C-17 TRANSPORT PLANE, ATLANTIC AIR
SPACE,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0515 GMT
She had kept up her
ceaseless struggle with the zip ever since she had been left alone,
but in vain. Now and then her mind drifted back to the
stomach-turning noise of a rifle butt making contact with Júlíus’s
face, followed by the dull thud of his body landing on the ice.
More soldiers had entered the tent and soon she had felt herself
being picked up and carried outside.
She had heard Ratoff
telling Bateman that the body-bags were to be placed in the
wreckage of the German aircraft and taken away by the choppers. For
a brief moment no one was watching them in the tent as the
helicopters were taking off. Júlíus tried to tear her away from
Steve but he was not strong enough. He yelled in her ear but she
behaved as if he did not exist. Bending down, he struck her hard on
the face and she finally broke off her howling. He prised Steve’s
body out of her grasp and laid him gently on the snow. Kristín came
to her senses and started frantically looking for a way out and saw
some empty body-bags by the wall in the corner where the corpses
were laid out. Júlíus did not understand when she indicated the
body-bags to him; he merely tried to drag her out of the tent
again. Still resisting, she pointed to herself and then to the
body-bags, put her mouth to his ear and shouted:
‘Help me into one of
the bags.’
He stared at her,
dumbfounded, then shook his head.
‘No way,’ he shouted
back.
Tearing herself away
from him, she ran to the bags by the wall and started opening the
first one she reached. Júlíus knew their time had run out. His only
thought was to save Kristín. Running over, he helped her unzip the
bag and climb inside, then zipped it up again, leaving only a small
gap. He laid the bag against the wall beside the other bodies just
before the soldiers arrived.
The body-bag was very
roomy, with handles at each corner. Four soldiers lifted it easily.
She lay on her back, trying to keep still, making herself as rigid
and inflexible as possible, regardless of what happened. Through
the zip that Júlíus had left slightly open a tiny ray of light
entered. She glimpsed the starry sky overhead.
The bag was dumped
roughly on the floor of the plane and before long the light
disappeared from the zip opening. She heard the noise of a
helicopter again, this time directly above her head. There was an
abrupt jerk as the wreckage began to lift away from the ice, then
swung in the air beneath the helicopter as it set off on its
westerly course.
She tried to open the
zip and managed to force it down a few centimetres before it
jammed. After that, no matter how hard she tried, she could budge
it no further. Although she had sufficient oxygen to breathe, she
was enveloped in impenetrable blackness.
She hardly felt the
impact when the helicopter gently laid down the rear half of the
plane on the C-17 transport pallet at Keflavík Airport, nor when it
was driven into the yawning hold of the freight plane. She tried to
envisage what could be happening, only guessing that she was on
board a plane when the C-17 took off and she experienced that
hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach that she always felt
when she travelled by air. Her ears popped and the bass roar of the
engines warned her that she was embarking on a much longer journey
than she had imagined. She was still wearing the thick winter
snowsuit but, although better than nothing, it provided limited
protection against the cold that now penetrated the
body-bag.
The damn zip was
still stuck fast and she was beginning to doubt she would ever get
out of the bag. At this rate, she thought to herself grimly, she
would indeed end up in a mortuary, ready-wrapped. Her fingers were
bloody from her battle and she was growing afraid that she would
freeze to death from the cold when suddenly she heard a rustling
sound from within the cabin of the German plane. Someone was close
by. She saw a small beam of light through the gap in the bag. Could
it be Ratoff?
She heard asthmatic
wheezing and groans as if someone were struggling with something
nearby, then all of a sudden there was fumbling at her bag.
Ham-fisted attempts were being made to unfasten the zip. When it
finally gave, Kristín closed her eyes and held her breath until she
thought her chest would burst. As she opened her eyes at last, it
was to find Miller leaning over her with a look of utter
bewilderment on his face.
‘Jesus Christ!’
Miller cried, starting back, his eyes fixed on Kristín as she
reared up out of the body-bag. Corpses coming to life – it was
enough to kill a man.
