Operation Napoleon Read online

  ‘There were a few Irish hermits living here over a thousand years ago.’

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘But I don’t think . . .’

  They started when the car-phone began to ring. They stared at it, but when Steve moved to answer it, Kristín said:

  ‘Oh, leave it. It’ll just be my ex, pissing himself about his fancy jeep.’

  By the time they drove into Jón’s yard, the blizzard that had blown up on the way there had developed into a complete whiteout. The old farmer was standing in the doorway, visible through the thick curtain of snow, lit up by the porch light, a stooping figure in jeans and felt slippers. There was no sign of the soldiers; they had moved all their equipment up to the glacier, and the wind, which was gusting strongly here at the foot of the ice cap, had filled their tracks and tyre-marks with drifting snow. Kristín and Steve ran from the jeep to the farmhouse and Jón closed the door behind them, showing them into his living room where Kristín took in old family photos, bookshelves and thick curtains in the dim lamplight. The heating was turned up high and a powerful odour of the stables hung in the room’s stuffy air. Jón went into the kitchen to put on some coffee while they made themselves comfortable.

  ‘I heard about the shooting in Reykjavík,’ he said quietly, his eyes on Kristín as he invited them to take a seat. His voice was hoarse and quavered a little. He had thick hands, callused with hard work, slightly bow legs and strong features long since mellowed by age.

  ‘And I suppose you’re the Kristín they keep asking about on the radio,’ he added.

  ‘My brother is dying on the glacier,’ Kristín said slowly and clearly. ‘He fell into the hands of some American soldiers up there; they took him and threw him down a crevasse. He was found by his rescue team but they think he’s unlikely to live. The friend who was with him is dead. We hear that you’ve helped these soldiers over the years, guided them on the glacier, done whatever needed doing.’

  The accusatory note in her voice did not escape Jón and he looked surprised. What an extraordinary young woman she was. He had always kept the promise he and his brother had given Miller long ago and never told a soul what he knew, had kept quiet all these years. Even after Karl died. And now here sat this woman, accusing him of colluding somehow in her brother’s death. What would Karl have done in his shoes? he asked himself.

  ‘The expedition leader goes by the name of Ratoff,’ he volunteered.

  ‘Ratoff!’ Kristín exclaimed triumphantly. ‘That’s him. That’s the man they mentioned.’

  ‘He’s not like Miller.’

  ‘Who’s Miller?’ Steve asked, catching the name, although they were speaking Icelandic.

  ‘A colonel in the American army who was in charge of the first expedition. In 1945.’

  ‘So the plane on the glacier’s American, not German?’ Kristín asked, once she had translated Jón’s reply.

  ‘No, on the contrary, I think it’s much more likely to be German,’ Jón said slowly. ‘It crashed at the end of the Second World War; flew over our house and vanished into the darkness. We knew it had gone down. It was flying too low. Miller told my brother and me that the plane was carrying dangerous biological weapons – some kind of virus that the Germans had developed. That was why they had to find it urgently. It didn’t occur to us not to help them.’

  ‘So it crashed before the end of the war?’

  ‘Shortly before peace was declared.’

  ‘That fits in with what Sarah Steinkamp told us,’ Kristín said, looking at Steve. ‘She said there were Germans on board. Hang on, a virus?’ she said to Jón. ‘What kind of virus?’

  ‘Miller was very vague about it. I got the impression he’d given away more than he should have done. We were on good terms; Karl and I would never have dreamt of betraying his trust.’

  Jón looked from Kristín to Steve and back again.

  ‘Miller said the pilot was his brother,’ he added.

  ‘His brother?’ Kristín said. ‘In a German plane?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jón replied. ‘He didn’t mean to tell us; he was under a great deal of pressure and it just slipped out.’

  ‘Did Miller tell you the plane was German?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why was an American pilot flying it?’ Kristín asked, perplexed.

