Arnaldur Indriðason - Operation Napoleon

‘Have you come across a man by the name of Ratoff?’

‘No, never heard of him. Who is he?’

‘It’s a name Kristín overheard. He may be in charge. Look, I have to hang up. Is there anything you can do to help me, anything at all, Monica?’

‘I’ll try to dig something up for you. If special forces have taken over the embassy, they’re probably in control of the base too, so I’d be very careful about looking for help there. Do you remember the Irish pub in Reykjavík? The one downtown?’

‘Yes.’

‘Call there at 4 o’clock today or come down yourself. I’ll see what I can find out for you in the meantime.’

‘Thanks, Monica.’

‘And Steve, for Christ’s sake, be careful.’

He put the phone down and turned to Kristín. They were in his office in one of the army administration blocks. Kristín was keeping watch by the window, the profile of her face silhouetted against the glass, black against black. She had phoned air traffic control in Keflavík, posing as a journalist from Reykjavík, and asked if there had been a plane crash recently on Vatnajökull. She was informed that no plane had crashed on the glacier for decades, not since the famous Loftleidir incident. When they asked what paper she was calling from, she had hung up.

Kristín vaguely remembered the accident. ‘A Loftleidir plane – that’s the old Icelandic airline – was forced to make an emergency landing on the glacier,’ she told Steve. ‘Everyone survived.’

‘Is that the plane Elías saw then?’ Steve asked.

‘I haven’t a clue. I don’t know what happened to the wreckage. And anyway, what would the army want with an old Loftleidir plane? It must have been forty years ago. It’s absurd.’

They had been in the office around ten minutes and Kristín was growing jumpy. Although they had parked Steve’s car a few hundred yards away among other vehicles outside a large apartment block, it would not remain undiscovered for long if the men put out a search. The office had been Steve’s first thought as he accelerated away from his block, leaving Ripley and Bateman behind in the parking lot. But he had not come here to hide as his workplace would be an obvious location for them to check; rather, the building housed part of the Defense Force archives, to which he had access.

He and Kristín ran down the long ground floor corridor and descended into the basement where the archives were kept. Punching in a code to deactivate the alarm, Steve turned a key in the heavy steel door and pushed it open. Inside stood another door, covered in wire netting, which opened into one of the archives. The storeroom was divided into several compartments by coarse wire netting which formed a series of cages, each of which was filled with long rows of filing cabinets, and beyond them shelves of files and boxes.

‘Welcome to America’s memory,’ Steve whispered.

‘How are we supposed to find anything in this warren?’ Kristín asked, gazing in dismay at the rows of units stretching off into the distance. ‘What are you looking for anyway?’

‘There may be something here about operations on Vatnajökull,’ Steve said. He was familiar with the archives, having temped there one summer, and knew where to lay his hands on records of surveillance flights over Iceland in the last fifty years. If there was a plane on the glacier, he reasoned, it might well belong to the US Air Force or Navy.

He was so happy that Kristín had turned to him in her hour of need that it did not even occur to him to refuse her request. No longer in any doubt about the danger she was in, he was determined to stand by her, to help her in any way he could; besides, his journalistic instincts had been roused and he was becoming increasingly curious about the case on his own account.

They walked rapidly along the shelves, checking the labels on cupboards and files. Some way towards the back, Steve stopped and pulled out a box. He looked inside, then replaced it and continued searching. He did the same thing several times; took out a box containing a number of files, leafed through them, then put it back. It was hopeless – he had no idea where to start in this sea of information – and before long they returned to his office, empty-handed.

For some minutes he stood by the window, peering out, chewing his lip in frustration. ‘A friend of mine has access to more files than me,’ he announced finally. ‘We should see what he says.’

‘I’m sorry to have landed you in all this. I didn’t know where else to turn,’ Kristín said as they left the building.

‘Forget it,’ Steve answered, his eyes flickering round nervously. ‘I’m as interested as you in finding out what’s up there.’

They decided to leave the car behind and walk. Steve knew the base very well and kept to the back alleyways, stealing through communal gardens, darting hurriedly across brightly lit streets where necessary, taking care to stay under cover. Kristín had no idea where they were going. As for most Icelanders, the base was a foreign country to her. The only time she had been to Midnesheidi was with her parents to the international airport in the days before the new terminal had been built. She recognised the Andrews movie theatre, and glimpsed in the distance the old terminal building and officers’ mess. She remembered two of her old classmates from school who had gone on to work for Icelandic contractors on the base and used to come home to Reykjavík every weekend laden with cigarettes and vodka that they bought cheap from the American servicemen, to the great envy of their friends.

‘I never expected to see you again,’ Steve ventured as they picked their way through the snow behind one of the apartment blocks.

‘I know,’ Kristín said.

‘I always meant to try to talk to you about it but somehow…’

‘I’ve thought the same. It was my fault.’

‘No, it wasn’t. No way. It was nobody’s fault. Why does everything always have to be somebody’s fault?’

When Kristín did not answer, Steve let the subject drop. There was little traffic in the area although they twice spotted military police patrols. Steve stopped by a building not dissimilar to his own but in an entirely different part of the base. They all looked identical to Kristín. He told her to wait, he would not be long, so she lurked round the side of the block trying to make herself inconspicuous, stamping her feet, blowing on her hands and pulling her hood tight against the chill air. It was about fifteen minutes before he returned, accompanied by a man whom he introduced to her as Arnold. He was plump, about Steve’s age, with sweaty palms, shifty eyes and a lisp. They climbed into his car and drove off.

‘Arnold’s a librarian,’ Steve said smiling. ‘He knows his way round the archives and he owes me a favour.’

Kristín had no idea what this implied and Arnold did not enlighten her, just glowered at Steve.

He pulled up at a two-storey administration block not far from the old terminal. After letting them in through the back entrance, he led them straight down to a basement archive, considerably larger than the one they had visited earlier, occupying three levels.

‘What years are we talking about?’ Arnold asked flatly.

‘Flights over Vatnajökull since the beginning of the war, I suppose,’ Steve replied. ‘I don’t know what for. Routine surveillance flights, maybe, or reconnaissance. Aerial photography. Nothing major, as I said. Nothing risky. Nothing that presents a threat to US national security.’

‘Surveillance? Aerial photography?’ Arnold scoffed, not even trying to disguise his irritation. ‘You’ve no idea what you’re on about.’

‘Forced landings as well. Crashes on the glacier. A plane. Anything like that. Pilots who might know about flights over the glacier. Anything at all like that.’