Operation Napoleon

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Why had Elías’s sister thought he was dead? Júlíus wondered, as he walked back to the edge of the crevasse and looked down into the chasm. How could she have found out before us?

  He dreaded having to tell her that she was right. Elías was not dead yet but he was unlikely to pull through. His injuries were severe, he had been lying in the ice for hours, and he would certainly be hypothermic. Júlíus scanned the horizon, willing the helicopter to arrive before the storm struck. It was Elías’s only hope.

  US EMBASSY, CENTRAL REYKJAVÍK,

  SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 0100 GMT

  She woke up at the third ring. Monica Garcia worked as the director of the Fulbright Commission in Iceland, an educational exchange programme based at the US embassy in Reykjavík, where she had an apartment. She disliked being called in the middle of the night and stirred sleepily; she had been hoping for a peaceful night after the extraordinary last twenty-four hours at the embassy. But the strident ringing persisted until at last she propped herself up on her elbow and snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Monica?’ said a voice.

  ‘It’s one in the morning,’ she protested, registering the luminous numbers on her radio alarm. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Steve. I’m sorry, but it’s an emergency.’

  ‘Steve? Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I think some men from the embassy are trying to kill me.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to kill you, Steve? What have you been smoking?’

  Groping for the lamp on the bedside table, she switched it on, just managing to avoid knocking over a glass of water and dislodging a small pile of books on which an open copy of War and Peace lay uppermost.

  ‘Two men, both around six foot, blond, neatly dressed in civilian clothes. They’re after my friend as well. I told you about Kristín. She knows something about military activities on Vatnajökull and whatever it is, it’s important enough for them to send paid assassins round to her house. She came to the base to find me, and the men turned up at my place shortly afterwards but we managed to escape.’

  ‘She fled to the base? Steve, I don’t understand a word of this.’

  She sat up in bed and shivered: the room was freezing as the radiator had broken again.

  ‘I know, it’s complicated. I’ll explain later but you have to trust me.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m still on the base. What’s going on at the embassy? What’s happening on the glacier? Do you know?’

  ‘Everything’s been turned upside down. That’s all I can tell you. I’ve no idea why.’

  ‘How do you mean upside down?’

  ‘Military intelligence has assumed control by direct order of the defense secretary. Some sort of special operations personnel showed up, took over everything and sent the ambassador on leave. Three special forces companies landed at Keflavík just over twenty-four hours ago and may well have gone to Vatnajökull, for all I know. Beyond that I really don’t know what’s going on. It’s as if there’s been a military coup. They installed a whole load of computer equipment – I don’t have a clue what it’s for – and set up a command and control centre. The embassy staff aren’t being told anything. We’ve been ordered to stay out of the way and keep our mouths shut. They say they’ll only be here for a few days.’

  ‘Have you come across a man by the name of Ratoff?’

  ‘No, never heard of him. Who is he?’

  ‘It’s a name Kristín overheard. He may be in charge. Look, I have to hang up. Is there anything you can do to help me, anything at all, Monica?’

  ‘I’ll try to dig something up for you. If special forces have taken over the embassy, they’re probably in control of the base too, so I’d be very careful about looking for help there. Do you remember the Irish pub in Reykjavík? The one downtown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Call there at 4 o’clock today or come down yourself. I’ll see what I can find out for you in the meantime.’

  ‘Thanks, Monica.’

  ‘And Steve, for Christ’s sake, be careful.’

  He put the phone down and turned to Kristín. They were in his office in one of the army administration blocks. Kristín was keeping watch by the window, the profile of her face silhouetted against the glass, black against black. She had phoned air traffic control in Keflavík, posing as a journalist from Reykjavík, and asked if there had been a plane crash recently on Vatnajökull. She was informed that no plane had crashed on the glacier for decades, not since the famous Loftleidir incident. When they asked what paper she was calling from, she had hung up.

