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them?”
    Birkir replied, “I’ve heard of him. Wasn’t he a politician?”
    “Yeah, that’s right. Konrad has been the ambassador in Berlin for just over a year, but before that he was a member of parliament for twenty years or so. At the last party conference, he challenged the sitting chairman and almost defeated him in the party leadership election. He lost by one vote.”
    “I remember that,” Birkir said.
    “Yeah, it was a memorable weekend in the political landscape. Two months later, the party unexpectedly found itself in power, even though it had suffered heavy losses in the elections. But there was no way that Konrad would get a ministerial post. Then they came up with the solution to make him ambassador to Berlin. Apparently, he studied at an East German agricultural school when he was young, so his German is pretty good.”
    “Did everything work out?”
    “No major mishaps until now. The foreign service’s most experienced and reliable counselor, Arngrímur Ingason, has been at the Berlin embassy for years. He oversees the embassy’s workand has mostly managed to prevent any embarrassments. Until yesterday.”
    “What do you mean by no major mishaps?”
    “Konrad functioned well as a typical constituency go-getter when his party was in the opposition. He was actually never in a position to commit any major blunders, but his career was pretty flat. Younger folks had begun to run against him in the primaries, and he needed to do something to draw attention to himself and establish a position within the party. His big break was totally by chance—the party chairman encountered an unexpected crisis involving careless handling of party funds, and Konrad was the only one who’d been preparing to run against him. So he rode the crest of the wave that arose at the party conference and nearly won the leadership election. At the embassy, he’s at his best when he isn’t doing anything. Fortunately, that’s the normal state of things.”
    “Doesn’t that get tiresome?” Birkir asked.
    “Konrad is sober for two hours a day. He shows up at the embassy around ten o’clock and has a drink around noon. After that nobody has to worry about him. Somebody told me he spends most of his time writing his autobiography. Hulda, his wife, on the other hand, likes to set up events for Icelandic artists she invites over to Berlin, leaving it to the embassy staff to organize the details, often on short notice. And then nobody knows who’s going to pay, and that can cause problems. Especially after the banking crisis. It’s difficult to find sponsors these days.”
    “You said his wife was at the party, too.”
    “Yes. Hulda turned up at the embassy later that evening, as I said, and left with Konrad when the gathering broke up. She’s something else, that woman. The story goes that Konrad finagled her into that pivotal party conference—with full voting rights,even. She represented some women’s group. But she went off to get her hair done for the last-night ball, and forgot to vote in the leadership election. Her missing vote would have resulted in a tie, in which case they would have had to draw lots between Konrad and the sitting chairman. The ambassador and his wife sometimes discuss this fact at awkward moments.”
    Birkir asked, “How will this murder affect the ambassador’s position?”
    “He’ll be recalled home, for the time being at least. I will act on his behalf until he returns or a new ambassador is appointed.”
    “Who else is on your list?”
    The plane had now reached cruising altitude, so Sigmundur woke up his laptop.
    “Let’s see. Here’s Arngrímur’s list. First is the guest of honor, Jón Sváfnisson, ‘the Sun Poet,’ ” he read from the computer screen. “Do you know him?”
    Birkir said, “I know his poem ‘As daylight grows longer and dreams multiply,’ et cetera.”
    “Ah, you know that one,” Sigmundur said. “A book of translations of his work was just