Operation Napoleon

by Arnaldur Indridason

  ‘What exactly did he tell you?’ Steve asked.

  The woman still appeared suspicious and uncertain, as if in two minds about whether to answer them, but then she seemed to come to a decision.

  ‘Leo made a fuss about it at the base. About the plane. They wanted to cover it up but my Leo wanted to know what was going on. He wouldn’t shut up. He couldn’t stand all the secrecy.’

  ‘And what happened then? Did he get any answers?’ Steve asked.

  ‘No, nothing,’ Sarah Steinkamp replied. ‘The plane appeared out of the ice, then vanished again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kristín asked.

  ‘Leo said that the glacier was like that. He said the plane had been buried in the glacier but then reappeared. End of story.’

  ‘Was this in 1967?’

  ‘Yes, 1967, exactly.’

  ‘So why did Leo believe it was a Nazi plane? What did he mean by Nazi?’

  ‘Surely even you know who the Nazis were, young man!’ the old woman snapped, her expression hardening. ‘Or has everyone forgotten them, as if they never existed?’

  Kristín had stood up. She shuddered as the full implication of this woman’s history dawned on her: the photographs, Budapest, Steinkamp.

  ‘Murderers!’ the old woman exclaimed, and Kristín heard the frozen agony in her voice. ‘Bloody murderers! Never forget what they did,’ she cried, her eyes blazing as she stood there surrounded by the family pictures in their thick black frames. ‘They murdered my entire family. Burnt them in the ovens. Murdered our children. That’s what the Nazis were like, and never you forget it.’

  Kristín looked at Steve rather than meet Sarah Steinkamp’s gaze. She felt guilty and ashamed for rousing this pensioner from her warm bed and stirring up a lifetime’s horrors. To her amazement, Steve ploughed on, lost in the complexities of the riddle they were struggling to solve.

  ‘But why did Leo believe the plane belonged to the Nazis? What made him think that?’ he persisted.

  ‘Who are you?’ the old woman asked, suddenly sounding brusque, as if she had regained her senses. ‘Who are you? I don’t know you at all. I am tired and you are upsetting me. Please leave now. Please go away and leave me alone.’

  Kristín signalled to Steve that enough was enough. They took their leave of her without more ado. She stood by the piano, watching as they turned and walked back out to the front door. They closed it carefully behind them and felt a mingled sense of relief and sadness on emerging once more into the icy winter air.

  CONTROL ROOM, WASHINGTON DC,

  SATURDAY 30 JANUARY

  Vytautas Carr strode briskly into the control room. The reinforced doors closed slowly behind him with a heavy sucking sound. The room was filled with the same chilly gloom, the only light coming from the screens, most of which were flickering. A number of employees sat at the computer consoles and other controls which operated the organisation’s satellites, some talking on the phone, others silently intent on the screens which were reflected in their eyes. Phil, Carr’s assistant, came over and invited him to follow him. They walked through the control room and into a much smaller room, closing the door behind them.

  ‘We’ll start receiving them live any minute, sir,’ said Phil, a thin, tense man with a cigarette permanently jammed between his lips. He was one of the satellite operators. He had rolled-up shirt-sleeves and horn-rimmed glasses balanced on his nose which were invariably smeary with fingerprints, though he never seemed to notice. Carr reflected that for a man charged with seeing things with superb clarity, it was odd that he never seemed to clean his spectacles.

  ‘How long will we have them?’ Carr asked.

  ‘The satellite takes approximately thirty-seven minutes to pass over the area, sir. It’s cloudless at the moment but a storm’s gathering.’

  ‘Does Ratoff know we’re watching?’

  ‘I imagine he does, sir.’