  ‘When my brother and I saw the plane fly over the farmhouse in the dark all those years ago, we reckoned it was big enough to be a Junkers Ju 52. Of course no one would know it nowadays. It was the same model as Himmler’s private plane. We didn’t know then that it was German.’

  She looked at him blankly.

  ‘The war was something of a hobby for my brother and me,’ Jón explained. ‘Especially the aircraft. Karl knew all about the aircraft they used and said straight away that it looked like a Junkers.’

  She continued to stare at him, still not quite sure what he was talking about.

  ‘Miller was tireless in his hunt for that plane. We didn’t understand why until he told us about his brother. Karl took a photo of Miller that I still have somewhere.’

  Jón rose from his chair and walked over to a large dresser. The top half was a cabinet containing glasses and plates, the lower half heavy, carved drawers. Bending down, Jón pulled out the bottom drawer and rooted around until he found what he was looking for. He handed them an old photograph.

  ‘He used to turn up here from time to time, saying he was on his summer vacation, and would go up to the glacier. We let him stay with us. He’d be here for up to a week or two. Came every three to five years to search for that plane, though it must be more than thirty years since his last visit. We were told he’d died. He wrote to us for years,’ Jón added, handing them some yellowed letters. ‘These are thank-you letters to me and my brother that he used to write after he’d been to stay. An exceptionally nice chap, Miller.’

  The letters were addressed to Jón in an elegant hand and the sender had taken care to spell his patronymic and the name of the farm correctly. They were postmarked Washington; the stamps featured Abraham Lincoln.

  ‘What was his Christian name?’ Kristín asked, examining the photo.

  ‘Robert,’ Jón replied. ‘Robert Miller. He told us to call him Bob. Isn’t that what most Americans are called?’

  ‘Did he ever find anything?’

  ‘Not a thing, poor man.’

  ‘He wanted to find his brother?’

  ‘That goes without saying.’

  ‘Did he tell you anything about his brother?’

  ‘Not another word. And we didn’t ask any questions. He asked us not to take any more pictures of him. This is the only one we have.’

  The photograph had been taken outside the brothers’ stables one summer’s day. Miller stood holding the bridle of a black horse, face turned to the camera; a thin figure in checked shirt and jeans. He had raised a gloved hand to shield his eyes from the sun but his features were clearly visible: a prominent nose and mouth above a receding chin, a high brow and thinning hair.

  ‘That horse was only half broken and it came close to killing Miller,’ Jón said, pointing to the animal. ‘Bolted across the yard with him the moment he got in the saddle, heading straight for the electric cable that used to run between the buildings. Fortunately Miller noticed the wire in time and managed to throw himself off.’

  Jón was silent for a while, as if considering whether to say more or stop there. They raised their eyes to him enquiringly. He shifted from one foot to the other in his woollen socks, before eventually inviting them to follow him.

  ‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘Come with me. I can show you something that proves that plane was German.’

  They waited while he pulled on a thick down jacket, boots, a woollen hat and gloves. Their own coats were in the car and he told them to fetch them while he waited at the door, then led them out into the blinding whiteness. Soon the house was invisible and they could see no more than a yard ahead in the snow-filled night. Kri
stín walked behind Jón, carefully placing her feet in his tracks. She could only just make out his shape in front of her and when he stopped abruptly, she stumbled into him and felt Steve collide with her from behind. Jón had reached a door which he heaved open, sending it slamming back into the wall. He fumbled in the darkness and turned on a light, revealing that they were inside a cowshed that was now used as a stable. It took all Steve’s strength to close the door behind them against the force of the wind.

  There were six horses in the stable, giving off a heat that made it warm inside. They stood in their wooden stalls, watching the unexpected visitors with quizzical expressions, steam rising from their nostrils, their winter coats almost comically thick and woolly. Kristín, who had always loved horses although she had never ridden, paused to pat a chestnut mare. Jón led them along the passage that ran behind the animals, parallel to the dung channel. Kristín was surprised by the old man’s vigour and nimble movements. The three innermost stalls were empty and in one stood a large chest with a key in the lock, which Jón now turned, before lifting the lid.

