US
EMBASSY, CENTRAL REYKJAVÍK,
SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 0100 GMT
She woke up at the
third ring. Monica Garcia worked as the director of the Fulbright
Commission in Iceland, an educational exchange programme based at
the US embassy in Reykjavík, where she had an apartment. She
disliked being called in the middle of the night and stirred
sleepily; she had been hoping for a peaceful night after the
extraordinary last twenty-four hours at the embassy. But the
strident ringing persisted until at last she propped herself up on
her elbow and snatched up the receiver.
‘Monica?’ said a
voice.
‘It’s one in the
morning,’ she protested, registering the luminous numbers on her
radio alarm. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Steve. I’m
sorry, but it’s an emergency.’
‘Steve? Why are you
calling me in the middle of the night?’
‘I think some men
from the embassy are trying to kill me.’
‘Why would anyone
want to kill you, Steve? What have you been smoking?’
Groping for the lamp
on the bedside table, she switched it on, just managing to avoid
knocking over a glass of water and dislodging a small pile of books
on which an open copy of War and Peace
lay uppermost.
‘Two men, both around
six foot, blond, neatly dressed in civilian clothes. They’re after
my friend as well. I told you about Kristín. She knows something
about military activities on Vatnajökull and whatever it is, it’s
important enough for them to send paid assassins round to her
house. She came to the base to find me, and the men turned up at my
place shortly afterwards but we managed to escape.’
‘She fled
to the base? Steve, I don’t understand
a word of this.’
She sat up in bed and
shivered: the room was freezing as the radiator had broken
again.
‘I know, it’s
complicated. I’ll explain later but you have to trust
me.’
‘Where are you
now?’
‘I’m still on the
base. What’s going on at the embassy? What’s happening on the
glacier? Do you know?’
‘Everything’s been
turned upside down. That’s all I can tell you. I’ve no idea
why.’
‘How do you mean
upside down?’
‘Military
intelligence has assumed control by direct order of the defense
secretary. Some sort of special operations personnel showed up,
took over everything and sent the ambassador on leave. Three
special forces companies landed at Keflavík just over twenty-four
hours ago and may well have gone to Vatnajökull, for all I know.
Beyond that I really don’t know what’s going on. It’s as if there’s
been a military coup. They installed a whole load of computer
equipment – I don’t have a clue what it’s for – and set up a
command and control centre. The embassy staff aren’t being told
anything. We’ve been ordered to stay out of the way and keep our
mouths shut. They say they’ll only be here for a few
days.’
‘Have you come across
a man by the name of Ratoff?’
‘No, never heard of
him. Who is he?’
‘It’s a name Kristín
overheard. He may be in charge. Look, I have to hang up. Is there
anything you can do to help me, anything at all,
Monica?’
‘I’ll try to dig
something up for you. If special forces have taken over the
embassy, they’re probably in control of the base too, so I’d be
very careful about looking for help there. Do you remember the
Irish pub in Reykjavík? The one downtown?’
‘Yes.’
‘Call there at 4
o’clock today or come down yourself. I’ll see what I can find out
for you in the meantime.’
‘Thanks,
Monica.’
‘And Steve, for
Christ’s sake, be careful.’
He put the phone down
and turned to Kristín. They were in his office in one of the army
administration blocks. Kristín was keeping watch by the window, the
profile of her face silhouetted against the glass, black against
black. She had phoned air traffic control in Keflavík, posing as a
journalist from Reykjavík, and asked if there had been a plane
crash recently on Vatnajökull. She was informed that no plane had
crashed on the glacier for decades, not since the famous Loftleidir
incident. When they asked what paper she was calling from, she had
hung up.
Kristín vaguely
remembered the accident. ‘A Loftleidir plane – that’s the old
Icelandic airline – was forced to make an emergency landing on the
glacier,’ she told Steve. ‘Everyone survived.’
‘Is that the plane
Elías saw then?’ Steve asked.
‘I haven’t a clue. I
don’t know what happened to the wreckage. And anyway, what would
the army want with an old Loftleidir plane? It must have been forty
years ago. It’s absurd.’
They had been in the
office around ten minutes and Kristín was growing jumpy. Although
they had parked Steve’s car a few hundred yards away among other
vehicles outside a large apartment block, it would not remain
undiscovered for long if the men put out a search. The office had
been Steve’s first thought as he accelerated away from his block,
leaving Ripley and Bateman behind in the parking lot. But he had
not come here to hide as his workplace would be an obvious location
for them to check; rather, the building housed part of the Defense
Force archives, to which he had access.
