He tackled the ties and plastic sheeting on the other half of the wreck in a similar manner, not caring if anyone discovered that he had entered it. Being already surplus to requirements lent him a recklessness that he was oddly pleased to discover within himself. A lifetime’s waiting was now at an end. Nor could he persuade himself to wait until they reached their destination; after all, he had no guarantee that Carr would keep his word – that he would be able to keep his word.
Carr had been minded to send him straight home to the States but he had managed to talk him round. Miller knew Carr of old: he had selected him to be his successor, a man of incredible resourcefulness and daring, utterly lacking in sentimentality. Carr had eyed him for a long time as they stood there in the draughty hangar before accepting that Miller could come along for the ride. Miller had no right to be there, even as former chief of the organisation, no right to interfere, no right to make any demands, and he knew it. But he also knew, as did Carr, that the circumstances were highly unusual; they were beyond protocol.
The unrelenting din of the C-17’s engines had taken its toll on Miller by the time he finally succeeded in hacking a hole in the sheeting covering the rear half of the plane. Crawling inside, his head throbbing, he switched on his torch again, shone its beam into the tail-end and immediately spotted the unmistakable outline of the body-bags in the gloom. There were several, each two and a half metres long and the width of a man’s shoulders, fastened with zips running their length. They had been set on the floor of the aircraft. The bags were unmarked, so Miller got down on the floor and began to struggle with the zip on the nearest.
He was met by the blue-white face of a middle-aged man in German uniform. His eyes were closed, his lips black and frostbitten, his nose straight and sharp, a thick mop of hair on his head. Miller half expected the figure to come alive and felt a renewed trepidation at the thought of finding his brother. He dreaded seeing the face he had known so many years ago, lifeless, bloodless, deep frozen.
Hesitantly, he opened the second bag but it was another stranger. By the time he reached the third he was beginning to have doubts – perhaps his brother’s body was still lost in the wastes of the glacier, undiscovered and now surely destined to remain so for ever? He balanced the torch so as to illuminate the bag and, steeling himself, tried to unfasten the zip but it proved to be jammed. It was not completely closed though: a fairly large opening had been left. Not enough to enable him to see inside but enough to push his hands through and grip the sides of the bag. Tugging at the zip with all his might, he managed to haul it up, but when he tried to pull it down again, it jammed. He wrenched again and again until finally the zip gave way.
He was met by a face so different from the first two that his heart lurched. In the dim light of the torch and with his mind ablaze with memories, he believed for an instant that he was seeing his brother as he had been half a century ago. His lips were red, his cheeks ruddy, his skin pale pink. For an instant Miller was gripped by this unnerving illusion. Then it occurred to him that his brother must have grown his hair since their final meeting. This mouth, this nose, the shape of the face – it was all unfamiliar. In fact, he did not remember these features at all.
Miller reeled back, losing his balance, as the corpse, to his stunned amazement, opened its eyes and glared at him. He sprawled on the freezing metal floor of the hold.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Kristín spat, rearing up out of the bag.
C-17 TRANSPORT PLANE, ATLANTIC AIR SPACE,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0515 GMT
She had kept up her ceaseless struggle with the zip ever since she had been left alone, but in vain. Now and then her mind drifted back to the stomach-turning noise of a rifle butt making contact with Júlíus’s face, followed by the dull thud of his body landing on the ice. More soldiers had entered the tent and soon she had felt herself being picked up and carried outside.
She had heard Ratoff telling Bateman that the body-bags were to be placed in the wreckage of the German aircraft and taken away by the choppers. For a brief moment no one was watching them in the tent as the helicopters were taking off. Júlíus tried to tear her away from Steve but he was not strong enough. He yelled in her ear but she behaved as if he did not exist. Bending down, he struck her hard on the face and she finally broke off her howling. He prised Steve’s body out of her grasp and laid him gently on the snow. Kristín came to her senses and started frantically looking for a way out and saw some empty body-bags by the wall in the corner where the corpses were laid out. Júlíus did not understand when she indicated the body-bags to him; he merely tried to drag her out of the tent again. Still resisting, she pointed to herself and then to the body-bags, put her mouth to his ear and shouted:
‘Help me into one of the bags.’
He stared at her, dumbfounded, then shook his head.
‘No way,’ he shouted back.
Tearing herself away from him, she ran to the bags by the wall and started opening the first one she reached. Júlíus knew their time had run out. His only thought was to save Kristín. Running over, he helped her unzip the bag and climb inside, then zipped it up again, leaving only a small gap. He laid the bag against the wall beside the other bodies just before the soldiers arrived.
The body-bag was very roomy, with handles at each corner. Four soldiers lifted it easily. She lay on her back, trying to keep still, making herself as rigid and inflexible as possible, regardless of what happened. Through the zip that Júlíus had left slightly open a tiny ray of light entered. She glimpsed the starry sky overhead.
The bag was dumped roughly on the floor of the plane and before long the light disappeared from the zip opening. She heard the noise of a helicopter again, this time directly above her head. There was an abrupt jerk as the wreckage began to lift away from the ice, then swung in the air beneath the helicopter as it set off on its westerly course.
