Operation Napoleon

by Arnaldur Indridason

  They had kept in touch as far as circumstances allowed. His brother saw more action than he ever did and Miller was dogged by worry about him. They met only twice during the war, once in London, and again in Paris, when Miller gave his brother his assignment. They would write, however, keeping up to date with each other’s movements, and looked forward to being reunited after the war.

  The assignment required a pilot from the Allied forces, one familiar with the route, who could make the necessary contact with the Allied air traffic control centres. The mission was to fly to Iceland and then to cross the Atlantic. His brother by this stage could have flown it blindfolded so Miller had put forward his name as pilot. The war was in its final phase and he had believed that he had his brother’s best interests at heart; they would meet up in Reykjavík and fly on to South America, far from enemy planes and anti-aircraft defences, where they could enjoy a few days’ leave. It was a straightforward mission, a safe way of ticking off another precious parcel of time survived before the war ground to its inevitable end.

  Miller was kept ignorant of where the idea had originated and who was behind its implementation. He did not even know which division of the army had formulated it. All personnel involved were given only partial information, with no more than a handful of senior officers aware of its ultimate purpose. Miller was merely following orders, conducting his part of the operation as efficiently as possible. He did not know the details, did not know the agenda of the Allied–German talks, or the identities of those who attended the meeting in Paris. All that was revealed later. At first the plan had been for the Germans to provide an Allied plane that they had in their possession, but this course was abandoned and they instead decided to paint a Junkers Ju 52 in Allied colours.

  Miller had arrived in Iceland with two other intelligence agents two days before his brother was scheduled to fly the German delegation over from Berlin. The agents took rooms at Hotel Borg. Reykjavík was packed with US servicemen but they avoided company, kept a low profile and checked the facilities at the aerodrome the British had built within the city limits at Vatnsm¥yri. The plane would have a three-hour stopover in Reykjavík to take on provisions and refuel before continuing its journey west. For the next two days the weather forecast was fine; after that the outlook was less clear, but there was an inevitable degree of uncertainty at this time of year.

  The meeting in Berlin had dragged on. Miller did not know why. They had been issued with a rigid schedule from which they were not to deviate under any circumstances, but it was no good. By the time his brother took off, a deep low-pressure weather system had formed to the south of Iceland and was moving steadily towards the north-east of the country and the barometer was plunging at an alarming rate. Snow and low visibility were now forecast. Air traffic control in Prestwick, Scotland, was the last to make contact with the plane four hours after it left Berlin. By then it was north of the Scottish coast but still within their airspace. After that, whether its radio had stopped working or not, no further news was received until the brothers turned up in the village of Höfn to report that they had seen a plane flying so low that it must have crashed on the glacier.

  Miller was informed as soon as it became clear that contact with the plane had been lost; somehow he knew instantly that it had crashed. He sensed it. He waited in a hangar on the airfield, hoping in vain to hear from his brother. Days passed and the storm that had raged in the south-east of the country now passed over Reykjavík, trapping people indoors for days on end. It was Miller’s belief that the plane had either crashed into the sea or that his brother had turned back to Scotland when the conditions deteriorated and gone down there. He clung to the forlorn hope that his brother might have survived the crash-landing and would eventually turn up, staggering out of one wilderness or another to some outpost of civilisation. But it was not to be.

  When news of a plane sighting in the vicinity of Vatnajökull reached the occupying force in Reykjavík, Miller was appointed leader of the rescue mission. He had spent the entire time since the plane lost contact wandering between Hotel Borg and the aerodrome on Vatnsmy¥ri, preoccupied with potential explanations and scenarios, unable to go anywhere or do anything. The intelligence officers were scheduled to leave Iceland shortly and return to Washington but Miller could not bear the prospect of never learning his brother’s fate. When the report came in from Höfn, he felt as if he had received a cold electric shock. He knew his brother was found. He might even be alive, though no one appreciated better than Miller how remote a possibility this was. At the very least he would be able to take his body home with him.

