Operation Napoleon (25 page)

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 2330 GMT

The team had settled down, some inside the two tracked vehicles, others alongside them, to wait and see what would happen. No one dared make a move against the soldiers or give them the slightest provocation to use their rifles again. After the soldiers had halted the rescue team, they had confiscated all communications equipment and conducted a thorough search of both people and vehicles, until they were confident that they had removed every flare, radio and mobile phone, before withdrawing to their original position. They seemed content to have impeded the team’s progress and simply stood next to their snowmobiles, holding their ground and ensuring that the Icelanders could not proceed.

Júlíus climbed into the back of the second vehicle, taking care to sit beside a door. After they had been waiting for some time he cautiously opened the door and slid out. The stand-off had calmed down and he sensed that their guards had relaxed. He lay for a long while in the snow underneath the vehicle, not moving a muscle. The chill gradually crept up his legs despite his thick ski-suit; his toes were agonisingly cold, his hands growing dangerously numb. He would have to move soon, if only to generate some warmth.

He heard the soldiers talking but could not make out what they were saying. After about ten minutes he crawled away from the vehicle, between two snowmobiles and away into the darkness. When he believed he was safe, he rose to his knees, peered behind him and saw that no one had spotted his departure. Rising to his feet, he set off in a wide detour around the soldiers, taking care to keep far enough away to be hidden by the night.

He seethed with fury; he was not going to let any bloody Yanks from the base threaten him, search him and rob him, abuse and attack his friends, or ban him from moving about in his own country. Besides, Kristín was relying on him. If he could support her account of the army’s activities on the glacier, he would at least have achieved something. The shame and guilt of almost losing Elías burned in his chest; it was too much to bear that Kristín might also be in physical danger. Try as he might to rid his mind of these thoughts, he was haunted by the prospect of being responsible for both siblings coming to harm.

Soon the soldiers were behind him and, driven by a mixture of anger and distress, he broke into a run over the ice towards the glow which lit up the sky about three kilometres away. He knew the Americans would be monitoring the glacier closely and that he could expect soldiers to appear out of the darkness at any moment to arrest him – maybe even to use their weapons.

Júlíus was extremely fit and covered the distance rapidly, the freezing air burning invigoratingly in his lungs. At once, the flood of light ahead grew brighter and he heard a roar approaching; from behind him, helicopters swooped in and landed in the midst of the pool of light. He heard the drone of the rotor-blades diminishing until all was quiet again. Quickening his pace, he reached the margin of the lit-up area. There he slowed down and finally threw himself panting on the ice, before crawling the last stretch up a small rise which afforded him a good view of the area.

He had not known what to expect but what he saw was staggering. The two Pave Hawk helicopters, the wreck of an old plane cut into halves which were now being covered with tarpaulins. Soldiers swarming everywhere. Tents. Equipment. It defied explanation. He noticed the helicopter pilots being escorted to one of the tents and not long afterwards saw a woman being taken into another tent. He had never set eyes on Kristín, let alone the man who was roughly frogmarched in after her, but it was clear that they were captives of the soldiers.

At that moment he heard the snow creak beside him and, turning, encountered a pair of shiny, black boots. Following them upwards he discovered three men aiming guns at him. Like the soldiers who had intercepted the rescue team, they were wearing white camouflage, skiing goggles obscuring their faces and scarves bound over their mouths to keep out the cold.

Júlíus climbed warily to his feet and, not knowing what else to do, raised his hands in the air. The soldiers seemed content with this submission and, without a word, gestured with their rifles towards the camp. They had followed Júlíus from the moment he had appeared as a dot on their radar screens, approaching the prohibited zone by infinitesimal degrees.

All the way he made desperate efforts to memorise what he saw. He noticed that the soldiers were beginning to take down their tents and collect up equipment and tools, as if their work on the glacier, whatever it was, would soon be at an end.

On reaching the ragged, makeshift encampment he was brought before another man. This one was clearly an officer of some sort. There was no one else in the tent. He stared at the Icelander as if he had come from another planet, and it crossed Júlíus’s mind that this was not far from the truth. When asked, he explained to the officer how he had slipped away from his team and made his way here under cover of darkness. He made sure to claim that there were other Icelanders in the area, lying that his men had received a message from Reykjavík before the soldiers had confiscated his team’s radios that other rescue teams were at this moment on their way to the glacier, together with the police and members of the Coast Guard.

The officer listened, nodding and went on asking his monotonous questions:

‘Has anyone else escaped from the guards?’

‘No,’ Júlíus replied. ‘Is this an interrogation?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why are you interrogating me?’

‘Please answer the question.’

‘I protest in the strongest terms about your treatment of an Icelandic rescue team. What on earth do you think you’re doing? Who are you?’

‘Are you alone?’ the officer persisted, ignoring Júlíus’s outburst.

