Operation Napoleon (23 page)

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0000 GMT

He lost control – Kreutz, that is. He looks like he must be the youngest, in spite of his rank. At first he was talking calmly to his companion, but he grew more and more agitated until he was screaming at him. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. I don’t know what it was but something made him go completely crazy. He jumped to his feet and began pacing back and forth, hammering the cabin door, shouting and thumping on the fuselage. In his madness he knocked over one of the kerosene lamps and we haven’t been able to relight it since. The other German tackled him and eventually overcame him after a hell of a fight in the cramped space. I kept out of it in the cockpit. There isn’t really enough light left for writing as we only have one lamp that works now. The kerosene is running low. Soon we’ll be in total darkness
.

Maybe they were arguing over whether it had been a mistake to sit tight, instead of following Count von Mantauffel. The storm and cold were so severe when we landed that you couldn’t stand up outside, though von Mantauffel didn’t let that hinder him. Our attempts to force the door off its hinges are in vain. The plane will be our tomb and I suppose that fact has started to come home to us all. We’re slowly dying inside a coffin made of metal and ice
.

We’ve lost track of time. It could be two or three days since we landed. Maybe longer. Hunger is becoming an increasing problem. There’s nothing to eat and the air in the cabin is very stale; I suppose the oxygen’s not being replaced quickly enough. The Germans are dozing. They haven’t taken any notice of me since the crash. At the time they were mad at me, yelling until von Mantauffel ordered them to shut up. I wish I understood more German. I would have liked to know what this mission is about. I know it’s important, otherwise you wouldn’t have sent me, but what’s it all about? Why are we collaborating with the Germans? Aren’t they our enemies any more?

Ratoff’s reading was interrupted.

‘Phone call from Carr, sir,’ a soldier called into his tent. Ratoff trod the same short walk back to the communications tent and took the receiver.

‘The Icelandic government are coming under increasing pressure over the military exercises on the glacier,’ Carr began, without preamble. He was speaking from the base in Keflavík where, twenty minutes earlier, his plane had landed and taken off again immediately after refuelling. Carr himself planned to personally accompany the Junkers back across the Atlantic in the C-17. He had had a brief meeting with the admiral who had told him of the Icelanders’ mounting anger at the presence of the army on Vatnajökull. The lie about the volcanic eruption alert would not work for long. Time was running out and the situation was deteriorating with every passing minute. He was afraid of being stranded here with the German plane and the bodies and the secret connected to them. The Icelandic government was growing ever more impatient and a diplomatic catastrophe loomed which would send shockwaves around the world.

‘We’ll be gone from here in no time, sir,’ Ratoff reassured him. ‘We’re just waiting for the choppers.’

‘We don’t want any more bodies,’ Carr said. ‘We don’t want any more disappearances. Get yourselves off that glacier and vanish into thin air. Is any of that unclear?’

‘None, sir,’ Ratoff replied. He avoided any mention of the rescue team or Kristín.

‘Good.’

Ratoff handed the phone to the communications officer and stepped outside. In the distance he heard the massive rotors of the Pave Hawk helicopters beating as they came powering in from the west, two pricks of light growing larger in the darkness. His men had prepared a landing site on the ice with two rings of torches, and launched four powerful flares that hung in the air like lanterns and blazed for several minutes, throwing a bright orange-yellow light over the entire scene. The Pave Hawks flew into the glow cast by the flares and hovered for a moment above the tents before settling with infinite care on the ice like gigantic steel insects, the noise deafening, clouds of snow whipping up all round. The men on the ground took cover until the engines had died and the blades finally stopped turning, their whine fading in the cold air. When the doors opened and the crews clambered out, they were directed straight to Ratoff’s tent. Soon all was quiet again.

The pilots looked around in astonishment at the floodlit scene: the city of tents pitched in a semicircle around the plane, evidence of its excavation from the ice, the swastika instantly identifiable below the cockpit, the camouflage paint flaking off to reveal the gunmetal grey beneath, the special forces personnel swarming all round and over the wreckage. The fuselage had been cut in half but they were unable to see inside because plastic sheeting had been fitted over the yawning mouth of the exposed cabin. They glanced at one another and back at the wreckage. They had been given no reason for their summons in the middle of the night to Vatnajökull; their orders were simply to airlift some heavy equipment off the ice cap and ask no questions, their destination the C-17 transport that had been on standby at Keflavík Airport for three nights.