  What he did not know were the particular difficulties of the wintry land he found himself in. It was impossible to fly in the storm that had now blown up and he was dismayed to discover that driving to Höfn along the south coast was made impossible by wide, unbridgeable rivers that flowed from the ice cap over vast glacial outwash plains to the sea. The northern route was the only alternative, despite its many challenges. Major General Cortlandt Parker, commander of the US occupying force in Iceland, provided him with two hundred of his best men, some of whom had taken part in exercises on the Eiríksjökull glacier earlier that winter. Few had experience in searching in snow, however. They followed rough winter tracks around the country, at times digging the convoy of vehicles out of snowdrifts as high as a man’s head. The days wasted on the northern route were hard to endure for Miller.

  Their luck improved, however, and they had good weather and reasonable conditions for their drive south through the East Fjords, finally reaching Höfn on the fourth day. Miller headed directly to the foot of the glacier to find the two brothers who had been the last to sight the plane; they were eager to help. They told him about the glacier and warned him against high expectations. Miller was surprised to find how easy it was to approach the ice cap from their farm, despite the heavy snowfall over the last few days. Pointing him and his men in the direction they believed the plane had taken, the brothers accompanied him to the glacier, lent him horses and assisted in any way they could. They ended up becoming friends.

  But it was all in vain. Miller had seen it in the brothers’ faces the first time he explained his mission. Saw the glances they exchanged. The soldiers carried out a painstaking search, dividing the glacier systematically into sections and combing the ice in long lines, inserting slender three-metre-long poles into the snow. But without success. All they found was the plane’s nose wheel. Every other fragment and trace had been consumed by the glacier.

  The day Miller gave orders to abandon the hunt, he walked out further on to the ice sheet than before, far beyond the outer limit of their earlier searches, scanning the surroundings for hours on end before finally heading back, defeated, to his company. The weather had turned fine and the storm now seemed a distant memory. The sun shone high in a clear blue sky and there was not a cloud to be seen in the perfect stillness. The glacier stretched out, a pristine white expanse, as far as the eye could see. Miller could not help but be struck by its magnificent desolation, and would later think of this moment of solitude, cold and calm when recalling Iceland.

  But beneath this awareness of the beauty of his surroundings ran the churning, appalling feeling that somewhere below his feet, in the ice, at this very moment, his brother was trapped inside the plane, dying of cold and hunger.

  C-17 TRANSPORT PLANE, ATLANTIC AIR SPACE,

  SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0600 GMT

  Kristín studied the brothers, now reunited after all these years, one so young, the other stamped by conflict and old age.

  ‘So you were looking for your brother as much as Napoleon,’ she said eventually, trying to feel her way, to encourage Miller to continue his story. Every utterance was now calculated to lead him to believe that she knew more than he had suspected. Miller raised his eyes from his brother to Kristín’s face and stared at her. At last, he seemed to come to a decision.

  ‘Napoleon wasn’t on board the plane,’ he said in the same q
uiet voice. Kristín could not hide her excitement.

  ‘Where was he then?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Miller said, his eyes returning to his brother. ‘And I don’t know where he is now. I’m not sure anyone does any longer.’

  He fell silent and Kristín waited.

  ‘You have to understand that only a tightly controlled number of people within the army knew about Operation Napoleon,’ Miller continued at last. ‘Even I never knew exactly what it entailed, what the documents contained. I only knew the contents by hearsay. I was nothing but a pawn, an errand boy, assigned to solve a specific problem. My brother too.’

  He trailed off again.

