Operation Napoleon

by Arnaldur Indridason

  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?

  She stood up, went slowly over to the phone and lifted the receiver. The voice was foreign, the words English, the speaker almost certainly American. Could it be Steve? But no, this man sounded older.

  ‘Never cross Carr,’ said the voice on the phone, then hung up. The receiver was not slammed down but replaced gently, as if the caller was in no hurry.

  ‘Hello?’ Kristín said, but could hear only the dialling tone. She set the receiver down. Never cross Carr. Meaningless. Must have been a wrong number.

  God, she felt lethargic, as if she were coming down with something – flu, maybe. It was rampant at this time of year. She went back into the living room, the sentence spoken over the phone still echoing in her head.

  Never cross Carr. Never cross Carr. Never cross Carr.

  What did it mean? She stood in the middle of the living room, alone in the gloom, in dirty outdoor clothing, the sentence lodged in her head. Then she remembered something rather odd; an absurd incident – something she had surely dreamt. Holding her side, she peered into the hall. She stood quite still before moving closer to the door. It felt so vivid, so genuine, as if she had experienced it for real. She stood hesitantly by the door, before opening it and peering cautiously out into the dark entrance hall. Then she turned on the light and examined her door.

  Her gaze fell on a small, neat black hole, unmistakably made by a bullet. She raised her finger to it, touching it gently, and the tears welled up in her eyes. All at once she knew the truth – that it was not a dream, nor was this the day she had believed she had woken up on. It was much later, far too late. It was all over.

  She remembered Ratoff. Remembered Steve. Understood the voice on the phone.

  Never cross Carr.

  Kristín closed the door. A mirror hung in the hall and when she caught sight of her reflection in the glass on her way back to the living room, she did not recognise the figure in it: a gaunt-faced stranger with dark circles under her eyes and dirty hair, matted around her ear which was now red with fresh blood where the wound had reopened. She was wearing the thick snowsuit which was still stained with Steve’s blood. She did not know this woman. Did not know where she had come from. She stared at her, shaking her head with incomprehension.

  Steve. She remembered Steve.

  And then she watched the woman in the mirror crumple as she broke down in tears, felled by an overwhelming grief.

  TÓMASARHAGI, REYKJAVÍK

  That first half hour while her senses were returning was a blizzard of memories flooding back. She understood the phone call only too well now. Remembered Ratoff’s words on the plane and all that Miller had said. Remembered the body-bags, and Steve, and Jón, the old farmer who lived at the foot of the glacier, the shooting outside the pub, being hunted all over the US base. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Elías calling her from the glacier. Oh God, Elías!

  There were two major hospitals in the Reykjavík area, the National and the City Hospital. She rang the National Hospital, the larger of the two, and was put through to the information desk where she asked about her brother and after a short wait was told that there was no one by that name among the patients. Next she called the City Hospital, told them her brother’s name and waited, holding her breath, while the girl who answered checked the admissions list.

  ‘Yes,’ came the confirmation at last. ‘He’s here.’

  It transpired that he was in intensive care but off the critical list and would soon return to a general ward. She could visit him whenever she liked.

  ‘Though it’s unusual for visitors to come this early,’ the nurse remarked.

  ‘Early?’ Kristín said.

  ‘So early in the morning.’

  ‘Sorry, what day is it?’

  ‘It’s Tuesday, madam.’

  Kristín hung up. It had been Friday when the Jehovah’s Witnesses tried to kill her. Only four days ago. A whole lifetime compressed into four short days. Pulling on a coat, she ran out of the flat, then on second thoughts turned back and called a cab to come to the house.

  ‘To the City Hospital,’ she said, once she was in the back seat.

  The city was coming to life. People were getting up, seeing to their children, leaving for work. Large flakes of snow spun lazily to earth. She felt oddly disconnected, as if she were detached, watching herself from outside; as if this was not her world and her normal life were going on peacefully in some other parallel dimension. As she paid for the taxi she had a strong intuition that she should not be using her debit card. Why, she did not know.

