Operation Napoleon

by Arnaldur Indridason

  Miller paused.

  ‘My brother was supposed to fly him,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Your brother?’ Kristín said, her eyes on the body-bag.

  ‘He didn’t know. Didn’t know the real purpose of the journey, I mean. I was going to tell him when we met but I never got the chance.’

  ‘But this is absurd!’ Kristín said.

  ‘Yes, absurd,’ Miller agreed. ‘That’s the word for it. Can you imagine what would have happened if news had got out that the Americans had helped him to escape and kept him in detention?’

  ‘But the Russians got him.’

  ‘No. Somewhere near the bunker, in the chaos and wreckage of Berlin, the Russians found the burnt body of a man who could have been anybody. It suited them, and us, and everybody else to make certain assumptions, to draw conclusions. In any case they later mislaid the remains. That made proving his identity impossible and allowed the space for what were always written off as crackpot conspiracy theories to flourish.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘I haven’t read the documents. I hardly know anything, really. It was only a plan.’

  ‘Do you mean they never followed it through?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. I don’t know if they did. I don’t think any one person was in charge. People were involved on a need-to-know basis.’

  ‘But you mentioned Eichmann. You said the Americans had directed the Israelis to Eichmann when they stumbled across the trail.’

  ‘I’m only inferring,’ Miller said and Kristín could see that he was belatedly trying to backtrack, regretting having said so much. He had become wary now, unwilling to compromise himself any further. He looked vaguely ashamed of himself, somehow childlike. Even though the genie was out of the bottle, long-held habits of discretion were vainly doing battle with this newer taste for confession.

  ‘Where is Napoleon?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know.’

  ‘They put him on an island?’

  But Miller had come to the end. His shoulders slumped, his head bowed, he looked physically smaller and more fragile, a husk of a man finally overcome by burdens of grief and concealment.

  ‘Which island?’

  Silence.

  ‘After all these years, what are you scared of? Can’t you see it’s over?’

  Before he could answer, if he ever meant to, the dim light of his flickering torch went out and they were plunged into darkness.

  C-17 TRANSPORT PLANE, ATLANTIC AIR SPACE,

  SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0615 GMT

  From the sudden popping of their ears they sensed that the plane was losing altitude. Surely it was too soon for them to be beginning their descent? They waited, listening. After a while a new noise began above the drone of the engines but neither recognised it. Kristín crawled cautiously through the wreckage of the Junkers’ fuselage to the gap that Miller had cut in the sheeting. Inch by inch, her chest hammering, she craned her head out to see the vast ramp which formed the aft door of the plane slowly lowering. The night was moonlit outside and in the blue-white radiance she saw the silhouettes of figures standing by the opening. For a few seconds she feared she would be sucked into the black void before she realised that the cargo hold was not pressurised.

  She squeezed through the gap and down on to the floor of the hold, stealing along the fuselage towards the men. There were three of them but trying to hear a word they were saying was hopeless; a freezing wind blew in violent gusts and the noise of the plane reached an ear-splitting level as the view of the night sky grew larger. Her back pressed against the struts of the fuselage, she crept along the left-hand wall, hidden among the shadows. The men were standing only a few feet in front of her. Now that she could make out their faces, she realised they were strangers. She was certain neither Bateman nor Ratoff was among them. She took care to keep at a safe distance, and was about to return to Miller when she saw a pallet emerge from deep within the dark bowels of the plane.

  As it became more distinct she realised that there was a figure lying on top of it. He was flat on his back, lashed down, his arms splayed and his legs bound together, as if he were being crucified. His eyes were fixed on the opening which was slowly but inexorably drawing closer. It was Ratoff. Kristín saw that he was stripped to the waist; his torso smeared in blood, his face criss-crossed by lacerations. He approached the void at a snail’s pace, struggling with all his might to free himself, straining at the bonds that tied him down, straining to sit up. But his cries of terror were drowned out by the overwhelming din of the engines and the boiling turbulence of the air, and his bucking, screaming progress was reduced to a mesmerising dumb show.

  The three men completely ignored him, paying him no more attention than an item of freight. As the aft door completed its slow yawning, Kristín watched them take refuge at a point further inside the plane. She gazed and gazed, watching Ratoff rolling closer to the lip of the mechanised rollers, savouring the loathing which blazed up inside her. She felt once again the ache in her side where her flesh had been punctured, saw Elías in his clutches begging for mercy, saw Steve collapsing with a bullet in his face.

  As Ratoff drew near, she rose up, forgetting herself so far as to step out of her hiding place and walk to meet the pallet. She could not take her eyes off the monster who had shot Steve without the slightest provocation; she was drawn to him as if magnetised.

  A bone-chilling gust of wind battered and tore at her, the air frozen and thin, but she did not hesitate as she made her way to Ratoff and looked down at him while he writhed and struggled to free himself from his bonds. With horrified fascination she took in the ingenious cruelties they had inflicted on him: his fingers bloody at the ends where the nails had been extracted, both thumbs missing, his nose broken and black holes where several teeth had been kicked in, a patch of skin flayed from his chest. She felt not a single twinge of compassion. The rollers screeched relentlessly onwards.