  Iceland’s recognisable outline appeared on the screen in front of Carr alongside part of Greenland’s east coast. The image vanished, to be replaced by another showing the south-eastern corner of the island. Phil pressed a button and yet another frame appeared, this time of the southern half of Vatnajökull. He zoomed in until the snowy surface of the glacier became visible, criss-crossed with crevasses, and finally a group of tiny dots could be seen moving over the ice. Carr felt as if he were looking through a microscope at minute organisms swimming around on a slide, like a scientist observing a complex experiment. During his long army service the world had changed almost beyond recognition and the extent of the US army’s capabilities these days never ceased to amaze him. The image was magnified yet again until he could make out what was happening on the glacier. Removing his own glasses, he gave them a wipe, before replacing them on his nose and focusing intently.

  When he spotted the plane, half-protruding from the ice, his heart skipped a beat. He saw the men digging on either side of it, their tents and vehicles forming a semicircle around the wreck, and the glow of the blow-torches as they began the task of cutting the fuselage in half.

  ‘Are we recording this?’ Carr asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Phil said. ‘I guess we should be getting a glimpse of the cargo soon, sir?’ he added with a grin.

  ‘Yes, the cargo. Quite.’

  Carr watched the men on the glacier for many minutes in silence. The image was grainy, the men no more than dots swarming over the surface of the ice, the plane indistinct. But the job appeared to be progressing well; Ratoff was on schedule, and the work was being carried out in an orderly fashion. The plane would soon be free of the ice.

  Without warning, the rhythm of the movements on the screen changed and there was a commotion on the glacier: from thousands of miles away, Carr watched as men rushed over to the plane. Even from that great distance, it looked to Carr as if it had broken in half. The plane was open.

  Ratoff hurried out of the communications tent when he heard the calls and ran down to the wreck. As he was forcing his way through the crowd that had gathered, distracted from their jobs, the front of the plane bent and the fuselage broke in half, collapsing under its own weight on to the ice with a deafening screech and crash, leaving the tail-end still half-submerged. Ratoff peered through the gaping hole into the cabin, then turning to the soldiers, ordered them to prepare the severed section for removal from the glacier. At the same time he issued orders that no one was to enter the plane without his express permission.

  The men with the blow-torches moved aside with their equipment to give Ratoff room to climb inside the plane. Bending slightly, he stepped into the cabin, the first passenger aboard in over half a century, and as he did so the sounds outside were instantly muted; he was met by a heavy silence that had not been disturbed in all these years. The experience was like stepping back in time and it filled him with a sense of mingled excitement and anticipation. Four Delta Force officers stood guard outside; they knew their orders. Meanwhile the soldiers scattered again, returning to their tasks, and soon it was as if nothing had happened.

  In the weak daylight that penetrated this section of the fuselage, he found two bodies, both middle-aged men, one dressed in the uniform of a German army officer, the other, to his astonishment, in the uniform of a two-star US general. An American! He bore insignia that Ratoff did not recognise and looked to be in his late fifties. A strong-looking aluminium briefcase with heavy locks was handcuffed to his left wrist.

  That’s three bodies so far, Ratoff noted. They lay close together on the floor, side by side, as if carefully arranged. Where it was visible, their skin was bluish-white and he could see no sign of decay, the ice having preserved them as well as any morgue. Ratoff assumed these men had not survived the crash; those who did must have laid them here. One had a gaping wound to his head and must have died during the landing. The other appeared largely unscathed; his fatal injuries must have been internal. He looked better prepared for the cold, wrapped up in two overcoats and a fur hat, not that they had done him
much good.

  Ratoff turned and retraced his steps, re-emerging into the daylight. The tail section was still largely trapped in the ice and Ratoff needed a leg-up from one of the Delta officers to climb in through the opening. Inside it was dark, so he took out a torch, shining it towards the rear of the cabin where he made out three other bodies huddled together as if the men had been trying to share body heat during the final miserable hours of their lives. So the plane contained six corpses, counting the one found outside: according to Ratoff’s briefing, there should have been seven.

  Once again, any exposed skin was a translucent bluish-white, taut and firm to the touch, and as before Ratoff found no signs of decomposition. He noted crudely made splints on the legs of a couple of the bodies and again was baffled to discover that one of them was dressed in an American uniform. He must be the pilot; the leather bomber jacket he wore was standard World War II issue for US fighter pilots. There was a small American flag sewn on to the sleeve and the man’s name was embroidered on a strip of black linen on his left breast. The name was American too; there was no mistaking it. He could not have been much more than twenty-five years old.

