VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0015 GMT
Kristín was met by an
extraordinary, utterly surreal sight, a scene from science fiction.
Perhaps it was the exhaustion that now coursed through her limbs
like a dull drug, but all at once she felt she was losing her grip
and succumbing to an overpowering sense of helplessness. Everything
that had happened to her was reduced to a jumble of hallucinations,
a long, intense nightmare in which she was on the run but could
never move fast enough. Was she in fact still lying at home on the
sofa? The sight that met her eyes made it hard to put the events in
any sort of context, hard to distinguish between this outlandish
reality and her own delirious imaginings.
She saw the Pave Hawk
helicopters perched side by side, their immensely long rotor-blades
extending in all directions. About thirty tents of varying sizes
were arranged in a semicircle; snowmobiles, tracked vehicles,
trailers carrying oil-driven engines and portable generators,
floodlights and satellite dishes and a host of other equipment she
could not put a name to littered the area. Scores if not hundreds
of personnel were milling around on the ice. Some, she now noticed,
had begun to take down the tents – they were starting to clear up
after themselves. She understood. They were finished here. Soon
there would be no trace of them: the snow would obliterate their
tracks. Deep down the realisation struck her, triggering a warning
bell that gradually restored her wandering wits: they were leaving
the glacier.
Only then did she see
the plane. It lay, cut in half, in a shallow depression in the ice.
Two groups of people were busy fixing strong, thick slings around
each half, attached to cables which extended in the direction of
the helicopters. Evidently the helicopters were there to remove the
plane wreckage and after that it would not take the soldiers long
to disappear too.
It was very still,
several degrees below zero. The black vault of the night sky arched
over the area, reflecting the glow of the powerful floodlights. The
journey had been uneventful; she and Steve had been forced to ride
pillion on the snowmobiles behind their captors, who maintained
radio contact with the camp throughout. After fifteen or twenty
minutes they had ascended a small ridge and the tents had come into
view below them. The vehicles careered down the ridge and into the
camp, stopping by one of the larger tents. She and Steve were shown
inside, past two soldiers who stood guard either side of the
opening.
‘Are you okay,
Kristín?’ Steve asked once they were at the back of the tent, as
far from the guards as possible.
‘Yes, and you? Are
you all right?’
As she looked at him,
her thoughts strayed to what had happened between them at Jón’s
farm. For a brief moment her present surroundings faded and she
pictured a future with him.
‘Could be better,’
Steve said. ‘Could be at home watching basketball. There’s a big
game on tonight, Lakers against the Bulls.’
‘It could hardly beat
this,’ Kristín said. Neither of them smiled. Looking at Steve, she
saw her own anxiety reflected in his face.
She surveyed their
canvas cell with a sudden sense of hopelessness. On the table sat a
large gas lamp which lit up the tent and emitted a faint heat, but
otherwise it was freezing inside. There were also four camp chairs
and, at the back of the tent, close to where they were standing,
they noticed several heavy canvas sheets spread out over the ice.
She glanced towards the tent opening where the soldiers stood
watching them.
‘I want to speak to
Ratoff,’ Kristín called out but received no reaction.
‘Shouldn’t your
rescue team be here by now?’ Steve asked under his breath, the
worry just audible in his voice. ‘And the Coast Guard, or whatever
it’s called? And the police and reporters and TV crews? Where’s
CNN? Where’s the cavalry?’
‘I know,’ Kristín
said. ‘Something must start happening soon. Look, let’s think for a
minute. How can we get out of here? What is this tent anyway? What
are they using it for?’
She looked down at
the sheets of canvas.
‘What’s this?’ she
asked in a low voice, backing further into the tent. Steve moved
unobtrusively towards her. Distracted by the commotion outside, the
guards had lost interest and gone back to watching the spectacle of
a small army erasing all trace of itself. From under one of the
tarpaulins, the corner of a grey body-bag could be
glimpsed.
‘What have they got
here?’ Steve whispered.
Kristín stepped on
the corner of the canvas and drew it quietly towards her, then
repeated the movement. Her legs were stiff from the walk up to the
glacier and weak from lack of food; it took all her concentration
to stop the muscles in her thigh from going into spasm. The canvas
shifted and she continued dragging her foot until she had partially
uncovered what lay beneath. The body-bag was open at the top, the
heavy-duty zip which joined the bag’s shiny grey folds drawn back
perhaps ten inches. A peaked cap met their eyes, bearing the eagle
and swastika insignia. When Kristín tugged with her foot a little
more, a face appeared beneath the cap. They stared speechlessly at
the body. It was a middle-aged man whose deathly pallor was almost
as translucent as the ice. Kristín could hardly grasp what she was
seeing; she stood in silent wonder, her attention riveted on this
new discovery.
Her heart nearly
stopped when a hoarse voice spoke behind them.
