Arnaldur Indriðason - Operation Napoleon

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.

‘It’s Júlíus,’ he said. ‘I’m alone.’

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

SUNDAY 31 JANUARY

It was a close call: the helicopter nearly failed to lift the wreckage off the ice and for a moment it appeared as if it would plunge back to the glacier. It seemed that this half of the German aircraft had not been loosened sufficiently and the attention of the men standing around was fixed on the helicopter’s battle with its cargo.

Ratoff had found himself a seat in the hold of the Pave Hawk and sat, hunched tensely at a small porthole, trying to get a glimpse of the steel cables and their load. The helicopter rose with infinite slowness, jerking slightly and stopping its ascent momentarily as it took up the full weight of the Junkers’ fuselage. Little by little the wreckage rose from its icy tomb until it was free. Then the helicopter accelerated away and Ratoff watched the blur of the camp recede steadily into the surrounding night.

The noise in the cabin was mind-numbing but Ratoff was wearing earphones and could communicate with the two pilots in the cockpit via a helmet radio. They proceeded at a sedate pace, at an altitude of five thousand feet, the load dangling from three thick steel cables; this was the front half of the German plane. Before long the second helicopter would lift off the tail section, containing the bodies from the wreck. Both halves had been removed from the ice with their contents untouched and the openings sealed with heavy-duty plastic sheeting. He heaved a sigh of relief; the mission was in its final stages and had been largely successful, despite the inconvenience caused by Kristín and the rescue team. The plane had been safely excavated and he was on his way home. Soon it would be over, or this episode at least.

Ratoff was the only passenger. He tried to prepare his mind for what lay ahead while listening to the radio traffic between the pilots and air traffic control at the Keflavík base. The scheduled arrival time at Keflavík was in just over twenty-five minutes. Flying conditions were ideal – cold but windless – and the journey passed without incident. The helicopter would fly directly to the C-17 and set down its load on a special pallet where each half of the German aircraft would be loaded on to the transport plane. The air force referred to it as the Keiko plane, after a killer whale which, with the world’s animal lovers watching, had recently been flown to Iceland from Newport, Oregon. To save time and prevent discomfort to its unusual passenger, the C-17 had refuelled in mid-air and would do the same during the present mission. Very soon, the C-17 would take off and the Icelandic phase of the operation would be over. What followed would be a flight halfway round the world.

But the other half of his mind was elsewhere. Ratoff was working on the assumption that they would leave him alone until they reached their final destination, but he could not count on this. He considered why Carr had chosen him for the job. It had been Carr who had originally recruited him to the organisation but over the years the general had become increasingly remote until he no longer seemed willing to recognise his existence. Ratoff was reconciled to this fact. Though he was by no means his own master, he was able to decide his own movements and enjoyed a certain amount of freedom within the service, although he knew people disliked him. No doubt he troubled their consciences. After all, Ratoff did their dirty work; he gathered information. How he did it was his own business. The less the service knew about it, the less Carr knew, the better.

He had come to the conclusion while still on the glacier that the reason Carr had chosen him to lead the mission was because he regarded him as expendable. It would be a simple matter to make him disappear. He was an embarrassment, a relic from an era that no one wanted reminding of. Ratoff assumed that Carr knew precisely what the plane contained, along, no doubt, with a handful of other senior military intelligence officers. What he could not know was if anyone else was in on the secret. He was not even sure if anyone outside the army realised what was happening. For the first time he could remember in recent years, Ratoff was threatened, and the sensation awakened every animal instinct in him.

Where had that damned girl found out about Napoleon? The pathetic jerk with her had mentioned something about a pilot on the base but Ratoff knew that had been nothing but a desperate ploy. He could have extracted the information from her had there been time. No matter: Bateman would take over the interrogation, after which both she and her friend would disappear once and for all.