  ‘It must have been about twenty years ago,’ he said with a grunt. The lid was surprisingly heavy. ‘He may not have been the only one to survive the crash. He veered just too far to the east, or he would have stumbled on the farm.’

  ‘Who would?’ Kristín asked.

  ‘The German,’ Jón said, lifting a tattered German uniform jacket out of the chest and holding it up for them to see.

  VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

  SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, EVENING

  Count von Mantauffel has gone in search of help. He took two bars of chocolate and we tried to wrap him up as warmly as we could. He’s the toughest member of our party and is desperate to get off the ice. We thought if he headed south-east he might be able to find his way down, but there’s not much hope; he knows it and we know it. The cold will be the death of him.

  The cold will be the death of us all.

  Ratoff was sitting in his tent, reading the diary he had found under the co-pilot’s seat by the dim light of the gas heater. The gale ripped and tore at the tent, its screaming so loud that conversation was impossible. Two of the soldiers’ tents had already been carried away and were probably halfway across the Atlantic by now. Blinded by wind and snow, there was nothing more they could do until the storm had exhausted itself.

  The pilot had been carrying papers that identified him as one William Miller. Instantly, Ratoff knew where he had seen that face before: Colonel Miller was the former chief of the organisation; the pilot must have been his brother. Ratoff had already been struck by the strangeness of seeing the bodies emerge from the ice well preserved and undecayed after so many years. The pilot looked as if he had merely been asleep for half a century. Now he could picture Colonel Miller precisely as a young man. The thought intrigued him.

  The diary was written in pencil, its entries sporadic. They were not separated by date or time, as if the author had lost all sense of the passing days, and some were very short, hardly more than a sentence jotted down, a disjointed thought or a message from the pilot to those who eventually found the plane. Ratoff could not tell how much time the diary spanned but by his calculations it would not have taken the men long to freeze to death. He flicked through the pages, dipping into them here and there, trying to work out the sequence of events. From time to time the pilot addressed a particular reader – presumably his brother – as if he had intended him to find the diary.

  It’s dark round the clock here. Cold and dark. We put Dietrich outside on the ice. He died in agony, I’m afraid. We won’t be putting any more outside for the moment. The plane almost filled with snow. Such an incredible wind. But nothing could stop von Mantauffel. He said he had no intention of dying here; I’m afraid he’s right that no one will be coming to rescue us. But I’m glad he’s gone. He was a disturbing presence, playing the victor in spite of having lost the war. The others are more polite. We’re all dying – that makes men polite. I can’t see how we can be saved. I just can’t see it.

  Ratoff turned the pages.

  . . . to gain altitude but it was hopeless. The wings were heavily iced up and there was serious turbulence, alternating updrafts and downdrafts. It was nightmarish flying weather: gale-force winds, snowfall and pitch darkness. Out of nowhere, we felt the plane hit the ice. Completely out of the blue; I still can’t grasp how it happened. The left wing probably struck first, but after that it was just noisy chaos. We bounced and the propellers caught in the ice, the wings sheared off in a shower of sparks and the fuselage ploughed on but it didn’t break up . . .

  Ratoff read on. His tent flapped violently, the gaslight dancing over the pages of the diary.

  I saw Berlin for the first time in my life the day before yesterday. I think it was the day before yesterday. Strange to be visiting the German capital in the middle of a war. See what you’ve done by persuading me to fly over the Atlantic? What are you mixed up in? Are they going to do a deal with the Nazis? Are they trying to shorten the war? Planning to attack Russia? You hear so many rumors. The Germans don’t want to talk about it. I know they’re part of some kind of negotiating team, but what are they negotiating?

  Our general died on impact. He got up from his seat shortly before we crashed; one of the Germans as well. I don’t know what they were thinking of. They yelled at me to do something but there was nothing I could do.

  My God, it’s cold. I can hardly hold the pencil.