Ratoff greeted the helicopter crew members. There were four men, two per machine, aged between twenty-five and fifty and clad in the grey-green uniform of the US Air Force. They had already removed the thickly lined leather jackets and helmets they wore on top when they entered Ratoff’s tent. They did not recognise the operation director and plainly had no idea what was happening on the glacier. They looked from Ratoff to one another, exchanging puzzled glances.

Ratoff studied the pilots. He could tell from their expressions that they had had minimal briefing on the purpose of the mission. They seemed unsure of themselves, shifting from foot to foot and looking about uncomfortably, but he had no intention of putting them at their ease.

‘We’re going to airlift the wreckage of an old plane from the glacier to Keflavík Airport,’ he announced.

‘What plane is that, sir?’ one of the pilots asked.

‘A souvenir,’ Ratoff replied. ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve cut it in two, so the helicopters can take one half each. We’re grateful for your assistance but the operation should be straightforward. I recommend you stay put in the tent as it would be best for everyone if you avoided compromising your plausible deniability. Is that understood?’

‘Compromising our what?’ one of the pilots queried, looking at the others to see if he was alone in being baffled by these instructions. ‘May I ask what’s going on here?’

‘That’s precisely what I mean,’ Ratoff said. ‘The less you know, the better. Thank you, gentlemen,’ he concluded, indicating that the conversation was over. But the pilot was not satisfied.

‘Is it the German plane, sir?’ he asked hesitantly.

Ratoff stared at him, amazed that this man sought to question him. Had he not been adequately clear?

‘What do you mean, “the German plane”?’ he asked.

‘The German plane on Vatnajökull,’ the pilot answered. He was young, fresh-faced, and his lack of guile made him hard for Ratoff to read. ‘I’ve heard about it before. I saw the swastika.’

‘And just what have you heard about this German plane?’ Ratoff asked, moving closer.

‘In connection with the astronauts, sir.’

‘What astronauts?’

‘Armstrong, sir. Neil Armstrong. He went looking for it in the sixties. Or so the story goes. It’s supposed to have a bomb on board – a hydrogen bomb. If that’s the case, if I’m going to be flying with it strapped to me, I’d like to know about it. From an operational point of view, of course, sir.’

‘Is that the rumour on the base?’ Ratoff mused. ‘Nazis, Armstrong and a hydrogen bomb?’

‘So is there a bomb? Can we see inside the plane? Regulations mean I need to verify what we’re going to be transporting, sir.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust me, Flight Lieutenant, when I tell you that there is no bomb in the plane. The aircraft is German, obviously, and dates from World War II, but it’s completely safe. This is the first I’ve heard of Armstrong looking for it and certainly the first I’ve heard of any Nazi bomb. We haven’t found anything of the sort. Satisfied?’

‘I guess so, sir,’ the pilot said uncertainly.

‘If it’s so harmless,’ another pilot asked, ‘why can’t we watch, sir? Why do we have to stay cooped up in the tent?’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ratoff exclaimed under his breath. He sighed. ‘How many different ways can I put this, gentlemen? I am not required to give you any explanations.’ He went outside and beckoned three soldiers into the tent. ‘Shoot anyone who tries to leave,’ he ordered.

The pilots stood in a huddle, shuffling together like stunned livestock, utterly baffled by this latest development. Brought to the middle of nowhere, witness to some inexplicable excavation, bound to secrecy and now held hostage by their own side, they stared speechlessly at one another and at their captor.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ demanded their leader at last. ‘What kind of treatment do you call this? How dare you? Who’ll fly the helicopters now?’

‘We have people for that. You’re surplus to requirements,’ Ratoff said and stalked out of the tent. A man stood waiting to join him as he walked down to the plane.

‘How was the flight?’

‘Like a dream,’ Bateman answered with a grin.

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0015 GMT

Kristín was met by an extraordinary, utterly surreal sight, a scene from science fiction. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that now coursed through her limbs like a dull drug, but all at once she felt she was losing her grip and succumbing to an overpowering sense of helplessness. Everything that had happened to her was reduced to a jumble of hallucinations, a long, intense nightmare in which she was on the run but could never move fast enough. Was she in fact still lying at home on the sofa? The sight that met her eyes made it hard to put the events in any sort of context, hard to distinguish between this outlandish reality and her own delirious imaginings.