She tried to open the zip and managed to force it down a few centimetres before it jammed. After that, no matter how hard she tried, she could budge it no further. Although she had sufficient oxygen to breathe, she was enveloped in impenetrable blackness.
She hardly felt the impact when the helicopter gently laid down the rear half of the plane on the C-17 transport pallet at Keflavík Airport, nor when it was driven into the yawning hold of the freight plane. She tried to envisage what could be happening, only guessing that she was on board a plane when the C-17 took off and she experienced that hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach that she always felt when she travelled by air. Her ears popped and the bass roar of the engines warned her that she was embarking on a much longer journey than she had imagined. She was still wearing the thick winter snowsuit but, although better than nothing, it provided limited protection against the cold that now penetrated the body-bag.
The damn zip was still stuck fast and she was beginning to doubt she would ever get out of the bag. At this rate, she thought to herself grimly, she would indeed end up in a mortuary, ready-wrapped. Her fingers were bloody from her battle and she was growing afraid that she would freeze to death from the cold when suddenly she heard a rustling sound from within the cabin of the German plane. Someone was close by. She saw a small beam of light through the gap in the bag. Could it be Ratoff?
She heard asthmatic wheezing and groans as if someone were struggling with something nearby, then all of a sudden there was fumbling at her bag. Ham-fisted attempts were being made to unfasten the zip. When it finally gave, Kristín closed her eyes and held her breath until she thought her chest would burst. As she opened her eyes at last, it was to find Miller leaning over her with a look of utter bewilderment on his face.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Miller cried, starting back, his eyes fixed on Kristín as she reared up out of the body-bag. Corpses coming to life – it was enough to kill a man.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Kristín demanded, before he could gather his wits. ‘Where am I? Where are you taking the plane?’
‘Who are you?’ M
iller asked, stunned. ‘And what are you doing here?’
She had climbed out of the body-bag and was on her feet, looming over the old man who had fallen back on to the floor.
‘Your people killed my friend on the glacier,’ Kristín said accusingly. ‘My brother is hardly expected to live. I would like to know exactly what is going on.’ Her voice rose: ‘What’s happening, for Christ’s sake? What’s so important about this plane that you’re prepared to kill for it?’
She came close to kicking the old man in her desperation, her foot drawn back and her thigh tensed, but thought better of it just before she allowed herself the release of lashing out. Miller, prone and vulnerable on the ground, did not dare move a muscle. She was glaring at him as if demented and long moments passed before she regained control of herself, her features softened and some of the tension left her.
Miller had recovered a little from his shock and sat up on one of the two crates of gold that were on board the plane. She glimpsed the outline of a swastika on the box.
‘For God’s sake, tell me why this plane is so important to you,’ she begged Miller, then abruptly her mood seemed to change to alarm. ‘Who are you? Where are we?’
‘We’re on board a US army C-17 transport plane on our way across the Atlantic,’ Miller said in a level, soothing tone. ‘You have nothing to fear from me. Try to calm down.’
‘Don’t tell me to calm down. Who are you?’
‘My name’s Miller.’
‘Miller?’ Kristín repeated. A memory stirred. ‘Are you the man Jón talked about?’
‘Jón?’
‘The farmer, Jón. The brothers from the farm at the foot of the glacier.’
‘Of course. Yes, I’m that Miller. You’ve met Jón?’
‘He told us about you. Steve and me.’ Her voice quavered but she bit her lip, forcing the repugnant image of Steve sprawled across the ice from her mind, and continued: ‘You were in the first expedition. You had a brother on board the plane. Is that right?’
‘I was looking for him when you . . .’
‘You’re looking for your brother?’
Miller did not speak.
He could not imagine who this dishevelled stowaway could be. But judging by her appearance and her troubled state of mind, he understood that he must be direct and polite, do whatever he could to reassure her. He had no idea who she was, did not know the ordeal she had endured, her flight from paid assassins, her search for answers, but little by little he managed to elicit her story.
There was something reassuring about this weary-looking old man, something trustworthy that Kristín responded to. He had said he was looking for his brother, just as she was – they had something in common – and she sensed that he genuinely wanted to hear her story, to know who she was and how on earth she came to be hiding in a body-bag in the wreck of the German aircraft. He listened patiently as she recounted the barely credible series of events, culminating in the tale of how Ratoff had killed Steve in front of her. She was to blame for Steve’s death. He was gone because of her – her impetuosity, her selfish, pig-headed pursuit. Only now could she begin to absorb this awful truth. Her tale told, she hung her head, sunk in despair.
Miller sat and studied her. He believed her. She had been through an indescribable ordeal and he had no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth. She was obviously near the end of her endurance, yet she seemed calmer now and had taken a seat opposite him on another box. He shook his head over the absurdity of their situation.
‘This Steve, did he work at the base?’
‘Yes.’
‘But they shot him anyway?’
‘It was because of me. It was personal somehow. It didn’t make sense. Ratoff said he would leave me something to remember him by. Then he shot Steve. He didn’t need to. He just did it to torment me. Steve was nothing to him. Tell me, please, what’s going on? I need answers. And where is Ratoff? Is he here?’ she asked, looking distractedly around the dark recesses of the fuselage.
