Operation Napoleon Part 17

'There is one thing we need to ask you, gentlemen,' the general said, opening his mouth at last. All eyes turned to him. He cleared his throat. 'This rescue team we want it out of there.'

He spoke brusquely, as if he had other better things to do than waste his time on diplomatic talks or making roundabout excuses like the admiral.

'What do you mean?' the prime minister asked, disconcerted. The admiral slowly closed his eyes.

'Out of there, I said. We want the team out of there. They'll ruin our exercise if they start interfering. We don't want them there. We want rid of them. Do you have a problem with that?'

The Icelanders looked at one another in silent astonishment.

'Do you have a problem with that?' Wesson repeated.

'We have no authority over the rescue team,' the prime minister replied. 'We can't simply order them to stop. In any case, I gather they were already on the glacier before our last meeting. If you had given us sufficient warning about your intentions we could have closed the area to all traffic. But as you didn't see fit to...'

'Then we can't be held accountable for their welfare,' the general interrupted. 'I'm sure they'd think twice if they received a call from the prime minister.'

'I suggest you take care who you threaten, General,' the prime minister said in an even tone. 'One man has died on the glacier, another is critically injured, so please don't insult me by saying that it has nothing to do with you.'

'May I remind you, Prime Minister, that a sizeable percentage of this country's gross national income derives either directly or indirectly from us.' The general spoke in the same flat, emotionless tone, his face impa.s.sive.

'I don't think this meeting is going anywhere,' the prime minister said, rising to his feet. 'We'll be issuing a formal protest about this matter and demanding a thorough public investigation, both here and in America, into the accident involving the two rescue team members. We will close all roads between the glacier and the base until we have full and accurate disclosure about what is going on out there. We'll apprise the media of the situation and you can imagine how they will apportion the blame. I will address the nation personally. You can talk all you like about percentages. Good day.' Gathering up his papers from the table, he replaced them in his briefcase and closed it with a snap. The justice minister followed his example.

'There's a bomb on the glacier,' the general said, unmoved, his gaze still fixed directly ahead. 'You should call the team home, if only for their own sake.'

'A bomb? What do you mean, a bomb? What kind of bomb?'

'The kind that explodes. It's German and it's old and we're trying to remove it but it's a delicate operation. We have experts on site, our best men, but the rescue team is in danger. You have the power to stop them, thereby preventing a potential catastrophe.'

'There's a bomb on board the plane? What do you mean by German?'

'The German scientists brought it with them. We believe we are dealing with a primitive hydrogen bomb.'

The prime minister was struck dumb; he could hardly believe he was hearing this.

'It's our first broken arrow,' the admiral added. 'We call them broken arrows, the nuclear weapons lost in air crashes or through other accidents. There are a small number scattered here and there around the globe and you will understand that we go to considerable lengths to control information about them. But the first, Prime Minister, is on Vatnajokull.'

'And it's still live and extremely dangerous,' Wesson added.

VATNAJoKULL GLACIER,

SAt.u.r.dAY 30 JANUARY, 2300 GMT

They were well equipped with powerful torches, good climbing boots and warm winter overalls provided by Jon but the temperature had risen after the earlier storm, turning the snow soft underfoot and making every step a struggle. The moon dipped in and out of the clouds, shedding a pale light on the rim of the glacier. The temperature was falling again.

In the end they had not managed any sleep but the rest had done them good. Before setting off, Kristin had tried once more, unsuccessfully, to reach her father, then had finally gathered enough courage to call the police. She was put through immediately to the detective investigating the city centre shooting. He listened attentively to her detailed account of the improbable events that had occurred and her explanation of why she had not contacted the police sooner. She concluded by telling him that she was now at the foot of Vatnajokull.

'So the man we found in your flat Runolfur had no connection with any of this,' the detective commented when Kristin had finished speaking. Far from disputing her account, he went out of his way to give the impression of taking what she said seriously. He did not want to risk making her hang up by arguing with her. It was late and the entire force was working round the clock on the shooting and murder.

'No connection at all,' Kristin confirmed; she had tried to give as clear and impartial an account as possible. 'In fact, I think he saved my life.'

