Operation Napoleon (8 page)

REYKJAVÍK

FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 1945 GMT

Kristín ran blindly towards the coast road at Aegisída, then veered west, her instincts keeping her as far as possible to the dark gardens. Her only thought was to flee; she never once looked back.

A succession of terrible images flashed through her mind. She saw the light going out in Runólfur’s eyes as the bullet entered his forehead, heard the whine of a second bullet and saw it thud into the door. Her ear hurt; it was bleeding. Her thoughts darted to her brother on the glacier: they had said he was dead. She remembered his last words: armed soldiers, a plane. A few minutes later two men had forced their way into her flat and tried to kill her. They had mentioned a name – Ratoff – and a conspiracy involving the Reykjavík police, the foreign ministry and the ministry of justice. It had seemed preposterous at first but any illusion had been dispelled as Runólfur crumpled to the floor in front of her.

The cold soon began to make her bones ache. She psyched herself up to look over her shoulder as she ran but could see no sign of the two men. Dropping her pace, she took a better look around and finally slowed to a standstill. She was surrounded by apartment blocks. Noticing that the door to the basement of one building was ajar, she slipped inside, pulling the door to behind her. It was pitch black inside and she was met by a stench of refuse. She made her way to the back and crouched down in the dark like an animal.

She lost track of time. Eventually, hearing no sound of movement, she crept forwards, cautiously pushed at the door and peered out through the crack, surveying her surroundings. There was nobody about; they had not followed her. Not far off was a small estate of terraced houses, their lights shining cosily through the icy darkness. What should she do? Knock at one of the doors and tell them everything? About the men and the body in her flat and the police complicity? But if the police were involved, who could she notify about the murder, about her brother on the glacier and the two killers? And what if the ministry she worked for was also implicated in the murder? She fumbled at her jacket, feeling for the wallet in her pocket.

What if they had killed Elías the way they had killed Runólfur right in front of her eyes? she thought. What kind of men were they?

Gradually anger got the better of her fear, allowing her to think more logically. She must find shelter somewhere; acquire clothes, information, maybe even go to the glacier herself and try to help her brother, if he was still alive. She did not dare contact the authorities; not as things stood, not until she knew more, until she was sure it was safe. But where was she to go? If they knew about her, surely they would know about her father too, in which case she could not go to him. The thought suddenly struck her: should she not warn him in case they paid him a visit next?

She dashed out of the rubbish store and over to the terraced houses where she hammered on the door of the nearest and leaned on the doorbell. The man of the house answered quickly, his wife and two children hovering behind his shoulder. They had been watching television and had evidently sprung to their feet when they heard the banging and ringing. Kristín barged her way inside the moment the door opened.

‘I have to make a phone call,’ she cried. ‘Where’s the phone?’

‘Just a minute, miss,’ the man said, looking at her in horror. She was sweating in spite of the cold, her chest was heaving, her face a mask of terror, her clothes soaking wet and blood was oozing from one ear, caking the right side of her head.

‘I asked you, where’s the phone?’ she repeated as he staggered back before her into the little kitchen, where he pointed dumbly to the telephone. His family clustered around him.

Three rings, six. He did not answer. She tried to think clearly: where could he be? His answering machine kicked in and she waited impatiently for the tone, then spoke hurriedly.

‘Dad? You’ve got to hide. The moment you hear this, disappear. I don’t know what’s going on but they’ve killed a man and tried to kill me, and they’ll almost certainly come after you. Elías may be dead. There are two of them, dressed like Jehovah’s Witnesses. I know this sounds insane but please do as I say and go into hiding. Don’t worry about me, just hide! And don’t try to make contact with me.’

The little family were gaping at her. The man exchanged alarmed glances with his wife and both looked down at the children, huddling closer together, their eyes fixed on this wild woman as she ended her message. When Kristín put down the receiver and turned to face them, they all stepped back simultaneously.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, seeing the terror on the children’s faces. ‘It’s all true, I swear to God. They were going to kill me. Can you lend me some clothes? But please don’t ring the police – they may be involved. Try to forget this happened.’ She shivered involuntarily as the adrenalin began to ebb from her body, her teeth chattering together. ‘Do you have any clothes you could lend me? God, I’m so cold. Do you have any shoes and socks?’

‘If we give you some clothes,’ the woman said, speaking as calmly as she could, ‘will you leave?’

‘I’ll leave right away,’ Kristín assured her. ‘Just please don’t call the police.’

A few minutes later she emerged from the house dressed in an outfit belonging to the woman: a pair of jeans, a thick jumper and winter boots. Under normal circumstances she would have found it odd and uncomfortable to be wearing someone else’s clothes which smelt of a strange, alien perfume, but there was no time for such thoughts now. The door slammed behind her. They had given her a plaster for her ear as well. As she walked slowly out of the cul-de-sac and on to the main road, the occasional car drove past cautiously in the snow. Kristín loathed snow; it reminded her of nothing more than Icelandic winters and the inner darkness they brought with them. She walked along the pavement, wondering what to do, before eventually deciding to head back in the direction of Tómasarhagi, looking round warily all the while. She had come up with a plan of sorts, though she doubted that she was in any fit state to think rationally or to work out the simplest solution.

