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“So we get called to a lava field in Mývatn at dusk. Steam thick like curtains. Water churning, heated from below. Heartbreakingly beautiful.” The former cop paused a moment. “That glacial blue, a color you can’t believe God can make. We get there and …”
The young women leaned closer. “And?”
“Floating like a stroke of paint in that blue, blue water was a ribbon of crimson thick as my arm. I waded in after it. Sloshing along, following the blood like a shark. And then I saw it. Bobbing against a wall of lava. Waterlogged. Head at an angle that made no anatomical sense.” The cop tented his fingertips on the surface of the bar. “The garrote had worked its way through most of the neck. Guy must’ve put up a helluva struggle.”
“Who was he?” one of the Australians asked breathlessly.
“German drug lord. The one who’d set up the operation.”
“So who … who killed him?”
On Evan’s other side, the footballers were stomping their feet now and chanting a drinking song. But his ear was tuned to the tale being spun by the onetime member of Sérsveit Ríkislögreglustjórans.
“Do you believe in fairy tales?” the cop asked.
The women stared at him glassy-eyed.
“There was a government assassin known as Orphan X,” he continued. “Think of him as the Big Bad Wolf. Probably American, maybe British. No one knew who he was. No one ever found out. Maybe he didn’t even exist. Maybe he was just a name theywhispered to bad men to make sure they didn’t sleep well at night.”
“Doyouthink he was real?”
“I saw his handiwork.”
“The dead German drug lord?”
“And five of his colleagues, found in various states of disassembly in a barn at the foot of the Námafjall Mountains. Their stash house. The carnage …” The cop shook his head. “Matched our national death rate from the preceding decade. No one saw the assassin come or go. No footprints, no tire tracks, no eyewitnesses. They say that’s how he earned his nickname. Hisothernickname.”
“What’s that?” The Australians were captive now, leaning in, twirling straws in their drinks.
“‘The Nowhere Man.’ It’s said that he left the world of spycraft. But he’s still around. In the shadows.”
“That’s not true,” one of the women said. “That can’t be true.”
“He has a secret phone number. Or so the story goes. The number gets passed around, and when you call it, he answers, ‘Can I help you?’”
Evan shook his head. Barely.
The retired cop keyed to him. “What?”
“‘Can I help you?’” Evan repeated. “That sounds … servile.”
“This man is anything but,” the cop said.
“I’d imagine he’d say something more muscular,” Evan offered. “Like, ‘Do you need my help?’”
“Well, whatever he says, he’s not someone you want on your tail.”
“What’s he look like?” another of the young women asked.
“Like not much,” the cop said, happily directing his attention back to the clique. “There’s scant intel on him. Ordinary size, ordinary build. Just an average guy, not too good-looking.”
The women were breathless.
The cop pressed on. “He goes anywhere, they say. Capable of anything. Scared of nothing.”
“No one is scared of nothing,” Evan said.
The cop fixed him with an irritated glance. “What’s a touristlike you know of a man like that? A man who’s killed drug dealers, terrorists, heads of state? I’ve seen with my own two eyes the wreckage he’s left behind.”