‘Pretty sight, don’t
you think? As if he’d died no more than a week ago.’
Ratoff had entered
the tent, with Bateman at his heel. Kristín instantly recognised
the man who had twice tried to murder her; she also knew in her
bones that she was finally standing face to face with Ratoff. She
had formed an image of him which in no way fitted the man before
her. He was so short that she almost burst out laughing. She had
imagined a man well over six feet tall, yet here he was, a man with
no physical presence whatsoever; in spite of his padded ski-suit,
she could tell that he was nothing but skin and bone. For a moment
it crossed her mind that he might be suffering from some incurable
disease. His features looked vaguely Slavonic: a bony face, the
cheekbones and chin jutting through the taut skin, a narrow, dead
straight nose, and small, sharp, deep-set eyes. As he came closer
she noticed that he had white rings round his pupils that made his
eyes appear eerily bright. His ears were small and grew close to
his head, and his mouth seemed to underline the cruelty above, but
her attention was drawn irresistibly to the scar under his left
eye. She could not stop staring at it. It was round like a little
sun, radiating tiny grooves down his cheek.
‘You’re not the
first,’ Ratoff said in his odd, rasping voice, noting the direction
of her gaze: ‘She did her best.’ He scratched the raised purple
outline of the old scar with one finger.
‘I hope it hurt,’
Kristín replied.
‘An accident,’ Ratoff
said. ‘The bullet went right through my face and out behind my ear.
I lost part of my voice, nothing else.’
‘Pity she didn’t kill
you,’ Kristín retorted.
‘She came close.’ He
smiled. ‘Are you looking for your little brother, Kristín? I fear
it may be too late to save him now.’
‘Don’t be so sure. He
was alive the last I heard. It was a close call but if a shit like
you can survive being hit point-blank, there’s still hope for
him.’
Ratoff considered
this.
‘Icelandic women,’ he
said at last, sliding his gaze over to Steve. ‘I’ve read about
them. They are fond of sleeping with foreigners. Are you,
Kristín?’
‘Fuck you,’ Kristín
growled.
The thin line of
Ratoff’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
‘It doesn’t matter,’
he said. ‘We’re finished. And the best of it is that we were never
here.’
‘Everyone knows.
We’ve told everyone we could about you and the plane on
Vatnajökull. It’s only a question of time before the glacier is
crawling with well-informed observers and you won’t be able to
throw all of them down a crevasse.’
‘That’s why we have
to make haste. A pity I can’t spend a little more time with you two
first. Bateman would especially enjoy that.’
‘So the asshole has a
name,’ Kristín exclaimed.
Bateman did not stir
but Ratoff walked right up to Kristín, causing her to take an
involuntary step backwards. His face touched hers. Looking deep
into the small eyes, she saw nothing but cold revulsion. She
breathed in his stale, sour smell.
‘You look like you
have more guts than your little brother,’ he hissed from between
his thin lips. ‘How he could howl. How he screamed and cried. First
when I put his friend’s eyes out, then when I started on him.
Whined and whined for his big sister. I thought he’d never stop.
But she didn’t hear him. She was too busy fucking an American. You
should have heard him. Very moving, it was.’
He did not flinch,
even when the saliva landed on his forehead and dribbled into his
eye, just carried on in the same low, hoarse voice.
‘“Kristín” he moaned,
but his big sister never came.’
A special forces
soldier appeared at the tent flap.
‘They’re ready with
the choppers, sir,’ he called.
Ratoff turned, wiping
the saliva from his face. He glanced at Bateman and
nodded.
‘Load the body bags
into the plane,’ he ordered and started to walk away. He was
halfway out of the tent when Kristín shouted at his
back:
‘I know about
Napoleon!’
Ratoff stopped dead,
then turned round.
‘I said I know all
about Napoleon,’ Kristín repeated.
‘You have no idea
what you are talking about,’ Ratoff said, entering the tent
again.
‘I know about the
Napoleon documents,’ Kristín continued, in a blind rage. ‘Or
Operation Napoleon, as it was known.’
‘Tell me, Kristín.
What exactly do you know about it? Or is it just a word you have
heard? I’m afraid that’s not much of a card to play,’ Ratoff
sneered.
‘Everything. What the
Germans were up to,’ Kristín said, feeling her way blindly. ‘I know
what your precious plane is hiding. A secret in a briefcase. No
bomb, no gold, no virus. Just papers.’
‘Well, well. Let’s
imagine you do. Who else knows about Napoleon?’ Ratoff asked,
standing right in front of her again. His soulless eyes searched
hers. He repeated his question and Kristín realised that she had
touched a nerve but had no idea how to press her advantage. Her
mind was blank. Under his gaze she felt paper-thin, transparent,
exposed.
‘Who have you told
about Napoleon?’ Ratoff asked, and Kristín saw a sudden flash of
steel in his hand.