Operation Napoleon Part 18

They stood eye to eye. A biting northerly wind was blowing over the glacier, sending loose ice crystals rippling across the surface like smoke. The rescue volunteers stood in a silent pack behind Julius, showing no sign of fear in the face of armed soldiers. Like their leader, they had no intention of being pushed around by a foreign military power.

'We're carrying on,' Julius announced.

He turned and walked back towards his team, so failed to notice the officer signalling to the man nearest him. The soldier removed his rifle from his back and knelt to a.s.sume a firing position. Julius had almost reached the first tracked vehicle when a volley of shots rang out. Instantly, the grille and bonnet of the vehicle in front of him were riddled with holes, the silence split by a deafening series of cracks as the bullets punctured the steel. Julius flung himself down on the ice. Fire blazed up from the engine and a small detonation blew the bonnet sky-high, to land with a crash on the roof of the vehicle. The members of the rescue team who were sitting inside it kicked open the doors, hurled themselves out on to the ice and crawled to safety. Soon the entire vehicle went up in flames, illuminating the winter darkness.

The shooting stopped as quickly as it had started. His breathing coming in gasps, heart hammering in his chest, Julius rose up from the ice, stunned at what had just happened. Calmly, the young officer walked right up to him again. The soldiers had all unslung their weapons and now had the rescue team comprehensively covered.

'Your mobile phones, radios and emergency flares,' the officer repeated in the same flat, toneless voice. Julius stared at the flaming wreckage. He had never experienced anything like this before, never encountered military force, or seen weapons used in combat, and for a moment his anger gave way to trepidation about what might await him and his team. He tried to penetrate the soldier's goggles, taking in the grey forest of weaponry behind him. None of the men's faces were visible. His gaze turned to his own people, some of whom had fled the burning vehicle while the others were standing at a loss by their snowmobiles. It was fifteen degrees below zero on the glacier and he could feel the warmth from the blaze.

Kristin spotted them first. She and Steve had approached the glacier at a point where the edge was not particularly high or steep, so they barely noticed the change in terrain from snow-covered rocks to ice and were already some way on to the surface of the ice cap when she saw lights ahead in the darkness. Four snowmobiles. She had stopped to wait for Steve who had been lagging behind again. By the time he caught up the snowmobiles had reached her.

Both had the same thought as their eyes met. They had a.s.sumed that the glacier would be kept under close surveillance, so it came as no surprise that a reception committee had been sent to meet them, but the speed at which they had been intercepted was shocking. There was no hope of outrunning the snowmobiles, but then they had no intention of trying. As the familiar sensation of fear bloomed again in Kristin, she reminded herself that those who needed to know had been informed of what was happening. That was her life insurance. Whether it would work or not was another matter. She and Steve stood still and waited. Strangely, given the circ.u.mstances, it was her feet that preoccupied her at that moment. From painfully cold they were beginning to turn numb, despite the extra pair of woollen socks that Jon had lent her.

The four men surrounded them on their snowmobiles. One, whom Kristin took to be the officer in charge, switched off his engine and dismounted. He was clad in goggles and Arctic survival gear like the other three, with thick gloves on his hands. He drew the scarf down from his mouth.

'I must ask you to turn around and leave the glacier,' he said. 'You have entered a US military prohibited zone.'

'Prohibited zone?' Kristin repeated contemptuously. She knew instinctively that these were the soldiers her brother had seen, perhaps precisely those who had intercepted him on the glacier. Perhaps the very men who had thrown him into the creva.s.se.

'Correct. A US military prohibited zone,' the soldier repeated. 'We have permission to carry out exercises here. The area is closed to all unauthorised personnel. Please turn back.'

Kristin stared at him and had difficulty hiding her feelings. Rage boiled up inside her. After all the trials she had gone through since the two men burst into her flat, at last she was standing face to face with the truth. These soldiers were proof that the US army was involved in activities on the glacier that would not tolerate the light of day. They were proof that her brother had not had an accident but had seen something he was not supposed to see. And now this man was standing in front of her, giving her orders; an American soldier throwing his weight around in her country as if he ruled the place.

