VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY
It was a close call:
the helicopter nearly failed to lift the wreckage off the ice and
for a moment it appeared as if it would plunge back to the glacier.
It seemed that this half of the German aircraft had not been
loosened sufficiently and the attention of the men standing around
was fixed on the helicopter’s battle with its cargo.
Ratoff had found
himself a seat in the hold of the Pave Hawk and sat, hunched
tensely at a small porthole, trying to get a glimpse of the steel
cables and their load. The helicopter rose with infinite slowness,
jerking slightly and stopping its ascent momentarily as it took up
the full weight of the Junkers’ fuselage. Little by little the
wreckage rose from its icy tomb until it was free. Then the
helicopter accelerated away and Ratoff watched the blur of the camp
recede steadily into the surrounding night.
The noise in the
cabin was mind-numbing but Ratoff was wearing earphones and could
communicate with the two pilots in the cockpit via a helmet radio.
They proceeded at a sedate pace, at an altitude of five thousand
feet, the load dangling from three thick steel cables; this was the
front half of the German plane. Before long the second helicopter
would lift off the tail section, containing the bodies from the
wreck. Both halves had been removed from the ice with their
contents untouched and the openings sealed with heavy-duty plastic
sheeting. He heaved a sigh of relief; the mission was in its final
stages and had been largely successful, despite the inconvenience
caused by Kristín and the rescue team. The plane had been safely
excavated and he was on his way home. Soon it would be over, or
this episode at least.
Ratoff was the only
passenger. He tried to prepare his mind for what lay ahead while
listening to the radio traffic between the pilots and air traffic
control at the Keflavík base. The scheduled arrival time at
Keflavík was in just over twenty-five minutes. Flying conditions
were ideal – cold but windless – and the journey passed without
incident. The helicopter would fly directly to the C-17 and set
down its load on a special pallet where each half of the German
aircraft would be loaded on to the transport plane. The air force
referred to it as the Keiko plane, after a killer whale which, with
the world’s animal lovers watching, had recently been flown to
Iceland from Newport, Oregon. To save time and prevent discomfort
to its unusual passenger, the C-17 had refuelled in mid-air and
would do the same during the present mission. Very soon, the C-17
would take off and the Icelandic phase of the operation would be
over. What followed would be a flight halfway round the
world.
But the other half of
his mind was elsewhere. Ratoff was working on the assumption that
they would leave him alone until they reached their final
destination, but he could not count on this. He considered why Carr
had chosen him for the job. It had been Carr who had originally
recruited him to the organisation but over the years the general
had become increasingly remote until he no longer seemed willing to
recognise his existence. Ratoff was reconciled to this fact. Though
he was by no means his own master, he was able to decide his own
movements and enjoyed a certain amount of freedom within the
service, although he knew people disliked him. No doubt he troubled
their consciences. After all, Ratoff did their dirty work; he
gathered information. How he did it was his own business. The less
the service knew about it, the less Carr knew, the
better.
He had come to the
conclusion while still on the glacier that the reason Carr had
chosen him to lead the mission was because he regarded him as
expendable. It would be a simple matter to make him disappear. He
was an embarrassment, a relic from an era that no one wanted
reminding of. Ratoff assumed that Carr knew precisely what the
plane contained, along, no doubt, with a handful of other senior
military intelligence officers. What he could not know was if
anyone else was in on the secret. He was not even sure if anyone
outside the army realised what was happening. For the first time he
could remember in recent years, Ratoff was threatened, and the
sensation awakened every animal instinct in him.
Where had that damned
girl found out about Napoleon? The pathetic jerk with her had
mentioned something about a pilot on the base but Ratoff knew that
had been nothing but a desperate ploy. He could have extracted the
information from her had there been time. No matter: Bateman would
take over the interrogation, after which both she and her friend
would disappear once and for all.
He recalled what he
had read in one of the briefing documents from the dossier in the
plane, a yellowing typewritten sheet, with a British War Cabinet
Office letterhead.
