It was Old Norse, and I could see why they’d have had to take it to an expert to get it translated. I missed a few words here and there myself, but I got enough to make sense out of it, if you want to call it that.

“Harald Engstrom was not the man he pretended to be,” I said.

“Harald Engstrom? Was he the man-”

“Who gave me the brandy? Uh-huh. And he was supposed to be an activist in SKOAL, working to bring about the independence of Southern Sweden. But actually he was an agent provocateur of the Stockholm government.”

“Oh?”

“He wanted to learn just how committed I was to the cause,” I went on, “and evidently I convinced him of the depth of my feelings, and that meant I was a dangerous man. He saw it as his patriotic duty to nullify me.” I read some more, shook my head. “But he couldn’t just slit my throat and leave it at that,” I said. “He was too Scandinavian.”

“Too Scandinavian?”

I nodded. “Too civilized. Too highly evolved. Too humane. No more death penalty, not even for enemies of the state. He couldn’t kill me, but he had to neutralize me, and that meant putting me on ice.”

“For twenty-five years?”

“Forever, if the folks in Union City hadn’t taken up the basement floor. But I don’t think it was supposed to go on that long. As soon as SKOAL was eliminated as a political force, he’d have had me thawed and returned to society. But I think something must have happened to him. Maybe he got hit by a bus. Or maybe some players on the other side decided that he was dangerous, and he’s tucked away in a meat locker somewhere, hovering at zero degrees. That would be poetic justice, wouldn’t it?”

“And the people who owned the house?”

“Engstrom’s friends?” I tapped the letter. “He mentions them. They didn’t even know about his little excavation project beneath the furnace room, let alone that they were harboring a low-temperature guest. So if anything happened to Engstrom, I would just stay there until hell froze over.” I frowned. “That’s the wrong metaphor, but you get the idea.”