ONCE IN, NEVER OUT
Chapter 2




Because of the number of fire engines, ambulances, police cars, and news vans in the Saga Hotel's parking lot, Thor had to park in the rear. The firemen were blocking the entrance to the hotel as they loaded their equipment and hoses back onto their trucks, so Thor sat in his car, waiting and thinking.
     In his younger days, the police department had taken advantage of Thor's size and appearance; he had been assigned many times to guard foreign diplomats during their visits to Iceland. Since the Saga Hotel was considered by most to be the nation's best, he had spent many hours standing guard outside the presidential suite, just as Haarold had done. He knew all of the security precautions implemented by the hotel to safeguard the important guests who used the presidential suite, so he mentally reviewed them.
     The presidential suite was room 730, located on the top floor of the hotel. Whenever a foreign diplomat was a guest in the suite, elevator access to the seventh floor was restricted; a security key had to be inserted into the elevator car's control panel or the elevator wouldn't stop on seven. To further restrict access to the seventh floor, the stairwell doors could only be opened from the hallway.
     Then there were the two motion-activated security cameras, each hidden behind small, curved, one-way mirrors mounted at ceiling corners at opposite ends of the seventh floor hallway. These cameras were monitored from the front desk and the images were preserved on videotape.
     Unauthorized access to the suite itself was also extremely difficult. The Saga used computer-coded access cards, not keys, and every time a guest checked out the access code was changed. Better yet, every time an access card was used to enter any room in the Saga, the hotel's computer logged the date and time of entry.
     Extensive safeguards, Thor thought, but all of them had been overcome or bypassed by whomever had planted the bomb. But who knew the foreign secretary was at the Saga and who, armed with that knowledge, had the motive, expertise, and opportunity to place the bombs? Thor could reach only one conclusion. Since the foreign secretary's visit was almost a spur-of-the moment affair, the bomber had to be an Icelander.
     Although everything he knew at the moment pointed to that conclusion, it was still difficult for Thor to believe. Iceland prided itself on being a peaceful, non-violent nation, a country without an army that hadn't gone to war since the Viking days. The idea that an Icelander could have been responsible for the bomb seemed so preposterous to him that he put it out of his mind for the moment.
     After the firemen finished loading their trucks and left, Thor unloaded his crime scene kits from the trunk of his car and lugged the two suitcases of equipment to the hotel's entrance.
     Reporters were waiting for him. He knew them all and greeted some of them by name; before they could ask him a single question, he told them that he was sure they knew more than he did.
     "Thor, will you be giving us a statement later?" one of them asked.
     "Sure, unless for some reason I'm instructed not to."
     "Did you know the British foreign secretary was in the country?" said another.
     "No. Did you?"
     "No, no one told us about it either."
     One of the reporters held the door open and Thor carried his equipment into the lobby and straight to the elevator bank. A young uniformed constable was waiting with the elevator security key. Thor prided himself on knowing almost all of the three hundred Reykjavík cops by name and most of the cops in the rest of the country at least by face, but he had to search his mind for a moment. "Hello, Leifur. How's it going upstairs?"
     "Don't know, Thor. Haven't been allowed up there. Whatever's happening, apparently it's secret stuff and nobody's talking." Leifur pressed the call button and the elevator doors instantly opened. The constable followed Thor into the elevator, inserted the key into the control panel, and pressed 7 before resuming his post outside.
     Janus Arnonson was waiting for Thor in the seventh floor hallway. Janus had been a cop for forty-two years and the police chief of Reykjavík for seven. Tall and broad with a long, wide nose, and a mane of thick, white hair, Janus looked like a polar bear, an almost mythic creature in the Icelandic sagas. Since Janus had been around long enough to become something of a myth himself, "polar bear" was what the people of Iceland called him. He didn't mind and had even taken to wearing white suits.
     One look at Janus told Thor that something extraordinary had happened. Janus was in full uniform, a rare event, and he had a pistol in a holster on his belt, an even rarer event since police officers in Iceland usually didn't carry firearms unless they were guarding foreign dignitaries. But the look on his face was one Thor had never seen during their long friendship. Like Erík, Janus looked haggard and worried.
     Thor put his suitcases down and extended his hand, but the chief grabbed Thor in a hug. "So glad you're here," he said, which was something Thor had never heard before from Janus.
     As soon as the chief released him, Thor looked up and down the hallway and was relieved to see only Haarold, still standing guard down the hall outside the presidential suite.
     Icelanders are not known for spontaneous shows of affection and the chief's hug was definitely out of character--the national character and his own. Fortunately, Icelanders are known for being tight-lipped and Haarold was just so. He would never say a word and no reporter would ever learn from him just how worried Janus was.
     "I guess it's bad," Thor observed.
     "It's horrible, exactly the kind of thing that could ruin our national reputation."
     "You think it was an Icelander?"
     "Unless there's a serious leak on the Brits' end, there's nothing else to think. I can't believe I'm saying this, but someone connected to the hotel must be involved."
