Operation Napoleon Read online

  ‘There’s a man here asking to speak to you, sir,’ said the serviceman, who was dressed in air force uniform. Carr did not recognise him.

  ‘He’s come over from the States to find you, sir,’ the man repeated.

  ‘To find me?’

  ‘Landed fifteen minutes ago, sir,’ the man said. ‘On a civilian flight. I was sent to inform you.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Carr asked.

  ‘Name of Miller, sir,’ the man said. ‘A Colonel Miller. He landed at Keflavík Airport fifteen minutes ago, on a civilian flight.’

  ‘Miller? Where is he?’

  ‘He was in a hurry to see you, so we brought him here, to the hangar, sir,’ the man said, looking over his shoulder. Turning, Carr saw a door open and Miller enter. He was wearing a thick green anorak with a fur-lined hood that almost completely obscured his gaunt, white face. Carr strode hurriedly over. This was the last thing he had expected; they had not discussed Miller’s further involvement, indeed he had not heard from him since their previous meeting and he was completely wrong-footed by his sudden presence in the hangar.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he called while he was still ten yards away. ‘What’s the meaning of this? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Same pure, fresh air,’ Miller remarked. ‘I’ve never been able to forget it.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Carr repeated. He glanced at the men who had brought Miller to him, three intelligence agents in civilian dress who accompanied Carr wherever he went.

  ‘Relax, Vytautus,’ Miller said. ‘I’ve always wanted to visit Iceland again. Always wanted to breathe this cold pure oxygen.’

  ‘Oxygen? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Would you be so good as to step aside with me,’ Miller said. ‘Just the two of us. The others can wait here.’

  Carr walked slowly over to the hangar doors, each one a steel construction the size of a tennis court. They stopped in the opening where an overhead heater was struggling to keep the bitter cold at bay.

  ‘The first time I came to this country,’ Miller said, ‘a lifetime ago now, at the end of the war, it was to meet my brother. I sent him on that mission and I intended to be there to meet him when he made a stopover with the Germans to refuel in Reykjavík. I was going to fly back with them. That was the plan. I know it’s absurd, but I blame myself for what happened to him. It was selfish of me to put him in that position. I took him off the battlefield. Well, I was punished for that. He lost his life here in the Arctic instead. Died in the crash or froze to death afterwards – we never did find out which. Or I never found out. All because of that preposterous operation that should never have been set in motion.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ asked Carr impatiently.

  ‘I haven’t heard anything from you. What have you found up there? Are there any bodies and what sort of state are they in? Do you know what happened? Tell me something. It’s all I ask.’

  Carr regarded his former commanding officer. He understood what motivated Miller; knew he had been waiting for the greater part of his life to find out what had happened to the plane. There was a light in his eyes now that Carr had never seen before, a gleam of hope that Miller was trying but failing to disguise.

  ‘Most of them are intact,’ he said. ‘Your brother too. They’ve been preserved in the ice. Apparently the landing wasn’t that bad. They must have had to cope with a fire but nothing major. As you know, the weather conditions were severe when they crashed and they would have been buried by snow in no time and trapped in the plane. It’s irrelevant, anyway. They couldn’t have survived the cold even if they had dug themselves out of the ice. There are no signs of violence. It’s as if they simply passed away, one after the other. They were all carrying passports and only one appears to be missing: Von Mantauffel wasn’t on board or in the vicinity of the plane.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Which might mean that he tried to reach help. Tried to get to civilisation.’

  ‘But never made it.’

  ‘No. I don’t think we need worry about him.’

  ‘Good God. He must have frozen to death.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Any personal documents on board?’

  ‘Nothing that Ratoff has reported. Do you mean a message from your brother?’

  ‘We exchanged weekly letters throughout the war. We were close. It was a habit we got into – a way, I suppose, of explaining to ourselves everything we were witnessing. I thought he might perhaps have written something down, a few words or thoughts, if he survived the crash. His regrets.’

  ‘I’m afraid not, no.’

  ‘And the documents?’

  ‘Ratoff has them.’

  Neither man spoke.

  ‘You’re complicating things,’ Carr said. ‘You know that.’

  Miller turned and started to walk away. ‘I don’t want to lose him again,’ he replied over his shoulder.

  VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

  SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0030 GMT

  Kristín was transfixed by Ratoff, as a snake before a charmer. He had brought his face close to hers and was running the awl playfully up her throat, chin and cheek to her eye. She did not have a clue how to answer him about Napoleon but she had to say something – anything – to stall him; something he wanted to hear. It did not matter what. She had a sudden intuition that she was now in the same situation her brother had been in and understood how he must have felt, understood his terror of this man, his terror of dying. Understood what it was like to be this close to a maniac. Was it really such a short time ago? Yesterday evening? The day before yesterday?

  What could she say?

  ‘Kristín, your attempts to delay us are delightful. But pointless,’ Ratoff said.

  Kristín had retreated to a pole at the back of the tent. The two guards were restraining Steve. Bateman held a gun levelled at them.