‘Don’t think this is over. I’m looking forward to telling the press exactly what’s going on here; how you’re jackbooting around in Icelandic territory, putting Icelandic lives in danger.’

They heard a whine, rising to a crescendo as one of the helicopters started up.

‘Don’t move,’ the officer ordered. He walked over to the door of the tent where he saw Ratoff’s back disappearing into the helicopter. With an even greater commotion, it gradually rose to hover thirty or forty feet above the ice. The noise was deafening and the helicopter whipped up so much snow that it could barely be seen. Below it, the dangling thick steel cables tautened and soon the fuselage of the old plane began to shift, inch by inch, off the ice, swinging in the glare of the floodlights. Higher and higher it rose, the helicopter then rotating itself westwards before setting off on its course and slowly melting into the darkness. The other would be minutes behind it.

When the officer turned back into the tent he was met by nothing but a man-high slit in the canvas wall. He leapt through it but Júlíus was nowhere to be seen.

Júlíus was fairly sure which tent he had seen Kristín being taken into and sprinted over to it. Without a moment’s hesitation he slashed the canvas from top to bottom and stepped through the opening. He was met by a horrific scene. In the middle of the floor a man lay face down. One of the tent’s walls had been spattered with blood and there was a gaping hole in the back of the man’s head. A short way from him a young woman was prone on the ice, apparently unconscious. His heart lurched. Who else could these be but Kristín and Steve?

Júlíus stooped over Kristín’s slack body and slapped her cheek repeatedly. Her skin was tinged with blue and cold to the touch. To his surprise, she opened her eyes after a few seconds and stared at him. Quickly he forced his hand over her mouth and laid his own face close to her ear.

‘It’s Júlíus,’ he said. ‘I’m alone.’

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

SUNDAY 31 JANUARY

It was a close call: the helicopter nearly failed to lift the wreckage off the ice and for a moment it appeared as if it would plunge back to the glacier. It seemed that this half of the German aircraft had not been loosened sufficiently and the attention of the men standing around was fixed on the helicopter’s battle with its cargo.

Ratoff had found himself a seat in the hold of the Pave Hawk and sat, hunched tensely at a small porthole, trying to get a glimpse of the steel cables and their load. The helicopter rose with infinite slowness, jerking slightly and stopping its ascent momentarily as it took up the full weight of the Junkers’ fuselage. Little by little the wreckage rose from its icy tomb until it was free. Then the helicopter accelerated away and Ratoff watched the blur of the camp recede steadily into the surrounding night.

The noise in the cabin was mind-numbing but Ratoff was wearing earphones and could communicate with the two pilots in the cockpit via a helmet radio. They proceeded at a sedate pace, at an altitude of five thousand feet, the load dangling from three thick steel cables; this was the front half of the German plane. Before long the second helicopter would lift off the tail section, containing the bodies from the wreck. Both halves had been removed from the ice with their contents untouched and the openings sealed with heavy-duty plastic sheeting. He heaved a sigh of relief; the mission was in its final stages and had been largely successful, despite the inconvenience caused by Kristín and the rescue team. The plane had been safely excavated and he was on his way home. Soon it would be over, or this episode at least.

Ratoff was the only passenger. He tried to prepare his mind for what lay ahead while listening to the radio traffic between the pilots and air traffic control at the Keflavík base. The scheduled arrival time at Keflavík was in just over twenty-five minutes. Flying conditions were ideal – cold but windless – and the journey passed without incident. The helicopter would fly directly to the C-17 and set down its load on a special pallet where each half of the German aircraft would be loaded on to the transport plane. The air force referred to it as the Keiko plane, after a killer whale which, with the world’s animal lovers watching, had recently been flown to Iceland from Newport, Oregon. To save time and prevent discomfort to its unusual passenger, the C-17 had refuelled in mid-air and would do the same during the present mission. Very soon, the C-17 would take off and the Icelandic phase of the operation would be over. What followed would be a flight halfway round the world.

But the other half of his mind was elsewhere. Ratoff was working on the assumption that they would leave him alone until they reached their final destination, but he could not count on this. He considered why Carr had chosen him for the job. It had been Carr who had originally recruited him to the organisation but over the years the general had become increasingly remote until he no longer seemed willing to recognise his existence. Ratoff was reconciled to this fact. Though he was by no means his own master, he was able to decide his own movements and enjoyed a certain amount of freedom within the service, although he knew people disliked him. No doubt he troubled their consciences. After all, Ratoff did their dirty work; he gathered information. How he did it was his own business. The less the service knew about it, the less Carr knew, the better.

He had come to the conclusion while still on the glacier that the reason Carr had chosen him to lead the mission was because he regarded him as expendable. It would be a simple matter to make him disappear. He was an embarrassment, a relic from an era that no one wanted reminding of. Ratoff assumed that Carr knew precisely what the plane contained, along, no doubt, with a handful of other senior military intelligence officers. What he could not know was if anyone else was in on the secret. He was not even sure if anyone outside the army realised what was happening. For the first time he could remember in recent years, Ratoff was threatened, and the sensation awakened every animal instinct in him.