  It was inexplicable. What was an American fighter pilot doing flying German officers and an American general across the Atlantic in a Nazi plane painted in US camouflage colours?

  To reach the innermost part of the Junkers’ tail, Ratoff had to bend double. With the help of his torch it did not take him long to find two wooden boxes the size of beer crates, one of which he dragged towards the front of the plane where the light was better. The lid was nailed down but he found a severed piece of iron stanchion on the floor and, using it as a lever, was able to force the lid, the nails screeching as they were slowly torn from the wood. Soon the box opened fully to reveal rows of small white bags, each tied at one end. There must have been about twenty of them. Ratoff picked one up, discovering that it was made of soft velvet and felt heavy in his hand. Releasing the drawstring, he slid out an ice-cold gold bar with a swastika, the emblem of the Third Reich, stamped in the centre of it. Ratoff stared at the bar, weighing it in his hand with a smile, then cast his eyes around.

  But only two crates, he thought. A tiny haul. So where was the rest? Ratoff had been anticipating far more than these two boxes; he had expected the plane to be packed with gold bars bearing the Nazi seal. He slid the bar back into its bag and replaced it in the crate, closing the lid and hammering the nails back in again.

  Could they have moved it out of the plane? Moved the entire cargo and buried it in the ice somewhere nearby? Or somewhere further afield even? When Ratoff considered it, however, it dawned on him that the plane was hardly big enough to have carried all the gold he had been assured it contained: he had been expecting at least several tons. So if Jewish gold was not behind the organisation’s interest in monitoring this godforsaken, frozen desert for half a century, he reasoned, what on earth was? Two crates of gold would hardly trigger the Third World War. Two pathetic boxes. What other secrets did the plane harbour? What was this icy tomb carrying that caused his superiors to have a heart attack every time they thought it was re-emerging from the ice?

  Ratoff’s eyes had by now adjusted to the gloom inside the wreckage, but although he searched high and low, he could find no more boxes. The only personal item he discovered belonging to any of the passengers was the briefcase. Carr had given him special orders to remove all documents from the plane, of whatever type. Frustrated by the absence of the treasure trove he had pictured in his mind’s eye, he attacked the briefcase with the scrap of metal that he had used on the crate, and with some difficulty succeeded in forcing the lock. Nothing but worthless files and papers. He would take a better look at them later. A search of the bodies also yielded an unremarkable cache of wallets and passports. The men in German uniform ranged in age from forty to sixty. One bore a rank that Ratoff thought might be that of a general. He wore several unfamiliar medals on his chest, and like the man who had been laid beside the plane, had an Iron Cross fixed at his throat between the points of his collar, the German army’s highest honour in the war.

  On re-emerging despondently into the light, Ratoff noted that his men were already preparing to transport the front section of the plane down to the base. He gave orders for the corpses to be removed from the wreckage and taken to the tents to be placed in body-bags, then returned to the front section of the Junkers, heading straight for the cockpit, intent on piecing together a fuller picture. There were seats for a co-pilot and navigator but from the bodies of the other personnel on board, it appeared that the American had flown the plane single-handedly. Spotting the flight chart the pilot had made, he shoved it in his pocket, along with the log book and was just turning to leave the cabin when he caught sight of a small red exercise book protruding from under the co-pilot’s seat. He scooped it up and put that in his pocket as well.

  Carr was on the phone as he crawled out of the aircraft again.

  ‘Are you spying on me, sir?’ Ratoff rasped when he had taken the receiver.

  ‘Why waste billions on all this equipment if we don’t use it?’ Carr retorted. ‘Well, what have you found?’

  Ratoff gestured to the communications officer to leave the tent. All communication from the glacier was conducted on the Delta Force closed channel. Ratoff waited until he was alone, then spoke again.

