Nobody noticed them. Freight transport was common in the countryside where, in the absence of railways, goods of all kinds were transported by road: agricultural machinery, food supplies and fuel bound for Iceland’s remote farms and villages.
Ratoff’s briefing had included a detailed account of the military operation in 1967, the second major expedition mounted to search for the plane on Vatnajökull. Forced to circumnavigate the country on rough dirt roads, heading first north, then approaching the ice cap from the east, it had been difficult, then as now, to avoid attention. In the end they had been obliged to resort to drastic measures.
Ratoff’s men travelled on under cover of darkness. In spite of the snow the roads were perfectly passable now that they had been asphalted. One by one they drove past the popular tourist destination of Skaftafell, making for Hornafjördur in the east. They passed through the lowland corridor of ÷raefi, Sudursveit and M¥yrar, between glacier and sea, then just before the town of Höfn turned left off the ring road, drove up into the farmlands at the foot of the glacier and stopped at the brothers’ farm. By the time Ratoff’s truck arrived, the soldiers were busy unloading the other transporters and the first snowmobiles were already on their way up to the ice cap.
The farmer stood at his door, watching the troops at work. He had seen it all before and though he did not know Ratoff, who now came walking towards him through the thickly falling snow, he had met others of his type. The farmer’s name was Jón. He had lived alone on the farm since his brother’s death several years earlier.
‘Having another crack at the glacier?’ he asked in Icelandic, shaking Ratoff’s hand. Jón knew a smattering of English – he understood it better than he could speak it – but they still had need of the interpreter supplied by the base, a man who had been stationed in Iceland for several years.
Ratoff smiled at Jón. They kicked off the snow, went inside the warm, tidy house and sat down in the sitting room, Ratoff in his white overalls, the interpreter bundled up in a down jacket, and the farmer in a red-checked shirt, worn jeans and woollen socks. He was nearly eighty, his cranium completely bald, his face a mass of wrinkles, but he was still spry and straight-backed, still mentally and physically robust. Once the men had taken their seats he offered them strong black coffee and a pinch of snuff taken from the back of his wrist. Unsure what it was, Ratoff and the interpreter shook their heads.
To Jón’s knowledge it was the third time the army had mounted an expedition to the glacier, if you counted Miller’s attempt at the end of the war. For some time afterwards, though, the colonel had returned every few years on his own, staying with the brothers for two to three weeks at a time while he scoured the ice cap with a small metal detector, before heading back to the States. He and the brothers were on friendly terms, but when they asked members of the 1967 expedition for news of Miller, they were informed that he was dead. That was the biggest expedition Jón had seen to date. As before, the brothers had acted as guides for the army, leading the soldiers up through the foothills and on to the ice sheet. They learnt that part of the wrecked aircraft had appeared on a satellite image – the military had stopped using spy planes by then. Over the years the brothers had sometimes been aware of the surveillance flights, but patrols of the area had ceased abruptly after the advent of the new technology.
The brothers had often asked themselves why the Americans were so obsessed with the German aircraft that they had the glacier monitored from space and turned up at the farm in force whenever they believed the wreckage was emerging from the ice. They had given Colonel Miller their word that they would never reveal the true purpose of the expeditions to their neighbours or anyone else; he had told them to dismiss the activity as military training exercises if the locals became curious, and they followed his advice. In private, however, they speculated endlessly, considering ever more wildly improbable theories: perhaps the plane was full of Jewish gold, or diamonds, or art treasures plundered by the Nazis from all over Europe. Perhaps there had been a high-ranking general on board, or a secret weapon from the war. Whatever it was, the US army was extremely keen both to lay hands on it and to do so without drawing attention to the fact. Every time a black mark appeared on their images of the glacier, the military authorities became very jittery indeed. It amused the old man.
‘What did you see this time?’ Jón asked, watching the interpreter relay his question to Ratoff.
‘We believe we’ve finally located it,’ the interpreter said, translating Ratoff’s words. ‘Better satellites.’
‘Yes, better satellites,’ Jón repeated. ‘Do you know what the plane contains? What it is that your people are so desperate to find?’
‘No idea,’ Ratoff replied. ‘My job is merely to accomplish a specific task. It’s nothing to do with me what the plane contains or where it comes from. My only concern is to follow my orders to the letter.’
Jón inspected Ratoff, sensing that he was a very different customer from the gentle Miller; there was something unclean, cunning even, about his expression; a hint of impatience, of an incalculable temper lurking beneath his outwardly calm demeanour.
‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you found it,’ Jón went on. ‘There’s been a warm spell since about 1960 and much of the ice in this area has melted.’
‘According to our images, the nose is visible above the ice,’ Ratoff told him. ‘We have the coordinates. It shouldn’t take us long.’
‘So you know where you’re going,’ Jón said, taking a powerful sniff of the coarse tobacco. The snuff induced an overwhelming urge to sneeze in the uninitiated and was dismissed as a dirty habit by many, but the nicotine hit was every bit as strong as that from a cigarette.
‘You don’t need a guide any longer,’ he added. ‘Especially not a dinosaur like me. I’m no use to anyone these days.’ He smiled.
