TÓMASARHAGI, REYKJAVÍK
That first half hour
while her senses were returning was a blizzard of memories flooding
back. She understood the phone call only too well now. Remembered
Ratoff’s words on the plane and all that Miller had said.
Remembered the body-bags, and Steve, and Jón, the old farmer who
lived at the foot of the glacier, the shooting outside the pub,
being hunted all over the US base. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, and
Elías calling her from the glacier. Oh God, Elías!
There were two major
hospitals in the Reykjavík area, the National and the City
Hospital. She rang the National Hospital, the larger of the two,
and was put through to the information desk where she asked about
her brother and after a short wait was told that there was no one
by that name among the patients. Next she called the City Hospital,
told them her brother’s name and waited, holding her breath, while
the girl who answered checked the admissions list.
‘Yes,’ came the
confirmation at last. ‘He’s here.’
It transpired that he
was in intensive care but off the critical list and would soon
return to a general ward. She could visit him whenever she
liked.
‘Though it’s unusual
for visitors to come this early,’ the nurse remarked.
‘Early?’ Kristín
said.
‘So early in the
morning.’
‘Sorry, what day is
it?’
‘It’s Tuesday,
madam.’
Kristín hung up. It
had been Friday when the Jehovah’s Witnesses tried to kill her.
Only four days ago. A whole lifetime compressed into four short
days. Pulling on a coat, she ran out of the flat, then on second
thoughts turned back and called a cab to come to the
house.
‘To the City
Hospital,’ she said, once she was in the back seat.
The city was coming
to life. People were getting up, seeing to their children, leaving
for work. Large flakes of snow spun lazily to earth. She felt oddly
disconnected, as if she were detached, watching herself from
outside; as if this was not her world and her normal life were
going on peacefully in some other parallel dimension. As she paid
for the taxi she had a strong intuition that she should not be
using her debit card. Why, she did not know.
The nurse who took
her to see Elías handed her a mask and made her don a paper robe
and blue plastic shoe-covers. They walked down a long, brightly lit
corridor and entered a dark room where a man lay motionless,
connected to a mass of tubes which in turn were attached to a
variety of machines that hummed or beeped at regular intervals. His
face was obscured by an oxygen mask but Kristín knew that it was
Elías. She stopped beside his bed and at last rested her eyes on
him, unable to hold back the tears. Only his head was visible above
the covers and she noticed that he had a bandage over one
eye.
‘Elías,’ she said
quietly.
‘Elías?’ she repeated
slightly louder. He did not move.
She longed to gather
him up in her arms but held back, inhibited by all the tubes. The
tears spilled over and ran down her face, her body trembled and
shook. Elías was alive. He would live. He would recover and before
long he would be able to come home. She remembered being in the
same position when he was hit by a car all those years ago: but she
no longer felt guilty. That at least had gone. She knew she could
not be held responsible for Elías’s life – or anyone else’s. It was
beyond her power to decide life or death.
‘Are you Kristín?’
asked a weary voice. Flinching, she half-turned. A man had arrived
unnoticed and was quietly watching her. He was tall, with a thin
face and body, and a thick mane of black hair that he combed
straight back off a high forehead. There was a bandage round his
head.
‘Are you Kristín?’
the man repeated slowly.
‘Who are you?’ she
asked.
‘You can’t be
expected to recognise me with this turban,’ the man said, squinting
up at it. ‘But we’ve met once before. My name’s
Júlíus.’
‘Júlíus!’ she said
quietly, as if to herself. ‘My God, are you Júlíus?’
Going over, she put
her arms round him and they exchanged a fierce embrace. She gripped
him as if he were the one fixed point in her existence. Eventually,
he took hold of her shoulders and loosened her clasp.
‘They released me
yesterday and I came straight to the hospital,’ he said. ‘Elías is
going to make it. They told me they managed to save his
eye.’
‘His
eye?’
‘One of his eyes was
badly damaged but they managed to save his sight.’
Kristín looked at
Elías. He breathed calmly, his machines pulsing and humming
reassuringly.
‘What happened to
you?’ she asked.
‘More to the point,
what happened to you?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I mean
I don’t know how they did it. I think they must have drugged me –
there’s a mark on my neck, here – and delivered me home. I woke up
about an hour ago to find myself in my flat. I’ve been getting
clearer and clearer flashbacks since then but I think there’s a lot
still missing. What about you?’
‘Well, they took me
prisoner and forced me to go with them when they decamped from the
glacier. The man who cracked my skull kept asking me where you
were. He couldn’t understand how you could have vanished but I
pretended not to know anything. When we got down from the glacier
there were trucks waiting to transport all the equipment and I was
put in one of them. I don’t know how long it took but he was
constantly in my face, making threats. He even threatened me with a
knife.’
‘That must have been
Bateman.’
‘If you say so. I
don’t know what he was called but the weird thing was that the
truck suddenly stopped and some soldiers burst in and from what I
could tell arrested him. They dragged him out of the truck, frisked
him, and confiscated some papers he was carrying. I didn’t see him
again after that.’
The wheels of her
addled memory turned slowly. ‘Confiscated some
papers?’
