Part 9 (1/2)

Thompson's name was on the entry-phone. Steve rang the bell. The retired pilot lived in an apartment block like Steve's but more rundown. No maintenance had been carried out for years; the paint had flaked off here and there exposing the concrete, the light above the front door was broken and only a handful of the apartments looked occupied.

Steve pressed the doorbell again and they waited, glancing around anxiously. He rang the bell a third time, holding the b.u.t.ton down for so long that Kristin tapped his hand. Shortly afterwards there was a crackle from the entry-phone and a reedy voice uttered a hesitant: 'h.e.l.lo?'

'Is that Michael Thompson?' Steve asked.

'Yes,' replied the voice.

'I'm sorry to wake you like this but I need to talk to you urgently. Could you let me in?' Steve said, trying to speak as quietly as possible.

'What?'

'Could you let me in?'

'What's going on?'

'May I come in?'

'What is it you want exactly? I don't understand.'

'It's about Vatnajokull.'

'What?'

'Vatnajokull,' Steve said. 'I want to ask you about flights over Vatnajokull. I know it's very unexpected and an extra...'

'Flights?'

'Lives are at stake, man. For Christ's sake, please open the door.'

After a short pause and more crackling on the entry-phone, the lock buzzed and Steve ushered Kristin inside in front of him. They did not turn on the light in the hall but groped their way up the stairs, holding on to the banister. Thompson lived on the first floor. They tapped on his door and he appeared in the rectangle of light, peering out at them. He had put on slippers and a robe, beneath which his legs protruded, chalk-white and bony. He was very thin, with a stoop and a Clark Gable moustache, long since turned white, barely visible against his pale skin.

'It must be serious to make you barge in on me in the middle of the night like this,' Thompson commented, showing them into the living room. They sat down on a small, black leather sofa and he took a seat facing them, looking at them sceptically in turn.

'My brother called me earlier this evening,' Kristin began, feeling that it might just as well have been a month ago. 'He was on a training exercise on Vatnajokull when he spotted a plane and some soldiers. Then his mobile phone was cut off and I haven't heard from him since. Shortly afterwards two Americans turned up at my apartment in Reykjavik and tried to kill me. I escaped and came to Steve for help because if there are soldiers on the glacier, I a.s.sumed they must have come from here.'

'You say they tried to kill you?'

'That's right.'

'What are you talking about? What do you mean by barging into my home and spinning me a story like this? And anyway, what's it got to do with me?'

'You're a pilot. You've been here a long time. Do you know anything about a plane on Vatnajokull?'

'I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about,' the old man answered angrily. 'Now please leave before I call the police.'

'Wait. I know we must seem crazy,' Steve said, 'but we're desperate. This is not a hoax, we're not nuts and we don't mean to be disrespectful. If you can't help us, we'll go. But if you can tell us anything that might help, we'd be incredibly grateful.'

'My brother witnessed something he wasn't supposed to see,' Kristin said. 'And soldiers who presumably must come from this base. They believe he told me more about what he saw than he did and now they're after us too. Steve had the idea that if there was a plane on the glacier then a pilot like you would know about it.'

'But who is this they they you keep going on about?' Thompson asked. you keep going on about?' Thompson asked.

'We don't know,' Steve said. 'There are two men. We don't know who sent them.'

'But we've heard,' Kristin added, 'that special forces troops landed here in Keflavik a short time ago, on their way to Vatnajokull.'

Thompson was silent.

'They were going to kill you?' he asked again.

They stared back at him without speaking.

'There used to be so many rumours,' he said at last in a resigned tone. 'We never knew for certain what they were looking for. We thought it might be a plane and that it must have had some extremely dangerous cargo; they organised regular monitoring flights over the country and the sea to the north of it. Once a month we flew over the glacier, over the south-eastern section, photographing the surface of the ice. Our commanding officer, Leo Stiller, organised the flights. I never spotted anything myself, but every now and then they would believe they had seen something that gave them strong enough grounds to take a closer look.'

'Leo Stiller?' Steve repeated.

'A good guy. Killed in a helicopter accident here on the base. His wife moved to Reykjavik after he died. Her name's Sarah Steinkamp.'

'Who a.n.a.lysed the photographs you took?' Steve asked.

'I believe they were sent to military intelligence headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton. I don't know much about that end of things. Only that all sorts of rumours used to do the rounds; they still crop up from time to time. Leo was into all kinds of conspiracy theories. He never did know when to shut up. I'm sorry to hear about your brother. Judging from the way they've behaved in the past I imagine he'd be in danger up there.'

'So what is this plane?'

'I don't know.'

'Why's it important?'

'I don't know that either.'

'But what do you believe is in the plane?' Kristin asked. 'What did you pilots think when you talked amongst yourselves?'

Instead of answering her, Thompson rose slowly to his feet and suggested he make some coffee; they looked chilled to the bone and he could never really get going in the morning until he had had a coffee, he explained. 'Not that it's morning yet,' he corrected himself, 'but it's near enough; not much point going back to bed after a night like this.'

As he clattered around in the little kitchen that opened off the living room, Kristin gesticulated frantically at Steve.

'We can't sit around drinking f.u.c.king coffee whilst he takes a trip down memory lane,' she whispered urgently. 'Elias is out there...'

He signalled to her to slow down, relax, let the old man decide the pace.

'I was wondering,' Steve called into the kitchen, 'if it's not rude to ask, why you're still here. I'd have expected you to have gone home to the States long ago. Everyone else leaves here the first chance they get. Isn't there some sort of rule about it?'

Thompson reappeared carrying three mugs.

'Do you take milk or sugar?' he asked.

Kristin rolled her eyes in despair. Steve shook his head.

'Coffee's no good unless it's strong and black.' Thompson looked at Steve. 'It's hardly surprising you should ask,' he said. 'I came to this strange little island in 1955. I flew helicopters in Korea and was posted here when the war was over if it is over. Before that I was stationed in Germany and the Philippines. It was quite a shock to the system, I can tell you, coming here to the far north where the climate's miserable, it's cold and dark for half the year, there's nothing to do on the base and the locals despise us. Yet here I am.'

'Why?' Kristin asked. 'And I'm not sure all the people despise Americans,' she added.