Arnaldur Indriðason: Operation Napoleon

He gawped at her, the words ‘stupid’ and ‘fool’ echoing in his head. He opened his mouth to say something but she got in first.

‘Out, now, if you please.’

She saw his face swell with rage.

He stood up slowly without taking his eyes off her, then suddenly seemed to lose control. Picking up the chair he had been sitting on, he hurled it at the wall behind him.

‘This isn’t finished!’ he yelled. ‘We’ll meet again and then we’ll see which of us is the fool. It’s a conspiracy. A conspiracy, I tell you! And you’ll suffer for it.’

‘Yes, yes, dear, off you go now,’ she said as if to a six-year-old. She knew she was goading him but could not resist it.

‘You watch yourself! Don’t think you can talk to me like that and get away with it!’ he shouted and swept to the door, slamming it behind him so the walls shook.

Ministry employees had collected outside her office, drawn by the sound of the chair hitting the wall and the man shouting. They saw him emerge, purple in the face, and storm away. Kristín appeared in the doorway.

‘It’s all right,’ she told her colleagues calmly, adding: ‘he’s got problems,’ then shut the door carefully. Sitting down at her desk, she began to tremble and sat quietly until she had regained her composure. They did not teach you how to deal with this at law school.

Kristín was petite and dark, with short, black hair, strong features in a thin face and sharp brown eyes that shone with decisiveness and self-confidence. She had a reputation for firmness and obstinacy, and was known within the ministry for not suffering fools gladly.

The phone rang. It was her brother. He immediately felt her tension.

‘Is everything okay?’ he asked.

‘Oh, it’s nothing. There was a man in here just now. I thought he was going to throw a chair at me. Apart from that, everything’s fine.’

‘Throw a chair! What sort of lunatics are you dealing with?’

‘The Russian mafia, or so I’m told. It’s some kind of conspiracy, apparently. How are things with you?’

‘Everything’s great. I just bought this phone. Do I sound clear?’

‘No different from usual.’

‘No different from usual!’ he mimicked. ‘Do you know where I am?’

‘No. Where?’

‘Just outside Akureyri. The team’s on its way to Vatnajökull.’

‘Vatnajökull? In the middle of winter?’

‘It’s a winter exercise. I’ve already told you. We reach the glacier tomorrow and I’ll call you again then. But you must tell me how the phone sounds. It’s clear, isn’t it?’ he repeated.

‘Great. You stick with the others. You hear me? Don’t attempt anything by yourself.’

‘Sure. It cost seventy thousand krónur , you know.’

‘What did?’

‘The phone. It’s got NMT’s long-distance communication system.’

‘NMT? What are you on about? Over and out.’

‘You don’t need to say over…’

She put down the receiver. Her brother Elías was ten years younger than her, forever immersed in one new hobby or another, mostly outdoor activities which involved travelling in the uninhabited interior. One year it had been hunting, when he filled her freezer with goose and reindeer meat. Another year it was skydiving, and he pestered her to jump with him, without success. The third year it was river rafting in rubber dinghies, then jeep trips across the highlands, glacier trips, skiing trips, snowmobiling – you name it. He was a member of the Reykjavík Air Ground Rescue Team. And it was just like him to buy a mobile phone for seventy thousand krónur . He was a technology junkie. His jeep looked like the flight deck of an aircraft.

In this respect brother and sister could not be more different. When winter arrived, her instinct was to crawl into hibernation and not emerge until spring. She never ventured into the highlands, and avoided travelling in Iceland altogether during winter. If she went for a summer holiday, she kept to the country’s ring road and stayed at hotels. But generally she went abroad; to the US, where she had studied, or London, where she had friends. Sometimes, during the darkest period of the Icelandic winter, she would book a week’s escape somewhere hot. She hated the cold and dark and had a tendency to suffer from depression during the blackest months when the sun rose at eleven and crawled along the horizon, to set after only five meagre hours of twilight. At this time of year she was overwhelmed by the realisation that she was trapped on a small island in the far north of the Atlantic, in cold, dark isolation.

But regardless of their differences, brother and sister got on very well. They were their parents’ only children, and despite the ten-year age gap, or perhaps because of it, had always been extremely close. He worked for a large garage in Reykjavík, converting jeeps into customised off-roaders; she was a lawyer with a degree in international law from the University of California, had been working at the ministry for two years and was very happy to be doing a job which made use of her education. Fortunately, encounters like today’s were the exception.

As long as he takes care up on the glacier, thought Kristín as she made her way home. The memory of her meeting with Runólfur would not go away. As she walked down Laugavegur shopping street, through the centre of Reykjavík and home to Tómasarhagi in the west of town, she had a prickling sensation of being watched. She had never experienced this before and told herself it was because she was still on edge. Looking around, she saw nothing to be concerned about and mocked herself for being so neurotic. But the feeling persisted. Come to think of it, she had never been accused of accepting bribes from the Russian mafia before either.

KEFLAVÍK AIRPORT, ICELAND,

THURSDAY 28 JANUARY, 2000 GMT

The giant C-17 US army transport plane landed at Keflavík Airport at around 8 p.m., local time. It was cold, several degrees below zero, but the forecast was for rising temperatures and snow. The massive bulk of the jet taxied through the winter darkness to the end of runway seven, which was reserved for the exclusive use of the NATO base on Midnesheidi moor. It was a remote, bleak location amidst the lava fields on the westernmost tip of the Reykjanes peninsula, lashed by constant gale-force winds, devoid of vegetation, barely fit for human habitation. Hangars large and small dotted the landscape, along with barracks, shops, a cinema and administration blocks. The naval air station had been a centre for reconnaissance flights at the height of the Cold War but these days the base’s activities had been greatly curtailed.

Once the aircraft had come to a standstill, the aft door opened, releasing a stream of personnel who immediately began the task of unloading: powerful snowmobiles, tracked vehicles, skiing equipment, all the gear necessary for tackling the glacier. Fifteen minutes after the plane had touched down, the first transporter departed from Keflavík Airport with its cargo, bound for the Reykjanes highway and the south Iceland route to Vatnajökull.

The transporter was a German model, a Mercedes-Benz, its only marking Icelandic licence plates. It was no different from any other truck and trailer combo that plied the country’s roads and as such drew no attention. In all, four trucks of varying models had pulled up to the C-17 when it came to a stop at the end of the runway. They departed from Keflavík Airport at half-hour intervals, mingling seamlessly with the civilian traffic.

Ratoff, the director of the operation, rode in the final vehicle. He had been met at the airport by the commander of the US military base on Midnesheidi, an admiral by rank, who had been forewarned of Ratoff’s arrival and ordered to provide him with transport vehicles, no questions asked. The admiral, who had been exiled to this unpopular outpost after a scandal involving the large-scale embezzlement of supplies from a Florida base, had the good sense not to press for details, though he struggled to keep his curiosity in check. He had heard rumours about the commotion in the late sixties, and judging from the equipment being arranged in front of him, history was repeating itself: another glacier trip was planned.