Part 20 (1/2)

'No,' she said in Icelandic. 'No.'

'In that case you can tell me what Napoleon is.'

He twisted the awl.

Kristin did not answer. The pain was unendurable. The wound must be ten centimetres deep. She thought she was going to faint; her mind was clouding over, making it hard to concentrate, hard to come up with the right answers to play him along, to keep stalling.

'What is Napoleon?' Ratoff repeated.

Kristin was silent.

'Have you asked yourself what they did to Napoleon?'

'Constantly,' she replied.

'And what can you tell me about that?'

'Plenty.'

'So what's Napoleon?'

'You know what he was famous for,' she groaned.

'A great emperor,' Ratoff said. 'A great general.'

'No, no, not that,' Kristin said.

'What then?'

'He was small. A midget like you.'

She prepared for another wave of agony. It did not come. Ratoff jerked the awl out of the wound and the tool vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared.

'Never mind,' he said, pulling out a revolver. Kristin had just long enough to register how small and neat it was, the sort of weapon she imagined might be designed for a handbag.

'I'm going to leave you with a beautiful memory. It didn't have to be like this. You could have saved him. Think about that on cold nights when you are alone. This is your fault.'

Without the slightest warning he half-turned and fired a single shot into Steve's face. A small, puckered hole appeared under Steve's right eye as his skull exploded and an ugly splatter coated the wall of the tent. He dropped instantly to the ground, eyes open, a look of bafflement fixed on his face. Kristin watched as if in a daze. The gunshot rang deafeningly in her ears; for a moment time seemed to slow down; she could not grasp what had happened. Ratoff was standing unmoving, observing her; the attention of the men in the tent was focused on Steve as the bullet hit home. She saw him fall on to the ice, his head striking the frozen ground with a thud, his dead eyes fixed on her face. She saw the obscene red streak on the tent wall, the ice under his head soaking up the blood.

Bile rushed up into her mouth. She dropped on to the ground, retching, her body shuddering. Then she blacked out.

The last thing she saw was Steve's empty eyes. But the last thing she heard was Ratoff's voice.

'This is your fault, Kristin.'

VATNAJoKULL GLACIER,

SAt.u.r.dAY 30 JANUARY, 2330 GMT

The team had settled down, some inside the two tracked vehicles, others alongside them, to wait and see what would happen. No one dared make a move against the soldiers or give them the slightest provocation to use their rifles again. After the soldiers had halted the rescue team, they had confiscated all communications equipment and conducted a thorough search of both people and vehicles, until they were confident that they had removed every flare, radio and mobile phone, before withdrawing to their original position. They seemed content to have impeded the team's progress and simply stood next to their snowmobiles, holding their ground and ensuring that the Icelanders could not proceed.

Julius climbed into the back of the second vehicle, taking care to sit beside a door. After they had been waiting for some time he cautiously opened the door and slid out. The stand-off had calmed down and he sensed that their guards had relaxed. He lay for a long while in the snow underneath the vehicle, not moving a muscle. The chill gradually crept up his legs despite his thick ski-suit; his toes were agonisingly cold, his hands growing dangerously numb. He would have to move soon, if only to generate some warmth.

He heard the soldiers talking but could not make out what they were saying. After about ten minutes he crawled away from the vehicle, between two snowmobiles and away into the darkness. When he believed he was safe, he rose to his knees, peered behind him and saw that no one had spotted his departure. Rising to his feet, he set off in a wide detour around the soldiers, taking care to keep far enough away to be hidden by the night.

He seethed with fury; he was not going to let any b.l.o.o.d.y Yanks from the base threaten him, search him and rob him, abuse and attack his friends, or ban him from moving about in his own country. Besides, Kristin was relying on him. If he could support her account of the army's activities on the glacier, he would at least have achieved something. The shame and guilt of almost losing Elias burned in his chest; it was too much to bear that Kristin might also be in physical danger. Try as he might to rid his mind of these thoughts, he was haunted by the prospect of being responsible for both siblings coming to harm.

Soon the soldiers were behind him and, driven by a mixture of anger and distress, he broke into a run over the ice towards the glow which lit up the sky about three kilometres away. He knew the Americans would be monitoring the glacier closely and that he could expect soldiers to appear out of the darkness at any moment to arrest him maybe even to use their weapons.

Julius was extremely fit and covered the distance rapidly, the freezing air burning invigoratingly in his lungs. At once, the flood of light ahead grew brighter and he heard a roar approaching; from behind him, helicopters swooped in and landed in the midst of the pool of light. He heard the drone of the rotor-blades diminis.h.i.+ng until all was quiet again. Quickening his pace, he reached the margin of the lit-up area. There he slowed down and finally threw himself panting on the ice, before crawling the last stretch up a small rise which afforded him a good view of the area.

He had not known what to expect but what he saw was staggering. The two Pave Hawk helicopters, the wreck of an old plane cut into halves which were now being covered with tarpaulins. Soldiers swarming everywhere. Tents. Equipment. It defied explanation. He noticed the helicopter pilots being escorted to one of the tents and not long afterwards saw a woman being taken into another tent. He had never set eyes on Kristin, let alone the man who was roughly frogmarched in after her, but it was clear that they were captives of the soldiers.

At that moment he heard the snow creak beside him and, turning, encountered a pair of s.h.i.+ny, black boots. Following them upwards he discovered three men aiming guns at him. Like the soldiers who had intercepted the rescue team, they were wearing white camouflage, skiing goggles obscuring their faces and scarves bound over their mouths to keep out the cold.

Julius climbed warily to his feet and, not knowing what else to do, raised his hands in the air. The soldiers seemed content with this submission and, without a word, gestured with their rifles towards the camp. They had followed Julius from the moment he had appeared as a dot on their radar screens, approaching the prohibited zone by infinitesimal degrees.

All the way he made desperate efforts to memorise what he saw. He noticed that the soldiers were beginning to take down their tents and collect up equipment and tools, as if their work on the glacier, whatever it was, would soon be at an end.

On reaching the ragged, makes.h.i.+ft encampment he was brought before another man. This one was clearly an officer of some sort. There was no one else in the tent. He stared at the Icelander as if he had come from another planet, and it crossed Julius's mind that this was not far from the truth. When asked, he explained to the officer how he had slipped away from his team and made his way here under cover of darkness. He made sure to claim that there were other Icelanders in the area, lying that his men had received a message from Reykjavik before the soldiers had confiscated his team's radios that other rescue teams were at this moment on their way to the glacier, together with the police and members of the Coast Guard.

The officer listened, nodding and went on asking his monotonous questions: 'Has anyone else escaped from the guards?'

'No,' Julius replied. 'Is this an interrogation?'

'Are you sure?'

'Why are you interrogating me?'

'Please answer the question.'

'I protest in the strongest terms about your treatment of an Icelandic rescue team. What on earth do you think you're doing? Who are you?'

'Are you alone?' the officer persisted, ignoring Julius's outburst.

'Don't think this is over. I'm looking forward to telling the press exactly what's going on here; how you're jackbooting around in Icelandic territory, putting Icelandic lives in danger.'

They heard a whine, rising to a crescendo as one of the helicopters started up.