He and Kristín ran
down the long ground floor corridor and descended into the basement
where the archives were kept. Punching in a code to deactivate the
alarm, Steve turned a key in the heavy steel door and pushed it
open. Inside stood another door, covered in wire netting, which
opened into one of the archives. The storeroom was divided into
several compartments by coarse wire netting which formed a series
of cages, each of which was filled with long rows of filing
cabinets, and beyond them shelves of files and boxes.
‘Welcome to America’s
memory,’ Steve whispered.
‘How are we supposed
to find anything in this warren?’ Kristín asked, gazing in dismay
at the rows of units stretching off into the distance. ‘What are
you looking for anyway?’
‘There may be
something here about operations on Vatnajökull,’ Steve said. He was
familiar with the archives, having temped there one summer, and
knew where to lay his hands on records of surveillance flights over
Iceland in the last fifty years. If there was a plane on the
glacier, he reasoned, it might well belong to the US Air Force or
Navy.
He was so happy that
Kristín had turned to him in her hour of need that it did not even
occur to him to refuse her request. No longer in any doubt about
the danger she was in, he was determined to stand by her, to help
her in any way he could; besides, his journalistic instincts had
been roused and he was becoming increasingly curious about the case
on his own account.
They walked rapidly
along the shelves, checking the labels on cupboards and files. Some
way towards the back, Steve stopped and pulled out a box. He looked
inside, then replaced it and continued searching. He did the same
thing several times; took out a box containing a number of files,
leafed through them, then put it back. It was hopeless – he had no
idea where to start in this sea of information – and before long
they returned to his office, empty-handed.
For some minutes he
stood by the window, peering out, chewing his lip in frustration.
‘A friend of mine has access to more files than me,’ he announced
finally. ‘We should see what he says.’
‘I’m sorry to have
landed you in all this. I didn’t know where else to turn,’ Kristín
said as they left the building.
‘Forget it,’ Steve
answered, his eyes flickering round nervously. ‘I’m as interested
as you in finding out what’s up there.’
They decided to leave
the car behind and walk. Steve knew the base very well and kept to
the back alleyways, stealing through communal gardens, darting
hurriedly across brightly lit streets where necessary, taking care
to stay under cover. Kristín had no idea where they were going. As
for most Icelanders, the base was a foreign country to her. The
only time she had been to Midnesheidi was with her parents to the
international airport in the days before the new terminal had been
built. She recognised the Andrews movie theatre, and glimpsed in
the distance the old terminal building and officers’ mess. She
remembered two of her old classmates from school who had gone on to
work for Icelandic contractors on the base and used to come home to
Reykjavík every weekend laden with cigarettes and vodka that they
bought cheap from the American servicemen, to the great envy of
their friends.
‘I never expected to
see you again,’ Steve ventured as they picked their way through the
snow behind one of the apartment blocks.
‘I know,’ Kristín
said.
‘I always meant to
try to talk to you about it but
somehow . . .’
‘I’ve thought the
same. It was my fault.’
‘No, it wasn’t. No
way. It was nobody’s fault. Why does everything always have to be
somebody’s fault?’
When Kristín did not
answer, Steve let the subject drop. There was little traffic in the
area although they twice spotted military police patrols. Steve
stopped by a building not dissimilar to his own but in an entirely
different part of the base. They all looked identical to Kristín.
He told her to wait, he would not be long, so she lurked round the
side of the block trying to make herself inconspicuous, stamping
her feet, blowing on her hands and pulling her hood tight against
the chill air. It was about fifteen minutes before he returned,
accompanied by a man whom he introduced to her as Arnold. He was
plump, about Steve’s age, with sweaty palms, shifty eyes and a
lisp. They climbed into his car and drove off.
‘Arnold’s a
librarian,’ Steve said smiling. ‘He knows his way round the
archives and he owes me a favour.’
Kristín had no idea
what this implied and Arnold did not enlighten her, just glowered
at Steve.
He pulled up at a
two-storey administration block not far from the old terminal.
After letting them in through the back entrance, he led them
straight down to a basement archive, considerably larger than the
one they had visited earlier, occupying three levels.
‘What years are we
talking about?’ Arnold asked flatly.
‘Flights over
Vatnajökull since the beginning of the war, I suppose,’ Steve
replied. ‘I don’t know what for. Routine surveillance flights,
maybe, or reconnaissance. Aerial photography. Nothing major, as I
said. Nothing risky. Nothing that presents a threat to US national
security.’