  Ratoff was staring at the approaching void in agonised horror when Kristín reached him. Seeming to sense her presence, he reluctantly tore his eyes from the door. His face twisted in a grimace. Disbelief, confusion and desperation could be read in his eyes. He jerked and winced as his body was racked by a spasm of pain, then seemed almost to laugh, before bursting into a trembling, shaking fit of coughing.

  ‘Never cross Carr,’ Ratoff whispered when she bent over him. Blood bubbled through his split lips. ‘Take it from me. Do I look convincing? Never cross Carr.’

  Kristín did not speak. The pallet crawled on as she watched.

  ‘I must . . . Kristín, isn’t that your name? I must say, you’re . . .’

  Kristín did not hear how the sentence ended. The noise was deafening now and Ratoff writhed in yet another hopeless attempt to break free.

  ‘Help me!’ he croaked at her. ‘For Christ’s sake, untie me.’

  She looked down at him, followed him a little further, then stopped. She no longer felt anger or hatred towards him. She felt nothing. She was drained of all emotion. The pallet continued its measured progress, as a coffin might pass through a curtain, and she watched it tilt, pause, then fall as Ratoff vanished into the black void. When the aft door began to close again, Kristín remained standing as if rooted to the spot. Her strength had run out, she was on the point of collapse, overwhelmed by the full weight of all the nights without sleep, all the horrors she had witnessed. She no longer cared about anything any more and she flirted briefly with the idea of simply disappearing, of stepping into the black eternity while the opportunity presented itself. It would be so easy to let herself fall, to put an end to her ordeal, to the pain and exhaustion and guilt over Steve, to silence the accusing voices in her head, telling her over and over that it was her fault he had died.

  The feeling passed.

  A great stillness and quiet fell again inside the hold once the aft door had closed. Asking herself how much of this scene she should tell Miller, Kristín turned, only t
o find herself face to face with a tall, imposing, elderly man, wearing the uniform of a US general. Behind him stood three other men, the same three that she had just seen shepherd Ratoff out of the aft door. Miller too was standing beside the tall man, who now held out his hand to her.

  ‘Kristín, I presume,’ Carr said.

  C-17 TRANSPORT PLANE, ATLANTIC AIR SPACE,

  SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0630 GMT

  Carr took a seat with Kristín and Miller in the C-17’s cramped flight cabin. Kristín did not know what had become of the other men, nor how many other people were on board. No one had been introduced, nobody had a name; she felt she was in a world of nameless shadows.

  A cup of coffee was handed to her. She could not remember when she had last eaten – perhaps at Jón’s farm, perhaps not. She had no idea what day it was, what week or month, nor how long she had been awake. All she knew was that she was on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. And Steve was dead.

  ‘Colonel Miller’s trying to convince me that you know nothing about the sensitive contents of this German plane which we have gone to great lengths to retrieve,’ Carr said. ‘He says there aren’t enough Icelanders in the world.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Kristín asked. She was too shattered and depressed to take in much about this man. He was just another in the string of shadowy figures she had encountered over the last forty-eight hours.

  ‘That’s of no importance.’

  Never cross Carr, Kristín thought. Behind her eyelids burned the image of Ratoff lashed to the pallet.

  ‘Are you Carr?’ she asked.

  ‘As far as we’re concerned, the mission’s over. We just need to tie up a few loose ends and . . .’

  A man appeared at the door, entered the cabin and bent to whisper a few words in Carr’s ear. Carr nodded and the man went out again.

  ‘You shit,’ Kristín muttered in a low voice.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Carr said.

  ‘You fucking American shit.’

  His grey eyes appraised her coolly from behind his glasses. She read nothing in his gaze – neither amusement nor offence. ‘I can understand how you feel,’ he said.

  ‘Understand?’ she laughed. ‘How could you understand anything?’ As Kristín’s indignation rose, she caught the look of alarm on Miller’s face. He tried to caution her but Carr silenced him.

  ‘You are murderers. You have violated every law and standard of decency. You disgust me – so don’t claim to understand how I feel,’ Kristín went on.

  Carr waited patiently until she was finished. ‘For what it is worth, I regret what was done to your brother and his friend,’ Carr said. ‘It should never have happened.’

  Kristín moved faster than Carr had expected but it was all over in seconds: she sprang out of her chair and struck him in the face so hard that his head rocked back. Miller shouted at her – she had no idea what – and two men materialised behind her and forced her down into her seat. Carr rubbed his cheek, which was already turning a mottled red.

  ‘You saw what became of Ratoff, I assume,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Is that supposed to appease me? Seeing that sadist wheeled out of the plane?’

  ‘He overestimated his usefulness and was punished. I didn’t see you trying to help him.’

  ‘You shit!’

  ‘Don’t, Kristín,’ Miller warned. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘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 urg
e 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.