The Last Orphan

1

Hold My Vodka

It wasn’t the first time Evan had drunk vodka atop a glacier.

But it was the first time he’d traveled to a glacier with the express purpose of drinking vodka.

Not just any glacier, but Langjökull, the behemoth nearest Iceland’s capital. Fifteen hundred meters above sea level, the air was frigid enough that Evan sensed it leaking between his teeth, even within the fireplace- warmed interior of the pop- up bar.

It had taken some navigating to get here. A connecting flight to Reykjavik followed by a journey across the tundra with sufficient four-wheel-drive turbulence to make his insides feel as though they’d been tumbled by an industrial dryer.

He’d arrived at the precise coordinates— 64.565653°N, 20.024822°W— twenty minutes ago, time enough to shake the numbness from his fingertips and take his first sip from the specialty batch of handmade spirit. Its name derived from the word for “smoke,” Reyka had a barley base, augmented with water filtered by the rock of a four-thousand-year-old lava stream, making it the purest liquid on earth.

The bar here in the middle of the desolate nowhere was little more than a sparse wooden structure composed of beams and walls. Well-loved chessboards on tables. A foursome of burly Icelanders in football jerseys. Picture windows overlooking miles of blindingly white tundra. Decorative puffins peeked out from the shelves of bottles.

Evan took another sip of the limited- edition batch he’d traveled over four thousand miles to sample. Silky mouthfeel, rose and lavender,a hint of grain on the back half. He set his shot glass, fashioned from glacial ice, down on the bar before him.

It was promptly shattered by the elbow of one of the footballers wheeling drunkenly to grab at the waist of a passing female tourist. Evan exhaled evenly and swept the ice remnants from the bar. Though the young men were rowdy, cocky, and redlining their blood-alcohol, he could sense that they weren’t awful guys. But they were on their way to becoming awful if no one provided a course correction.

On Evan’s other side, a lantern- jawed retiree was bragging to a gaggle of Australian coeds and anyone else within earshot thathe’d been a member of the legendary Viking Squad S.W.A.T. Team known as Sérsveit Ríkislögreglustjórans. A handsome man a few years past his prime, he basked in the glow of the young women’s attention.

Buoyant and amused, the Australians fumbled through his pronunciation lessons. Well built, with beautiful smiles and generous laughs, they hung on his words, as pleased by the unlikely company as he was.

“— we have no standing army,” the former cop was telling them in near- perfect English. “So we’re the last line of defense when it comes to facing deadly threats.”

Evan leaned forward and flagged the bartender for another shot. As it was being poured in front of him, another of the footballers snatched it from beneath the bottle and slammed it.

Evan stared at the pool of vodka puddled on the bar between his hands. Then up at the bartender, a pale Nordic towhead. “Would you like to talk to them?” Evan said. “Or should I?”

The bartender shrugged. “There are four of them. And we’re way out here. There’s nothing to do.”

“Well,” Evan said. “Not nothing.”

The bartender gave him another shot, this time safeguarding it through the handoff. “American?” he asked. “What did you come to Iceland for? Business? Whale watching?”

Evan hoisted the shot glass. “This.”

“You flew all the way here?” The bartender’s mouth cracked open in disbelief. “For vodka?”

Why not? Evan thought.