‘Surveillance? Aerial
photography?’ Arnold scoffed, not even trying to disguise his
irritation. ‘You’ve no idea what you’re on about.’
‘Forced landings as
well. Crashes on the glacier. A plane. Anything like that. Pilots
who might know about flights over the glacier. Anything at all like
that.’
Shaking his head,
Arnold walked down to the next level. They followed, their
footsteps echoing hollowly against the walls. Kristín found the
noise they were making unbearable. Arnold passed a row of shelves,
slowed and stopped. Turning back, he descended to the level below,
clattering down the metal staircase, and walked along one of the
rows. There he took down a box file and opened it, then closed it
again. Eventually they came to a large filing cabinet and Arnold
pulled out one of the drawers.
‘Here’s something,’
he said to Steve. ‘Records of photographic surveillance flights in
1965. By the old U-2 spy planes, just before they switched to
satellites.’ Arnold stepped aside as if to avoid getting any closer
to this irregularity than he already was, then announced that he
would wait for them by the entrance upstairs and vanished. Steve
squatted down.
‘Let’s
see . . . what have we here? . . .
Nothing. Only some crap about routine surveillance flights off the
north coast. Nothing about Vatnajökull. Nothing about aerial
photography.’ He examined more of the files.
‘Maintenance
reports!’ he sighed. ‘Technical jargon. Wait a minute, here are
some names of pilots.’ There were several. Steve took out a pen and
paper and started to scribble them down.
‘Arnold’s a laugh a
minute,’ Kristín observed.
‘He smuggles more
dope into the base than anyone else I know,’ Steve said
matter-of-factly.
‘I thought he was a
librarian?’
‘A wolf in sheep’s
clothing.’
‘So what did you say
to him?’
‘Some lie about you
being – what do you call it? – a GI baby? That you’re trying to
trace your father.’
‘Who was a
pilot?’
‘You got
it.’
‘And he didn’t think
we kept rather unorthodox hours?’
‘All these guys must
be dead,’ Steve muttered, without answering. He was still busy
noting the pilots’ names.
‘What do the reports
say?’
‘Nothing of any
interest. Just descriptions of routine surveillance flights. Very
limited information. Naturally they don’t keep anything important
down here.’
‘Nothing about
Vatnajökull? Or photographs?’
‘Not that I can
see.’
‘Might Arnold
know?’
‘No harm in asking.
I’m going to check if we’ve got anything on these pilots.’ He
finished copying down the names.
Arnold was hovering
by the door when they came back upstairs. Telling Kristín to wait a
minute, Steve went over and had a word with him in private. Arnold
looked extremely nervous. They argued for a while, then Steve came
back.
‘He says he doesn’t
know anything about Vatnajökull and I believe him. He’ll give us
five minutes to look up the names of these pilots on his
computer.’
Arnold led them down
a long corridor, cursing all the while, opened the door to his
office, groped his way to the computer and turned it on. He reached
out to switch on his desk lamp but Steve stopped him; the blue glow
from the computer screen provided the only illumination in the
room. Before long they had opened the army employment records and
were looking up each name in turn. Kristín stationed herself by the
window, terrified that the glow from the computer would attract
attention. What was it that Elías had seen?
‘They’re either dead
and buried or repatriated to the States long ago,’ Steve sighed and
typed in one last name. Arnold had disappeared.
‘Hang on, there’s
something here. Michael Thompson. Retired. Still resident on the
base. Pilot. Born 1921. He’s been here at Midnesheidi since the
sixties. He lives nearby. Come on,’ Steve said, jumping out of his
chair. ‘We’ll have to wake the poor bastard up. Maybe he’ll have
some answers.’
They left by the way
they had come in. Arnold was nowhere to be seen and Steve told
Kristín he had probably slipped off home. The snow was still
falling incessantly as they made their way through the darkness to
the oldest part of the military zone. Compared to others the US
army had established around the world, the base was tiny. The NATO
Defense Force had numbered only four to five thousand personnel at
its height but its population had been dramatically reduced since
the end of the Cold War. Many of the accommodation blocks now stood
empty and derelict, especially in the oldest quarter, relics of a
forgotten war. It did not take them long to get there, despite
wading through knee-deep snow on little-used paths. They did not
speak on the way except once when Steve expressed surprise that
Michael Thompson should still be living on the base. Most of the
servicemen sent to Iceland could not wait to move on to their next
posting after completing their maximum three-year tour of duty,
usually praying fervently for somewhere tropical.