She saw the Pave Hawk helicopters perched side by side, their immensely long rotor-blades extending in all directions. About thirty tents of varying sizes were arranged in a semicircle; snowmobiles, tracked vehicles, trailers carrying oil-driven engines and portable generators, floodlights and satellite dishes and a host of other equipment she could not put a name to littered the area. Scores if not hundreds of personnel were milling around on the ice. Some, she now noticed, had begun to take down the tents – they were starting to clear up after themselves. She understood. They were finished here. Soon there would be no trace of them: the snow would obliterate their tracks. Deep down the realisation struck her, triggering a warning bell that gradually restored her wandering wits: they were leaving the glacier.

Only then did she see the plane. It lay, cut in half, in a shallow depression in the ice. Two groups of people were busy fixing strong, thick slings around each half, attached to cables which extended in the direction of the helicopters. Evidently the helicopters were there to remove the plane wreckage and after that it would not take the soldiers long to disappear too.

It was very still, several degrees below zero. The black vault of the night sky arched over the area, reflecting the glow of the powerful floodlights. The journey had been uneventful; she and Steve had been forced to ride pillion on the snowmobiles behind their captors, who maintained radio contact with the camp throughout. After fifteen or twenty minutes they had ascended a small ridge and the tents had come into view below them. The vehicles careered down the ridge and into the camp, stopping by one of the larger tents. She and Steve were shown inside, past two soldiers who stood guard either side of the opening.

‘Are you okay, Kristín?’ Steve asked once they were at the back of the tent, as far from the guards as possible.

‘Yes, and you? Are you all right?’

As she looked at him, her thoughts strayed to what had happened between them at Jón’s farm. For a brief moment her present surroundings faded and she pictured a future with him.

‘Could be better,’ Steve said. ‘Could be at home watching basketball. There’s a big game on tonight, Lakers against the Bulls.’

‘It could hardly beat this,’ Kristín said. Neither of them smiled. Looking at Steve, she saw her own anxiety reflected in his face.

She surveyed their canvas cell with a sudden sense of hopelessness. On the table sat a large gas lamp which lit up the tent and emitted a faint heat, but otherwise it was freezing inside. There were also four camp chairs and, at the back of the tent, close to where they were standing, they noticed several heavy canvas sheets spread out over the ice. She glanced towards the tent opening where the soldiers stood watching them.

‘I want to speak to Ratoff,’ Kristín called out but received no reaction.

‘Shouldn’t your rescue team be here by now?’ Steve asked under his breath, the worry just audible in his voice. ‘And the Coast Guard, or whatever it’s called? And the police and reporters and TV crews? Where’s CNN? Where’s the cavalry?’

‘I know,’ Kristín said. ‘Something must start happening soon. Look, let’s think for a minute. How can we get out of here? What is this tent anyway? What are they using it for?’

She looked down at the sheets of canvas.

‘What’s this?’ she asked in a low voice, backing further into the tent. Steve moved unobtrusively towards her. Distracted by the commotion outside, the guards had lost interest and gone back to watching the spectacle of a small army erasing all trace of itself. From under one of the tarpaulins, the corner of a grey body-bag could be glimpsed.

‘What have they got here?’ Steve whispered.

Kristín stepped on the corner of the canvas and drew it quietly towards her, then repeated the movement. Her legs were stiff from the walk up to the glacier and weak from lack of food; it took all her concentration to stop the muscles in her thigh from going into spasm. The canvas shifted and she continued dragging her foot until she had partially uncovered what lay beneath. The body-bag was open at the top, the heavy-duty zip which joined the bag’s shiny grey folds drawn back perhaps ten inches. A peaked cap met their eyes, bearing the eagle and swastika insignia. When Kristín tugged with her foot a little more, a face appeared beneath the cap. They stared speechlessly at the body. It was a middle-aged man whose deathly pallor was almost as translucent as the ice. Kristín could hardly grasp what she was seeing; she stood in silent wonder, her attention riveted on this new discovery.

Her heart nearly stopped when a hoarse voice spoke behind them.

‘Pretty sight, don’t you think? As if he’d died no more than a week ago.’

