After the two men shook hands at the door, Miller showed Carr into his ground floor study which was filled with mementoes of a long life, predominantly photographs of his military service: World War II comrades, scenes from Korea and Vietnam, but there were pictures from peace time as well. Everything inside the house was as neat as a pin. The walls were lined with books, mostly about war.
‘Are you sure it’s the plane?’ Miller asked, taking out two small tumblers and filling them with brandy. It was far too early for Carr but he said nothing; the time of day had obviously ceased to have any meaning for Miller.
‘No question,’ Carr replied, sipping.
‘Are they inside yet?’
‘Not yet. Ratoff’s in charge.’
Miller frowned. ‘Was that really necessary?’
‘In my estimation the operation needs a man like Ratoff. It’s as simple as that.’
‘Are you still planning to fly it over the Atlantic? To Argentina?’
‘Yup, Argentina.’
‘So the procedure hasn’t changed?’
‘No. Everything’s going to plan. Though they were spotted with the plane. By locals – two of them. I’m afraid they saw too much, but according to Ratoff everything else is under control.’
‘I don’t suppose he spared them.’
Carr turned away and looked out of the window.
‘And the brothers?’
Carr shrugged.
Miller closed his eyes. He remembered the brothers as they had been when he first met them at the foot of the glacier all those years ago: friendly, hospitable, cooperative and, most important of all, discreet. They had never asked questions, simply invited him into their home and acted as guides on the glacier. They had been more or less the same age as him.
‘Ratoff hasn’t been briefed on what the plane contains, has he?’ he asked.
‘He’ll soon find out. But I’m confident we can trust him, at least to bring us the documents. We have trucks on the spot to transport the dismantled plane to Keflavík. The bodies will accompany the wreckage. I’ve given Ratoff instructions about what to do with any papers he finds. No doubt he’ll read them but it’s an unavoidable risk and in any case, he’s stuck on an island – where can he go? All being well, this chapter of the war will be closed in a few days’ time and we’ll finally be able to breathe easier. They’ll be able to breathe easier.’
‘And what about Ratoff?’
‘We’re keeping our options open.’
‘If he reads the documents, he’ll think he’s in danger.’
‘Let’s just wait and see how he plays it. Ratoff’s not a very complicated man.’
Miller swirled the brandy in his glass.
‘Do the others know the situation?’
‘The few who are left.’
‘And the politicians?’
‘I’m confident I’ve managed to frighten them off. I gave them the Walchensee gold story. Our young secretary of defense didn’t know whether to cry or piss himself when I told him. You only have to mention the Jews and they start shitting themselves.’
‘But something’s wrong.’ It was a statement, not a question. Miller knew his successor; he had guessed from Carr’s expression and the way he talked that all was not well. It would not be the first time Carr had come to him for guidance or support but he was a man who could not bear to admit to mistakes.
Carr spoke crisply and precisely. ‘There’s a young woman in Reykjavík, the sister of one of the boys who disturbed the excavation. Apparently the boy told her over the phone that there were armed troops and a plane on the glacier – Ratoff extracted that much from him. She’s given our men the slip twice now, and is being assisted by an American from the base, an ex-boyfriend. Presumably she went to him because of what her brother said about soldiers. They’re currently somewhere on the base but I’m assured that the area has been secured and the base commander is cooperating. They won’t get far.’
Neither man spoke for a while.
‘The operation was a necessity of war,’ Miller said at last. ‘We had to clean up after the politicians. Always have done.’
‘I know – though I’m more inclined to put it down to temporary insanity. It was bedlam in the last months of the war.’
‘That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have gone into Russia. Patton was right about that.’
‘They hesitated.’
‘And we lost half of Europe.’
Miller topped up their glasses. Brandy was one of the few luxuries he still permitted himself. The doctors had told him he did not have long. Not that he cared; he had reconciled himself to dying a long time ago and would welcome it when the time came.
‘It’s not our job to write history; that’s for others to do,’ he said.
‘No, our job has always been to wipe the slate clean and rewrite it,’ Carr replied. ‘History’s all lies – you know that and I know that. There have been so many cover-ups, so many fabrications; we’ve told the truth about lies and lied about the truth, taken out one thing and substituted another. That’s our job. You told me once that the history of mankind was nothing more than a register of crimes and misfortunes. Well, it’s also a register of carefully constructed lies.’
‘You sound tired, Vytautas.’
‘I am tired. When this is over I’m going to retire.’
Miller took another sip of brandy. It was his favourite label, an exclusive French cognac, and he savoured it lingeringly before letting it slip down his throat.
‘The brothers told me that the winter of ’45 was unusually hard,’ he remarked. ‘The snow didn’t melt on the slopes above the farm until July. I searched the area with a small party at the time but we found no trace of a crash. The fuselage must be fairly intact under the ice, which means the bodies must be too. They’ve been deep frozen for more than half a century.’
He paused.