‘Yes. He had them in
his pocket.’
‘And what happened to
the papers?’
‘Someone set fire to
them in front of his nose, without so much as looking at them. The
ash blew away. They left me alone after that.’
‘Where did they let
you go?’
‘Outside the gates of
the US base. I watched the convoy disappear inside. It was dark
when we left the glacier and dark when we reached Keflavík so I’ve
no idea how long it took. I got myself to town and made contact
with the team on the glacier. The Americans prevented us from
coming to join you. They shot at us.’
Júlíus handed her a
newspaper, pointing to the headline: RESCUE TEAM ATTACKED BY MILITARY. The
article was accompanied by photos of the team’s bullet-riddled
vehicle. He handed her another paper: SHOTS FIRED AT REYKJAVÍK RESCUE
TEAM.
‘We contacted the
media the moment we were released,’ he continued. ‘The Americans
have issued an apology. Army spokesmen have been busy on the TV and
radio, parroting a story about conventional winter exercises
involving Dutch and Belgian NATO forces in collaboration with the
US army, and claiming that it was never their intention to obstruct
us. They deeply regret that certain soldiers overreacted to a
perceived threat and fired at us. They promise that they’ll be
holding an inquiry and that compensation will be offered. But they
disclaim all knowledge of Elías and Jóhann’s fate. Deny
categorically that it had anything to do with them, or that they
know anything about you.’
‘And what do the
Yanks say about the plane?’
‘They have no
knowledge of any German aircraft on the glacier. The radio news
reported that the soldiers were searching for satellite-tracking
equipment that had been lost several years ago by a plane crossing
the glacier. The TV news, on the other hand, was saying the
soldiers had been rehearsing a rescue mission involving a staged
air crash, using bits of an old DC-8. And the evening paper
mentioned a hunt for lost gold reserves. You see what we’re up
against. They’ve been thorough, all right.’
Kristín took a deep
breath and thought about what Júlíus had said. ‘And
Steve?’
For the first time
since he arrived Júlíus looked awkward, his authority deserting
him. ‘They say he’s missing, Kristín. They claim they’re trying to
track him down but expect it to take time.’
‘I see.’
Júlíus searched her
face for a reaction but it was unreadable.
‘How have the
Icelandic government played it?’ she asked.
‘By saying that they
granted permission for the exercises.’
‘Nothing about the
plane or Steve?’
‘I told them about
the plane and Steve’s murder and that you were missing and probably
being held against your will by the Americans. It’s all in the
paper, but the army won’t discuss it. They dismiss it all as
“unfounded allegations”. But you’ve turned up now, and soon Elías
will come round and there’ll be three of us. People must believe
us. They’ll have to, don’t you think? The three of us
together?’
Kristín looked from
Júlíus to Elías and back again.
‘They threatened me,
Júlíus,’ she said quietly. ‘And I’m scared. I’ve had enough. They
threatened to harm Elías, and you too. I want it to stop, I’ve had
enough.’
It was beyond her to
explain her feelings about the ordeal she had been through or the
effect it had had on her. She felt as if she were alone in the
world with no one to turn to. Perhaps she would tell Júlíus what
had happened once she had had some rest and recovered a little but
right now all she wanted was to be left in peace.
‘But we can’t give in
now,’ he protested. ‘Where were you? What was the plane on the
glacier carrying? We owe it to the others’
‘I saw how they
treated the man who did this to Elías and killed Steve. I think I
was meant to see it. As a demonstration. As if they had held a
court martial, found him guilty and sentenced him, and that that
ought to satisfy me. If I pursue it, they know where to find me.
That was the message I got.’
Júlíus had no answer
to this.
‘Come on,’ Kristín
said, coming to a sudden decision. ‘Let’s go into the waiting room
and talk there.’
They left Elías and
walked along the corridor to a waiting room with three chairs, a
table and some out-of-date magazines on a shelf. They sat down and
Kristín described everything that had happened to her since they
parted. She repeated what Miller had told her about Operation
Napoleon, and the threats made by the man, almost certainly Carr,
who appeared to have been in charge. She could remember nothing at
all between talking to him on board the transport plane and waking
up in her own living room that morning.
Júlíus had a hard
time taking in the implications of the operation. ‘That’s
incredible, unbelievable! Who on earth could have come up with such
an idea? Do you really believe it? About Napoleon, I mean,’ he
asked. ‘Do you believe they moved him from Berlin?’
‘I think they’ve
behaved exactly as one would expect them to if they wanted to
prevent the story from leaking. If the plane was carrying
information that sensitive, they would want to know what happened
to it, establish whether it had emerged from the ice and make sure
that no one discovered its secret, whether or not the operation the
papers mapped out was ever followed through. They’d send soldiers
to the glacier to remove the plane and all it contained, as far as
possible without attracting any media attention. You can imagine
what would happen if it was found to be true.’
‘And if we take our
conspiracy theory to the press . . .’
‘We’ll be a laughing
stock, Júlíus. Nothing more.’
Neither of them
spoke. They sat there in the blandly impersonal surroundings of the
hospital lounge with its synthetic flowers, quietly contemplating
their separate fates.