‘Who the fuck are
you?’ Kristín demanded, before he could gather his wits. ‘Where am
I? Where are you taking the plane?’
‘Who are you?’ Miller
asked, stunned. ‘And what are you doing here?’
She had climbed out
of the body-bag and was on her feet, looming over the old man who
had fallen back on to the floor.
‘Your people killed
my friend on the glacier,’ Kristín said accusingly. ‘My brother is
hardly expected to live. I would like to know exactly what is going
on.’ Her voice rose: ‘What’s happening, for Christ’s sake? What’s
so important about this plane that you’re prepared to kill for
it?’
She came close to
kicking the old man in her desperation, her foot drawn back and her
thigh tensed, but thought better of it just before she allowed
herself the release of lashing out. Miller, prone and vulnerable on
the ground, did not dare move a muscle. She was glaring at him as
if demented and long moments passed before she regained control of
herself, her features softened and some of the tension left
her.
Miller had recovered
a little from his shock and sat up on one of the two crates of gold
that were on board the plane. She glimpsed the outline of a
swastika on the box.
‘For God’s sake, tell
me why this plane is so important to you,’ she begged Miller, then
abruptly her mood seemed to change to alarm. ‘Who are you? Where
are we?’
‘We’re on board a US
army C-17 transport plane on our way across the Atlantic,’ Miller
said in a level, soothing tone. ‘You have nothing to fear from me.
Try to calm down.’
‘Don’t tell me to
calm down. Who are you?’
‘My name’s
Miller.’
‘Miller?’ Kristín
repeated. A memory stirred. ‘Are you the man Jón talked
about?’
‘Jón?’
‘The farmer, Jón. The
brothers from the farm at the foot of the glacier.’
‘Of course. Yes, I’m
that Miller. You’ve met Jón?’
‘He told us about
you. Steve and me.’ Her voice quavered but she bit her lip, forcing
the repugnant image of Steve sprawled across the ice from her mind,
and continued: ‘You were in the first expedition. You had a brother
on board the plane. Is that right?’
‘I was looking for
him when you . . .’
‘You’re looking for
your brother?’
Miller did not
speak.
He could not imagine
who this dishevelled stowaway could be. But judging by her
appearance and her troubled state of mind, he understood that he
must be direct and polite, do whatever he could to reassure her. He
had no idea who she was, did not know the ordeal she had endured,
her flight from paid assassins, her search for answers, but little
by little he managed to elicit her story.
There was something
reassuring about this weary-looking old man, something trustworthy
that Kristín responded to. He had said he was looking for his
brother, just as she was – they had something in common – and she
sensed that he genuinely wanted to hear her story, to know who she
was and how on earth she came to be hiding in a body-bag in the
wreck of the German aircraft. He listened patiently as she
recounted the barely credible series of events, culminating in the
tale of how Ratoff had killed Steve in front of her. She was to
blame for Steve’s death. He was gone because of her – her
impetuosity, her selfish, pig-headed pursuit. Only now could she
begin to absorb this awful truth. Her tale told, she hung her head,
sunk in despair.
Miller sat and
studied her. He believed her. She had been through an indescribable
ordeal and he had no reason to doubt that she was telling the
truth. She was obviously near the end of her endurance, yet she
seemed calmer now and had taken a seat opposite him on another box.
He shook his head over the absurdity of their
situation.
‘This Steve, did he
work at the base?’
‘Yes.’
‘But they shot him
anyway?’
‘It was because of
me. It was personal somehow. It didn’t make sense. Ratoff said he
would leave me something to remember him by. Then he shot Steve. He
didn’t need to. He just did it to torment me. Steve was nothing to
him. Tell me, please, what’s going on? I need answers. And where is
Ratoff? Is he here?’ she asked, looking distractedly around the
dark recesses of the fuselage.
‘You needn’t worry
about Ratoff any more. And as for the rest, you don’t want to
know,’ Miller said after a pause. ‘You won’t gain anything by
knowing. I assure you, you won’t be any better off.’
‘That’s for me to
judge. I haven’t come this far to give up now. Do you even know
what it’s about?’