     Another hard one to believe, Thor thought, although he himself reached the same preposterous conclusion. "Have you spoken to Jónas yet?"
     "Yes, he's here. He handled the arrangements for the foreign secretary and swears there was no leak on his end."
     "How can he be sure?"
     "I don't see how he can be, but you know Jónas."
     Thor did know Jónas, the Saga Hotel's general manager, a man famous in diplomatic circles for being discreet and ensuring that his staff measured up to his high standards of discretion. But the staff was the obvious first place to look. "Where is the ambassador?"
     "I have him on ice in there," Janus said, pointing to the door of Room 728. "He's constantly on the phone to London and sweating up a storm. I'm anticipating a request from him, but I think he's having a hard time putting it into words."
     "You think he wants to offer us some help from their security services?"
     "Yeah, I think that's what he's been instructed to do, but he doesn't know how to make the offer without making us feel like a bunch of yokels when it comes to bombings."
     "Let's take a look, but can I tell you something?"
     "We are a bunch of yokels when it comes to bombings?"
     "Exactly. Between the IRA, the Palestinians, the Iranians, and Lord knows who else, the British have loads of experience in this type of thing and we have none. Between us, I'd welcome any assistance they care to offer."
     Thor had expected a fight from the chief, but Janus looked relieved. "I was hoping you'd see it that way," he said. "I'll run it by Vigdís first, but it sounds like a good idea."
     That settled, Thor was ready to get to work. He picked up one suitcase, Janus the other, and they walked down the hall to Haarold. The constable was still wet and dripping water onto the carpet at his feet, but he showed no signs of discomfort. "Is it very messy in there?" Thor asked.
     "They won't be renting it for a while," Haarold answered.
     That didn't make Thor feel any better. Although he was the homicide detective, there was something he found disturbing in his job that he could never admit to anyone. Thor had a weak stomach when it came to gore, so weak that he always took a few tablets of Dramamine before he went to a crime scene. The tablets prevented motion sickness and kept his lunch where it belonged as he did his job, but he still felt queasy as he examined the door of Suite 730.
     Haarold had rendered the heavy walnut door useless beyond repair. Besides the two nine millimeter bullet holes in the lock, there was a long crack in the center that ran almost from top to bottom.
     Thor pushed the door open with his foot and Janus followed him into the entrance foyer of the suite. Thor had expected that most of the lights in the suite would have been blown out by the blast, but he was wrong. Lights were on in the sitting room to his left, in the bathroom to his right, and the foyer was illuminated by an ornate brass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Directly in front of him was the master bedroom. The door was open and it was dark inside, but enough light seeped in from the foyer for Thor to see a body on the bed.
     The two men put their suitcases down. Thor opened his and took out a searchlight, a camera with a flash attached, and a pair of latex gloves. "Smell anything?" he asked Janus.
     "Yeah. Smoke. Burnt hair too, I think."
     "Anything else?"
     Janus raised his large nose in the air and sniffed a few times. "Coffee?"
     "That's what I think. Strong, burnt coffee." Thor pulled on the gloves and turned on the searchlight. "First, let's take a peek at the foreign secretary." Followed by Janus, he walked into the sitting room and took a quick look around. There was no sign of any damage, so they went down the hall to the servant's bedroom. Thor shined his searchlight into the small, darkened room.
     Sir Ian Smythe-Douglass had died in his pajamas and lay face-down on the floor next to the bed. Thor swung the beam around the room.
     "Not much damage," Janus commented, and Thor had to agree. The windows were shattered, the rug was soaked, there were feathers everywhere, and the smell of smoke and coffee was strong, but there was no apparent structural damage. The walls and the dresser were intact, but the bed would require some work. The legs had collapsed, leaving the supporting boxspring on the floor in one piece.
     The top mattress accounted for the feathers. Thor knew that the Saga would pamper its guests by placing a traditional Icelandic down mattress on top of the boxspring. The bomb had been there, in the down mattress among the feathers, but the limited blast damage still had to be addressed and explained.
     Thor directed the searchlight beam upward and found part of the answer. There was a long depression in the ceiling above the bed.
     "Shape charge?" Janus asked.
     "Uh-huh. Let's get to work, starting with his wife."
     Janus followed him back to the entrance to the master bedroom, but waited outside. Thor went in, his feet sinking into the wet carpet as he walked to the bed. He took a breath and shined his light on the body.
     It was not as bad as Thor had expected, at least for him. It had been terrible for Penelope Smythe-Douglass, but quick. The sturdy double bed had withstood the blast and she was on her back on the center of it, lying in a pile of wet down feathers on the boxspring and what was left of the down mattress. She wore a silk nightgown, but it was so blackened by the smoke that Thor could only guess at the color.