  The door flap was wrenched open from outside, causing the tent to belly out, the canvas stretching so taut that the seams creaked as if they were going to split. Bateman was on the line again in the communications tent. Ratoff stood up, zipped the tent flap firmly behind him and followed the man. They could barely keep their footing in the relentless blizzard even over the few short yards between the tents.

  ‘Tell me you have dealt with the inconvenience,’ Ratoff shouted, trying to make himself heard above the wind.

  ‘Negative, sir,’ Bateman said. ‘Ripley’s unconscious in hospital. The woman escaped with her friend. He’s one of us . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘An American. I think they’re on their way to you. There’s a retired pilot on the base who’s been asking questions about the brothers who farm near the glacier. It didn’t take him long to admit why he wanted the information. He said they’d come to him for help. Said they were heading for the glacier.’

  ‘Then good luck to them. It’s hell on earth up here,’ Ratoff yelled. ‘Has our mission been compromised?’

  ‘They don’t seem to have talked to anyone except the pilot. And as yet the embassy hasn’t received any official reaction from the government or any other institution in Reykjavík. The girl’s so busy evading us that she hasn’t had much chance to warn anyone about what’s going on. Anyway, I think we’ve managed to frame her for murder, which is a bonus.’

  Ratoff set the receiver back in its cradle and heaved a contemptuous sigh. They were pathetic; outmanoeuvred and now hospitalised by a woman. By a civil servant, for Christ’s sake, and an Icelandic one at that.

  CENTRAL REYKJAVÍK,

  SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 1800 GMT

  The two detectives who had inspected Kristín’s flat only the previous evening were now standing at the bar of the Irish pub. The area around the building was cordoned off with police tape; a crowd of curious bystanders had gathered in the darkness on the other side of the street, floodlights had been set up both inside and out, reporters and photographers were circling, desperate for a quote, and the premises were surrounded by police cars with flashing lights. Ripley and one of the fishermen had been admitted to hospital. Delicate, intricate flakes of snow were falling lazily, only to melt as they landed on the floodlights. The older detective removed his hat and scratched his head.

  ‘Like a spaghetti western,’ he remarked.

  ‘You were right about Kristín. She was here,’ the younger detective replied. ‘The witness statements matc
h the picture we have of her.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve quite grasped this yet. There are at least four people with Kristín at the scene, three men and one woman. One of them, who the fishermen claim was American, is lying on the steps outside after being beaten to a pulp by our jolly jack tars. The other woman makes herself scarce. Another man, after trying to come to the aid of his companion, runs down Tryggvagata taking pot shots at Kristín and a third man. The gunman is American too, if the fishermen are to be believed. Kristín and her companion get into a jeep and drive away. The American on the steps has no ID. His car is parked outside and has plates registered to the Defense Force in Keflavík. What’s going on? You studied in America. You know the people. I’ve only seen the films.’

  ‘I can’t make head or tail of it, any more than you. Perhaps we’ll get some answers from the embassy.’

  ‘Inspired. The embassy will solve it. We’ll just talk to the embassy and they’ll clarify everything and then we can go home to bed.’

  ‘Is your indigestion troubling you again?’

  The older police officer turned to look at his partner. His expression was oddly sad, despite the glint of mockery in his eyes under their red brows. His hair was red too; his face intelligent, stubborn, determined.

  ‘What? Am I not jolly enough for you?’ he asked sarcastically.

  ‘When were you ever?’

  On arrival at the US embassy on Laufásvegur, they were informed that neither the ambassador nor the attaché was in the country. The chief press officer was indisposed but they could speak to a General Wesson from the Keflavík base. He was the highest-ranking officer at the embassy in the ambassador’s absence. The detectives shrugged. The general kept them waiting for an hour and fifteen minutes in a small anteroom outside the ambassador’s office. Finally the door opened and they were greeted by an overweight man of about fifty, with thinning hair, a broad face and strong, rather protuberant teeth. He led them into the office and invited them to take a seat. The younger detective took care of the questions since his partner had a poor command of English.