  ‘I believe it was conceived and planned by a handful of generals based in Europe – American generals, that is. I don’t know where the idea came from or who took the initiative, but however it came about, talks were entered into with the Germans. Ever since it had become clear that the Germans were going to lose the war there had been discussions about how Europe would be split into Allied- and Russian-occupied territories. By the time the end was approaching and the Russians were pouring into Eastern Europe, people were beginning to talk in earnest about whether we should invade Russia and finish off what the Germans had failed to do; arrange an armistice with the Germans, prior to tackling the Red Army. The only person to float the idea openly was General Patton but no one took him seriously. People were tired of war. They wanted peace. Understandably.’

  ‘But what’s the point of all this?’ Kristín asked impatiently. ‘This is all common knowledge. Even I’ve heard of it. There was an article in the British papers recently saying that Churchill had drawn up plans to invade Russia as soon as Germany had surrendered.’

  ‘Operation Unthinkable was its name,’ Miller replied.

  ‘Exactly. That can hardly be the secret your people are prepared to torture and kill for. It’s old news.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, it’s quite a big question, in the light of history,’ Miller said. ‘The division of Europe. The Cold War. The nuclear threat. The Vietnam War. Could we have avoided all that? We defeated the Japanese and today they’re an economic superpower. Might the same have happened in Russia?’

  Now he’s just wasting time, Kristín thought. Can’t he see that we have no time? I have to have answers now.

  Vytautas Carr was sitting in the flight cabin. Since he could no longer hear Ratoff’s screams above the noise of the engines, he concluded that he must have given in. They all did in the end, even the Ratoffs of this world. It was merely a question of when. He did not know what they had done to him, did not want to know; the sordid details were irrelevant. They were short of time and Ratoff had been shown no mercy. It was futile to withstand the pincer movement of drugs and physical horrors; and no one understood that better than Ratoff himself.

  Carr looked out into the night. He would retire when all this was over. It was his last assignment and he felt as if he had spent his whole life waiting to be able to close this chapter. To be able to draw a line under this little footnote left over from the war years, one which the world had forgotten and no one cared about any more.

  One of Carr’s men materialised beside him and bent to his ear.

  ‘We have it, sir.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’ Carr asked.

  ‘Just about, sir,’ the man answered.

  ‘Have you made arrangements to retrieve the documents?’

  ‘It won’t be a problem, sir. They’re on their way to the base at Keflavík. We’ve arranged to have the convoy intercepted and the documents destroyed. As you asked.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What should we do with Ratoff, sir?’

  ‘We have no further need of him. Just do whatever’s necessary. And don’t tell me about it.’

  ‘Understood. There’s nothing further, sir.’

  ‘One thing – the bags. Have you checked the body-bags since we took off?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It’s probably unnecessary. The temperature back there should be low enough to preserve the bodies. Not that it matters. Except perhaps to Miller.’

  Carr paused.

  ‘Where is Miller?’ he asked.

  ‘No idea, sir. I thought he was with you.’

  ‘He was here not long ago. Find him and bring him back.’

  ‘Yes, sir. By the way, I checked on the bags when the two halves of the plane were loaded and all seven were present.’

  Carr was silent. He looked again through the cockpit window at the blackness beyond. The man was turning away.

  ‘Seven? You mean six,’ Carr corrected him.

  ‘No, sir. There are seven bags.’

  ‘No, there were only six bodies on the glacier. There should have been seven but one of them was missing. There are six bags.’

  ‘There are seven bags, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why seven? That can’t be right.’

  ‘Sir, I couldn’t say. But I definitely counted seven bags.’

  ‘It was the second round of talks with the Nazis,’ Miller went on, his eyes on his brother’s face. ‘We were testing the flight route and the plane, at the same time as transporting the gold and some of the Nazis in the negotiating committee. These two crates were meant as an appetiser. They still had to agree on a final destination in Argentina.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Nazis.’

  ‘Were they escaping?’

  ‘Of course. They all wanted to escape. Cowardly assholes, the whole damn lot of them.’

