Arnaldur Indriðason - Operation Napoleon

Shaking his head, Arnold walked down to the next level. They followed, their footsteps echoing hollowly against the walls. Kristín found the noise they were making unbearable. Arnold passed a row of shelves, slowed and stopped. Turning back, he descended to the level below, clattering down the metal staircase, and walked along one of the rows. There he took down a box file and opened it, then closed it again. Eventually they came to a large filing cabinet and Arnold pulled out one of the drawers.

‘Here’s something,’ he said to Steve. ‘Records of photographic surveillance flights in 1965. By the old U-2 spy planes, just before they switched to satellites.’ Arnold stepped aside as if to avoid getting any closer to this irregularity than he already was, then announced that he would wait for them by the entrance upstairs and vanished. Steve squatted down.

‘Let’s see… what have we here?… Nothing. Only some crap about routine surveillance flights off the north coast. Nothing about Vatnajökull. Nothing about aerial photography.’ He examined more of the files.

‘Maintenance reports!’ he sighed. ‘Technical jargon. Wait a minute, here are some names of pilots.’ There were several. Steve took out a pen and paper and started to scribble them down.

‘Arnold’s a laugh a minute,’ Kristín observed.

‘He smuggles more dope into the base than anyone else I know,’ Steve said matter-of-factly.

‘I thought he was a librarian?’

‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing.’

‘So what did you say to him?’

‘Some lie about you being – what do you call it? – a GI baby? That you’re trying to trace your father.’

‘Who was a pilot?’

‘You got it.’

‘And he didn’t think we kept rather unorthodox hours?’

‘All these guys must be dead,’ Steve muttered, without answering. He was still busy noting the pilots’ names.

‘What do the reports say?’

‘Nothing of any interest. Just descriptions of routine surveillance flights. Very limited information. Naturally they don’t keep anything important down here.’

‘Nothing about Vatnajökull? Or photographs?’

‘Not that I can see.’

‘Might Arnold know?’

‘No harm in asking. I’m going to check if we’ve got anything on these pilots.’ He finished copying down the names.

Arnold was hovering by the door when they came back upstairs. Telling Kristín to wait a minute, Steve went over and had a word with him in private. Arnold looked extremely nervous. They argued for a while, then Steve came back.

‘He says he doesn’t know anything about Vatnajökull and I believe him. He’ll give us five minutes to look up the names of these pilots on his computer.’

Arnold led them down a long corridor, cursing all the while, opened the door to his office, groped his way to the computer and turned it on. He reached out to switch on his desk lamp but Steve stopped him; the blue glow from the computer screen provided the only illumination in the room. Before long they had opened the army employment records and were looking up each name in turn. Kristín stationed herself by the window, terrified that the glow from the computer would attract attention. What was it that Elías had seen?

‘They’re either dead and buried or repatriated to the States long ago,’ Steve sighed and typed in one last name. Arnold had disappeared.

‘Hang on, there’s something here. Michael Thompson. Retired. Still resident on the base. Pilot. Born 1921. He’s been here at Midnesheidi since the sixties. He lives nearby. Come on,’ Steve said, jumping out of his chair. ‘We’ll have to wake the poor bastard up. Maybe he’ll have some answers.’

They left by the way they had come in. Arnold was nowhere to be seen and Steve told Kristín he had probably slipped off home. The snow was still falling incessantly as they made their way through the darkness to the oldest part of the military zone. Compared to others the US army had established around the world, the base was tiny. The NATO Defense Force had numbered only four to five thousand personnel at its height but its population had been dramatically reduced since the end of the Cold War. Many of the accommodation blocks now stood empty and derelict, especially in the oldest quarter, relics of a forgotten war. It did not take them long to get there, despite wading through knee-deep snow on little-used paths. They did not speak on the way except once when Steve expressed surprise that Michael Thompson should still be living on the base. Most of the servicemen sent to Iceland could not wait to move on to their next posting after completing their maximum three-year tour of duty, usually praying fervently for somewhere tropical.

KEFLAVÍK AIR BASE,

SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 0330 GMT

Thompson’s name was on the entry-phone. Steve rang the bell. The retired pilot lived in an apartment block like Steve’s but more rundown. No maintenance had been carried out for years; the paint had flaked off here and there exposing the concrete, the light above the front door was broken and only a handful of the apartments looked occupied.

Steve pressed the doorbell again and they waited, glancing around anxiously. He rang the bell a third time, holding the button down for so long that Kristín tapped his hand. Shortly afterwards there was a crackle from the entry-phone and a reedy voice uttered a hesitant: ‘Hello?’

‘Is that Michael Thompson?’ Steve asked.

‘Yes,’ replied the voice.

‘I’m sorry to wake you like this but I need to talk to you urgently. Could you let me in?’ Steve said, trying to speak as quietly as possible.

‘What?’

‘Could you let me in?’

‘What’s going on?’

‘May I come in?’

‘What is it you want exactly? I don’t understand.’

‘It’s about Vatnajökull.’

‘What?’

‘Vatnajökull,’ Steve said. ‘I want to ask you about flights over Vatnajökull. I know it’s very unexpected and an extra…’

‘Flights?’

‘Lives are at stake, man. For Christ’s sake, please open the door.’

After a short pause and more crackling on the entry-phone, the lock buzzed and Steve ushered Kristín inside in front of him. They did not turn on the light in the hall but groped their way up the stairs, holding on to the banister. Thompson lived on the first floor. They tapped on his door and he appeared in the rectangle of light, peering out at them. He had put on slippers and a robe, beneath which his legs protruded, chalk-white and bony. He was very thin, with a stoop and a Clark Gable moustache, long since turned white, barely visible against his pale skin.

‘It must be serious to make you barge in on me in the middle of the night like this,’ Thompson commented, showing them into the living room. They sat down on a small, black leather sofa and he took a seat facing them, looking at them sceptically in turn.

‘My brother called me earlier this evening,’ Kristín began, feeling that it might just as well have been a month ago. ‘He was on a training exercise on Vatnajökull when he spotted a plane and some soldiers. Then his mobile phone was cut off and I haven’t heard from him since. Shortly afterwards two Americans turned up at my apartment in Reykjavík and tried to kill me. I escaped and came to Steve for help because if there are soldiers on the glacier, I assumed they must have come from here.’

‘You say they tried to kill you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What are you talking about? What do you mean by barging into my home and spinning me a story like this? And anyway, what’s it got to do with me?’