  Kristín vaguely remembered the accident. ‘A Loftleidir plane – that’s the old Icelandic airline – was forced to make an emergency landing on the glacier,’ she told Steve. ‘Everyone survived.’

  ‘Is that the plane Elías saw then?’ Steve asked.

  ‘I haven’t a clue. I don’t know what happened to the wreckage. And anyway, what would the army want with an old Loftleidir plane? It must have been forty years ago. It’s absurd.’

  They had been in the office around ten minutes and Kristín was growing jumpy. Although they had parked Steve’s car a few hundred yards away among other vehicles outside a large apartment block, it would not remain undiscovered for long if the men put out a search. The office had been Steve’s first thought as he accelerated away from his block, leaving Ripley and Bateman behind in the parking lot. But he had not come here to hide as his workplace would be an obvious location for them to check; rather, the building housed part of the Defense Force archives, to which he had access.

  He and Kristín ran down the long ground floor corridor and descended into the basement where the archives were kept. Punching in a code to deactivate the alarm, Steve turned a key in the heavy steel door and pushed it open. Inside stood another door, covered in wire netting, which opened into one of the archives. The storeroom was divided into several compartments by coarse wire netting which formed a series of cages, each of which was filled with long rows of filing cabinets, and beyond them shelves of files and boxes.

  ‘Welcome to America’s memory,’ Steve whispered.

  ‘How are we supposed to find anything in this warren?’ Kristín asked, gazing in dismay at the rows of units stretching off into the distance. ‘What are you looking for anyway?’

  ‘There may be something here about operations on Vatnajökull,’ Steve said. He was familiar with the archives, having temped there one summer, and knew where to lay his hands on records of surveillance flights over Iceland in the last fifty years. If there was a plane on the glacier, he reasoned, it might well belong to the US Air Force or Navy.

  He was so happy that Kristín had turned to him in her hour of need that it did not even occur to him to refuse her request. No longer in any doubt about the danger she was in, he was determined to stand by her, to help her in any way he could; besides, his journalistic instincts had been roused and he was becoming increasingly curious about the case on his own account.

  They walked rapidly along the shelves, checking the labels on cupboards and files. Some way towards the back, Steve stopped and pulled out a box. He looked inside, then replaced it and continued searching. He did the same thing several times; took out a box containing a number of files, leafed through them, then put it back. It was hopeless – he had no idea where to start in this sea of information – and before long they returned to his office, empty-handed.

  For some minutes he stood by the window, peering out, chewing his lip in frustration. ‘A friend of mine has access to more files than me,’ he announced finally. ‘We should see what he says.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have landed you in all this. I didn’t know where else to turn,’ Kristín said as they left the building.

  ‘Forget it,’ Steve answered, his eyes flickering round nervously. ‘I’m as interested as you in finding out what’s up there.’

  They decided to leave the car behind and walk. Steve knew the base ve
ry well and kept to the back alleyways, stealing through communal gardens, darting hurriedly across brightly lit streets where necessary, taking care to stay under cover. Kristín had no idea where they were going. As for most Icelanders, the base was a foreign country to her. The only time she had been to Midnesheidi was with her parents to the international airport in the days before the new terminal had been built. She recognised the Andrews movie theatre, and glimpsed in the distance the old terminal building and officers’ mess. She remembered two of her old classmates from school who had gone on to work for Icelandic contractors on the base and used to come home to Reykjavík every weekend laden with cigarettes and vodka that they bought cheap from the American servicemen, to the great envy of their friends.

  ‘I never expected to see you again,’ Steve ventured as they picked their way through the snow behind one of the apartment blocks.

  ‘I know,’ Kristín said.

  ‘I always meant to try to talk to you about it but somehow . . .’

  ‘I’ve thought the same. It was my fault.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. No way. It was nobody’s fault. Why does everything always have to be somebody’s fault?’