‘We’re very familiar with the route by now,’ Ratoff agreed, rising to his feet.
‘Tourists use it a lot in the summer,’ Jón said. ‘They run glacier jeep tours from Höfn; I let them cross my land. There are more coming every year now.’
Shortly afterwards Ratoff emerged from the farmhouse with his interpreter. They strode over to a small vehicle with caterpillar tracks, climbed inside and set off without delay, past the farm in the direction of the foothills. There was no sign of the larger trucks now. The blizzard had grown ever more dense during the evening and visibility was poor. Their vehicle followed the trail left by the others in the newly fallen snow, its progress slow, crawling onwards through the drifts, its powerful headlights illuminating the way. By the time they reached the camp at the foot of the hills, brilliant floodlights had been erected within a rough circle of tents. Boxes of supplies lay scattered around and special forces soldiers in snow camouflage were working in an orderly, methodical fashion. Once the plane had been located, they would shift the camp on to the ice cap.
The outline of a large satellite dish loomed through the thick veil of snow outside the tent that acted as telecommunications centre. Ratoff went straight inside. Two men were busy setting up the radio system.
‘How soon can we make contact?’ Ratoff asked.
‘In forty minutes at the outside, sir,’ one of the men replied.
‘Get Carr for me when you’re done.’
Vytautas Carr was sitting in his office in Building 312 when the phone rang.
‘Ratoff on line one,’ his secretary announced. He pressed the button. It was 9 p.m. in the US capital, 2 a.m. in Iceland.
‘Everything okay?’ Carr asked.
‘We’re on schedule, sir. We’ll head up to the glacier at first light tomorrow. It’s snowing fairly heavily but nothing that will hold us up. As long as the coordinates are correct, it won’t matter if the plane’s been covered by drifts.’
‘What about the locals?’
‘Unsuspecting, and we plan to keep it that way, sir.’
‘They keep a close eye on our military manoeuvres. We’ll need to proceed wit
h caution.’
‘They’ll keep their mouths shut as long as they’re making money out of us.’
Carr ignored this. ‘Is there any other traffic on the glacier?’
‘We know about a rescue team on a training exercise but it’s in a different sector and shouldn’t cause us any problems, sir.’
‘Fine. Get in touch when you find the plane.’
TÓMASARHAGI, REYKJAVÍK,
FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 0600 GMT
Kristín woke up in the early hours with a sinking feeling about the day ahead. She knew the matter with the businessman was not over and that she was bound to encounter him again, maybe even later that day. Another source of worry was the knowledge that her brother was out on Vatnajökull in the middle of winter; he was experienced but you never knew how extreme the weather might become. After a bad night’s sleep, she got up shortly before six, took a quick shower and put on the coffee. Sometimes she missed having someone there to share her worries with.
Not that she minded living alone. She had lived for three years with a man she met after coming home from university in the States, a lawyer like her. But once the honeymoon period was over he had become increasingly domineering and she was relieved not to have to put up with his overbearing behaviour any longer. He had been so different when they first met, so witty and entertaining. He used to make her laugh and spoiled her with gifts and surprises. But all that had gradually dried up once they had moved in together; he had landed his fish, and at times she felt as if he was tearing out the hook.
Although she had always been independent, she was by nature quiet, somewhat introverted, protective of her privacy, and did not mind the absence of a man about the house. The sex had been nothing to write home about either, so she did not miss that. If she felt the urge, she could satisfy herself and she enjoyed the freedom that gave her. Enjoyed having the flat on Tómasarhagi to herself; only one toothbrush in the bathroom; no need to tell anyone where she was going. She could go out whenever she liked and come home when it suited her. She loved being alone, not having to pander to anyone else’s whims.
She had been so relieved when it was over that she was not sure she ever wanted to share her home again. Perhaps it was too great a sacrifice. Children had not crossed her mind. Maybe she was afraid of turning out like her parents. It had come as a surprise when, after they had lived together for a while, the lawyer had brought up the subject of children, saying they should think about starting a family. She had stared at him blankly and admitted that she had not given the matter much thought.
‘Then maybe you could stop fussing over Elías all the time,’ he said. ‘He is not your child, after all.’
What an extraordinary statement. Is not your child, she thought. She had no idea what he was getting at.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you treat him like a baby.’
‘Like a baby?’
‘You ring him ten times a day. He’s forever round here. You’ve always got some reason to go to town together. He hangs out here in the evenings. Sleeps on the sofa.’
‘He’s my brother.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You’re not jealous of Elías, are you?’
‘Jealous!’ he snorted. ‘Of course not. But it’s not natural, such an incredibly close relationship.’
‘Not natural? There are only the two of us. We’re close. What’s unnatural about that?’
‘Well, not unnatural exactly . . . it’s just he’s your brother not your child. I know he’s much younger than you but he’s almost twenty, he’s not a kid.’
She was silent for such a long time that he seized the chance to get up and claim he had some work to finish at the office.
Shortly afterwards, their relationship started to go downhill and by the end she had almost developed an aversion to him. Perhaps he had touched a nerve, opened her eyes to something she did not want to confront. She had met other men since but those had been nothing but brief flings and she had no regrets about any of them, with perhaps one exception. She regretted the way she had ended that relationship, the way they had parted. It was her fault and she knew it. Her sheer bloody ineptitude.
