Operation Napoleon (20 page)

SOUTH-EAST ICELAND,

SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, EVENING

Kristín lifted the tattered German uniform jacket and ran her hands over the cloth, feeling buttons, pockets, lapels. The fabric was surprisingly soft to the touch; it was a peculiar thought that it had belonged to a German officer who had died in it up by the glacier. There were three medals pinned to the left breast. She handed the jacket to Steve who also examined it carefully.

‘I found him in a small gully not more than five kilometres above the farm to the east,’ Jón said slowly, his eyes shifting from one of them to the other. ‘I buried him on the spot, the little that was left of him. Put up a small cross. The way I saw it, he was one of
them
. You’re the only people I’ve told. There was nothing left of the poor sod but bones.’

‘How long ago did you say this was?’ Kristín asked.

‘About twenty years.’

‘Hang on, are you saying he’d been lying practically on your doorstep for more than thirty years?’

‘Hardly on my doorstep. No, he was quite some way from here, well hidden among the rocks.’

‘Why didn’t you report your discovery?’

‘It was nobody else’s business. This was ten years after the major recovery expedition and there’s hardly been any sign of the military round here since. It’s not for the likes of me to go contacting senior officers in the army. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

‘So why did you take the jacket? Why didn’t you bury it as well?’

‘I don’t really know. Maybe I wanted a souvenir. As I said, I’m very interested in the war and anything to do with it. It was Karl’s hobby too, before he died. I remember when the plane flew over; Karl and I used to speculate about it endlessly. It’s easy to climb on to the glacier from here; hardly more than a gentle slope for those who know it well, though you have to watch out for crevasses. We scoured the glacier time and again in search of the plane but we never found it. The glacier’s like that. It’s quick to swallow up anything that sinks into it.’

‘Then spits it out again a hundred years later,’ Kristín added.

‘Yes. Or longer. Or never.’

While Kristín found it impossible to imagine what a German plane would have been doing this far north, Jón assured her that it was not unusual to see enemy aircraft flying over the south-eastern corner of the country during the war. They came from the airport at Stavanger in Norway, he explained, having been specially adapted to carry extra fuel; the return flight across the North Atlantic lasted more than eleven hours, during which time the temperature in the cockpit could drop to –30°C or lower. The planes were mostly Junkers Ju 88s. Generally these were reconnaissance missions but occasionally the Germans carried out air raids. He remembered a Heinkel He 111 fighter, for example, carrying out a machine gun attack on the British camp at the village of Selfoss in 1941, during which one man was killed. German aircraft were also spotted on rare occasions flying over Hornafjördur; they hugged the mountain range before disappearing from view behind Mount Eystrahorn. And a Focke-Wulf 200 once bombed the British tracking station just outside the village of Höfn. So Jón was not particularly surprised that a German plane should have crashed on the glacier. What did puzzle him was that it should have happened in the closing stages of the war when it could not have taken off from Norway, which was no longer occupied by then. It could only have come from Germany.

Jón also told Kristín about an American military aircraft that crashed on the Eyjafjallajökull glacier during the war. There had been little information about the accident at the time due to the news blackout, but everyone had survived and made it safely back to civilisation.

‘When Miller first turned up here, Karl and I remembered the Eyjafjallajökull accident and were eager to do anything we could to help him. I suppose our sense of loyalty may have been a bit exaggerated but we gave him our word and we kept it. We kept our promise. That’s all there is to it.’

Steve ran his hand over the German jacket again, examining the three medals on the breast. He did not recognise them or know what they would have been awarded for but they indicated that whoever owned the jacket must have been fairly senior in the German army. He wondered what the German officer had been doing up there on the glacier all those years ago.

‘There was a box half-buried in the ground beside the German,’ Jón said at last, as if as an afterthought. ‘I took that as well. It looked as if it had been handcuffed to him. He still had the cuff round his wrist. Must have lugged it down off the glacier.’

‘A box!’ Kristín exclaimed.

‘Yes, or something of the sort. It should be here as well.’

Jón rummaged around in the chest again. Kristín and Steve looked round at the horses which were watching them with ears pricked.

