CONTROL ROOM, WASHINGTON DC,
SATURDAY 30 JANUARY
Vytautas Carr strode
briskly into the control room. The reinforced doors closed slowly
behind him with a heavy sucking sound. The room was filled with the
same chilly gloom, the only light coming from the screens, most of
which were flickering. A number of employees sat at the computer
consoles and other controls which operated the organisation’s
satellites, some talking on the phone, others silently intent on
the screens which were reflected in their eyes. Phil, Carr’s
assistant, came over and invited him to follow him. They walked
through the control room and into a much smaller room, closing the
door behind them.
‘We’ll start
receiving them live any minute, sir,’ said Phil, a thin, tense man
with a cigarette permanently jammed between his lips. He was one of
the satellite operators. He had rolled-up shirt-sleeves and
horn-rimmed glasses balanced on his nose which were invariably
smeary with fingerprints, though he never seemed to notice. Carr
reflected that for a man charged with seeing things with superb
clarity, it was odd that he never seemed to clean his
spectacles.
‘How long will we
have them?’ Carr asked.
‘The satellite takes
approximately thirty-seven minutes to pass over the area, sir. It’s
cloudless at the moment but a storm’s gathering.’
‘Does Ratoff know
we’re watching?’
‘I imagine he does,
sir.’
Iceland’s
recognisable outline appeared on the screen in front of Carr
alongside part of Greenland’s east coast. The image vanished, to be
replaced by another showing the south-eastern corner of the island.
Phil pressed a button and yet another frame appeared, this time of
the southern half of Vatnajökull. He zoomed in until the snowy
surface of the glacier became visible, criss-crossed with
crevasses, and finally a group of tiny dots could be seen moving
over the ice. Carr felt as if he were looking through a microscope
at minute organisms swimming around on a slide, like a scientist
observing a complex experiment. During his long army service the
world had changed almost beyond recognition and the extent of the
US army’s capabilities these days never ceased to amaze him. The
image was magnified yet again until he could make out what was
happening on the glacier. Removing his own glasses, he gave them a
wipe, before replacing them on his nose and focusing
intently.
When he spotted the
plane, half-protruding from the ice, his heart skipped a beat. He
saw the men digging on either side of it, their tents and vehicles
forming a semicircle around the wreck, and the glow of the
blow-torches as they began the task of cutting the fuselage in
half.
‘Are we recording
this?’ Carr asked.
‘Sure,’ Phil said. ‘I
guess we should be getting a glimpse of the cargo soon, sir?’ he
added with a grin.
‘Yes, the cargo.
Quite.’
Carr watched the men
on the glacier for many minutes in silence. The image was grainy,
the men no more than dots swarming over the surface of the ice, the
plane indistinct. But the job appeared to be progressing well;
Ratoff was on schedule, and the work was being carried out in an
orderly fashion. The plane would soon be free of the
ice.
Without warning, the
rhythm of the movements on the screen changed and there was a
commotion on the glacier: from thousands of miles away, Carr
watched as men rushed over to the plane. Even from that great
distance, it looked to Carr as if it had broken in half. The plane
was open.
Ratoff hurried out of
the communications tent when he heard the calls and ran down to the
wreck. As he was forcing his way through the crowd that had
gathered, distracted from their jobs, the front of the plane bent
and the fuselage broke in half, collapsing under its own weight on
to the ice with a deafening screech and crash, leaving the tail-end
still half-submerged. Ratoff peered through the gaping hole into
the cabin, then turning to the soldiers, ordered them to prepare
the severed section for removal from the glacier. At the same time
he issued orders that no one was to enter the plane without his
express permission.
The men with the
blow-torches moved aside with their equipment to give Ratoff room
to climb inside the plane. Bending slightly, he stepped into the
cabin, the first passenger aboard in over half a century, and as he
did so the sounds outside were instantly muted; he was met by a
heavy silence that had not been disturbed in all these years. The
experience was like stepping back in time and it filled him with a
sense of mingled excitement and anticipation. Four Delta Force
officers stood guard outside; they knew their orders. Meanwhile the
soldiers scattered again, returning to their tasks, and soon it was
as if nothing had happened.