'Turn back yourself,' she snarled, s.n.a.t.c.hing at his goggles and looking him in the eye. He jerked his head away and the goggles snapped back on to his nose. The cold intensified the pain and, momentarily losing control of himself, he struck Kristin in the face with the b.u.t.t of his rifle, knocking her on to the ice. Steve tried to jump him, seizing him around the shoulders, but the soldier drove the b.u.t.t into his stomach with all his strength and Steve bent double and fell to his knees, winded. As she tried to pull herself up, Kristin was bleeding from mouth and nose but the officer shoved her down with his foot, knocking her flat on her back again.

'Turn back,' he ordered.

'Tell Ratoff I want to meet him,' Kristin choked.

'What do you know about Ratoff?' the officer asked, unable to conceal his surprise and realising belatedly that he had said too much.

Kristin smiled despite the cut on her lip.

'I know that he's a murderer,' she replied.

The soldier stared at her impa.s.sively and then at Steve, as if wondering what action to take. After weighing up the options, he fished a mobile phone from his breast pocket, punched in a number that was answered instantly, and stepped aside, making it hard for Kristin to hear what he was saying.

'A male and a female, affirmative, sir,' he said in a low voice. 'She knows your name. Just a minute, sir.' Turning, he walked back to where Kristin lay, propped up on her elbows in the snow.

'Are you Kristin?' he asked.

She met his gaze without answering.

'Do you have a brother who was up here on the glacier yesterday?' the officer asked.

'I don't know. You tell me,' Kristin hissed from between clenched teeth.

'That's right, sir,' the officer said into the phone. 'Understood,' he added, then ending the call, turned to his men.

'We're taking them with us,' he announced.

VATNAJoKULL GLACIER,

SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0000 GMT

He lost control Kreutz, that is. He looks like he must be the youngest, in spite of his rank. At first he was talking calmly to his companion, but he grew more and more agitated until he was screaming at him. I couldn't understand a word they were saying. I don't know what it was but something made him go completely crazy. He jumped to his feet and began pacing back and forth, hammering the cabin door, shouting and thumping on the fuselage. In his madness he knocked over one of the kerosene lamps and we haven't been able to relight it since. The other German tackled him and eventually overcame him after a h.e.l.l of a fight in the cramped s.p.a.ce. I kept out of it in the c.o.c.kpit. There isn't really enough light left for writing as we only have one lamp that works now. The kerosene is running low. Soon we'll be in total darkness.

Maybe they were arguing over whether it had been a mistake to sit tight, instead of following Count von Mantauffel. The storm and cold were so severe when we landed that you couldn't stand up outside, though von Mantauffel didn't let that hinder him. Our attempts to force the door off its hinges are in vain. The plane will be our tomb and I suppose that fact has started to come home to us all. We're slowly dying inside a coffin made of metal and ice.

We've lost track of time. It could be two or three days since we landed. Maybe longer. Hunger is becoming an increasing problem. There's nothing to eat and the air in the cabin is very stale; I suppose the oxygen's not being replaced quickly enough. The Germans are dozing. They haven't taken any notice of me since the crash. At the time they were mad at me, yelling until von Mantauffel ordered them to shut up. I wish I understood more German. I would have liked to know what this mission is about. I know it's important, otherwise you wouldn't have sent me, but what's it all about? Why are we collaborating with the Germans? Aren't they our enemies any more?

Ratoff's reading was interrupted.

'Phone call from Carr, sir,' a soldier called into his tent. Ratoff trod the same short walk back to the communications tent and took the receiver.

