VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,
FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 2100 GMT
Ratoff did not see
them land but heard the thuds as they collided with the ice on
their headlong descent into the crevasse. It was pitch dark on the
glacier, the moon hidden behind thick clouds, the only light
emanating from the headlamps on Ratoff’s tracked vehicle and the
snowmobiles. By the time they had reached the crevasse, one of the
young men was unconscious, the other dead. Ratoff ordered his
soldiers to push their snowmobiles into the chasm on top of them,
after which his men set to work obliterating their tracks. Once
this was done, Ratoff dropped Elías’s phone into the crevasse after
him.
In the end he had
forced Elías to give up the salient facts about Kristín,
information which he duly passed on to Ripley and Bateman. Elías
had held out for a long time but Ratoff was good at his job. The
boy had surrendered everything about his sister’s friends and
colleagues, where their father lived and how he often made long
trips abroad, and about Kristín’s ex-boyfriends, the lawyer and his
circle; even about their mother’s death a few years earlier in a
car crash. He revealed how his sister had taken a postgraduate
degree in California and how, despite sometimes visiting friends
abroad, she hated travelling in Iceland and that trips into the
interior were her idea of hell. Elías had told Ratoff everything he
wanted to know, before finally begging for mercy. But by then his
friend Jóhann was dead. The last thing Elías heard before he lost
consciousness was Ratoff whispering the news in his ear that his
sister was dead too.
Ratoff’s men laboured
away at clearing the ice from the German aircraft, working in
four-hour shifts, sixty men to a shift. They were well on schedule;
more and more of the fuselage had been uncovered until they could
now see into the passenger cabin through the first of the side
windows. When Ratoff returned to camp, he walked over to the German
plane and spent a long time peering through the window. He could
dimly make out shapes on the floor that might have been bodies. He
was summoned to the communications tent and straightened up. Ripley
was on the line.
‘She used her debit
card to pay for a taxi to Keflavík, sir,’ Ripley informed him. ‘Did
her brother say anything about Keflavík?’
‘Why the hell is she
going to Keflavík?’ Ratoff asked. ‘What happened at her place? How
much does she know? Surely the logical move would be to go to the
Reykjavík police?’
There was a short
pause on the line.
‘She knows there’s a
strong possibility that her brother’s dead,’ Ripley admitted
hesitantly. ‘She may also be under the impression that someone’s
trying to murder her because of a conspiracy involving the
Reykjavík police, the Icelandic foreign ministry and the ministry
of justice.’
‘Are you out of your
goddamn minds?’
‘We underestimated
the job, sir. It won’t happen again.’
‘Won’t happen again?’
Ratoff hissed. ‘It should never have happened in the first
place!’
‘We’re just leaving
her father’s apartment now. He’s not at home. She left a message on
his answering machine and we’re taking it down to the embassy to
get it translated.’
‘She knows too much.
Far too much.’
‘What about
Keflavík?’ Ripley asked again.
‘She may be on her
way to the base. Her brother mentioned an ex-boyfriend there. She
ditched him suddenly and they haven’t met in a while, but it’s
possible she will look to him for help or information
now.’
‘Understood, sir,’
Ripley said.
‘Don’t screw up
again.’
‘Understood,’ Ripley
repeated.
Ratoff gave him the
man’s name and hung up, then stepped out of the communications tent
and looked over at the plane. Like other members of Delta Force, he
was dressed in thick, white camouflage and snow goggles which he
had pushed up on his forehead, warm gloves and a balaclava. There
were no names or ranks, no indications of any affiliation or any
other markings on their clothes, nothing to connect them to the
unit.
Carr had not told him
exactly what the plane contained and he burned to know more. He
knew something of its history, knew that it had taken off from
Germany at the end of the war, heading for Reykjavík, and had hit
bad weather and crashed. But he had no idea whether Reykjavík had
been the intended destination or if the plane had been scheduled to
continue, perhaps all the way to the States. Nor did he know the
identity of her passengers.
He returned
thoughtfully to the wreck and peered into the passenger cabin
again. Ratoff had been trying to fill in the blanks by guesswork
but knew it was futile; he would not be able to satisfy his
curiosity until he could get inside. Turning away, he went back to
his tent. An image floated into his mind of the boy’s face as he
told him his sister was dead, of the torment in his eyes before he
darkened them for ever. But the young men’s deaths had no impact on
Ratoff. He calculated for collateral damage in all his assignments
and in his view they amounted to nothing more. He would complete
this job to his full satisfaction and any obstacles would have to
be eliminated. Carr had asked if they were young – he was obviously
getting soft in his old age. No doubt he would ask the same thing
when he was informed of the woman’s death.
He gave orders to be
put through to Carr.
‘We believe she’s on
her way to the US base in Keflavík, sir,’ he said when Carr came on
the line, ‘and I have a good idea who she’s going to
meet.’