In the weak daylight
that penetrated this section of the fuselage, he found two bodies,
both middle-aged men, one dressed in the uniform of a German army
officer, the other, to his astonishment, in the uniform of a
two-star US general. An American! He bore insignia that Ratoff did
not recognise and looked to be in his late fifties. A
strong-looking aluminium briefcase with heavy locks was handcuffed
to his left wrist.
That’s three bodies
so far, Ratoff noted. They lay close together on the floor, side by
side, as if carefully arranged. Where it was visible, their skin
was bluish-white and he could see no sign of decay, the ice having
preserved them as well as any morgue. Ratoff assumed these men had
not survived the crash; those who did must have laid them here. One
had a gaping wound to his head and must have died during the
landing. The other appeared largely unscathed; his fatal injuries
must have been internal. He looked better prepared for the cold,
wrapped up in two overcoats and a fur hat, not that they had done
him much good.
Ratoff turned and
retraced his steps, re-emerging into the daylight. The tail section
was still largely trapped in the ice and Ratoff needed a leg-up
from one of the Delta officers to climb in through the opening.
Inside it was dark, so he took out a torch, shining it towards the
rear of the cabin where he made out three other bodies huddled
together as if the men had been trying to share body heat during
the final miserable hours of their lives. So the plane contained
six corpses, counting the one found outside: according to Ratoff’s
briefing, there should have been seven.
Once again, any
exposed skin was a translucent bluish-white, taut and firm to the
touch, and as before Ratoff found no signs of decomposition. He
noted crudely made splints on the legs of a couple of the bodies
and again was baffled to discover that one of them was dressed in
an American uniform. He must be the pilot; the leather bomber
jacket he wore was standard World War II issue for US fighter
pilots. There was a small American flag sewn on to the sleeve and
the man’s name was embroidered on a strip of black linen on his
left breast. The name was American too; there was no mistaking it.
He could not have been much more than twenty-five years
old.
It was inexplicable.
What was an American fighter pilot doing flying German officers and
an American general across the Atlantic in a Nazi plane painted in
US camouflage colours?
To reach the
innermost part of the Junkers’ tail, Ratoff had to bend double.
With the help of his torch it did not take him long to find two
wooden boxes the size of beer crates, one of which he dragged
towards the front of the plane where the light was better. The lid
was nailed down but he found a severed piece of iron stanchion on
the floor and, using it as a lever, was able to force the lid, the
nails screeching as they were slowly torn from the wood. Soon the
box opened fully to reveal rows of small white bags, each tied at
one end. There must have been about twenty of them. Ratoff picked
one up, discovering that it was made of soft velvet and felt heavy
in his hand. Releasing the drawstring, he slid out an ice-cold gold
bar with a swastika, the emblem of the Third Reich, stamped in the
centre of it. Ratoff stared at the bar, weighing it in his hand
with a smile, then cast his eyes around.
But only two crates,
he thought. A tiny haul. So where was the rest? Ratoff had been
anticipating far more than these two boxes; he had expected the
plane to be packed with gold bars bearing the Nazi seal. He slid
the bar back into its bag and replaced it in the crate, closing the
lid and hammering the nails back in again.
Could they have moved
it out of the plane? Moved the entire cargo and buried it in the
ice somewhere nearby? Or somewhere further afield even? When Ratoff
considered it, however, it dawned on him that the plane was hardly
big enough to have carried all the gold he had been assured it
contained: he had been expecting at least several tons. So if
Jewish gold was not behind the organisation’s interest in
monitoring this godforsaken, frozen desert for half a century, he
reasoned, what on earth was? Two crates of gold would hardly
trigger the Third World War. Two pathetic boxes. What other secrets
did the plane harbour? What was this icy tomb carrying that caused
his superiors to have a heart attack every time they thought it was
re-emerging from the ice?