Just occasionally, when she was alone at home with time on her hands, she would have a vision of her future stretching out before her, saw herself growing older in lonely monotony, shrivelling up and dying; no children, no family, no nothing. Growing old in the oppressive silence of long summer evenings when she had nothing to do but read documents from the office. These moments tended to occur when she was disturbed by the shouts of children outside in the street or when she lay down in the evenings, feeling the weariness spreading through her body. Sometimes she thought the process was already happening, felt as if she were trapped inside time: all those long days, all those long, suffocating days, passed in solitary silence. At times she appreciated them, at others she wished her life were more eventful, presented more challenges, required more of her than merely sitting behind a desk all day and returning to an empty flat in the evenings.
Elías was her family. Their mother was dead, they had little contact with their father and few relatives to speak of. They had coped alone, she and Elías; taken care of one another. Perhaps the lawyer was right about him taking up too much of her time, but she had never minded.
She sat lost in a reverie over her coffee, leafing absently through the morning paper until it was time to leave for work. There was not much in the news. The national bank was in the process of being privatised and the minister for trade and industry was quoted as dismissing the need for legislation to diversify share ownership. The site of a Viking Age farm had been uncovered in the west of the country, and the Russian president Boris Yeltsin was due to celebrate his sixty-eighth birthday. It was quarter to nine when she left home. Sunrise was still nearly two hours off and the snow was falling thickly. She toiled slowly through the drifts. The traffic was heavy; people were in a hurry to get to work once they had dropped off their youngest children at the day nursery and seen the older ones off to school. The snow muffled the noise of the cars but a thick haze of exhaust fumes hung over the city. Kristín did not have a car; she preferred to walk, especially when the snow was deep like this. Distances were short in Reykjavík compared to California where she used to live; there you could talk about distance. Reykjavík had a population of only just over a hundred thousand but there were times when the locals behaved as if they lived in a giant metropolis, refusing to go anywhere without a car, even if it took only five minutes on foot.
On arriving at the office she was informed that the chairman of the Trade Council was waiting to see her, together with the foreign minister’s aide. What now? she wondered, bracing herself for the worst. Once the men had taken a seat in her office, they explained to Kristín that the man with the portable freezing plants, Runólfur Zóphaníasson, had made threats against the chairman of the Trade Council, which were considered serious enough for the police to be notified. He had called the chairman late last night, apparently sober but raging about the advice he had received in connection with his dealings with Russia. During the call, he had threatened the chairman with physical violence and there was reason to believe he was in earnest.
‘But what does this have to do with me?’ Kristín asked, after they had filled her in.
‘He mentioned you specifically by name,’ explained the foreign minister’s aide, a young party member with political ambitions. ‘I gather he wasn’t exactly in good humour when he stormed out of here yesterday.’
‘He did nothing but hurl abuse as usual so I chucked him out. He threw a chair at the wall. I ignored his threats, and that made him even madder. What kind of headcase is he anyway? He thinks there’s some kind of conspiracy going on. Here at the ministry.’
‘I had the police run a check on him,’ said the chairman, a plump man, with a small, kindly face. ‘Runólfur has done a lot of wheeling and dealing in his time but nothing illegal, as far as they can tell. They we
nt and had a word with him and he promised to behave, claimed he’d just lost his temper for a moment, but they warned us to be careful anyway. They don’t put much faith in his word. I won’t repeat the language he used about you in my hearing. Apparently he’s furious about losing a large amount of money in Russia and he blames us for it.’
‘I don’t really know the ins and outs of the case,’ Kristín said, ‘though I can assure you that we never gave him any incorrect information.’
‘Of course not,’ the aide said. ‘He alleges that we encouraged him to facilitate his business by sending over goods without any securities but that’s utter nonsense. It’s not our job to give out that sort of advice. How people conduct their business deals is entirely their own responsibility.’
‘Of course,’ Kristín agreed.
‘Anyway,’ the aide continued, glancing at his watch. ‘We wanted you to be aware of developments and to warn you that it wouldn’t hurt to keep your eyes open. If this Runólfur tries to intimidate you in any way, you’re to call the police at once. They have been briefed about the case.’
The meeting ended soon afterwards and the day’s business began. Kristín did not look up from her desk until midday when she went out with a couple of colleagues to a cosy little café near the ministry where she chatted and glanced through the afternoon paper over coffee and an omelette. When she returned to the office at one, there were a number of voicemail messages, including one from her brother saying he would ring back later. Otherwise the day was entirely uneventful.
She left work early. It had stopped snowing and turned into a beautiful, mild January evening. As it was Friday, she stopped off at a shop on the way home and bought some food for the weekend. She lived in the ground floor flat of a neat little two-storey maisonette built of whitewashed concrete, with a flat roof that had a tendency to leak. On entering the shared hall she heard the phone ringing inside her flat before she could even insert the key in the lock. She hastily opened the door, rushed over to the phone and snatched up the receiver.
Operation Napoleon Page 3