‘I envy that animal Ratoff. I’ve been looking for that plane all my life and now that it’s finally been found I’m too old to see it. When will it reach Argentina?’
‘Ratoff says four days, though that could change. There’s bad weather forecast for the area – a storm’s expected within the next twenty-four hours. You can always come to South America if you feel up to it.’
But Miller was far away. He was thinking of the layers upon layers of snow and ice he had spent so many years fruitlessly probing. The glacial accumulations, winter after winter, blizzard after blizzard, burying the frozen casket ever further from the world.
‘I’ve often thought it would probably be best for us if the glacier held on to the plane for ever, so we wouldn’t have to worry about it any more. It would be best for everyone.’
‘Maybe. Sometimes I think that damn plane is the only reason we established a base in Iceland. Sometimes it seems that important.’
Silence fell on the small room again.
‘About the sister? Can’t we let it go?’ Miller asked eventually.
‘Not until the transport’s airborne. After that it won’t matter.’
‘So all she need do is lie low for a few days and she’ll be out of danger?’
‘Something like that.’
Miller took another mouthful of brandy.
‘Who over here knows about the discovery then?’ he asked.
‘You and me. The defense secretary who’s under the impression that the matter involves Jewish gold. A handful of individuals at the company. The others are all dead and buried.’
‘And soon we’ll be joining them.’
‘It’s ancient history; few people apart from us know what the plane really contains. These new young men don’t appreciate the situation. They’re too naive to understand the need for secrecy. They don’t care if the plane’s story gets out. They might even try to exploit it for other purposes, God help us. They’re fanatics. We mustn’t drag this out – the longer the recovery takes, the more likely it is there’ll be a leak.’
‘When you talk of fanatics
. . .’
‘I mean I can’t be sure what they’d do if they knew the role the plane played.’
‘It’s too bad we don’t have the astronauts to deflect the world’s attention this time around.’ Miller smiled wryly.
‘Poor Armstrong. He never had a clue what he was doing in Iceland,’ Carr remarked.
‘He took another giant step for mankind there.’
Miller abruptly changed the subject. Carr had checked his watch and he had the sense that he would soon be leaving.
‘I got to know the Icelanders a little when I was stationed over there in ’45. A baffling nation. They live on this rocky outpost of Europe in the far north of the Atlantic. It’s dark most of the year round and for centuries they lived in dwellings little better than holes in the ground; rocks and peat sods were the only building materials they had to hand. When I was there they were just beginning to emerge from the ground, just starting to build themselves proper houses. Yet despite all that they were a cultured people. Take those brothers, for example – they’d read Milton in Icelandic translation. Knew every word. They’d learnt long passages of Paradise Lost by heart.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘There aren’t that many Icelanders in the world. Let’s not reduce their numbers unnecessarily.’
‘I assure you we won’t.’
Miller looked down at the glass in his hand.
‘If I can’t make it to Argentina, will you send him home to me?’
‘As I see it, nothing has changed since we last went over the procedure. It’s only right that he should come back to you.’
‘I keep thinking about the temperatures. It can’t have got above freezing up there in fifty years. If he wasn’t badly injured, he ought to look just as he did. Strange how I can’t stop thinking about it. More as the years go by. It would be like going back in time.’
VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,
SATURDAY 30 JANUARY
The Delta operators worked tirelessly at clearing away the snow. They were digging from both sides of the wreck simultaneously, throwing up great mounds, and in the growing light the plane became steadily more distinct. The nose now jutted up at a twenty-degree angle, though the tail was still buried in dense, hard-packed ice on which it was difficult to make any impact. The door, which was supposed to be located on the left-hand side behind the row of windows, had yet to be uncovered. From what they could tell, the fuselage was largely intact and not much snow appeared to have penetrated inside.
Powerful floodlights shed a yellowish glow over the scene during the night, but as the daylight grew stronger they were switched off, their hot surfaces sending a fine vapour rising and curling over the crust of the glacier. A number of white tents stood huddled on the ice, each containing a gas lamp that burned night and day for warmth. Largest of all was the communications tent. Electricity was provided by portable oil-powered generators, and the surrounding area was littered with oil barrels, snowmobiles, tracked vehicles, and beyond them large pallets for transporting the wreckage.
The work was progressing well. The wind was light and the temperature on the glacier hovered at around –15°C. Some of the men had been detailed to work with pickaxes to break up the hard surface, while another small group was busy cutting the plane in half with powerful blowtorches. The sections would then be loaded on to the pallets and towed down to where the trucks were waiting to drive them west to Keflavík Airport. Ratoff stood outside the communications tent, watching the blue flare of the oxyacetylene and the showers of sparks which flew from the metal carcass. By his reckoning, the job was on schedule. A storm was forecast but it was expected to blow over quickly.
In many ways it was fortunate that the plane had been found in winter. Of course, the weather was changeable in the extreme and the conditions for travel might prove difficult, but their activities were protected by the darkness and the lack of traffic in the area at this time of year.