‘I don’t really know whether to call it a box or a case,’ Jón said. ‘It’s made of metal. Here it is.’ He lifted up a scratched and dented metal box, the size of a small briefcase, with a handle and a lock that had clearly been tampered with. The metal had rusted clean through in places. Jón opened the box.

‘I found some papers inside. All ruined. Nothing else. I haven’t taken anything out.’ He passed the box to Kristín. She inspected it for any outer markings, then looked inside and saw the papers. They had been badly damaged by the weather, years of relentlessly alternating heat and cold, and fell apart when any attempt was made to separate out the sheets, but the odd word could still be made out on the most intact piece. The documents had been typewritten but the individual letters were now mostly blurred or illegible, though she could tell they were in German. In one place it was still possible to make out the words ‘Operation Napoleon’.

‘Have you any idea what this means?’ she asked Jón.

‘I don’t understand a word of German,’ he said. ‘But it must have been important if he was prepared to lug that case on his wrist all the way over the glacier in the middle of a storm.’

‘Thompson said something about a bomb on board the plane,’ Steve reminded Kristín.

‘What was that?’ Jón asked. He had been a farmer all his life and had never seen any reason to learn English or German or any other language, for that matter, apart from his native Icelandic.

‘We heard there was a Nazi bomb on board that the Americans were transporting to the States.’

‘A bomb?’

‘Yes. A hydrogen bomb that the Germans had been planning to drop on London at the end of the war. Or on Russia. Who knows?’

‘Wait a minute, didn’t you say you’d put a cross on the German’s grave?’ Kristín asked. ‘Is it still there?’

‘No, it isn’t, I’m afraid. I didn’t do a very good job. I don’t really know why I did it at all. It was just two pieces of wood nailed together. I haven’t been there for a long time but the cross fell down years ago. I . . .’

Jón broke off.

‘What?’ Kristín prompted.

‘I don’t like to say. I’m rather ashamed of myself.’

‘Why?’

‘I marked the cross.’

‘Marked it?’

‘I carved a name on it.’

‘A name? You mean you knew the German’s name?’

‘Goodness me, no. It wasn’t a man’s name.’

‘Not a man’s name? What do you mean?’

‘I had an old dog that I was forced to put down at around that time, so I buried him with the German. I don’t know what came over me. Bloody disrespectful, I know. I rather regret it now, but I comfort myself with the thought that he probably didn’t deserve any better. Few of them did.’

‘So you marked the cross with the name of the dog?’

‘Yes, Ogre.’

‘Ogre?’

Jón looked at his feet and smiled ruefully as he recalled his ill-tempered and mangy old companion. ‘He was a tiresome dog.’

Kristín glanced at Steve who shrugged.

‘Could I use your phone?’ she asked Jón.

He mumbled his assent. They went back out into the blizzard, Kristín carrying the metal box, Steve the uniform jacket, and followed Jón into the house, oblivious to the incessant ringing of the car-phone in the jeep.

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, EVENING

We’re trapped inside the plane. I can’t hear the wind any longer and it’s not as cold as before. We have two kerosene lamps; I don’t know how long they’ll last. Don’t know how long we’ve been here. Don’t even know where ‘here’ is. Probably the Vatnajökull glacier. At times the fuselage groans as if it’s being wrenched apart. Our only hope is Count von Mantauffel, but it’s not much of a hope. We’ll probably never be found. He took the metal box with him, handcuffed to his wrist, as if he didn’t even have a key to it himself. And if he doesn’t, who does? Or maybe it contains something so important that he daren’t leave it behind. I’m sitting in the cockpit, keeping away from the Germans. There are two of them still alive, talking their gibberish, scowling at me occasionally. Blaming me for everything
.

If we could force the door off its hinges we might be able to dig our way out. The windows are too small to squeeze through. We didn’t realise we’d be trapped. Crazy weather the whole time. We haven’t started thinking rationally yet. It’s horrible having the corpses in here, all battered from the landing. I didn’t see the glacier until we crashed into it. God! I couldn’t see a thing. I thought I was off the south coast. One minute we were in the air, the next I was skimming the ice. The two men who were standing over me in the cockpit were hurled back into the cabin. Killed instantly. I’d asked them repeatedly to sit down
.