  When Kristín did not answer, Steve let the subject drop. There was little traffic in the area although they twice spotted military police patrols. Steve stopped by a building not dissimilar to his own but in an entirely different part of the base. They all looked identical to Kristín. He told her to wait, he would not be long, so she lurked round the side of the block trying to make herself inconspicuous, stamping her feet, blowing on her hands and pulling her hood tight against the chill air. It was about fifteen minutes before he returned, accompanied by a man whom he introduced to her as Arnold. He was plump, about Steve’s age, with sweaty palms, shifty eyes and a lisp. They climbed into his car and drove off.

  ‘Arnold’s a librarian,’ Steve said smiling. ‘He knows his way round the archives and he owes me a favour.’

  Kristín had no idea what this implied and Arnold did not enlighten her, just glowered at Steve.

  He pulled up at a two-storey administration block not far from the old terminal. After letting them in through the back entrance, he led them straight down to a basement archive, considerably larger than the one they had visited earlier, occupying three levels.

  ‘What years are we talking about?’ Arnold asked flatly.

  ‘Flights over Vatnajökull since the beginning of the war, I suppose,’ Steve replied. ‘I don’t know what for. Routine surveillance flights, maybe, or reconnaissance. Aerial photography. Nothing major, as I said. Nothing risky. Nothing that presents a threat to US national security.’

  ‘Surveillance? Aerial photography?’ Arnold scoffed, not even trying to disguise his irritation. ‘You’ve no idea what you’re on about.’

  ‘Forced landings as well. Crashes on the glacier. A plane. Anything like that. Pilots who might know about flights over the glacier. Anything at all like that.’

  Shaking his head, Arnold walked down to the next level. They followed, their footsteps echoing hollowly against the walls. Kristín found the noise they were making unbearable. Arnold passed a row of shelves, slowed and stopped. Turning back, he descended to the level below, clattering down the metal staircase, and walked along one of the rows. There he took down a box file and opened it, then closed it again. Eventually they came to a large filing cabinet and Arnold pulled out one of the drawers.

  ‘Here’s something,’ he said to Steve. ‘Records of photographic surveillance flights in 1965. By the old U-2 spy planes, just before they switched to satellites.’ Arnold stepped aside as if to avoid getting any closer to this irregularity than he already was, then announced that he would wait for them by the entrance upstairs and vanished. Steve squatted down.

  ‘Let’s see . . . what have we here? . . . Nothing. Only some crap about routine surveillance flights off the north coast. Nothing about Vatnajökull. Nothing about aerial photography.’ He examined more of the files.

  ‘Maintenance reports!’ he sighed. ‘Technical jargon. Wait a minute, here are some names of pilots.’ There were several. Steve took out a pen and paper and started to scribble them down.

  ‘Arnold’s a laugh a minute,’ Kristín observed.

  ‘He smuggles more dope into the base than anyone else I know,’ Steve said matter-of-factly.

  ‘I thought he was a librarian?’

  ‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing.’

  ‘So what did you say to him?’

  ‘Some lie about you being – what do you call it? – a GI baby? That you’re trying to trace your father.’

  ‘Who was a pilot?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘And he didn’t think we kept rather unorthodox hours?’

  ‘All these guys must be dead,’ Steve muttered, without answering. He was still busy noting the pilots’ names.

  ‘What do the reports say?’

  ‘Nothing of any interest. Just descriptions of routine surveillance flights. Very limited information. Naturally they don’t keep anything important down here.’

  ‘Nothing about Vatnajökull? Or photographs?’

  ‘Not that I can see.’

  ‘Might Arnold know?’

  ‘No harm in asking. I’m going to check if we’ve got anything on these pilots.’ He finished copying down the names.

  Arnold was hovering by the door when they came back upstairs. Telling Kristín to wait a minute, Steve went over and had a word with him in private. Arnold looked extremely nervous. They argued for a while, then Steve came back.

  ‘He says he doesn’t know anything about Vatnajökull and I believe him. He’ll give us five minutes to look up the names of these pilots on his computer.’