  ‘You think the place will fill with rescue teams,’ Ratoff continued, ‘that you’ll be saved and the whole world will find out what’s going on here. Well, I regret that this is the real world. No one can touch us here. We have the government in our pocket and the rescue team has been intercepted. What are you going to do, Kristín? We’re leaving the glacier and after that no one will know a thing. Why is it your self-appointed duty to save the world? Can’t you see how ridiculous you are? Now tell me from the beginning . . .’

  ‘The choppers are taking off,’ a soldier called into the tent.

  ‘. . . how you found out about Napoleon.’

  They heard the helicopter engines growl then roar into life outside and the rising whine of the rotor-blades that magnified as they spun faster.

  ‘It was a retired pilot from the base who told us about Napoleon,’ Steve shouted. ‘And she’s not the one who knows what it means, I am.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ Kristín said.

  ‘How touching,’ Ratoff whispered.

  Kristín did not realise immediately that he had stabbed her – it felt more like a pinch. In one deft movement he had thrust the awl into her side just below her ribs, through her snowsuit and clothes, the steel penetrating several centimetres into her flesh. She felt a searing pain and blood seeping inside her clothes. He held the awl in the wound.

  She cried out in agony and tried to spit at him again but her mouth was too dry. He twisted the awl and her eyes bulged as a spasm of pain racked her body, forcing a shriek from her lips. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Steve shouting and struggling in the grip of the guards.

  ‘Who else knows about Napoleon?’ Ratoff repeated, observing Kristín’s reaction to the pain with scientific detachment. She stood on tiptoe, looming over him.

  ‘Everyone,’ she groaned.

  ‘Who’s everyone?’

  ‘The government, police, media. Everyone.’

  ‘I think you’re lying to me, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she said in Icelandic. ‘No.’

  ‘In that case you can tell me what Napoleon is.’

/>   He twisted the awl.

  Kristín did not answer. The pain was unendurable. The wound must be ten centimetres deep. She thought she was going to faint; her mind was clouding over, making it hard to concentrate, hard to come up with the right answers to play him along, to keep stalling.

  ‘What is Napoleon?’ Ratoff repeated.

  Kristín was silent.

  ‘Have you asked yourself what they did to Napoleon?’

  ‘Constantly,’ she replied.

  ‘And what can you tell me about that?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘So what’s Napoleon?’

  ‘You know what he was famous for,’ she groaned.

  ‘A great emperor,’ Ratoff said. ‘A great general.’

  ‘No, no, not that,’ Kristín said.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘He was small. A midget like you.’

  She prepared for another wave of agony. It did not come. Ratoff jerked the awl out of the wound and the tool vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, pulling out a revolver. Kristín had just long enough to register how small and neat it was, the sort of weapon she imagined might be designed for a handbag.

  ‘I’m going to leave you with a beautiful memory. It didn’t have to be like this. You could have saved him. Think about that on cold nights when you are alone. This is your fault.’

  Without the slightest warning he half-turned and fired a single shot into Steve’s face. A small, puckered hole appeared under Steve’s right eye as his skull exploded and an ugly splatter coated the wall of the tent. He dropped instantly to the ground, eyes open, a look of bafflement fixed on his face. Kristín watched as if in a daze. The gunshot rang deafeningly in her ears; for a moment time seemed to slow down; she could not grasp what had happened. Ratoff was standing unmoving, observing her; the attention of the men in the tent was focused on Steve as the bullet hit home. She saw him fall on to the ice, his head striking the frozen ground with a thud, his dead eyes fixed on her face. She saw the obscene red streak on the tent wall, the ice under his head soaking up the blood.

  Bile rushed up into her mouth. She dropped on to the ground, retching, her body shuddering. Then she blacked out.

  The last thing she saw was Steve’s empty eyes. But the last thing she heard was Ratoff’s voice.

  ‘This is your fault, Kristín.’

  VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

  SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 2330 GMT

  The team had settled down, some inside the two tracked vehicles, others alongside them, to wait and see what would happen. No one dared make a move against the soldiers or give them the slightest provocation to use their rifles again. After the soldiers had halted the rescue team, they had confiscated all communications equipment and conducted a thorough search of both people and vehicles, until they were confident that they had removed every flare, radio and mobile phone, before withdrawing to their original position. They seemed content to have impeded the team’s progress and simply stood next to their snowmobiles, holding their ground and ensuring that the Icelanders could not proceed.

  Júlíus climbed into the back of the second vehicle, taking care to sit beside a door. After they had been waiting for some time he cautiously opened the door and slid out. The stand-off had calmed down and he sensed that their guards had relaxed. He lay for a long while in the snow underneath the vehicle, not moving a muscle. The chill gradually crept up his legs despite his thick ski-suit; his toes were agonisingly cold, his hands growing dangerously numb. He would have to move soon, if only to generate some warmth.

  He heard the soldiers talking but could not make out what they were saying. After about ten minutes he crawled away from the vehicle, between two snowmobiles and away into the darkness. When he believed he was safe, he rose to his knees, peered behind him and saw that no one had spotted his departure. Rising to his feet, he set off in a wide detour around the soldiers, taking care to keep far enough away to be hidden by the night.