'They told me at the ministry that you might have killed him and gone into hiding as a result. They thought it was plausible. But that, if so, you would have been acting in self-defence. They said this Runolfur bloke had been threatening you.' His voice, friendly, steady and sensible, had a calming effect on Kristin. She sensed she could trust this man and tried to put a face to the voice but somehow could not imagine what he would look like.

'That's why I didn't know where to turn. And because the men who attacked me referred to a conspiracy. They murdered a man in my flat. Don't you see, I was desperate?'

He absorbed this information. Kristin's account, crazy as it was, nevertheless tied in with what he had found out so far, and he could see no reason to disbelieve her. Her willingness to work with the police was obvious but he sensed the extreme difficulty of her situation.

'We detained the man from the Irish pub briefly,' the detective continued, 'but the emba.s.sy insisted he be moved to the US military hospital on the base. The Icelandic government conceded to their wishes, on condition that he doesn't leave the country.'

'That's insane. He'll be halfway across the Atlantic by now,' Kristin said.

'I agree. First Cla.s.s.'

'And what about the other one?'

'We know nothing about the other man. We went to the emba.s.sy which is, as you say, crawling with soldiers, and talked to a general, some kind of stand-in amba.s.sador, but couldn't prise anything out of him. We know they have something to hide; we need your help to find out what it is.'

Her manner was so convincing that he had decided to take a gamble and trust her, at least more than he trusted the Americans.

'I know what it is,' Kristin said. 'It's to do with the wreck of a plane on Vatnajokull and I'm on my way there now. I've only got a single name, Ratoff. That's all. Maybe he's in charge of the operation.'

'We've heard nothing about any plane wreck,' the detective commented.

'My brother saw it.'

There was a pause while the man on the phone thought.

'Why don't you come and see us in town and we'll try to sort it out from here.'

'It'll be too late. It would be better if you sent some of your people here. And why don't you get in touch with the rescue team on the glacier? The man in charge is called Julius. He can confirm what I've told you about Elias and Johann.'

'You know that a travel ban has just been announced for the Vatnajokull area due to a volcanic eruption alert? There have been newsflashes on all channels. They've declared a state of emergency.'

'Eruption alert? What bulls.h.i.+t! What do you think American soldiers are doing there if there's a risk of an eruption? What you mean is that the spineless, a.r.s.e-licking government has kowtowed to the Yanks yet again.'

The detective suppressed a laugh. He was beginning to like her. 'I believe the term is "fostering positive relations".'

'I'm on my way,' Kristin said again.

'You really ought to come in to the station and tell me more. What's this plane you keep talking about?'

'I haven't got time to go into it but there's something inside the wreckage that they're determined to hide. I don't know what. It could be anything.'

'And that's the big secret?'

'Exactly. It's up to you what you do, but I'm going to the glacier,' Kristin repeated, and ended the conversation. Part of her wanted to trust the detective, who seemed a decent man, but she knew the only way for her to uncover the whole truth was to go and find it out for herself.

Steve was four metres behind her and the gap between them was growing. The weather was still but cold. Their overalls creaked, the snow creaked and she felt as if her lungs were creaking too. Jon had given them very precise directions as to the best way to access the glacier, yet she was surprised to find how easy the route was, in spite of everything. The only thing holding them back was their lack of fitness. She could hear Steve puffing and blowing behind her, swearing profusely every now and then. She was out of breath herself, every footstep she took in the snow an effort.

Kristin did not know what to expect when she reached the glacier. Hopefully she would find Julius there and possibly even members of the Coast Guard. Besides notifying the police, she had called an acquaintance on the national TV news desk to ensure that the media would quickly start following up the rumours of American troops on Vatnajokull and the possible presence of a German World War II plane on the glacier. The Yanks would not be able to cover it up much longer and she had every intention of being on the spot when the story broke.

She had barely slept a wink since she woke up at the crack of dawn two days ago, dreading a confrontation with Runolfur at the office, and exhaustion was beginning to take its toll as she laboured up the steep slope to the ice cap.

'Do you know what I saw in you?' Steve had asked as they lay in bed at Jon's farm.