‘Some of it. My
brother lost his life because of an operation that was set in
motion during the Second World War, an operation that has always
been denied. In fact it’s imperative that no one should know about
it. No one needs to. Not you, not anybody.’
‘How can you be so
sure?’
‘Believe me. I’ll see
that you get home to Iceland. I’ll see that nothing happens to you
but it’d be better for everyone, and for you too, if you stopped
looking for answers. Try to forget what you’ve been through. I’m
asking a lot, I know, but you have to trust me.’
‘And Ratoff too? What
about him?’
‘Ratoff’s an
exception. Men like him are sometimes necessary but they can never
be fully controlled.’
Kristín considered
Miller’s words. There was no way she could forget all she had been
through; it was inconceivable that she should abandon the search
now, after coming this far. She owed it to Elías to carry on, owed
it to Steve to find out the truth once and for all. She would not
give up, her conscience would not allow her to.
‘When you said
earlier that you were looking for him when I surprised you, did you
mean your brother? Is he in one of these body-bags?’
‘He flew the plane,’
Miller said, as if to himself. ‘We sent him to Germany, all the way
to Berlin to fly the damn plane. I sent him myself. We were going
to meet up in Reykjavík and travel across the Atlantic together,
all the way to Argentina. The gold in these boxes was supposed to
oil the wheels of the negotiations. They were to get more later.
All of it Jewish gold. For bribing the government in Buenos
Aires.’
Kristín studied him
for a while; she saw nothing to fear in him, he was simply an old
man searching for answers, just as she was. After a moment’s pause,
she continued with her probing.
‘What was Napoleon?’
she asked warily. ‘Or who was Napoleon? And what was Operation
Napoleon?’
‘Where did you hear
about Napoleon?’ Miller asked, unable to conceal his
surprise.
‘I caught sight of
some documents Ratoff had on the glacier,’ Kristín lied. ‘Saw the
name there. I assumed that they’d come from the plane. That they’d
belonged to the Germans.’
‘I don’t know all of
it,’ Miller said. His manner was an unreadable blend of studied
vagueness and what looked to Kristín like genuine distraction, as
if his real concern was far from whatever plots were at the heart
of this complex knot stretching back over fifty years of lies and
deceptions.
‘Let’s look for your
brother,’ Kristín suggested, making a great effort to curb her
temper. She would have liked to seize Miller and shake him; force
him to tell her what he knew about the plane, the Germans,
Napoleon. But she would have to handle him carefully, extract the
story piece by precious piece. She was too close to the truth now
to jeopardise it with more impatience; she swallowed a bitter taste
at the thought of what that had cost her already. And yet time was
so very short. Ratoff must be nearby, and other soldiers with him;
she was trapped in an aeroplane somewhere over the Atlantic with no
prospect of escape. The old man held the key to the riddle,
tantalisingly, right here in front of her. She had to win his
trust, give him more time. Though she placed little faith in his
claim that he could protect her, he had about him the air of
another outsider, of another person whose place in this scheme was
suspect and perhaps unwanted, and this gave her some meagre
hope.
Miller nodded, and
they stooped down to inspect the body-bags. He found his brother in
the last one. Kristín lowered the zip, revealing the face of a man
who must have been in his twenties. She stepped aside for Miller,
handing him the torch. He bowed over the body of his brother,
scrutinising his face.
‘At last,’ Miller
whispered.
Kristín studied the
brothers, the man breathing beside her and the still, silent boy in
the bag, and marvelled at how well the body had been preserved. The
glacier had been gentle with it; not a scratch was visible. The
face was utterly drained of colour, the taut skin like thin white
paper. The young man had strong features: a high forehead, finely
drawn brows and prominent cheekbones. His eyes were closed and his
face, though she wished there were some other way of expressing it,
looked at peace. It reminded Kristín of a book she had at home
containing photographs of dead children. They looked like china
dolls: immaculate, frozen, cold. This face too appeared cast from
porcelain.
A tear fell,
shattering on the hard shell of the cheek. She looked from one face
to the other.
‘He’s only
twenty-three,’ Miller said.