Part 8 (1/2)

'Is he trying to say something?' Julius asked.

Heimir bent down to Elias's bloodstained face and laid his ear to the boy's mouth. After a minute he straightened up and looked at Julius.

'He's drifting in and out of consciousness.'

'Did he say anything?'

'It was very unclear. I think he may have said ”Kristin”.'

'Yes, he would,' Julius said. He remembered how he had a.s.sured her that Elias was safe and a pang of self-recrimination went through him.

But when he called the Coast Guard helicopter it transpired that the only available aircraft was currently fetching a wounded fisherman from a trawler halfway between Iceland and Greenland. In cases when the Coast Guard could not get to the scene, it was customary to call the Defense Force at Keflavik Airport and ask them for help. Julius was a.s.sured that the Coast Guard would contact the Americans and ask them to send a helicopter to pick up the two men.

Why had Elias's sister thought he was dead? Julius wondered, as he walked back to the edge of the creva.s.se and looked down into the chasm. How could she have found out before us?

He dreaded having to tell her that she was right. Elias was not dead yet but he was unlikely to pull through. His injuries were severe, he had been lying in the ice for hours, and he would certainly be hypothermic. Julius scanned the horizon, willing the helicopter to arrive before the storm struck. It was Elias's only hope.

US EMBa.s.sY, CENTRAL REYKJAViK,

SAt.u.r.dAY 30 JANUARY, 0100 GMT

She woke up at the third ring. Monica Garcia worked as the director of the Fulbright Commission in Iceland, an educational exchange programme based at the US emba.s.sy in Reykjavik, where she had an apartment. She disliked being called in the middle of the night and stirred sleepily; she had been hoping for a peaceful night after the extraordinary last twenty-four hours at the emba.s.sy. But the strident ringing persisted until at last she propped herself up on her elbow and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver.

'Monica?' said a voice.

'It's one in the morning,' she protested, registering the luminous numbers on her radio alarm. 'Who is this?'

'It's Steve. I'm sorry, but it's an emergency.'

'Steve? Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?'

'I think some men from the emba.s.sy are trying to kill me.'

'Why would anyone want to kill you, Steve? What have you been smoking?'

Groping for the lamp on the bedside table, she switched it on, just managing to avoid knocking over a gla.s.s of water and dislodging a small pile of books on which an open copy of War and Peace War and Peace lay uppermost. lay uppermost.

'Two men, both around six foot, blond, neatly dressed in civilian clothes. They're after my friend as well. I told you about Kristin. She knows something about military activities on Vatnajokull and whatever it is, it's important enough for them to send paid a.s.sa.s.sins round to her house. She came to the base to find me, and the men turned up at my place shortly afterwards but we managed to escape.'

'She fled to to the base? Steve, I don't understand a word of this.' the base? Steve, I don't understand a word of this.'

She sat up in bed and s.h.i.+vered: the room was freezing as the radiator had broken again.

'I know, it's complicated. I'll explain later but you have to trust me.'

'Where are you now?'

'I'm still on the base. What's going on at the emba.s.sy? What's happening on the glacier? Do you know?'

'Everything's been turned upside down. That's all I can tell you. I've no idea why.'

'How do you mean upside down?'

'Military intelligence has a.s.sumed control by direct order of the defense secretary. Some sort of special operations personnel showed up, took over everything and sent the amba.s.sador on leave. Three special forces companies landed at Keflavik just over twenty-four hours ago and may well have gone to Vatnajokull, for all I know. Beyond that I really don't know what's going on. It's as if there's been a military coup. They installed a whole load of computer equipment I don't have a clue what it's for and set up a command and control centre. The emba.s.sy staff aren't being told anything. We've been ordered to stay out of the way and keep our mouths shut. They say they'll only be here for a few days.'

'Have you come across a man by the name of Ratoff?'

'No, never heard of him. Who is he?'

'It's a name Kristin overheard. He may be in charge. Look, I have to hang up. Is there anything you can do to help me, anything at all, Monica?'

'I'll try to dig something up for you. If special forces have taken over the emba.s.sy, they're probably in control of the base too, so I'd be very careful about looking for help there. Do you remember the Irish pub in Reykjavik? The one downtown?'

'Yes.'

'Call there at 4 o'clock today or come down yourself. I'll see what I can find out for you in the meantime.'

'Thanks, Monica.'

'And Steve, for Christ's sake, be careful.'

He put the phone down and turned to Kristin. They were in his office in one of the army administration blocks. Kristin was keeping watch by the window, the profile of her face silhouetted against the gla.s.s, black against black. She had phoned air traffic control in Keflavik, posing as a journalist from Reykjavik, and asked if there had been a plane crash recently on Vatnajokull. She was informed that no plane had crashed on the glacier for decades, not since the famous Loftleidir incident. When they asked what paper she was calling from, she had hung up.

Kristin vaguely remembered the accident. 'A Loftleidir plane that's the old Icelandic airline was forced to make an emergency landing on the glacier,' she told Steve. 'Everyone survived.'

'Is that the plane Elias saw then?' Steve asked.

'I haven't a clue. I don't know what happened to the wreckage. And anyway, what would the army want with an old Loftleidir plane? It must have been forty years ago. It's absurd.'

They had been in the office around ten minutes and Kristin was growing jumpy. Although they had parked Steve's car a few hundred yards away among other vehicles outside a large apartment block, it would not remain undiscovered for long if the men put out a search. The office had been Steve's first thought as he accelerated away from his block, leaving Ripley and Bateman behind in the parking lot. But he had not come here to hide as his workplace would be an obvious location for them to check; rather, the building housed part of the Defense Force archives, to which he had access.

He and Kristin ran down the long ground floor corridor and descended into the bas.e.m.e.nt where the archives were kept. Punching in a code to deactivate the alarm, Steve turned a key in the heavy steel door and pushed it open. Inside stood another door, covered in wire netting, which opened into one of the archives. The storeroom was divided into several compartments by coa.r.s.e wire netting which formed a series of cages, each of which was filled with long rows of filing cabinets, and beyond them shelves of files and boxes.

'Welcome to America's memory,' Steve whispered.

'How are we supposed to find anything in this warren?' Kristin asked, gazing in dismay at the rows of units stretching off into the distance. 'What are you looking for anyway?'

'There may be something here about operations on Vatnajokull,' Steve said. He was familiar with the archives, having temped there one summer, and knew where to lay his hands on records of surveillance flights over Iceland in the last fifty years. If there was a plane on the glacier, he reasoned, it might well belong to the US Air Force or Navy.

He was so happy that Kristin had turned to him in her hour of need that it did not even occur to him to refuse her request. No longer in any doubt about the danger she was in, he was determined to stand by her, to help her in any way he could; besides, his journalistic instincts had been roused and he was becoming increasingly curious about the case on his own account.

They walked rapidly along the shelves, checking the labels on cupboards and files. Some way towards the back, Steve stopped and pulled out a box. He looked inside, then replaced it and continued searching. He did the same thing several times; took out a box containing a number of files, leafed through them, then put it back. It was hopeless he had no idea where to start in this sea of information and before long they returned to his office, empty-handed.