a war wound.
    She was exhausted. She could work long hours without sleep. Her brain was a battleground, the forces of fatigue fighting the caffeine, adrenaline and pure determination. She knew she should
rest, or her judgement would begin to go. And a misjudgement could blow the whole project.
    The corner of her screen flickered. A message. From Gareth.
    Gareth: bad news.
    Erika: please don’t tell me you’re not at heathrow.
    Gareth: i’m at heathrow. and so is my plane. but it’s not going anywhere, at least today. all flights are cancelled. uk airspace is closed.
    Erika: why?
    Gareth: because of your volcano. there is an ash cloud over the atlantic and all over britain.
    ‘Damn liar!’ Erika growled to herself. She stood up and went to the living-room window, flicking back the curtain. Grey clouds. Clear air. She stalked back to the computer.
    Erika: there’s no ash. get your ass over here!
    Gareth: hey, it’s not up to me. if they won’t let the planes fly there’s nothing i can do.
    Dieter: i just checked. he’s right. there’s a big cloud of ash blowing south from Iceland stopping flights into the uk.
    Erika glanced across at Dieter only a few feet away from her, cocooned in his headphones. He, of course, had drawn his observation from his computer screen and not the real world outside. He
shrugged and shook his head.
    Erika: have they said when