  The nurse who took her to see Elías handed her a mask and made her don a paper robe and blue plastic shoe-covers. They walked down a long, brightly lit corridor and entered a dark room where a man lay motionless, connected to a mass of tubes which in turn were attached to a variety of machines that hummed or beeped at regular intervals. His face was obscured by an oxygen mask but Kristín knew that it was Elías. She stopped beside his bed and at last rested her eyes on him, unable to hold back the tears. Only his head was visible above the covers and she noticed that he had a bandage over one eye.

  ‘Elías,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Elías?’ she repeated slightly louder. He did not move.

  She longed to gather him up in her arms but held back, inhibited by all the tubes. The tears spilled over and ran down her face, her body trembled and shook. Elías was alive. He would live. He would recover and before long he would be able to come home. She remembered being in the same position when he was hit by a car all those years ago: but she no longer felt guilty. That at least had gone. She knew she could not be held responsible for Elías’s life – or anyone else’s. It was beyond her power to decide life or death.

  ‘Are you Kristín?’ asked a weary voice. Flinching, she half-turned. A man had arrived unnoticed and was quietly watching her. He was tall, with a thin face and body, and a thick mane of black hair that he combed straight back off a high forehead. There was a bandage round his head.

  ‘Are you Kristín?’ the man repeated slowly.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘You can’t be expected to recognise me with this turban,’ the man said, squinting up at it. ‘But we’ve met once before. My name’s Júlíus.’

  ‘Júlíus!’ she said quietly, as if to herself. ‘My God, are you Júlíus?’

  Going over, she put her arms round him and they exchanged a fierce embrace. She gripped him as if he were the one fixed point in her existence. Eventually, he took hold of her shoulders and loosened her clasp.

  ‘They released me yesterday and I came straight to the hospital,’ he said. ‘Elías is going to make it. They told me they managed to save his eye.’

  ‘His eye?’

  ‘One of his eyes was badly damaged bu
t they managed to save his sight.’

  Kristín looked at Elías. He breathed calmly, his machines pulsing and humming reassuringly.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.

  ‘More to the point, what happened to you?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. I mean I don’t know how they did it. I think they must have drugged me – there’s a mark on my neck, here – and delivered me home. I woke up about an hour ago to find myself in my flat. I’ve been getting clearer and clearer flashbacks since then but I think there’s a lot still missing. What about you?’

  ‘Well, they took me prisoner and forced me to go with them when they decamped from the glacier. The man who cracked my skull kept asking me where you were. He couldn’t understand how you could have vanished but I pretended not to know anything. When we got down from the glacier there were trucks waiting to transport all the equipment and I was put in one of them. I don’t know how long it took but he was constantly in my face, making threats. He even threatened me with a knife.’

  ‘That must have been Bateman.’

  ‘If you say so. I don’t know what he was called but the weird thing was that the truck suddenly stopped and some soldiers burst in and from what I could tell arrested him. They dragged him out of the truck, frisked him, and confiscated some papers he was carrying. I didn’t see him again after that.’

  The wheels of her addled memory turned slowly. ‘Confiscated some papers?’

  ‘Yes. He had them in his pocket.’

  ‘And what happened to the papers?’

  ‘Someone set fire to them in front of his nose, without so much as looking at them. The ash blew away. They left me alone after that.’

  ‘Where did they let you go?’

  ‘Outside the gates of the US base. I watched the convoy disappear inside. It was dark when we left the glacier and dark when we reached Keflavík so I’ve no idea how long it took. I got myself to town and made contact with the team on the glacier. The Americans prevented us from coming to join you. They shot at us.’

  Júlíus handed her a newspaper, pointing to the headline: RESCUE TEAM ATTACKED BY MILITARY. The article was accompanied by photos of the team’s bullet-riddled vehicle. He handed her another paper: SHOTS FIRED AT REYKJAVÍK RESCUE TEAM.

