Arnaldur Indriðason: Operation Napoleon

‘We’ll see you get back,’ Carr said. ‘We’ll send you home to Iceland. Of course, we’ll have to wait until all our personnel have left with their equipment but after that you’ll be free of us and we’ll be free of you. You can say what you like: you can talk to the authorities and the press, to your family and friends, but I doubt anyone will believe you. We’ve already begun disseminating misinformation about the purpose of the mission. At the end of the day no one knows anything and that’s for the best. Incidentally, there’s a man on his way to Keflavík with the troops. His name’s Júlíus. A friend of yours, I believe. Leader of the rescue team on the glacier. He’s perfectly safe and will be set down outside the gates of the base. He’ll be able to back up your story. And so will your brother – Elías, isn’t it? I gather he’s safe, by the way, and has been admitted to a Reykjavík hospital.’

‘You mean he’s… alive?’ Krístín gasped.

‘Yes,’ Carr replied, ‘to the best of my knowledge.’

‘You’re not just playing with me?’

‘Certainly not.’

The relief was overwhelming. It did not matter that the news had been delivered by a stranger, a man who, from what she could tell, bore the chief responsibility for what had happened to her. She had been unable to face up to the possibility that, despite all her efforts, Elías might die. Now, however, here was the confirmation that she had managed to save his life and suddenly all she could think of was that it was Steve who had paid the ultimate price. She ground her teeth in frustration.

‘We can always send people after the three of you. It’s up to you to make that clear to the others. And I do urge you to take me seriously, Kristín. Go ahead and tell who you like, but if Júlíus were to go missing one day, you’ll know why.’

‘All because of…’ Kristín began.

‘An old plane,’ Miller interrupted. ‘All because of an old plane.’

‘All I want to know is what’s happening. What’s going on? What’s the truth?’

‘Kristín, Kristín, you ask too much,’ Carr said. ‘Truth and lies are nothing but a means to an end. I make no distinction between them. You could say we are historians, trying to correct some of the mistakes made during a century that is now coming to its close. This has nothing to do with any truth, and anyway what’s in the past is irrelevant now. We reinvent history for our own purposes. The astronaut Neil Armstrong once visited Iceland – we know that. But who can say for sure whether he ever landed on the moon? Who knows? We saw the pictures but what proof do we have that they weren’t staged in a US air force hangar? Is that the truth? Who shot Kennedy? Why did we fight the Vietnam War? Did Stalin really kill forty million? Who knows the truth?’

Carr stopped.

‘There’s no such thing as truth, Kristín, if ever there was,’ he continued. ‘No one knows the answers any more and few even care enough to ask the questions.’

It was the last thing Kristín heard.

She felt a pinch on her neck. She had not noticed anyone behind her and never saw the needle. All of a sudden she went limp, a feeling of utter tranquillity spread through her body and everything turned black.

TÓMASARHAGI, REYKJAVÍK

Who was Ratoff? A name in her head.

She was lying on the sofa in her living room at home in Tómasarhagi. She felt unable to move, as if pole-axed. Slowly, gradually, she resurfaced from the depths of unconsciousness. She was vaguely troubled by the thought that the shop might have closed, but sleep still held her in a powerful grip. She must have overslept. She usually drank her coffee with hot milk but had forgotten to buy any when she came home from work. The name kept resurfacing in her mind, like a cork bobbing in a stream. It frightened her somehow. She pondered this but still could not summon any energy. All she wanted was to go back to sleep. She had got up far too early that morning.

But she had to buy some milk, she must not forget. That was the first thing she remembered.

That and Ratoff.

Slowly she opened her eyes. Their lids felt heavy as lead. It was pitch dark in the flat. She just wanted to lie there, letting the tiredness flow out of her body. A jumble of unconnected thoughts swam through her mind but she made no attempt to lend them any order. She was too comfortable; she did not want to spoil it. She had not felt so well in ages. God, she was tired.

For the first time in as long as she could remember she thought about her parents and her ex-boyfriend the lawyer, and about Steve – she had always regretted dropping him the way she did. One day she would have to put that right. She would like to see him again. In fact, she felt a powerful urge to talk to him. Her thoughts drifted to that madman Runólfur and her colleagues at work, and she wondered idly if it might not be time to look for another job. Perhaps open her own legal practice with a friend. They had discussed the idea. She did not particularly enjoy working at the ministry and now that people had started threatening her it was even less appealing. The thoughts flitted through her mind without her being able to fix on any of them, fleeting, gone in a flash, snapping at her unconscious.

She had been lying on the sofa for half an hour before she tried to move and only then did she become aware of the throbbing ache in her side. She gave a startled cry as the pain lanced through her, and slumped back, waiting for the spasm to pass. Her overalls were filthy but she did not even stop to wonder why she was wearing outdoor clothes. Undoing the zip, she pulled up her jumper and found a dressing below her ribs. She stared blankly at the plasters and gauze, then gently lowered the jumper over the dressing again. When had she hurt herself? She could not remember going to hospital to have the wound dressed, nor did she know where the injury had come from, but clearly she must have been to hospital.

She made another attempt to sit up and this time managed, in spite of the stabbing pain. She did not have a clue what time it was but assumed that all the shops must be shut by now. When she glanced around the flat, the little she could see of it, everything looked normal, yet she could have sworn she had left the kitchen light on when she lay down. And where had the injury come from? It must have been serious because the dressing was quite large and her whole side was bruised dark blue.

Rising to her feet with difficulty, she limped into the kitchen, turned on the light, went over to the fridge and fetched a can of Coke. She was dying of thirst. She gulped it down where she was standing by the open fridge, and having emptied the can, went to the sink, ran the cold water for a while and drank greedily straight from the tap. It was stiflingly hot in the flat. She went to the big kitchen window and opened it, breathing in the cold winter air.

Her briefcase was in its place and the papers she had brought home from work lay untouched on the kitchen table. She looked at the clock; it was just past seven. She had slept far too long – for a whole hour – and missed the shop. She swore under her breath. Groggy, devoid of energy, she slumped into a chair and stared into space. Something had happened, something terrible, but every detail of it was shrouded in an impenetrable fog in her mind.

Ratoff?

Kristín jumped as the phone started to ring, the sudden noise splitting the silence. She stared at it dumbly, as if she had no idea what to do with it. It rang and rang. Her first reaction was not to answer it. What if it was Runólfur? Then she remembered that Elías was going to call from the glacier. But had he not called already? Was there not also something wrong with Elías?