  ‘What’s going on, sir?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve found only two crates of gold. You said the plane was full of it. Two boxes! That’s the lot.’

  ‘Maybe they buried it in the ice. Maybe it’ll never be found.’

  ‘Maybe the gold’s not what it’s about,’ Ratoff suggested.

  The line filled with static.

  ‘You never told me there was an American pilot on board,’ Ratoff continued. ‘And a two-star general from our side.’

  ‘Be careful, Ratoff. I’m under no obligation to tell you anything.’

  ‘It looks to me as if some of them survived the landing,’ Ratoff said. ‘Our pilot and two of the Germans. Judging by the numbers you gave me, one of the Germans is missing. In any case, they can’t have survived long up here in the depths of winter – they had inadequate clothing and no provisions. And somehow I doubt they kept themselves warm by lugging gold around. Anyway, the plane’s too small to have been carrying a heavy cargo. So if you’re not looking for gold, what are you looking for? Maybe you’d like to tell me what I’m doing in this shit-hole.’

  ‘You say there are only six bodies?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘There should be seven on board.’

  ‘Is that something to worry about?’

  ‘Well, the seventh man has never come to light. Perhaps they buried him further away. Perhaps he tried to get to civilisation.’

  ‘If the plane wasn’t carrying gold,’ Ratoff repeated, ‘what is it that you’re after, sir?’

  ‘Ratoff,’ Carr said warily. ‘If I wanted someone to ask questions I wouldn’t have come to you. You know that.’

  ‘Is it the briefcase?’

  ‘Ratoff.’ Carr’s voice had fallen to a low growl. ‘Don’t fuck with me. Just do as you’re told. You were chosen to lead this operation for a reason.’

  Ratoff decided not to push it any further for the time being.

  ‘The only thing I found was the general’s briefcase, which I haven’t opened. Then there’s the pilot’s log book and another book. I don’t know what it contains. I haven’t looked at any of it.’

  ‘Fine. I repeat: bring out all documents, briefcases, books, passports, names, anything in writing that you find on board. Take it into your safekeeping, Ratoff; do not allow anyone else access to it and deliver it to me and only me. Observe the procedure. Bring me the lot. Every last scrap.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Take my advice: you’d be doing yourself a favour to remain ignorant of those documents. We’ve been over this already. Follow the plan.’

  �
��You’ve always been able to rely on me, sir.’

  Carr ignored the edge he believed he could detect in Ratoff’s voice. ‘When will you be in Keflavík?’

  ‘We’ll be airborne in two days’ time, assuming the storm doesn’t delay us.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  They ended the conversation. Ratoff considered the briefcase, chart and books he had piled on a chair. Over the years, he had heard innumerable stories about the plane’s contents but when he had to accept that it was nothing but documents, it was as if all suspense, all anticipation and all his hunger for the mission had died within him. No gold. No bomb. No biological weapon. None of the more recognisable of the missing Nazi war criminals, as far as he could see. No art treasures. No diamonds. Only documents. Worthless documents. Scraps of yellowed paper.

  Still angered and disorientated by disappointment, he took the documents to his own tent. Inside stood a camp bed, a chair and a collapsible desk at which he sat down. First he examined the log book, noting where and when the plane had taken off and the intended flightpath. Then he turned to the red exercise book; leafing through it, he was surprised to see that the pilot had kept a diary during his last days on the glacier. Putting it aside for the moment, he opened the briefcase and took out three files, bound with thin, white straps. He opened the first and flicked quickly through the pages which turned out to be in German; the yellowed paper felt stiff and brittle to the touch. The second contained similar documents. He knew a little German, having been stationed for two years in his youth at the US base in Ramstein, but not enough to grasp the precise meaning of the pages.

  The third file contained several more documents, all marked confidential, whose entire text was in English. Among the papers was a single unsigned memorandum. Ratoff immersed himself in reading. He perused the material quickly and gradually began to piece together what the documents contained, rising involuntarily to his feet and pacing the narrow confines of the tent. ‘Is it possible?’ he whispered to himself.