'The Icelandic government are coming under increasing pressure over the military exercises on the glacier,' Carr began, without preamble. He was speaking from the base in Keflavik where, twenty minutes earlier, his plane had landed and taken off again immediately after refuelling. Carr himself planned to personally accompany the Junkers back across the Atlantic in the C-17. He had had a brief meeting with the admiral who had told him of the Icelanders' mounting anger at the presence of the army on Vatnajokull. The lie about the volcanic eruption alert would not work for long. Time was running out and the situation was deteriorating with every pa.s.sing minute. He was afraid of being stranded here with the German plane and the bodies and the secret connected to them. The Icelandic government was growing ever more impatient and a diplomatic catastrophe loomed which would send shockwaves around the world.

'We'll be gone from here in no time, sir,' Ratoff rea.s.sured him. 'We're just waiting for the choppers.'

'We don't want any more bodies,' Carr said. 'We don't want any more disappearances. Get yourselves off that glacier and vanish into thin air. Is any of that unclear?'

'None, sir,' Ratoff replied. He avoided any mention of the rescue team or Kristin.

'Good.'

Ratoff handed the phone to the communications officer and stepped outside. In the distance he heard the ma.s.sive rotors of the Pave Hawk helicopters beating as they came powering in from the west, two p.r.i.c.ks of light growing larger in the darkness. His men had prepared a landing site on the ice with two rings of torches, and launched four powerful flares that hung in the air like lanterns and blazed for several minutes, throwing a bright orange-yellow light over the entire scene. The Pave Hawks flew into the glow cast by the flares and hovered for a moment above the tents before settling with infinite care on the ice like gigantic steel insects, the noise deafening, clouds of snow whipping up all round. The men on the ground took cover until the engines had died and the blades finally stopped turning, their whine fading in the cold air. When the doors opened and the crews clambered out, they were directed straight to Ratoff's tent. Soon all was quiet again.

The pilots looked around in astonishment at the floodlit scene: the city of tents pitched in a semicircle around the plane, evidence of its excavation from the ice, the swastika instantly identifiable below the c.o.c.kpit, the camouflage paint flaking off to reveal the gunmetal grey beneath, the special forces personnel swarming all round and over the wreckage. The fuselage had been cut in half but they were unable to see inside because plastic sheeting had been fitted over the yawning mouth of the exposed cabin. They glanced at one another and back at the wreckage. They had been given no reason for their summons in the middle of the night to Vatnajokull; their orders were simply to airlift some heavy equipment off the ice cap and ask no questions, their destination the C-17 transport that had been on standby at Keflavik Airport for three nights.

Ratoff greeted the helicopter crew members. There were four men, two per machine, aged between twenty-five and fifty and clad in the grey-green uniform of the US Air Force. They had already removed the thickly lined leather jackets and helmets they wore on top when they entered Ratoff's tent. They did not recognise the operation director and plainly had no idea what was happening on the glacier. They looked from Ratoff to one another, exchanging puzzled glances.

Ratoff studied the pilots. He could tell from their expressions that they had had minimal briefing on the purpose of the mission. They seemed unsure of themselves, shifting from foot to foot and looking about uncomfortably, but he had no intention of putting them at their ease.

'We're going to airlift the wreckage of an old plane from the glacier to Keflavik Airport,' he announced.

'What plane is that, sir?' one of the pilots asked.

'A souvenir,' Ratoff replied. 'Don't worry about it. We've cut it in two, so the helicopters can take one half each. We're grateful for your a.s.sistance but the operation should be straightforward. I recommend you stay put in the tent as it would be best for everyone if you avoided compromising your plausible deniability. Is that understood?'

'Compromising our what?' one of the pilots queried, looking at the others to see if he was alone in being baffled by these instructions. 'May I ask what's going on here?'

'That's precisely what I mean,' Ratoff said. 'The less you know, the better. Thank you, gentlemen,' he concluded, indicating that the conversation was over. But the pilot was not satisfied.

'Is it the German plane, sir?' he asked hesitantly.

Ratoff stared at him, amazed that this man sought to question him. Had he not been adequately clear?

'What do you mean, "the German plane"?' he asked.

'The German plane on Vatnajokull,' the pilot answered. He was young, fresh-faced, and his lack of guile made him hard for Ratoff to read. 'I've heard about it before. I saw the swastika.'