‘You needn’t worry about Ratoff any more. And as for the rest, you don’t want to know,’ Miller said after a pause. ‘You won’t gain anything by knowing. I assure you, you won’t be any better off.’
‘That’s for me to judge. I haven’t come this far to give up now. Do you even know what it’s about?’
‘Some of it. My brother lost his life because of an operation that was set in motion during the Second World War, an operation that has always been denied. In fact it’s imperative that no one should know about it. No one needs to. Not you, not anybody.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Believe me. I’ll see that you get home to Iceland. I’ll see that nothing happens to you but it’d be better for everyone, and for you too, if you stopped looking for answers. Try to forget what you’ve been through. I’m asking a lot, I know, but you have to trust me.’
‘And Ratoff too? What about him?’
‘Ratoff’s an exception. Men like him are sometimes necessary but they can never be fully controlled.’
Kristín considered Miller’s words. There was no way she could forget all she had been through; it was inconceivable that she should abandon the search now, after coming this far. She owed it to Elías to carry on, owed it to Steve to find out the truth once and for all. She would not give up, her conscience would not allow her to.
‘When you said earlier that you were looking for him when I surprised you, did you mean your brother? Is he in one of these body-bags?’
‘He flew the plane,’ Miller said, as if to himself. ‘We sent him to Germany, all the way to Berlin to fly the damn plane. I sent him myself. We were going to meet up in Reykjavík and travel across the Atlantic together, all the way to Argentina. The gold in these boxes was supposed to oil the wheels of the negotiations. They were to get more later. All of it Jewish gold. For bribing the government in Buenos Aires.’
Kristín studied him for a while; she saw nothing to fear in him, he was simply an old man searching for answers, just as she was. After a moment’s pause, she continued with her probing.
‘What was Napoleon?’ she asked warily. ‘Or who was Napoleon? And what was Operation Napoleon?’
‘Where did you hear about Napoleon?’ Miller asked, unable to conceal his surprise.
‘I caught sight of some documents Ratoff had on the glacier,’ Kristín lied. ‘Saw the name there. I assumed that they’d come from the plane. That they’d belonged to the Germans.’
‘I don’t know all of it,’ Miller said. His manner was an unreadable blend of studied vagueness and what looked to Kristín like genuine distraction, as if his real concern was far from whatever plots were at the heart of this complex knot stretching back over fifty years of lies and deceptions.
‘Let’s look for your brother,’ Kristín suggested, making a great effort to curb her temper. She would have liked to seize Miller and shake him; force him to tell her what he knew about the plane, the Germans, Napoleon. But she would have to handle him carefully, extract the story piece by precious piece. She was too close to the truth now to jeopardise it with more impatience; she swallowed a bitter taste at the thought of what that had cost her already. And yet time was so very short. Ratoff must be nearby, and other soldiers with him; she was trapped in an aeroplane somewhere over the Atlantic with no prospect of escape. The old man held the key to the riddle, tantalisingly, right here in front of her. She had to win his trust, give him more time. Though she placed little faith in his claim that he could protect her, he had about him the air of another outsider, of another person whose place in this scheme was suspect and perhaps unwanted, and this gave her some meagre hope.
Miller nodded, and they stooped down to inspect the body-bags. He found his brother in the last one. Kristín lowered the zip, revealing the face of a man who must have been in his twenties. She stepped aside for Miller, handing him the torch. He bowed over the body of his brother, scrutinising his face.
‘At last,’ Miller whisper
ed.
Kristín studied the brothers, the man breathing beside her and the still, silent boy in the bag, and marvelled at how well the body had been preserved. The glacier had been gentle with it; not a scratch was visible. The face was utterly drained of colour, the taut skin like thin white paper. The young man had strong features: a high forehead, finely drawn brows and prominent cheekbones. His eyes were closed and his face, though she wished there were some other way of expressing it, looked at peace. It reminded Kristín of a book she had at home containing photographs of dead children. They looked like china dolls: immaculate, frozen, cold. This face too appeared cast from porcelain.
A tear fell, shattering on the hard shell of the cheek. She looked from one face to the other.
‘He’s only twenty-three,’ Miller said.
C-17 TRANSPORT PLANE, ATLANTIC AIR SPACE,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0545 GMT
Kristín listened in silence. She no longer felt the cold; her mind was too preoccupied. Her side ached where Ratoff had stabbed her but it seemed he had not injured her seriously. The wound had bled quite heavily at first but it was a compact puncture, if deep, and gradually the bleeding had slowed until it stopped altogether.
Miller was lost in reminiscence. He and his brother had both joined up in December 1941 in the immediate wake of Pearl Harbor but had no say where they were posted. Miller had been appointed to army intelligence HQ in Washington, while his brother was assigned to the air force and sent all over Europe, to Reykjavík among other places. During his time there he had flown over Iceland and Greenland, and later also flew missions from bases in Britain and Italy.
Operation Napoleon Page 24