Ratoff had entered the tent, with Bateman at his heel. Kristín instantly recognised the man who had twice tried to murder her; she also knew in her bones that she was finally standing face to face with Ratoff. She had formed an image of him which in no way fitted the man before her. He was so short that she almost burst out laughing. She had imagined a man well over six feet tall, yet here he was, a man with no physical presence whatsoever; in spite of his padded ski-suit, she could tell that he was nothing but skin and bone. For a moment it crossed her mind that he might be suffering from some incurable disease. His features looked vaguely Slavonic: a bony face, the cheekbones and chin jutting through the taut skin, a narrow, dead straight nose, and small, sharp, deep-set eyes. As he came closer she noticed that he had white rings round his pupils that made his eyes appear eerily bright. His ears were small and grew close to his head, and his mouth seemed to underline the cruelty above, but her attention was drawn irresistibly to the scar under his left eye. She could not stop staring at it. It was round like a little sun, radiating tiny grooves down his cheek.

‘You’re not the first,’ Ratoff said in his odd, rasping voice, noting the direction of her gaze: ‘She did her best.’ He scratched the raised purple outline of the old scar with one finger.

‘I hope it hurt,’ Kristín replied.

‘An accident,’ Ratoff said. ‘The bullet went right through my face and out behind my ear. I lost part of my voice, nothing else.’

‘Pity she didn’t kill you,’ Kristín retorted.

‘She came close.’ He smiled. ‘Are you looking for your little brother, Kristín? I fear it may be too late to save him now.’

‘Don’t be so sure. He was alive the last I heard. It was a close call but if a shit like you can survive being hit point-blank, there’s still hope for him.’

Ratoff considered this.

‘Icelandic women,’ he said at last, sliding his gaze over to Steve. ‘I’ve read about them. They are fond of sleeping with foreigners. Are you, Kristín?’

‘Fuck you,’ Kristín growled.

The thin line of Ratoff’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘We’re finished. And the best of it is that we were never here.’

‘Everyone knows. We’ve told everyone we could about you and the plane on Vatnajökull. It’s only a question of time before the glacier is crawling with well-informed observers and you won’t be able to throw all of them down a crevasse.’

‘That’s why we have to make haste. A pity I can’t spend a little more time with you two first. Bateman would especially enjoy that.’

‘So the asshole has a name,’ Kristín exclaimed.

Bateman did not stir but Ratoff walked right up to Kristín, causing her to take an involuntary step backwards. His face touched hers. Looking deep into the small eyes, she saw nothing but cold revulsion. She breathed in his stale, sour smell.

‘You look like you have more guts than your little brother,’ he hissed from between his thin lips. ‘How he could howl. How he screamed and cried. First when I put his friend’s eyes out, then when I started on him. Whined and whined for his big sister. I thought he’d never stop. But she didn’t hear him. She was too busy fucking an American. You should have heard him. Very moving, it was.’

He did not flinch, even when the saliva landed on his forehead and dribbled into his eye, just carried on in the same low, hoarse voice.

‘“Kristín” he moaned, but his big sister never came.’

A special forces soldier appeared at the tent flap.

‘They’re ready with the choppers, sir,’ he called.

Ratoff turned, wiping the saliva from his face. He glanced at Bateman and nodded.

‘Load the body bags into the plane,’ he ordered and started to walk away. He was halfway out of the tent when Kristín shouted at his back:

‘I know about Napoleon!’

Ratoff stopped dead, then turned round.

‘I said I know all about Napoleon,’ Kristín repeated.

‘You have no idea what you are talking about,’ Ratoff said, entering the tent again.

‘I know about the Napoleon documents,’ Kristín continued, in a blind rage. ‘Or Operation Napoleon, as it was known.’

‘Tell me, Kristín. What exactly do you know about it? Or is it just a word you have heard? I’m afraid that’s not much of a card to play,’ Ratoff sneered.

‘Everything. What the Germans were up to,’ Kristín said, feeling her way blindly. ‘I know what your precious plane is hiding. A secret in a briefcase. No bomb, no gold, no virus. Just papers.’

‘Well, well. Let’s imagine you do. Who else knows about Napoleon?’ Ratoff asked, standing right in front of her again. His soulless eyes searched hers. He repeated his question and Kristín realised that she had touched a nerve but had no idea how to press her advantage. Her mind was blank. Under his gaze she felt paper-thin, transparent, exposed.

‘Who have you told about Napoleon?’ Ratoff asked, and Kristín saw a sudden flash of steel in his hand.