As Ratoff watched, the men on the far side of the plane wreck abandoned their digging and gathered to peer at something in the ice. After a moment, one of them yelled to him. He set off towards them, ducked under the nose of the plane and joined the soldiers, to be met by the sight of a leg protruding from the ice next to the fuselage. The leg was encased in a black army boot that reached almost up to the knee and greyish trousers. Ratoff ordered the men to uncover the body and soon the entire corpse, or what was left of it, became visible.
It looked to Ratoff as if it had been deliberately laid there beside the plane. Some of the passengers had evidently survived the crash and been capable of moving around and tending to those who had died on impact. The man was dressed in the uniform of a high-ranking German officer, though Ratoff did not recognise the insignia. He wore an Iron Cross at his neck, his hands were crossed over his breast and his face was covered with a cap. His other leg was missing: apparently it had been ripped off at the hip. The gaping wound, revealing the white bone, was clearly visible but the leg itself was nowhere to be seen. Ratoff bent over the body with the intention of examining its face but found the cap frozen to it.
Straightening up again, he ordered his men to free the body from the ice and take it into one of the tents. He wondered how long the passengers had survived after the crash-landing. The accident had happened at this time of year. Ratoff and his men were clad in special Arctic-survival gear but even so the cold pierced them to the bone. They also had the gas lamps and had been specially trained to endure the cold. The passengers of the plane, on the other hand, would have been utterly defenceless. Those who survived the crash must have slowly frozen to death. It could not have taken many days.
Thirty-five miles away, eight members of the Reykjavík Rescue Team stood staring down into the blue depths of a jagged fissure in the ice, from which they could hear the faint ringing of a mobile phone. They had set out shortly before daybreak and soon found the tracks of the snowmobiles; the trail had changed direction about two hours from the team’s base camp, heading due west towards a large belt of crevasses. Back at camp they succeeded in pinpointing the mobile phone signal and the rest had been easy. The snowmobiles appeared to have careered into the chasm at full speed, as if Elías and Jóhann had not seen it coming until it was too late.
One of the rescue team lowered himself into the crevasse on a rope; his two comrades lay at a depth of about eight metres. As he came alongside them, he could see that their injuries were horrific, as if they had crashed repeatedly into the walls of the fissure as they fell and the snowmobiles had then landed on top of them, rendering them almost unrecognisable. Their faces were reduced to raw, featureless pulp; eyes obscured by a mass of swelling, ears bloody clumps, bodies twisted into unnatural shapes as if every bone in them were broken. He had never seen anything like it before and, turning his head away, he vomited.
The team set to work, first hauling up the snowmobiles, then lowering stretchers on to which they strapped Elías and Jóhann. These they raised in turn with slow care to avoid bumping the battered bodies against the ice walls, and set the stretchers in the back of the team’s snow-cat. A bitterly cold north-easterly had started to blow, whirling up loose snow which cut into any exposed skin like razorblades and soon hid all sign of their tracks around the crevasse.
Júlíus stood watching the operation, his head bowed, oblivious to the cold. He had been leading expeditions for fifteen years; there had been accidents and injuries before but nobody in his charge had ever died. Now he had lost two young men for whom he was responsible, two boys whom he had given permission to leave camp to test-drive the new snowmobiles. He might have known they would get carried away, forget the time and end up in trouble, but this was far beyond his worst imaginings. He heard someone calling him from the vehicle. One of the volunteers, a medical student called Heimir, was resting two fingers over Elías’s neck. Júlíus waited, holding his breath.
‘It’s weak but there’s still a pulse,’ Heimir announced.
‘He’s alive?’
‘Can we tend to him here or should we take him back to camp and summon a helicopter?’
‘Like I say, he could go at any minute. It’s probably safest not to try and move him. We should do the best we can and call the helicopter. How quickly can it get here?’
‘It shouldn’t take long,’ the leader said, switching on his radio. ‘But I still think we should get him out before the storm hits. There’s severe weather expected any minute and we’d be better off back at camp than in the open. Let’s move.’
Suddenly Elías gave a faint moan. His blue lips moved slightly.
‘Is he trying to say something?’ Júlíus asked.
Heimir bent down to Elías’s bloodstained face and laid his ear to the boy’s mouth. After a minute he straightened up and looked at Júlíus.
‘He’s drifting in and out of consciousness.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘It was very unclear. I think he may have said “Kristín”.’
‘Yes, he would,’ Júlíus said. He remembered how he had assured her that Elías was safe and a pang of self-recrimination went through him.
But when he called the Coast Guard helicopter it transpired that the only available aircraft was currently fetching a wounded fisherman from a trawler halfway between Iceland and Greenland. In cases when the Coast Guard could not get to the scene, it was customary to call the Defense Force at Keflavík Airport and ask them for help. Júlíus was assured that the Coast Guard would contact the Americans and ask them to send a helicopter to pick up the two men.
Operation Napoleon Page 9