  ‘Lots of them escaped to South America,’ Kristín said, willing him to continue. Since the old man appeared to offer no threat to her, she had temporarily forgotten the danger she was in. At the forefront of her mind was the insistent conviction that she had to fish for more information, that any scrap she could glean might prove crucial. She was in the endgame now, and though she dimly expected some final confrontation, she knew that she would need to gather everything she had if she was to evade the trap which was closing around her. ‘Adolf Eichmann,’ she added. ‘He was caught in Argentina.’

  ‘I believe we let them have Eichmann,’ Miller replied.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We led them to Eichmann.’

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘Besides being ruthless, Mossad are tireless. Like bloodhounds. You can’t keep anything hidden from them indefinitely. When the Israelis had sniffed out too much, we arranged things to look as if the trail led to Eichmann. They were satisfied and took the bait. But they would never have found him without our intelligence.’

  Kristín had the sensation of being in freefall. Her mind was at once quite empty and yet overwhelmed with trying to take in the implications of Miller’s revelation. The individual words were barely registering as sounds but the sense of what he was saying seemed to penetrate her mind obscurely. Her face betrayed no emotion, no great astonishment as Miller went on. She had, it might have looked to Miller, entered a state of suspended animation.

  ‘The Germans were in no position to lay down conditions for a ceasefire. They were defeated; it was only a question of time before the war ended. They were so terrified the Reds would reach Berlin first that many of them were prepared to join us in the final months if we could be trusted to turn on the Russians.’

  ‘The trail to Eichmann?’ Kristín said, as if to herself. ‘Whose trail were they on then?’

  ‘A Swedish count acted as intermediary between us and the Nazis,’ Miller continued, ignoring her question. ‘It may have been his idea, put to a handful of people. Or the Nazis may have raised it first. Himmler wanted to do a deal with the Allies over fighting the Communists; he counted on becoming the new head of government. Meanwhile Churchill drafted a plan to attack Russia with German support and I believe the idea was hatched after that. The Nazis couldn’t dictate conditions but they could put in a request. I don’t think the plan originated with the US generals but once they considered it, the idea
didn’t seem so preposterous. After all, there was a historical precedent. There was Napoleon.’

  ‘What’s Napoleon got to do with all this? Why Napoleon?’

  But to Kristín’s horror, Miller appeared to catch himself, to come out of the mist of recollection and confession into which he had drifted, and to regain some measure of control.

  ‘I can’t tell you anything else. I’ve already said more than enough.’

  ‘You haven’t said anything.’

  ‘That’s because I don’t know anything for certain. I never saw the documents.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The Operation Napoleon papers. I never saw them. Never saw what the final plan looked like.’

  ‘Who drafted it?’

  ‘I can’t tell you any more. And you don’t want to know any more. Believe me. You don’t want to know. No one wants to know. It doesn’t matter any more. It’s irrelevant. It’s all buried and forgotten.’

  ‘What?’

  Miller looked down at his brother without speaking, and Kristín saw tears welling up in his eyes. She did not understand what he was insinuating and was fast losing patience with his evasions; here he was, perched on the precipice of giving up whatever precious information he had guarded so jealously for so long. She fought back the instinct to shake the last shreds out of him.

  ‘Ask yourself what became of Napoleon,’ Miller said abruptly.

  ‘What became of him? He died in exile on St Helena. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Well, they did the same thing.’

  Kristín stared at the old man, forgetting to breathe.

  ‘That’s why they called it Operation Napoleon.’

  ‘And Napoleon?’

  ‘He was to be allowed to take his dog with him. A German shepherd called Blondi. Nothing else. I’ve wondered about this all my life but never had any confirmation. I don’t know if the suggestion that his life should be spared originated as part of the negotiations with the German war cabinet, or if he was handed over to the Allies to smooth the way for negotiations, or if the British and Americans were competing with the Russians to get to him first. Perhaps there was another, more obscure reason. The Germans’ last hope was to drive a wedge between the Allies, to encourage friction between them. After all, they knew Churchill was no friend of the Russians.’