She would handle this alone, at least to begin with. She did not dare to go to her friends or family for fear that her pursuers or their henchmen would be waiting. Only a few minutes had elapsed between her conversation with her brother and their appearance on her doorstep. Perhaps they were tapping her phone. But why? Did it have something to do with Runólfur? They had killed him, after all, and he had been raging about a conspiracy; about the Russian mafia.

She knew only one man who could tell her about soldiers.

Taking care to keep out of sight, she peered over at her own house. There was no sign of the police or anyone else; everything looked quiet, domestic, unremarkable. When she reached the main road she hailed a taxi, one which fortunately accepted cards.

‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘Keflavík Airport,’ she replied, casting a nervous glance out of the rear window.

VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,

FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 2100 GMT

Ratoff did not see them land but heard the thuds as they collided with the ice on their headlong descent into the crevasse. It was pitch dark on the glacier, the moon hidden behind thick clouds, the only light emanating from the headlamps on Ratoff’s tracked vehicle and the snowmobiles. By the time they had reached the crevasse, one of the young men was unconscious, the other dead. Ratoff ordered his soldiers to push their snowmobiles into the chasm on top of them, after which his men set to work obliterating their tracks. Once this was done, Ratoff dropped Elías’s phone into the crevasse after him.

In the end he had forced Elías to give up the salient facts about Kristín, information which he duly passed on to Ripley and Bateman. Elías had held out for a long time but Ratoff was good at his job. The boy had surrendered everything about his sister’s friends and colleagues, where their father lived and how he often made long trips abroad, and about Kristín’s ex-boyfriends, the lawyer and his circle; even about their mother’s death a few years earlier in a car crash. He revealed how his sister had taken a postgraduate degree in California and how, despite sometimes visiting friends abroad, she hated travelling in Iceland and that trips into the interior were her idea of hell. Elías had told Ratoff everything he wanted to know, before finally begging for mercy. But by then his friend Jóhann was dead. The last thing Elías heard before he lost consciousness was Ratoff whispering the news in his ear that his sister was dead too.

Ratoff’s men laboured away at clearing the ice from the German aircraft, working in four-hour shifts, sixty men to a shift. They were well on schedule; more and more of the fuselage had been uncovered until they could now see into the passenger cabin through the first of the side windows. When Ratoff returned to camp, he walked over to the German plane and spent a long time peering through the window. He could dimly make out shapes on the floor that might have been bodies. He was summoned to the communications tent and straightened up. Ripley was on the line.

‘She used her debit card to pay for a taxi to Keflavík, sir,’ Ripley informed him. ‘Did her brother say anything about Keflavík?’

‘Why the hell is she going to Keflavík?’ Ratoff asked. ‘What happened at her place? How much does she know? Surely the logical move would be to go to the Reykjavík police?’

There was a short pause on the line.

‘She knows there’s a strong possibility that her brother’s dead,’ Ripley admitted hesitantly. ‘She may also be under the impression that someone’s trying to murder her because of a conspiracy involving the Reykjavík police, the Icelandic foreign ministry and the ministry of justice.’

‘Are you out of your goddamn minds?’

‘We underestimated the job, sir. It won’t happen again.’

‘Won’t happen again?’ Ratoff hissed. ‘It should never have happened in the first place!’

‘We’re just leaving her father’s apartment now. He’s not at home. She left a message on his answering machine and we’re taking it down to the embassy to get it translated.’

‘She knows too much. Far too much.’

‘What about Keflavík?’ Ripley asked again.

‘She may be on her way to the base. Her brother mentioned an ex-boyfriend there. She ditched him suddenly and they haven’t met in a while, but it’s possible she will look to him for help or information now.’

‘Understood, sir,’ Ripley said.

‘Don’t screw up again.’

‘Understood,’ Ripley repeated.

Ratoff gave him the man’s name and hung up, then stepped out of the communications tent and looked over at the plane. Like other members of Delta Force, he was dressed in thick, white camouflage and snow goggles which he had pushed up on his forehead, warm gloves and a balaclava. There were no names or ranks, no indications of any affiliation or any other markings on their clothes, nothing to connect them to the unit.

Carr had not told him exactly what the plane contained and he burned to know more. He knew something of its history, knew that it had taken off from Germany at the end of the war, heading for Reykjavík, and had hit bad weather and crashed. But he had no idea whether Reykjavík had been the intended destination or if the plane had been scheduled to continue, perhaps all the way to the States. Nor did he know the identity of her passengers.

He returned thoughtfully to the wreck and peered into the passenger cabin again. Ratoff had been trying to fill in the blanks by guesswork but knew it was futile; he would not be able to satisfy his curiosity until he could get inside. Turning away, he went back to his tent. An image floated into his mind of the boy’s face as he told him his sister was dead, of the torment in his eyes before he darkened them for ever. But the young men’s deaths had no impact on Ratoff. He calculated for collateral damage in all his assignments and in his view they amounted to nothing more. He would complete this job to his full satisfaction and any obstacles would have to be eliminated. Carr had asked if they were young – he was obviously getting soft in his old age. No doubt he would ask the same thing when he was informed of the woman’s death.

He gave orders to be put through to Carr.

‘We believe she’s on her way to the US base in Keflavík, sir,’ he said when Carr came on the line, ‘and I have a good idea who she’s going to meet.’