Ratoff’s eyes had by
now adjusted to the gloom inside the wreckage, but although he
searched high and low, he could find no more boxes. The only
personal item he discovered belonging to any of the passengers was
the briefcase. Carr had given him special orders to remove all
documents from the plane, of whatever type. Frustrated by the
absence of the treasure trove he had pictured in his mind’s eye, he
attacked the briefcase with the scrap of metal that he had used on
the crate, and with some difficulty succeeded in forcing the lock.
Nothing but worthless files and papers. He would take a better look
at them later. A search of the bodies also yielded an unremarkable
cache of wallets and passports. The men in German uniform ranged in
age from forty to sixty. One bore a rank that Ratoff thought might
be that of a general. He wore several unfamiliar medals on his
chest, and like the man who had been laid beside the plane, had an
Iron Cross fixed at his throat between the points of his collar,
the German army’s highest honour in the war.
On re-emerging
despondently into the light, Ratoff noted that his men were already
preparing to transport the front section of the plane down to the
base. He gave orders for the corpses to be removed from the
wreckage and taken to the tents to be placed in body-bags, then
returned to the front section of the Junkers, heading straight for
the cockpit, intent on piecing together a fuller picture. There
were seats for a co-pilot and navigator but from the bodies of the
other personnel on board, it appeared that the American had flown
the plane single-handedly. Spotting the flight chart the pilot had
made, he shoved it in his pocket, along with the log book and was
just turning to leave the cabin when he caught sight of a small red
exercise book protruding from under the co-pilot’s seat. He scooped
it up and put that in his pocket as well.
Carr was on the phone
as he crawled out of the aircraft again.
‘Are you spying on
me, sir?’ Ratoff rasped when he had taken the
receiver.
‘Why waste billions
on all this equipment if we don’t use it?’ Carr retorted. ‘Well,
what have you found?’
Ratoff gestured to
the communications officer to leave the tent. All communication
from the glacier was conducted on the Delta Force closed channel.
Ratoff waited until he was alone, then spoke again.
‘What’s going on,
sir?’
‘What do you
mean?’
‘I’ve found only two
crates of gold. You said the plane was full of it. Two boxes!
That’s the lot.’
‘Maybe they buried it
in the ice. Maybe it’ll never be found.’
‘Maybe the gold’s not
what it’s about,’ Ratoff suggested.
The line filled with
static.
‘You never told me
there was an American pilot on board,’ Ratoff continued. ‘And a
two-star general from our side.’
‘Be careful, Ratoff.
I’m under no obligation to tell you anything.’
‘It looks to me as if
some of them survived the landing,’ Ratoff said. ‘Our pilot and two
of the Germans. Judging by the numbers you gave me, one of the
Germans is missing. In any case, they can’t have survived long up
here in the depths of winter – they had inadequate clothing and no
provisions. And somehow I doubt they kept themselves warm by
lugging gold around. Anyway, the plane’s too small to have been
carrying a heavy cargo. So if you’re not looking for gold, what are
you looking for? Maybe you’d like to tell me what I’m doing in this
shit-hole.’
‘You say there are
only six bodies?’
‘Correct.’
‘There should be
seven on board.’
‘Is that something to
worry about?’
‘Well, the seventh
man has never come to light. Perhaps they buried him further away.
Perhaps he tried to get to civilisation.’
‘If the plane wasn’t
carrying gold,’ Ratoff repeated, ‘what is it that you’re after,
sir?’
‘Ratoff,’ Carr said
warily. ‘If I wanted someone to ask questions I wouldn’t have come
to you. You know that.’
‘Is it the
briefcase?’
‘Ratoff.’ Carr’s
voice had fallen to a low growl. ‘Don’t fuck with me. Just do as
you’re told. You were chosen to lead this operation for a
reason.’
Ratoff decided not to
push it any further for the time being.