. . . following the meeting in Yalta that Stalin would have excessive power in Eastern Europe and would no doubt fail to keep the terms of the treaties. The British War Cabinet has therefore drafted a plan for an Allied attack on Stalin’s government in Moscow, which would result in the elimination of Russia. The plan has been assigned the codename ‘Operation Unthinkable’. The war in the European theatre will be brought to an end by means of a treaty with the Germans, according to the terms of which approximately one hundred thousand German soldiers will join the Allies in the attack on Stalin, to be deployed in the front line of the first wave of the invasion. It is considered advisable to launch the eastward attack from north Germany, near Dresden. A second attack, to be launched from the Baltic, cannot be ruled out. It is assumed that the Russians will respond by invading Turkey, Greece, and even Norway from the north. It is also likely that they will attempt to secure oil reserves in Iraq and Iran.The idea is not a new one and has been debated in the innermost circles where it initially met with overwhelming opposition. Its fiercest opponents regard negotiation with Germany as tantamount to entering into an alliance with the Nazis, who initiated the war that has laid waste to Europe. Recent discoveries in Eastern Europe have also confirmed suspicions about the organised extermination of the Jews. Another credible argument against Unthinkable is that the Russians more than any other nation have changed the course of the war, helping to secure an Allied victory at enormous cost to themselves.Notwithstanding, there are those who believe they can shorten the war by several months, thus minimising further loss of life. They are looking to the future and fear how the world will appear if Unthinkable is not put into action. There is serious concern about what will follow the end of the war when the Yalta Treaty authorises Stalin control over almost half of Europe as well as the Baltic States. It is already clear that he cannot be trusted to keep the terms of the treaty. His policy of expansionism, this thinking suggests, will threaten the newly won peace in future years. The Prime Minister has referred in private talks to an ‘iron curtain’ . . .
Ratoff remembered
something he had seen in the pilot’s diary. The writing was almost
illegible towards the end until only fragments could be made out,
only the odd sentence, of which Ratoff could make little.
Disconnected snatches about his parents, his brother, death. He
remembered one sentence in particular. I’m
almost sure I saw Guderian at the meeting. Guderian,
Hitler’s chief of staff towards the end of the war.
Ratoff started out of
his reverie. The pilots had been trying to attract his attention
over the radio and finally one of them shouted his
name.
‘A message from the
glacier, sir, from someone called Bateman,’ he said when Ratoff
asked what was going on.
‘What
message?’
‘He says she’s
vanished, sir.’
‘Who?’
‘Some woman. He won’t
say over the radio. Doesn’t trust us. The message is: she’s
disappeared from the camp.’
He ordered them to
put him through; his earpiece filled with crackling static and
radio distortion as they searched for the correct channel, then he
heard Bateman’s voice.
‘It’s
incomprehensible, totally incomprehensible, sir,’ Ratoff heard him
say.
‘Go after her,’
Ratoff shouted. ‘She must be moving away from the camp. She should
show up on the radar.’
‘No, she isn’t. It’s
as if she’s vanished into thin air. The surveillance system doesn’t
show her anywhere near the camp and we’ve turned the whole place
upside down but she’s nowhere to be found. Vanished into thin air.
And we’re dismantling the system so we won’t be able to use it any
more.’
A cold tremor of
alarm went through Ratoff. He could not afford any more mistakes.
They had fumbled their way through this operation and were on the
point of getting out intact and now this infernal woman was once
again jeopardising his success.
‘There’s another
thing, sir,’ Bateman said. ‘We found a man in the tent in her
place. He claims he’s the leader of the rescue team. His name’s
Júlíus. He evaded our guards and it’s obvious that he must have
helped her. What do you want us to do with him?’
‘Why wasn’t I told
about this man?’ Ratoff snarled.
‘There wasn’t time,
sir,’ Bateman answered.
Ratoff looked into
the dark oblivion beyond the helicopter’s porthole.
‘He knows where she
is. Get it out of him.’
‘There’s no time for
that. We’re almost ready to move out. The first group will be
setting off in a matter of minutes.’
The helicopter pilots
were listening to the conversation with interest.
‘Take him with you,’
Ratoff ordered. ‘Take him with you and for Christ’s sake make sure
he doesn’t escape.’ He would have to deal with him
later.