  He seethed with fury; he was not going to let any bloody Yanks from the base threaten him, search him and rob him, abuse and attack his friends, or ban him from moving about in his own country. Besides, Kristín was relying on him. If he could support her account of the army’s activities on the glacier, he would at least have achieved something. The shame and guilt of almost losing Elías burned in his chest; it was too much to bear that Kristín might also be in physical danger. Try as he might to rid his mind of these thoughts, he was haunted by the prospect of being responsible for both siblings coming to harm.

  Soon the soldiers were behind him and, driven by a mixture of anger and distress, he broke into a run over the ice towards the glow which lit up the sky about three kilometres away. He knew the Americans would be monitoring the glacier closely and that he could expect soldiers to appear out of the darkness at any moment to arrest him – maybe even to use their weapons.

  Júlíus was extremely fit and covered the distance rapidly, the freezing air burning invigoratingly in his lungs. At once, the flood of light ahead grew brighter and he heard a roar approaching; from behind him, helicopters swooped in and landed in the midst of the pool of light. He heard the drone of the rotor-blades diminishing until all was quiet again. Quickening his pace, he reached the margin of the lit-up area. There he slowed down and finally threw himself panting on the ice, before crawling the last stretch up a small rise which afforded him a good view of the area.

  He had not known what to expect but what he saw was staggering. The two Pave Hawk helicopters, the wreck of an old plane cut into halves which were now being covered with tarpaulins. Soldiers swarming everywhere. Tents. Equipment. It defied explanation. He noticed the helicopter pilots being escorted to one of the tents and not long afterwards saw a woman being taken into another tent. He had never set eyes on Kristín, let alone the man who was roughly frogmarched in after her, but it was clear that they were captives of the soldiers.

  At that moment he heard the snow creak beside him and, turning, encountered a pair of shiny, black boots. Following them upwards he discovered three men aiming guns at him. Like the soldiers who had intercepted the rescue team, they were wearing white camouflage, skiing goggles obscuring their faces and scarves bound over their mouths to keep out the cold.

  Júlíus climbed warily to his feet and, not knowing what else to do, raised his hands in the air. The soldiers seemed content with this submission and, without a word, gestured with their rifles towards the camp. They had followed Júlíus from the moment he had appeared as a dot on their radar screens, approaching the prohibited zone by infinitesimal degrees.

  All the way he made desperate efforts to memorise what he saw. He noticed that the soldiers were beginning to take down their tents and collect up equipment and tools, as if their work on the glacier, whatever it was, would soon be at an end.

  On reaching the ragged, makeshift encampment he was brought before another man. This one was clearly an officer of some sort. There was no one else in the tent. He stared at the Icelander as if he had come from another planet, and it crossed Júlíus’s mind that this was not far from the truth. When asked, he explained to the officer how he had slipped away from his team and made his way here under cover of darkness. He made sure to claim that there were other Icelanders in the area, lying that his men had received a message from Reykjavík before the soldiers had confiscated his team’s radios that other rescue teams were at this moment on their way to the glacier, together with the police and members of the Coast Guard.

  The officer listened, nodding and went on asking his monotonous questions:

  ‘Has anyone else escaped from the guards?’

  ‘No,’ Júlíus replied. ‘Is this an interrogation?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Why are you interrogating me?’

  ‘Please answer the question.’

  ‘I protest in the strongest terms about your treatment of an Icelandic rescue team. What on earth do you think you’re doing
? Who are you?’

  ‘Are you alone?’ the officer persisted, ignoring Júlíus’s outburst.

  ‘Don’t think this is over. I’m looking forward to telling the press exactly what’s going on here; how you’re jackbooting around in Icelandic territory, putting Icelandic lives in danger.’

  They heard a whine, rising to a crescendo as one of the helicopters started up.

  ‘Don’t move,’ the officer ordered. He walked over to the door of the tent where he saw Ratoff’s back disappearing into the helicopter. With an even greater commotion, it gradually rose to hover thirty or forty feet above the ice. The noise was deafening and the helicopter whipped up so much snow that it could barely be seen. Below it, the dangling thick steel cables tautened and soon the fuselage of the old plane began to shift, inch by inch, off the ice, swinging in the glare of the floodlights. Higher and higher it rose, the helicopter then rotating itself westwards before setting off on its course and slowly melting into the darkness. The other would be minutes behind it.

  When the officer turned back into the tent he was met by nothing but a man-high slit in the canvas wall. He leapt through it but Júlíus was nowhere to be seen.

  Júlíus was fairly sure which tent he had seen Kristín being taken into and sprinted over to it. Without a moment’s hesitation he slashed the canvas from top to bottom and stepped through the opening. He was met by a horrific scene. In the middle of the floor a man lay face down. One of the tent’s walls had been spattered with blood and there was a gaping hole in the back of the man’s head. A short way from him a young woman was prone on the ice, apparently unconscious. His heart lurched. Who else could these be but Kristín and Steve?

  Júlíus stooped over Kristín’s slack body and slapped her cheek repeatedly. Her skin was tinged with blue and cold to the touch. To his surprise, she opened her eyes after a few seconds and stared at him. Quickly he forced his hand over her mouth and laid his own face close to her ear.