     The body was intact, but her face was a mess. Blood covered her nose, mouth, and ears, and her hair was burned. Her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling, so Thor shined his light up. He knew what he would find and it was there, bloodstains on the damaged ceiling above Penelope Smythe-Douglass's head, and something else--small, black dots on the ceiling that he felt sure were burnt coffee grounds.
     He stepped back and shined his light around the room. Again, there were feathers everywhere, but considering that a bomb powerful enough to kill the woman had exploded in the room, there was no structural damage that Thor could see. He knew how it had been done.
     Thor brushed the feathers off the boxspring and found what he expected--the Kevlar bomb blanket that had been placed under the charge in the down mattress. But there was still something missing.
     Thor walked around the bed, taking pictures of the body from every angle. Then he reloaded the camera and took twelve photos of the rest of the room as Janus watched from the foyer. Satisfied that he had every portion preserved on film, he spent ten minutes looking around and memorizing every detail before he rejoined Janus. "I'm going to need some help now," Thor told him. "We have to move the body."
     "Move it where?"
     "Right here would be fine," Thor said, then went back into the bedroom. Janus followed him in and two minutes later they were back in the foyer with Penelope Smythe-Douglass on the floor at their feet.
     She looked worse in the lighted foyer than she had in the darkened bedroom. Thor could see that both her forearms were broken, her nose was smashed, and her top row of teeth was broken. He got a towel from the bathroom and placed it next to her head as Janus watched, puzzled. "We have to roll her over," Thor told him.
     "What are you looking for?"
     "Pieces of black plastic."
     "Black plastic?"
     "Yeah, pieces of the radio-remote detonator. There's none inside the bedroom that I can see, so there have to be pieces of it in her back."
     "Whatever you say."
     Thor laid both her arms across her chest and together they rolled her over so that Penelope's face lay in the towel. Among the many burnt feathers melted into the fabric of the nightgown, a half-inch sliver of melted black plastic protruded from the center of her back. Looking closer, Thor could see that many smaller pieces of plastic were melted into her burned nightgown.
     "You had that right," Janus said. "Now can you tell me how you knew the plastic would be there?"
     "Easy. Both bombs went off at the same time, so they weren't mechanically detonated. It was done by radio. There was a radio-remote detonator tuned to the same frequency attached to each bomb in each mattress. The bomber sent the signal and that was it for Mr. and Mrs Smythe-Douglass. Propelled them to the ceilings, but didn't do much else in the way of damage."
     "How did he make the shape charge?"
     "Undid the stitching in the down mattress, took out all the feathers, and then laid a Kevlar bomb blanket on the bottom, probably fashioning it so that it looked like a baking pan. Then he laid in the radio-remote detonator and a couple of strips of det cord..."
     "Det cord?"
     "Round strips of American C-4 plastic explosive, comes in fifty-foot rolls. It's pretty powerful stuff, but this bomber is clever and didn't use much to get the job done. Probably two strips of det cord, maybe six meters total for both bombs."
     "So all the explosive force was directed upwards?" Janus ventured.
     "I think so. It wasn't the explosion that killed this poor woman, although I'm sure it ruptured her eardrums. She was killed when she hit the ceiling at a couple hundred kilometers per hour, like she was fired out of a cannon."
     "Pretty sophisticated," Janus commented.
     "Very sophisticated, especially when you throw in the coffee. He put freeze-dried crystals in the mattress to disguise the smell of the C-4, just in case we used a bomb dog to check the room. It's an old trick the Colombians use to fool the American customs' drug-sniffing dogs, and I've heard the IRA also uses it. The coffee overpowers the smell of the explosives."
     "I see. Freeze-dried crystals that don't give much of an odor until they're heated," Janus said.
     "Not to us, but Brandy would smell it. It's the coffee that tells me we're not looking for an Icelander."
     Janus looked relieved, but then he took a moment to examine Thor's reasoning. He didn't get it. "Because of the coffee you know that?" he asked incredulously.
     "Like you said. Anybody who placed those bombs yesterday would have needed some help from the staff. Right?"
     "That still makes sense. So?"
     "So Brandy's been to this hotel quite a few times. Matter of fact, she's been used almost every time a foreign dignitary stayed here during the past few years. All the staff knows her and they all know that she has one unusual trait for a dog--Brandy loves coffee."
     It was news to Janus. "A dog who loves coffee?"
     "Loves it so much that she won't work when there's coffee around. She's got to have it. Brandy would have smelled that coffee in the bomb from the elevator and then she would have gone right for it."
     "So any member of the staff looking to hide a bomb absolutely wouldn't put coffee in it?"
     "Absolutely."
     "Then who exactly are we looking for?"
     "I can't be absolutely certain until we check the tapes from the hallway cameras, but I don't think our bomber is going to show up on any video from yesterday. I'll bet those bombs have been in those mattresses for a while."
     "How long is that?" Janus asked.
     "A couple of days, at least."
     "Impossible. Nobody knew the foreign secretary was coming a couple of days ago. He didn't even know himself."
     "He probably didn't. But, somehow, the IRA did."

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