  Arnold led them down a long corridor, cursing all the while, opened the door to his office, groped his way to the computer and turned it on. He reached out to switch on his desk lamp but Steve stopped him; the blue glow from the computer screen provided the only illumination in the room. Before long they had opened the army employment records and were looking up each name in turn. Kristín stationed herself by the window, terrified that the glow from the computer would attract attention. What was it that Elías had seen?

  ‘They’re either dead and buried or repatriated to the States long ago,’ Steve sighed and typed in one last name. Arnold had disappeared.

  ‘Hang on, there’s something here. Michael Thompson. Retired. Still resident on the base. Pilot. Born 1921. He’s been here at Midnesheidi since the sixties. He lives nearby. Come on,’ Steve said, jumping out of his chair. ‘We’ll have to wake the poor bastard up. Maybe he’ll have some answers.’

  They left by the way they had come in. Arnold was nowhere to be seen and Steve told Kristín he had probably slipped off home. The snow was still falling incessantly as they made their way through the darkness to the oldest part of the military zone. Compared to others the US army had established around the world, the base was tiny. The NATO Defense Force had numbered only four to five thousand personnel at its height but its population had been dramatically reduced since the end of the Cold War. Many of the accommodation blocks now stood empty and derelict, especially in the oldest quarter, relics of a forgotten war. It did not take them long to get there, despite wading through knee-deep snow on little-used paths. They did not speak on the way except once when Steve expressed surprise that Michael Thompson should still be living on the base. Most of the servicemen sent to Iceland could not wait to move on to their next posting after completing their maximum three-year tour of duty, usually praying fervently for somewhere tropical.

  KEFLAVÍK AIR BASE,

  SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 0330 GMT

  Thompson’s name was on the entry-phone. Steve rang the bell. The retired pilot lived in an apartment block like Steve’s but more rundown. No maintenance had been carried out for years; the paint had flaked off here and there exposing the concrete, the light above the front door was broken and only a handful of the apartments looked occ
upied.

  Steve pressed the doorbell again and they waited, glancing around anxiously. He rang the bell a third time, holding the button down for so long that Kristín tapped his hand. Shortly afterwards there was a crackle from the entry-phone and a reedy voice uttered a hesitant: ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is that Michael Thompson?’ Steve asked.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the voice.

  ‘I’m sorry to wake you like this but I need to talk to you urgently. Could you let me in?’ Steve said, trying to speak as quietly as possible.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could you let me in?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘What is it you want exactly? I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s about Vatnajökull.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vatnajökull,’ Steve said. ‘I want to ask you about flights over Vatnajökull. I know it’s very unexpected and an extra . . .’

  ‘Flights?’

  ‘Lives are at stake, man. For Christ’s sake, please open the door.’

  After a short pause and more crackling on the entry-phone, the lock buzzed and Steve ushered Kristín inside in front of him. They did not turn on the light in the hall but groped their way up the stairs, holding on to the banister. Thompson lived on the first floor. They tapped on his door and he appeared in the rectangle of light, peering out at them. He had put on slippers and a robe, beneath which his legs protruded, chalk-white and bony. He was very thin, with a stoop and a Clark Gable moustache, long since turned white, barely visible against his pale skin.

  ‘It must be serious to make you barge in on me in the middle of the night like this,’ Thompson commented, showing them into the living room. They sat down on a small, black leather sofa and he took a seat facing them, looking at them sceptically in turn.

  ‘My brother called me earlier this evening,’ Kristín began, feeling that it might just as well have been a month ago. ‘He was on a training exercise on Vatnajökull when he spotted a plane and some soldiers. Then his mobile phone was cut off and I haven’t heard from him since. Shortly afterwards two Americans turned up at my apartment in Reykjavík and tried to kill me. I escaped and came to Steve for help because if there are soldiers on the glacier, I assumed they must have come from here.’