Omar was very fond of talking, especially about himself, and Erlendur began at once to try to stem the flow of words.
“As I told you over the phone…” Erlendur began.
“Yes, yes, quite, I saw it all on the news, about the skeleton in Kleifarvatn. You think it’s a murder and—”
“Yes,” Erlendur interrupted, “but what hasn’t been reported on the news and what no one knows and you must keep to yourself, is that a Russian listening device from the 1960s was tied to the skeleton. The equipment had clearly been tampered with to conceal its origin, but there’s no doubt that it came from the Soviet Union.”
Omar looked at them both and they saw how this aroused his interest. He seemed to turn more cautious and slip into his old ministry manner.
“How can I assist you with that?” he asked.
“The questions we’re considering mainly involve whether there was spying on any scale in Iceland at the time and whether it is likely to be an Icelander or a foreign embassy official.”
“Have you looked up the missing persons from this time?” Omar said.
“Yes,” Elinborg said. “It’s not possible to link any of them to Russian bugging devices.”
“I don’t think any Icelanders went in for serious spying,” Omar said after a long pause for thought, and they both sensed that he was choosing his words very carefully. “We know that the Warsaw Pact and NATO countries both tried to get them to, and we know that there was espionage in one form or another in neighbouring countries.”
“The other Nordic countries, for instance?” Erlendur said.
“Yes,” Omar said. “But of course there’s one obvious problem. If Icelanders were spying for either side we wouldn’t know about it if it was successful. No Icelandic spy of any note has ever been uncovered.”
“Is there any other possible explanation for that Russian equipment lying there with the skeleton?” Elinborg asked.
“Of course,” Omar said. “It needn’t have had anything to do with spying. But your inference is probably correct. It’s a reasonable enough explanation that such an unusual discovery is somehow related to the ex-Warsaw Pact embassies.”
“Could such a spy have come from, let’s say, the Foreign Ministry?” Erlendur asked.
“No official from the Foreign Ministry went missing, to my knowledge,” Omar said.
“What I mean is, where would it have been most useful for the Russians, for instance, to plant spies?”
“Probably anywhere in government,” Omar said. “The civil service is small and the officials are all closely acquainted, so they keep very few secrets from each other. Dealings with the US defence force largely took place through us in the Foreign Ministry, so it would have been worth having someone there. But I can imagine it would have been enough for foreign spies or embassy officials to read the Icelandic newspapers — which they did, of course. It was all there. In a democracy like ours there’s always a lot of public debate and things are difficult to conceal.”
“And then there were the cocktail parties,” Erlendur said.
“Yes, we mustn’t forget them. The embassies were quite clever at compiling their guest lists. We’re a small community, everyone knows everybody else and is related to everyone else, and they took advantage of that.”
“Did you never have the feeling that information was leaking out of the civil service?” Erlendur asked him.
“Never as far as I knew,” Omar said. “And if there was any espionage here on any scale, it would probably have come to light by now, after the Soviet system collapsed and the old-style secret services were disbanded in Eastern Europe. Former spies in those countries have been busily publishing their memoirs and there’s never been any mention of Iceland. Most of their archives were opened and people could remove the files they found about themselves. The old communist countries gathered a huge amount of personal information and those records were destroyed before the Berlin Wall came down. Shredded.”
“Some spies in the West were uncovered after the Wall fell,” Elinborg said.
“Certainly,” Omar said. “I can imagine that it sent tremors through the whole espionage community.”
“But not all the archives were made public,” Erlendur said. “It’s not all waiting for anyone who cares to look.”
“No, of course not, there are still official secrets in those countries, just as there are here. But actually I’m no expert on espionage, neither abroad nor in Iceland. I know little more than you do, I expect. I’ve always found it a bit absurd to talk about spying in Iceland. Somehow it’s so unreal for us.”
“Do you remember when those divers found some equipment in Kleifarvatn?” Erlendur asked. “That was some distance from where we found the skeleton but the equipment provides an obvious link between the cases.”
“I remember when that was discovered,” Omar said. “Of course the Russians denied everything and so did the other Eastern bloc embassies. They claimed ignorance of the devices but the theory was, if I remember correctly, that they had simply been disposing of old listening devices and radio equipment. It wasn’t worth the expense of sending them home in diplomatic bags and they couldn’t dispose of them in the city dump so…”
“They tried to hide them in the lake.”
“I imagine it was something like that but, as I say, I’m no expert. The equipment proved that spying went on in Iceland. No question of that. But no one was surprised, either.”
They fell silent. Erlendur looked around the room. It was crowded with souvenirs from around the world after a long career in the ministry. Omar and his wife had travelled widely and visited the four corners of the globe. There were Buddhas and photographs of Omar at the Great Wall of China and at Cape Canaveral with a space shuttle in the background. Erlendur also saw photographs of him with a succession of cabinet ministers.
Omar cleared his throat. He had, they felt, been mulling over whether to help them further or just send them away. After mentioning the Russian equipment in the lake, they sensed a hint of caution about him, and had the feeling that he was watching every word he said.
“It might not be, I don’t know, such a bad idea for you to talk to Bob,” he eventually said, stumbling over his own words.
“Bob?” Elinborg repeated.
“Robert Christie. Bob. Head of security at the US embassy in the 1960s and 1970s, a fine man. We got to know each other well and we keep in touch. I always visit him when I go to America. He lives in Washington, retired ages ago like me, has a brilliant memory, a lively character.”
“How could he help us?” Erlendur asked.
“The embassies spied on each other,” Omar said. “He told me that much. I don’t know on what scale and I don’t think any Icelanders were involved, but the embassy staff, from NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries, had spies in their employ. He told me this after the end of the Cold War, and history corroborates that, of course. One of the embassies” tasks was to monitor the movements of diplomats from enemy countries. They knew exactly who came here and who left, what their jobs were, where they came from and where they went, their names, their personal circumstances and family situation. Most of the effort went into gathering that kind of information.”
“What was the point?” Elinborg asked.
“Some staff were known spies,” Omar said. “They came here, stayed briefly and left again. There was a hierarchy, so if someone of a certain rank arrived, you could be reasonably certain that something was going on. You recall the news reports in the old days about diplomats being expelled? That happened here too and it was a regular event in neighbouring countries. The Americans would expel some Russians for spying. The Russians would deny all the accusations and respond immediately by expelling a few Americans. It went on like that all over the world. Everyone knew the rules. Everyone knew everything about everyone else. They tracked each other’s movements. They kept precise records about who joined the embassies and who left.”