'Saw in me?'

'The first time I met you.'

'At that reception?'

'You seemed a bit lonely, as if you didn't know many people.'

'Receptions are not my favourite...'

'I've never had such a powerful response to anyone.'

'What do you mean?

'I'm not sure what it was. It's hard to explain.'

'What response?'

'I saw... I knew at once that I... I wanted to get to know you, to find out who you were, hear you speak, see you laugh and smile, be with you, just you and me.'

Kristin smiled. 'You're not very good at this, are you?'

'No, I guess not,' he replied, smiling. 'I'm just trying to tell you how I felt the first time I saw you.'

From Steve, Kristin's thoughts moved on to Elias. He would have made light work of a climb like this and teased her for being such a wimp. Well, he had finally succeeded in forcing her out into the wilderness. She saw the rim of the glacier drawing nearer in the moonlight. A little way to the east the land was scored by deep gullies and ravines, in one of which Jon had found the German.

She pictured her brother in the hands of the soldiers, and lying, critically injured, at the bottom of the creva.s.se. It was not the first time she had suffered this choking sensation on Elias's account.

She had been eighteen, Elias eight, and she had sent him to the shop for a bottle of c.o.ke. When he came out of the shop, she heard later, he had run straight into the road without looking and was. .h.i.t by a car. He landed on the bonnet, bounced on to the windscreen, shattering it, then was flung over the roof, fetching up on the road. He was knocked unconscious and a large pool of blood had acc.u.mulated under his head. They did not live far from the shop, so Kristin had heard the shrill sirens accompanying the arrival of police and ambulance, and knew instinctively that they were for Elias. She set off at a run and saw men lifting his small frame off the road and into the ambulance. Kristin could see no sign of life in her brother. The driver who had hit him was sitting on the kerb, clutching his head in despair and a group of bystanders had gathered. She walked over to the ambulance in a daze and was permitted to ride with Elias to the hospital.

Elias was in surgery for eight hours. He had cracked his skull and suffered a brain haemorrhage; he had also broken a leg and two ribs, one of which had pierced his right lung, and fractured his right arm in two places. Kristin sat in the waiting room, consumed with guilt, rocking to and fro, staring into s.p.a.ce, now and then emitting anguished whimpers from deep within. She had sent her brother out for a bottle of c.o.ke and now he was dying.

Her parents cut short their holiday in the Canaries and flew home, but only after she had managed to convince them that Elias was seriously injured. They blamed Kristin not only for what had happened to him but also for spoiling their holiday; she had found it hard to tell which upset them more. She was supposed to look after her brother. It had always been that way. They had placed the responsibility on her shoulders and she had failed.

She would never be free of the guilt. Even though Elias later made a full recovery, the guilt remained deep inside her like a malignant tumour that could not be excised. Stranger still, she could never shake off the conviction, however absurd, that if anything happened to Elias later in life, it would be because of the accident, because of his head injury. That because of her, he might be more vulnerable to falls or car accidents. That was why she could not bear his l.u.s.t for adventure the skydiving, scuba diving, glacier trips and did her best to curtail such activities. She often felt that he went out of his way to provoke her, yet she had never told him of her fear, of the guilt that gnawed away inside her. Did not dare put it into words. Perhaps she had bottled it up inside her until she needed it, like now.

'Wait for me,' Steve shouted and she realised that she had forged far ahead.

Work on the glacier was proceeding at full speed again. The snow had been cleared from one side of the Junkers but the other was still surrounded by deep drifts. Nevertheless, men were busy fixing slings around the front half of the plane. Ratoff was expecting two helicopters. As soon as the slings had been fixed around the fuselage, the bodies would be put back inside the cabin and the opening would be sealed off, enabling the helicopters to remove all the detritus in one go. Inevitably the use of the choppers would compromise the secrecy of the mission, but the men would spread tarpaulins over the wreckage in an attempt to disguise it. Not that Ratoff was worried about rumours: the more the better.

The head of communications gestured to the radar screen. A cl.u.s.ter of small green dots was crawling down the gla.s.s, their movement so slow as to be almost imperceptible.

