VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER, ICELAND
FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 1900 GMT
Ratoff held the phone
belonging to the boy who claimed his name was Elías and, as he
walked into the communications tent that had been erected beside
the aircraft, checked the last number he had dialled. According to
the screen, the call had lasted long enough, Ratoff thought, for
the boy to have described the area and their activities in detail.
It was the only number that showed up on screen. Otherwise the
phone appeared new and barely used.
‘Have the embassy
trace this number,’ Ratoff ordered the chief communications
officer. ‘And I need to talk to Vytautas.’
‘Vytautas, sir?’ the
officer asked.
‘Carr,’ Ratoff
breathed. ‘General Vytautas Carr.’
Ratoff left the tent
again. The plane was now half clear of the ice. In the glare cast
by four powerful floodlights a swarm of troops was busy digging it
out with spades. The nose, which was relatively intact, jutted into
the air like a raised fist. Ratoff could now confirm Carr’s theory
that it was a Junkers Ju 52, known familiarly to Allied troops
during World War II as ‘Iron Annie’ or ‘Auntie Ju’. The Ju 52s were
Germany’s principal transport aircraft, often used for carrying
paratroopers and powered by three vast BMW engines, the third of
which was situated on the nose. And there the propeller still hung,
its blades mangled by their collision with the ice. Below the
window of the cockpit the outline of a black swastika was just
visible under the flaking camouflage paint, while two of the seven
windows that lined the sides of the plane could now be seen above
the ice. The tail-end was still buried but the wings had evidently
been sheared off and would probably never be found.
Ratoff understood the
urgency of the situation. If these hapless boys on snowmobiles had
managed to alert people to the presence of armed troops and a plane
on the glacier he would have to act decisively. He must establish
whom they had called and try to prevent the information from
spreading any further, from dividing and mutating like a virus. The
leak must be plugged at all costs. He had begun to realise just
what a major undertaking this was and how difficult it would be to
keep it under wraps. Smaller-scale operations involving less
equipment and manpower and set in an urban environment were more
his style, whereas Arctic wildernesses with weather conditions that
could change drastically in a matter of minutes were quite outside
his area of expertise. Nevertheless, he believed they had a good
chance of getting away with it if they played their cards right, if
everyone concerned did what was expected of them. He had done his
research: Iceland was the backend of beyond; if there was anywhere
an old secret could be dug up without word getting out, then surely
it was here.
He heard someone call
his name from the communications tent and went back
inside.
‘It’s a Reykjavík
number, sir. Registered to a woman named Kristín. She has the same
patronymic as the owner of the phone. His sister, maybe. Married
women keep their father’s name in Iceland. Here’s the address. It
looks as if she lives alone. I have the embassy on the
line.’
‘Get me
Ripley.’
He was handed the
receiver.
‘Her name’s Kristín,’
Ratoff said and dictated her address.
There was a silence
while he listened intently.
‘Suicide,’ Ratoff
said.
The man known as
Ripley replaced the telephone. He and his colleague Bateman had
arrived with the other Delta Force personnel, but Ratoff had sent
them to the American embassy in Reykjavík with instructions simply
to sit and await orders. To others, his ability to anticipate and
plan for unforeseen contingencies was eerie.
Ripley relayed to
Bateman the drift of the phone conversation. They were very similar
in appearance, both tall, muscular and clean shaven, their fair
hair combed into neat side partings. Over their neatly pressed,
inconspicuous dark suits, smart ties and shiny shoes, they wore
only waist-length blue raincoats. They could have been twins were
it not for their contrasting features. One was more refined, with a
narrow face and piercing blue eyes above a long, thin nose and a
small, almost lipless mouth; the other somewhat coarser in
appearance, with a square jaw, thick ripe lips, big chin and bull
neck.
Having found the
woman’s address, they identified the shortest route through the
streets of Reykjavík, then borrowed one of the staff cars, an
unmarked white Ford Explorer SUV, and drove off into the snowstorm.
Time was of the essence.
The journey took no
more than five minutes despite the heavy going.
When they pulled up
outside her house on Tómasarhagi, Kristín was trying to contact the
Reykjavík Air Ground Rescue Team. She was still wearing her anorak
as she stood by the phone, trying all the numbers listed for the
organisation in the telephone directory, without success. No one
answered. She dialled her brother’s number again but there was
still no reply. A recorded message announced that the phone was
either switched off, out of range or all the lines were currently
busy. Convinced now that he was in danger, she fought down the
dread rising within her. She took a deep breath and tried to think
clearly, tried to persuade herself that she was worrying
unnecessarily, that her brother was fine and would phone her any
minute to tell her what he had seen; that there was some perfectly
reasonable explanation. She counted slowly up to ten, then up to
twenty, and felt her heartbeat gradually steadying.
She was just about to
ring the police when she heard a knock at the door. Dropping the
telephone, she went and put her eye to the peephole.
‘Jehovah’s
Witnesses,’ she sighed. ‘At a time like this!’ She must be
polite.
The instant she
opened the door, two men barged inside. One clamped his hand over
her mouth and forced her ahead of him into the living room. The
other followed close behind, shut the door and conducted a swift
search of the flat, checking the other rooms and kitchen to ensure
she was alone. Meanwhile, the man who was holding Kristín pulled
out a small revolver and put a finger to his lips to indicate that
she should keep quiet. They were both wearing white rubber gloves.
Their actions were methodical, calculated and practised, as if they
had done this countless times before. Focused and purposeful, they
got straight down to business.
Kristín could not
make a sound. She stared at the two men in stunned
bewilderment.
White rubber
gloves?
Bateman found her
passport in a drawer in the sideboard, walked over to Kristín and
compared her face with the photo.