‘The only thing I
found was the general’s briefcase, which I haven’t opened. Then
there’s the pilot’s log book and another book. I don’t know what it
contains. I haven’t looked at any of it.’
‘Fine. I repeat:
bring out all documents, briefcases, books, passports, names,
anything in writing that you find on board. Take it into your
safekeeping, Ratoff; do not allow anyone else access to it and
deliver it to me and only me. Observe the procedure. Bring me the
lot. Every last scrap.’
‘Of course,
sir.’
‘Take my advice:
you’d be doing yourself a favour to remain ignorant of those
documents. We’ve been over this already. Follow the
plan.’
‘You’ve always been
able to rely on me, sir.’
Carr ignored the edge
he believed he could detect in Ratoff’s voice. ‘When will you be in
Keflavík?’
‘We’ll be airborne in
two days’ time, assuming the storm doesn’t delay us.’
‘Excellent.’
They ended the
conversation. Ratoff considered the briefcase, chart and books he
had piled on a chair. Over the years, he had heard innumerable
stories about the plane’s contents but when he had to accept that
it was nothing but documents, it was as if all suspense, all
anticipation and all his hunger for the mission had died within
him. No gold. No bomb. No biological weapon. None of the more
recognisable of the missing Nazi war criminals, as far as he could
see. No art treasures. No diamonds. Only documents. Worthless
documents. Scraps of yellowed paper.
Still angered and
disorientated by disappointment, he took the documents to his own
tent. Inside stood a camp bed, a chair and a collapsible desk at
which he sat down. First he examined the log book, noting where and
when the plane had taken off and the intended flightpath. Then he
turned to the red exercise book; leafing through it, he was
surprised to see that the pilot had kept a diary during his last
days on the glacier. Putting it aside for the moment, he opened the
briefcase and took out three files, bound with thin, white straps.
He opened the first and flicked quickly through the pages which
turned out to be in German; the yellowed paper felt stiff and
brittle to the touch. The second contained similar documents. He
knew a little German, having been stationed for two years in his
youth at the US base in Ramstein, but not enough to grasp the
precise meaning of the pages.
The third file
contained several more documents, all marked confidential, whose
entire text was in English. Among the papers was a single unsigned
memorandum. Ratoff immersed himself in reading. He perused the
material quickly and gradually began to piece together what the
documents contained, rising involuntarily to his feet and pacing
the narrow confines of the tent. ‘Is it possible?’ he whispered to
himself.
After he had finished
reading, he stood, dumbfounded, staring blankly at the papers,
briefcase, passports, diary. It took him quite a while to grasp the
implications and put them in the context of what he already knew.
He scanned the names that were mentioned, scrutinised the
signatures again. They were powerfully familiar.
Little by little his
scattered thoughts fell into place. He understood the lies. He
understood all the misinformation that had been disseminated. At
once, he understood the plane’s significance. He knew now why they
had been searching for it for decades.
Ratoff grimaced as
the truth finally dawned on him. If they had indeed executed this
plan, and then gone on to organise this massive military operation
to protect the secret, then surely he was in danger? He would be
eliminated at the first opportunity; they would have killed him
regardless of whether he had read the documents. Carr had known at
the outset that if it was successful the mission would be his death
warrant. He smiled grimly at the irony. He would have done the same
in their shoes. He looked at the documents again and shook his
head.
The wind snatched and
tore at the canvas, sending it billowing to and fro, wrenching
Ratoff back to reality. When he went outside, the snow was gusting
so hard he could not see his hand in front of his
face.
Carr watched as the
glacier edged sideways and finally disappeared from the screen. Few
knew Ratoff better and Carr understood instinctively what the
director of the operation was doing at that moment. He left the
room, prowling ponderously through the control room, out into the
corridor and back to his own office where he closed the door firmly
and sat down at the desk. He picked up the telephone receiver. It
was time for the next step.
He asked for a Buenos
Aires number. Then for a flight to Iceland.