Suddenly Jón Karl is blinded by a car’s high beams. He shades his eyes and steps onto the verge. A white Jeep approaches from the east, slows down and seems to be stopping. Jón Karl’s heart skips a beat and he expects to see flashing lights at any moment, but when the driver turns off the high beams he sees that this is not a police car but a tired old Cherokee with fog lights and a ski rack on the roof.
‘Karl?’ calls the driver, sticking his face and an elbow out the open window.
‘Yes?’ answers Jón Karl, staring at the man, who he has never seen before.
‘I’m Rúnar, the bosun!’ says the driver, motions Jón Karl to get in. ‘Hop in, man! We’re already late!’
Too late for what-the-fuck?
Jón Karl doesn’t know quite what to do or what to think about this stranger who wants him to get in his car, but when he notices a ghostly light approaching from the west, the man’s strange request seems like a great offer.
‘I’m coming,’ says Jón Karl, limping across the road and getting into the Jeep, which smells as if it’s been used to transport dead animals.
‘What in the world happened, man?’ asks Rúnar when he sees the swollen, blood-covered face of Jón Karl, who grits his teeth and dries the sweat from his forehead while Rúnar turns the Jeep around. The one-eyed van is approaching fast and Jón Karl is about to freeze up with pain.
Hurry, hurry, thinks Jón Karl, leaning up against the passenger door.
‘I… just…’ he starts, only to say something, because he has no idea what to really say to this stranger who acts as if he knows him.
‘Is that your car?’ asks Rúnar, stopping the Jeep right across the road.
In the glare of the high beams they can just see the crumpled back end of the Impreza sticking up out of the deep ditch.
‘Yes, it is,’ says Jón Karl, tensing up. The black van is still nearing them at speed, only about half a kilometre away now. ‘Shouldn’t we get a move on? Didn’t you say we were late?’
‘Yeah, very late,’ answers Rúnar and drives off to the east. ‘What happened? Did someone tail-end you?’
‘No, I just… went off the road,’ says Jón Karl quietly, watching the van in the side mirror.
‘And are you okay?’ asks Rúnar, signalling right. ‘I mean, are you well enough to sail?’
What? Sail?
‘I’m fine really,’ says Jón Karl, who can see in the mirror that the van stops beside the Impreza. Damn! He’d been hoping Óðin wouldn’t notice the sportscar and would just drive on. Now he’s likely to put two and two together and follow the white Jeep.
But when Rúnar suddenly slows and turns down the side road towards the ferrosilicon and aluminium plants at Grundartangi, Jón Karl is filled with new worries and doubts.
‘What, here… where to?’ says Jón Karl, sure that Óðin will follow them here and get him, because this road almost certainly ends at the lit-up factories which glow under a cloud of yellow smoke like nightmare castles in the pitch-black night.
‘They’re waiting for us on the quay,’ says Rúnar, turning right down a steep slope.
On the quay? Well enough to sail? Very late?
Jón Karl stares through the windscreen and sees a gloomy-looking freighter rocking ponderously alongside a long quay down by the dark shore. The ship’s bridge is lit by yellow searchlights, the wind is wailing in the masts and aerials and a greyish layer of salt wreathes the scene in a ghastly aura. And in the side mirror the ghostly headlight draws nearer.
There are still two shells in his revolver, but Jón Karl is stiff now, confused and exhausted by pain, and Óðin has the reputation of being literally unkillable. Obviously nobody is unkillable, biologically, but when it comes to Óðin R Elsuson, the logic of this world somehow does not apply. He is a living legend, a man who few know, many talk about and everyone fears without really knowing why, and this is why Óðin R Elsuson is more like menace incarnate than a mortal man.
‘Well, at least they didn’t leave without us, eh?’ says Rúnar when he catches sight of Sæli standing there, beating his arms to keep warm.
Jón Karl doesn’t know what he should do; his mouth is dry and his insides all numb. He’s not man enough for any conflict at the moment – that much is clear.
‘Your brother-in-law said I could leave the Jeep just anywhere,’ says Rúnar as he stops the car and kills the engine right by the old quay.
My brother-in-law?
Jón Karl glances at the petrol gauge, which has a red arrow pointing to the bottom of a red line. He can’t continue his escape in this car.
Fuck it!
‘Let’s go!’ says Rúnar, getting out of the vehicle. Jón Karl does the same. What else can he do? Rúnar locks the car and leads the way to the ship, which pitches by the quay, by turns pulling on its moorings or rubbing against the tyres on the quay, with accompanying screeches. It blows black smoke heavenwards and thrusts up seawater that foams across the concrete pier.
‘Hello there – I’m Sæli!’ Sæli offers Jón Karl his sturdy hand.
‘Hello.’ Jón Karl shakes his hand loosely, watching with an anxious expression as the black van drives through the gates at the top of the harbour area.
‘Whatever happened to you?’ asks Sæli, grinning at Jón Karl.
‘I, well…’ Jón Karl hesitates, the salt wind bringing tears to his eyes.
‘Not now!’ shouts Rúnar, who has already jumped on board and is holding his left hand out to Jón Karl and hanging on to the railing with his right.
The black van gets closer and Jón Karl can see the shape of Óðin’s head behind the dirty windscreen. Jón Karl’s thoughts turn to the gun and he flexes the fingers of his right hand, but they are as stiff as frozen lobster tails.
It’s now or…
Jón Karl turns around, tosses his duffel bag behind Rúnar, places his left foot on the gunwale and grabs the outstretched hand of the bosun, who pulls him aboard through a gate in the railing.
‘Fucking windy!’ Rúnar shouts through the chilling howl.
What might their destination be? Isafjörður? Or Amsterdam? Doesn’t make much difference. Jón Karl will be leaving the ship at the next port, and if it turns out to be a foreign port he’ll phone Lilja and get her to wire him money for the airfare home.
‘Come on, I’ll take you to your cabin,’ Rúnar calls out, walking ahead of him up an iron staircase and behind the bridge on the starboard side to enter B-deck, where the kitchen, fuse room and a toilet are, along with two dining or mess halls – one for the officers, one for the seamen.
‘Everybody’s on board,’ says Sæli into the intercom and then waits for an answer.
‘Cast off the bowline,’ the captain, Guðmundur, calls back through the static.
‘Cast off the bowline,’ Sæli repeats as he carries out the order. He stoops under the ever-increasing wind, half closes his eyes against the salt spray, loosens the forward hawser from the bollard and throws the heavy loop in the water to be heaved on board.
‘Bowline ready!’
Óðin steps out of the black van and watches Sæli cast off astern and then jump aboard the ship, which drifts slowly away and then sails west out onto the turbulent waters of Hvalfjörður.
The sea churns behind the giant ship and the heavy beat of the main engine echoes like a toneless drum over the deep fjord.
The last thing Óðin R Elsuson sees before the freighter disappears into the dark of the stormy night is the name that is painted on the black stern: Per se.
‘May you sail straight down to hell!’
He spits out a cold cigar end and scratches his nose absentmindedly before getting back in the van, which is purring in neutral and rocking back and forth like a boat on the quay.