'The rescue team is on the move, sir.'

'Get me the emba.s.sy,' Ratoff ordered.

Ratoff watched the two dots approaching from the south, crawling slowly up the green radar screen in the communications tent. He saw the rescue team converging from the north, creeping down the screen. He was prepared and had sent soldiers to intercept them in an attempt to stop or at least delay them, but the two dots in the south were a mystery to him. He wondered if it could be that pain-in-the-a.s.s of a girl from Reykjavik, the young man's sister. His mouth twisted in a smile: she had certainly made fools of Bateman and Ripley, even put one of them in hospital.

A reception committee was on its way to meet them at the edge of the glacier. Incidentally, he noted from the screen that the troops he had sent in the opposite direction to meet the rescue team had come to a halt.

VATNAJoKULL GLACIER,

SAt.u.r.dAY 30 JANUARY, 2315 GMT

Julius watched the soldiers approaching, the powerful headlamps of their snowmobiles lighting up the darkness. There were about twenty of them, clad in helmets and goggles which completely obscured their faces, with rifles slung over their backs. Within a minute they had halted in unison and stood waiting for the rescue team, as if they had drawn an invisible line that they had every intention of defending. Julius's team consisted of some seventy men and women, travelling on skis, snowmobiles and two tracked vehicles. As they neared the soldiers, Julius signalled to them to slow down, and they eventually came to a standstill about ten metres from the waiting troops. It was an improbable meeting in the dark, snowy wasteland: the troops armed with automatics and revolvers, clad in Arctic camouflage, the winter uniform of soldiers who wished to pa.s.s unseen, and facing them, the unarmed Icelandic rescue team whose luminous orange jackets recalled, in contrast, the necessity of visibility in their work.

Julius, who was travelling in one of the tracked vehicles, told his team to stay put while he talked to the soldiers. He stepped out of his vehicle and walked towards the waiting men, noticing as he did that one of them dismounted from his snowmobile and came forward to meet him. The other soldiers rapidly followed suit. They met halfway, standing not quite toe-to-toe. The officer pulled the scarf down to uncover his mouth but even so Julius found it hard to make out his face behind the goggles. He looked young, though, much younger than Julius himself.

'You have entered a US military prohibited zone,' the officer announced in American-accented English. 'I have orders to prevent you from proceeding any further.'

'What do you mean a US military prohibited zone?' Julius responded. 'We've heard nothing about any prohibited zone.'

'I am not at liberty to reveal any further details. The zone won't be in force for long but whilst it is we insist that it is respected. It would be simplest for everyone if you cooperated with these instructions.'

Anger welled up inside Julius. He had seen the broken bodies of his team members lying at the bottom of a creva.s.se, one dead, the other unlikely to live, and was convinced that the men in white camouflage were behind the apparent accident. And now, to cap it all, these foreign soldiers were trying to deny him free movement in his own country.

'Cooperate! You're a fine one to talk about being cooperative. What are you up to here? Why did you have to kill one of my men? What's this about a plane on the glacier? What's all this f.u.c.king secrecy?'

'I need to ask you to hand over all your communications equipment, mobile phones, walkie-talkies, and any emergency flares,' the officer ordered, ignoring Julius's question.

'Our communications equipment? Are you insane? We're responding to a distress signal from your so-called prohibited zone. There are Icelanders in danger...'

'You are mistaken. There are no Icelanders in this area apart from yourselves,' the officer interrupted. He remained calm and impa.s.sive, though his tone betrayed a hint of impatient arrogance. Julius took exception to his conceited manner; under any other circ.u.mstances, this was a man he would be only too happy to punch. He was not afraid of the other soldiers and their guns; the entire situation seemed farcical and unreal more than dangerous.

'And what if we refuse? Will the American army shoot us?'

'We have orders.'

'Well you can shove your orders up your a.r.s.e. You have no right to stop us. There is no prohibited zone on the glacier. All we've heard about is a volcanic eruption alert but I bet that's a fabrication as well. You have no right to throw your weight about in Icelandic sovereign territory. And you certainly aren't having any of our equipment.'