  ‘We contacted the media the moment we were released,’ he continued. ‘The Americans have issued an apology. Army spokesmen have been busy on the TV and radio, parroting a story about conventional winter exercises involving Dutch and Belgian NATO forces in collaboration with the US army, and claiming that it was never their intention to obstruct us. They deeply regret that certain soldiers overreacted to a perceived threat and fired at us. They promise that they’ll be holding an inquiry and that compensation will be offered. But they disclaim all knowledge of Elías and Jóhann’s fate. Deny categorically that it had anything to do with them, or that they know anything about you.’

  ‘And what do the Yanks say about the plane?’

  ‘They have no knowledge of any German aircraft on the glacier. The radio news reported that the soldiers were searching for satellite-tracking equipment that had been lost several years ago by a plane crossing the glacier. The TV news, on the other hand, was saying the soldiers had been rehearsing a rescue mission involving a staged air crash, using bits of an old DC-8. And the evening paper mentioned a hunt for lost gold reserves. You see what we’re up against. They’ve been thorough, all right.’

  Kristín took a deep breath and thought about what Júlíus had said. ‘And Steve?’

  For the first time since he arrived Júlíus looked awkward, his authority deserting him. ‘They say he’s missing, Kristín. They claim they’re trying to track him down but expect it to take time.’

  ‘I see.’

  Júlíus searched her face for a reaction but it was unreadable.

  ‘How have the Icelandic government played it?’ she asked.

  ‘By saying that they granted permission for the exercises.’

  ‘Nothing about the plane or Steve?’

  ‘I told them about the plane and Steve’s murder and that you were missing and probably being held against your will by the Americans. It’s all in the paper, but the army won’t discuss it. They dismiss it all as “unfounded allegations”. But you’ve turned up now, and soon Elías will come round and there’ll be three of us. People must believe us. They’ll have to, don’t you think? The three of us together?’

  Kristín looked from Júlíus to Elías and back again.

  ‘They threatened me, Júlíus,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’m scared. I’ve had enough. They threatened to harm Elías, and you too. I want it to stop, I’ve had enough.’

  It was beyond her to explain her feelings about the ordeal she had been through or the effect it had had on her. She felt as if she were alone in the world with no one to turn to. Perhaps she would tell Júlíus what had happened once she had had some rest and recovered a little but right now all she wanted was to be left in peace.

  ‘But we can’t give in now,’ he protested. ‘Where were you? What was the plane on the glacier carrying? We owe it to the others’

  ‘I saw how they treated the man who did this to Elías and killed Steve. I think I was meant to see it. As a demonstration. As if they had held a court martial, found him guilty and sentenced him, and that that ought to satisfy me. If I pursue it, they know where to find me. That was the message I got.’

  Júlíus had no answer to this.

  ‘Come on,’ Kristín said, coming to a sudden decision. ‘Let’s go into the waiting room and talk there.’

  They left Elías and walked along the corridor to a waiting room with three chairs, a table and some out-of-date magazines on a shelf. They sat down and Kristín described everything that had happened to her since they parted. She repeated what Miller had told her about Operation Napoleon, and the threats made by the man, almost certainly Carr, who appeared to have been in charge. She could remember nothing at all between talking to him on board the transport plane and waking up in her own living room that morning.

  Júlíus had a hard time taking in the implications of the operation. ‘That’s incredible, unbelievable! Who on earth could have come up with such an idea? Do you really believe it? About Napoleon, I mean,’ he asked. ‘Do you believe they moved him from Berlin?’

  ‘I think they’ve behaved exactly as one would expect them to if they wanted to prevent the story from leaking. If the plane was carrying information that sensitive, they would want to know what happened to it, establish whether it had emerged from the ice and make sure that no one discovered its secret, whether or not the operation the papers mapped out was ever followed through. They’d send soldiers to the glacier to remove the plane and all it contained, as far as possible without attracting any media attention. You can imagine what would happen if it was found to be true.’