We’re trying to keep ourselves warm. We don’t talk much. Sometimes I hear them mention von Mantauffel. I haven’t told them but there’s a chance we were spotted. I was flying so low that I saw buildings below me through the blizzard. That’s when I knew we were done for. I tried to gain height but we were too near the glacier. There were two men standing by the house gazing up at the plane – they must have seen us. They’re bound to report it. They have to report it
.

Berlin was bombed flat like London. The airport had been destroyed, so we took off from outside the city. The delegation I’d arrived with stayed behind. Who was the Swede? An exceptionally courteous man. Seems they’re all counts there. I’m going to try to write down what happened in case you ever find us. It passes the time, too
.

After we parted in Copenhagen I went to meet the two intelligence officers you mentioned. They never told me their names. They were waiting for me in the park just like you said. They drove me out of the city in a military jeep, heading south to a town called Flensborg where two Germans met us, a lieutenant and a major, and the Swedish count, a member of the royal family apparently. From there we drove toward the front line. The roads were full of refugees and bomb craters – the battle of the Ardennes had been going on for several days at this point. We drove through Schleswig-Holstein where I was given a German uniform to change into. Next we passed through Hamburg where there was gasoline waiting, then on, following the course of the River Elbe, to Berlin, reaching it that evening. If anyone stopped us, all the Swedish count had to do was wave his papers and we’d be ushered through
.

They gave me back my jacket, then held a long meeting at the aerodrome. I didn’t recognise anyone – they were all Nazi big shots, but the Swede was obviously an old acquaintance of theirs. There were German generals with him, two of them. And one from our side, as you said – I don’t know where he came from. I wasn’t allowed to attend the meeting – I’m just the driver. Some soldiers loaded two crates of gold bars on to the plane, and provisions of some kind. That was all. The plane is painted in our camouflage colors. A wonderful machine, the Junkers – powerful engines, tremendous weight-bearing capacity and range
.

The meeting overran – it took forever. That’s why we’re in this goddamn mess. Otherwise we’d have missed the storm and ice, I’m convinced of that. At one point our man marched out of the meeting but the Swede persuaded him to go back in. A long time later the two of them came back out and held a conversation by the plane, going on about the Russians and the Ardennes, and Argentina and God knows what else. Anyway, the meeting dragged on and on. I tried to talk to the German soldiers but they couldn’t understand a word of English. I gave them some cigarettes. They were only boys, not even twenty. They smiled at me
.

In the city there was a total blackout, like everywhere else, and it was strangely silent. They know it’s over. I don’t understand what they can be negotiating about. The end of the war? Are they going to end the war with a treaty? We know there’s not long left. Can they shorten it? It would save thousands of lives. The Russians will beat us to Berlin. Is that the problem? Why these secret talks?

I’m almost sure I saw Guderian at the meeting – I recognized him from the newsreels
.

One of the lamps has gone out. I know you chose me because you trusted me to keep a secret and needed one of us to fly the plane across the Atlantic. I don’t blame you so don’t regret it. Never regret it
.

I think we’re disappearing into the ice. We’re being buried alive
.

Ratoff closed the book. The wind was dying down; the noise was not as shrill as before. Standing up, he opened the tent flap and peered outside. The night was pitch black but it was gusting and snowing less heavily now. The only illumination came from the floodlight on top of the communications tent. He realised it would take time to get things in motion since it would probably be necessary to dig the plane out again, but the longer the troops were on the glacier, the greater the risk they would attract attention. The sooner the wreckage and the Delta operators were back at base, the better. He considered calling out the Defense Force helicopters. This had been part of the back-up plan, but the drawback was that their activities tended to attract intense interest, not only from Icelandic air traffic control, who would ask endless questions, but also from the media, who scrutinised their every move. He had to make a decision: the storm had delayed the operation by at least a day and their presence on the glacier had now been discovered. There was an Icelandic rescue team in the area that had lost two members and was probably moving closer towards them every second.

Ratoff went into the communications tent and asked to be put through to the admiral in Keflavík.