‘Bingo,’ he said,
dropping the passport on the floor.
‘Do exactly what I
tell you,’ Ripley said in English as he levelled the revolver at
her head, ‘and sit down here at the desk.’ He shoved her towards
the desk and she sat down with the gun still wedged against her
temple. She could feel its muzzle, cold, heavy and blunt, and her
head hurt from the pressure.
Bateman came over and
joined them. He switched on Kristín’s computer, humming gently to
himself as it warmed up, then created a new file and began quickly
and methodically to copy something from a sheet of paper he had
taken from his pocket. They conversed in English while this was
going on, saying something she did not catch. Yet although they
gave the impression of being American, to Kristín’s astonishment
the man was writing in Icelandic.
I can’t go on living. It’s over. I’m
sorry.
She tried addressing
them, first in Icelandic, then in English, but they did not answer.
She knew that robberies had been on the increase lately but she had
never heard of a burglary like this. At first she had taken it for
some kind of joke. Now she was sure they were burglars. But why
this unintelligible message on the computer?
‘Take what you like,’
she said in English. ‘Take anything you like, then get out. Leave
me alone.’ She felt herself growing numb with terror at the thought
that they might not be thieves, that they might have some other
form of violence in mind for her. Later, when she replayed the
events in her head, as she would again and again in the following
days, she had difficulty remembering what thoughts had raced
through her mind during those chaotic minutes. It all happened so
fast that she never had time to take in the full implications of
her situation. It was so absurd, so utterly incomprehensible.
Things like this did not happen; not in Iceland, not in Reykjavík,
not in her world.
‘Take whatever you
like,’ she repeated.
The men did not
answer.
‘Do you mean me?’ she
asked, still speaking English, pointing at the computer screen. ‘Is
it me who can’t go on living any longer?’
‘Your brother’s dead
and you can’t go on living any longer. Simple as that,’ Bateman
replied. He smiled as he added to himself sarcastically: ‘What
poets they are at the embassy.’
The embassy, Kristín noted.
‘My brother? Elías?
What do you mean, dead? Who are you? Are you friends of Elías? If
this is supposed to be a joke . . .’
‘Hush, Kristín. Don’t
alarm yourself,’ Ripley said. The accent was definitely
American.
‘What’s going on?’
Kristín demanded to know, her terror suddenly giving way to blazing
anger.
‘A grand conspiracy
involving the Reykjavík police, the Icelandic foreign ministry and
the ministry of justice,’ Bateman said gravely, catching Ripley’s
eye. He looked for all the world as though he was enjoying
himself.
‘A conspiracy?’
Kristín repeated in Icelandic. ‘The foreign ministry? Elías? What
kind of joke is this? What kind of bullshit is this?’ She was
shouting now.
‘She’s lost it,’
Bateman said, taking in her flushed face and heaving chest. ‘Let
her have it,’ he added, and retreated a couple of
steps.
Out of the corner of
her eye Kristín saw the barrel of the gun and Ripley tightening his
finger on the trigger. She closed her eyes. But instead of the shot
she expected, there was a sudden violent banging on the
door.
Ripley removed the
revolver from her temple and clamped his gloved hand over Kristín’s
mouth. She struggled for air and could taste the plastic. Bateman
went to the door and peered through the peephole, then returned to
the living room.
‘A male, fortyish,
unaccompanied, medium height.’
‘Let him in,’ Ripley
said. ‘We’ll take him too. Turn it into a murder. Ratoff needn’t
know.’
Ratoff, Kristín noted.
Bateman returned to
the door. The banging resumed, even louder than before. A man was
yelling Kristín’s name. She recognised the voice and the hectoring
tone but could not place them. In an instant, Bateman had opened
the door, grabbed the man by the lapels and dragged him into the
flat. As the door opened and Ripley’s attention was momentarily
distracted by the struggle in the hall, Kristín seized her chance.
Leaping to her feet, she shoved Ripley away, sending him crashing
into the table, and fled to the door. Now she could see who the
visitor was: Runólfur.
‘Look out!’ she
screamed. ‘They’re armed!’
Runólfur did not have
time to reply. He saw Kristín rushing towards him, panic written on
her face. Glancing beyond her into the living room he saw Ripley
stagger into the table. There was a dull report and a tiny red hole
appeared in Runólfur’s forehead as Kristín dodged past him. She saw
him collapse noiselessly into Bateman’s arms. As she ran out of the
flat, the next bullet tore past her ear and smacked into the door.
She sped across the hall, through the front door, out into the snow
and round the corner of the building with Ripley and Bateman hard
on her heels.
Although Kristín had
been on her way out when her brother called from the glacier, she
had not got as far as putting on her shoes. She was wearing only
thin socks, baggy tracksuit bottoms and a vest-top under her anorak
as she hurtled across the back garden. The temperature had dropped
below freezing and the snow was covered with a thin crust of ice
that cracked beneath her weight, plunging her feet into soft
wetness with every step. The cold was so painful that she wanted to
cry out. Not daring to look back, she took a flying leap over the
garden fence, sprinted across the road, into another garden, across
it and over the next fence, vanishing into the
darkness.
Later, when she had
time to unravel the chaos in her mind, she would decide that her
life had been saved by the fact that Ripley and Bateman were
ill-equipped for running in snow. They never had a chance of
catching her in their slippery, leather-soled shoes and by the time
they had jettisoned them, she had disappeared. After observing
where her tracks in the snow met and mingled with countless others,
the two men turned and headed back to Kristín’s flat. In spite of
the gunfire and the commotion of the chase there was no sign of the
occupants of the flat upstairs.
Bateman and Ripley
shut the door behind them, re-emerged from the flat five minutes
later and climbed wordlessly into the Explorer.