  ‘And if we take our conspiracy theory to the press . . .’

  ‘We’ll be a laughing stock, Júlíus. Nothing more.’

  Neither of them spoke. They sat there in the blandly impersonal surroundings of the hospital lounge with its synthetic flowers, quietly contemplating their separate fates.

  REYKJAVÍK,

  AUGUST

  The days passed, turning into weeks and months, and the media furore caused by the US army opening fire on an Icelandic rescue team gradually died down. Kristín spent much of her time at the hospital with Elías who soon regained consciousness and was able to tell her about his encounter with Ratoff. His recovery was slow but steady. Their father returned from abroad and learnt about Elías’s condition, but he did not seem particularly interested in hearing the details.

  ‘All this bloody messing about on snowmobiles,’ he said. ‘It’s time you grew up.’ Four days later he was off on another trip.

  Kristín broke the news to Elías about his friend Jóhann. To her surprise, Jóhann’s parents were satisfied with the explanation that the two men had fallen into a crevasse. Kristín and Elías de
bated whether to tell them the truth and finally decided they would. Once Elías was stronger, they asked Jóhann’s parents to the hospital and told them about the circumstances of their son’s death and the eventual fate of his murderer. They chose not to mention anything relating to the German plane. Although Elías had witnessed the incident, Kristín pointed out, it was obvious that the army would not admit to any kind of violence, let alone murder, and no witnesses would come forward from among its ranks to support their statement.

  Jóhann’s parents, however, a wealthy, middle-aged couple, were determined to find out the truth. They called on Elías, Kristín and Júlíus as witnesses but as Kristín had suspected, the charges they submitted to the public prosecutor’s office and the subsequent investigation failed to yield any results and their case was not considered strong enough to mount a prosecution. The army spokesmen declared themselves astonished by the accusation that they were harbouring a killer in their ranks; they disclaimed all knowledge of the presence of Delta Force operators or a C-17 plane in the country. The legal proceedings dragged on, the media whipped themselves into a new feeding frenzy, but this too ultimately fizzled out.

  Runólfur’s murder remained unsolved. Kristín was summoned again and again by the police for cross-examination but stubbornly insisted on her innocence. After an exhaustive investigation, the police concluded that there were no grounds for prosecution. The decision was taken on the recommendation of the two detectives handling the case, one of whom was the sympathetic man that Kristín had talked to on the phone while at Jón’s farm. The case ended up deadlocked between the Icelandic police and the Defense Force in Keflavík.

  It was announced that Steve had been found not far from the Andrews movie theatre on the base, shot in the head by an unidentified gunman, and his body was repatriated to the States for burial.

  During all the legal proceedings in which she was involved over the following years Kristín never once spoke of the plane’s secret, but in her spare time she read up on the history of Nazi Germany and the fall of the Third Reich. To her surprise, she discovered that many different theories had surfaced over the years as to Adolf Hitler’s fate. She knew he had left orders for his remains to be burnt in the Berlin bunker when the Russians took the city. After the war, however, many doubted that this had truly been his fate. She learnt that the doctor’s report on his remains, published by the Russians some time after his death on 30 April 1945, concluded that the body was probably that of Hitler; they also claimed immediately after the war ended that they had compared the skull to his dental records and had confirmed that it was Hitler’s. Yet before long rumours began to circulate that he was being held prisoner in the British-occupied sector of Berlin, while at the summit meeting in Potsdam in July of 1945, Stalin announced that the Russians were ignorant of his fate; they had not found his body, and Stalin even hinted that he might be hiding in Spain or South America. This gave birth to a host of wild conjectures that he was staying in a Spanish monastery or on a South American ranch. Kristín came across yet another theory that the British had put him on board a submarine and taken him to a remote island. Indeed, towards the end of the war Stalin had suspected the British of engaging in secret talks with the Germans.