Where had that damned girl found out about Napoleon? The pathetic jerk with her had mentioned something about a pilot on the base but Ratoff knew that had been nothing but a desperate ploy. He could have extracted the information from her had there been time. No matter: Bateman would take over the interrogation, after which both she and her friend would disappear once and for all.

He recalled what he had read in one of the briefing documents from the dossier in the plane, a yellowing typewritten sheet, with a British War Cabinet Office letterhead.

. . . following the meeting in Yalta that Stalin would have excessive power in Eastern Europe and would no doubt fail to keep the terms of the treaties. The British War Cabinet has therefore drafted a plan for an Allied attack on Stalin’s government in Moscow, which would result in the elimination of Russia. The plan has been assigned the codename ‘Operation Unthinkable’. The war in the European theatre will be brought to an end by means of a treaty with the Germans, according to the terms of which approximately one hundred thousand German soldiers will join the Allies in the attack on Stalin, to be deployed in the front line of the first wave of the invasion. It is considered advisable to launch the eastward attack from north Germany, near Dresden. A second attack, to be launched from the Baltic, cannot be ruled out. It is assumed that the Russians will respond by invading Turkey, Greece, and even Norway from the north. It is also likely that they will attempt to secure oil reserves in Iraq and Iran.

The idea is not a new one and has been debated in the innermost circles where it initially met with overwhelming opposition. Its fiercest opponents regard negotiation with Germany as tantamount to entering into an alliance with the Nazis, who initiated the war that has laid waste to Europe. Recent discoveries in Eastern Europe have also confirmed suspicions about the organised extermination of the Jews. Another credible argument against Unthinkable is that the Russians more than any other nation have changed the course of the war, helping to secure an Allied victory at enormous cost to themselves.

Notwithstanding, there are those who believe they can shorten the war by several months, thus minimising further loss of life. They are looking to the future and fear how the world will appear if Unthinkable is not put into action. There is serious concern about what will follow the end of the war when the Yalta Treaty authorises Stalin control over almost half of Europe as well as the Baltic States. It is already clear that he cannot be trusted to keep the terms of the treaty. His policy of expansionism, this thinking suggests, will threaten the newly won peace in future years. The Prime Minister has referred in private talks to an ‘iron curtain’ . . .

Ratoff remembered something he had seen in the pilot’s diary. The writing was almost illegible towards the end until only fragments could be made out, only the odd sentence, of which Ratoff could make little. Disconnected snatches about his parents, his brother, death. He remembered one sentence in particular.
I’m almost sure I saw Guderian at the meeting
. Guderian, Hitler’s chief of staff towards the end of the war.

Ratoff started out of his reverie. The pilots had been trying to attract his attention over the radio and finally one of them shouted his name.

‘A message from the glacier, sir, from someone called Bateman,’ he said when Ratoff asked what was going on.

‘What message?’

‘He says she’s vanished, sir.’

‘Who?’

‘Some woman. He won’t say over the radio. Doesn’t trust us. The message is: she’s disappeared from the camp.’

He ordered them to put him through; his earpiece filled with crackling static and radio distortion as they searched for the correct channel, then he heard Bateman’s voice.

‘It’s incomprehensible, totally incomprehensible, sir,’ Ratoff heard him say.

‘Go after her,’ Ratoff shouted. ‘She must be moving away from the camp. She should show up on the radar.’

‘No, she isn’t. It’s as if she’s vanished into thin air. The surveillance system doesn’t show her anywhere near the camp and we’ve turned the whole place upside down but she’s nowhere to be found. Vanished into thin air. And we’re dismantling the system so we won’t be able to use it any more.’

A cold tremor of alarm went through Ratoff. He could not afford any more mistakes. They had fumbled their way through this operation and were on the point of getting out intact and now this infernal woman was once again jeopardising his success.

‘There’s another thing, sir,’ Bateman said. ‘We found a man in the tent in her place. He claims he’s the leader of the rescue team. His name’s Júlíus. He evaded our guards and it’s obvious that he must have helped her. What do you want us to do with him?’

‘Why wasn’t I told about this man?’ Ratoff snarled.

‘There wasn’t time, sir,’ Bateman answered.

Ratoff looked into the dark oblivion beyond the helicopter’s porthole.

‘He knows where she is. Get it out of him.’

‘There’s no time for that. We’re almost ready to move out. The first group will be setting off in a matter of minutes.’

The helicopter pilots were listening to the conversation with interest.

‘Take him with you,’ Ratoff ordered. ‘Take him with you and for Christ’s sake make sure he doesn’t escape.’ He would have to deal with him later.