'And just what have you heard about this German plane?' Ratoff asked, moving closer.

'In connection with the astronauts, sir.'

'What astronauts?'

'Armstrong, sir. Neil Armstrong. He went looking for it in the sixties. Or so the story goes. It's supposed to have a bomb on board a hydrogen bomb. If that's the case, if I'm going to be flying with it strapped to me, I'd like to know about it. From an operational point of view, of course, sir.'

'Is that the rumour on the base?' Ratoff mused. 'n.a.z.is, Armstrong and a hydrogen bomb?'

'So is there a bomb? Can we see inside the plane? Regulations mean I need to verify what we're going to be transporting, sir.'

'I'm afraid you'll just have to trust me, Flight Lieutenant, when I tell you that there is no bomb in the plane. The aircraft is German, obviously, and dates from World War II, but it's completely safe. This is the first I've heard of Armstrong looking for it and certainly the first I've heard of any n.a.z.i bomb. We haven't found anything of the sort. Satisfied?'

'I guess so, sir,' the pilot said uncertainly.

'If it's so harmless,' another pilot asked, 'why can't we watch, sir? Why do we have to stay cooped up in the tent?'

'Jesus Christ,' Ratoff exclaimed under his breath. He sighed. 'How many different ways can I put this, gentlemen? I am not required to give you any explanations.' He went outside and beckoned three soldiers into the tent. 'Shoot anyone who tries to leave,' he ordered.

The pilots stood in a huddle, shuffling together like stunned livestock, utterly baffled by this latest development. Brought to the middle of nowhere, witness to some inexplicable excavation, bound to secrecy and now held hostage by their own side, they stared speechlessly at one another and at their captor.

'What's the meaning of this?' demanded their leader at last. 'What kind of treatment do you call this? How dare you? Who'll fly the helicopters now?'

'We have people for that. You're surplus to requirements,' Ratoff said and stalked out of the tent. A man stood waiting to join him as he walked down to the plane.

'How was the flight?'

'Like a dream,' Bateman answered with a grin.

VATNAJoKULL GLACIER,

SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0015 GMT

Kristin was met by an extraordinary, utterly surreal sight, a scene from science fiction. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that now coursed through her limbs like a dull drug, but all at once she felt she was losing her grip and succ.u.mbing to an overpowering sense of helplessness. Everything that had happened to her was reduced to a jumble of hallucinations, a long, intense nightmare in which she was on the run but could never move fast enough. Was she in fact still lying at home on the sofa? The sight that met her eyes made it hard to put the events in any sort of context, hard to distinguish between this outlandish reality and her own delirious imaginings.

She saw the Pave Hawk helicopters perched side by side, their immensely long rotor-blades extending in all directions. About thirty tents of varying sizes were arranged in a semicircle; snowmobiles, tracked vehicles, trailers carrying oil-driven engines and portable generators, floodlights and satellite dishes and a host of other equipment she could not put a name to littered the area. Scores if not hundreds of personnel were milling around on the ice. Some, she now noticed, had begun to take down the tents they were starting to clear up after themselves. She understood. They were finished here. Soon there would be no trace of them: the snow would obliterate their tracks. Deep down the realisation struck her, triggering a warning bell that gradually restored her wandering wits: they were leaving the glacier.

Only then did she see the plane. It lay, cut in half, in a shallow depression in the ice. Two groups of people were busy fixing strong, thick slings around each half, attached to cables which extended in the direction of the helicopters. Evidently the helicopters were there to remove the plane wreckage and after that it would not take the soldiers long to disappear too.

It was very still, several degrees below zero. The black vault of the night sky arched over the area, reflecting the glow of the powerful floodlights. The journey had been uneventful; she and Steve had been forced to ride pillion on the snowmobiles behind their captors, who maintained radio contact with the camp throughout. After fifteen or twenty minutes they had ascended a small ridge and the tents had come into view below them. The vehicles careered down the ridge and into the camp, stopping by one of the larger tents. She and Steve were shown inside, past two soldiers who stood guard either side of the opening.

'Are you okay, Kristin?' Steve asked once they were at the back of the tent, as far from the guards as possible.

'Yes, and you? Are you all right?'

As she looked at him, her thoughts strayed to what had happened between them at Jon's farm. For a brief moment her present surroundings faded and she pictured a future with him.

'Could be better,' Steve said. 'Could be at home watching basketball. There's a big game on tonight, Lakers against the Bulls.'

'It could hardly beat this,' Kristin said. Neither of them smiled. Looking at Steve, she saw her own anxiety reflected in his face.

She surveyed their canvas cell with a sudden sense of hopelessness. On the table sat a large gas lamp which lit up the tent and emitted a faint heat, but otherwise it was freezing inside. There were also four camp chairs and, at the back of the tent, close to where they were standing, they noticed several heavy canvas sheets spread out over the ice. She glanced towards the tent opening where the soldiers stood watching them.

'I want to speak to Ratoff,' Kristin called out but received no reaction.

'Shouldn't your rescue team be here by now?' Steve asked under his breath, the worry just audible in his voice. 'And the Coast Guard, or whatever it's called? And the police and reporters and TV crews? Where's CNN? Where's the cavalry?'

'I know,' Kristin said. 'Something must start happening soon. Look, let's think for a minute. How can we get out of here? What is this tent anyway? What are they using it for?'

She looked down at the sheets of canvas.

'What's this?' she asked in a low voice, backing further into the tent. Steve moved un.o.btrusively towards her. Distracted by the commotion outside, the guards had lost interest and gone back to watching the spectacle of a small army erasing all trace of itself. From under one of the tarpaulins, the corner of a grey body-bag could be glimpsed.

'What have they got here?' Steve whispered.

Kristin stepped on the corner of the canvas and drew it quietly towards her, then repeated the movement. Her legs were stiff from the walk up to the glacier and weak from lack of food; it took all her concentration to stop the muscles in her thigh from going into spasm. The canvas shifted and she continued dragging her foot until she had partially uncovered what lay beneath. The body-bag was open at the top, the heavy-duty zip which joined the bag's shiny grey folds drawn back perhaps ten inches. A peaked cap met their eyes, bearing the eagle and swastika insignia. When Kristin tugged with her foot a little more, a face appeared beneath the cap. They stared speechlessly at the body. It was a middle-aged man whose deathly pallor was almost as translucent as the ice. Kristin could hardly grasp what she was seeing; she stood in silent wonder, her attention riveted on this new discovery.

Her heart nearly stopped when a hoa.r.s.e voice spoke behind them.

'Pretty sight, don't you think? As if he'd died no more than a week ago.'

Ratoff had entered the tent, with Bateman at his heel. Kristin instantly recognised the man who had twice tried to murder her; she also knew in her bones that she was finally standing face to face with Ratoff. She had formed an image of him which in no way fitted the man before her. He was so short that she almost burst out laughing. She had imagined a man well over six feet tall, yet here he was, a man with no physical presence whatsoever; in spite of his padded ski-suit, she could tell that he was nothing but skin and bone. For a moment it crossed her mind that he might be suffering from some incurable disease. His features looked vaguely Slavonic: a bony face, the cheekbones and chin jutting through the taut skin, a narrow, dead straight nose, and small, sharp, deep-set eyes. As he came closer she noticed that he had white rings round his pupils that made his eyes appear eerily bright. His ears were small and grew close to his head, and his mouth seemed to underline the cruelty above, but her attention was drawn irresistibly to the scar under his left eye. She could not stop staring at it. It was round like a little sun, radiating tiny grooves down his cheek.

'You're not the first,' Ratoff said in his odd, rasping voice, noting the direction of her gaze: 'She did her best.' He scratched the raised purple outline of the old scar with one finger.

'I hope it hurt,' Kristin replied.

'An accident,' Ratoff said. 'The bullet went right through my face and out behind my ear. I lost part of my voice, nothing else.'

'Pity she didn't kill you,' Kristin retorted.