‘I guess so, sir,’ the pilot said uncertainly.
‘If it’s so harmless,’ another pilot asked, ‘why can’t we watch, sir? Why do we have to stay cooped up in the tent?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Ratoff exclaimed under his breath. He sighed. ‘How many different ways can I put this, gentlemen? I am not required to give you any explanations.’ He went outside and beckoned three soldiers into the tent. ‘Shoot anyone who tries to leave,’ he ordered.
The pilots stood in a huddle, shuffling together like stunned livestock, utterly baffled by this latest development. Brought to the middle of nowhere, witness to some inexplicable excavation, bound to secrecy and now held hostage by their own side, they stared speechlessly at one another and at their captor.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ demanded their leader at last. ‘What kind of treatment do you call this? How dare you? Who’ll fly the helicopters now?’
‘We have people for that. You’re surplus to requirements,’ Ratoff said and stalked out of the tent. A man stood waiting to join him as he walked down to the plane.
‘How was the flight?’
‘Like a dream,’ Bateman answered with a grin.
Chapter 31
VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0015 GMT
Kristín was met by an extraordinary, utterly surreal sight, a scene from science fiction. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that now coursed through her limbs like a dull drug, but all at once she felt she was losing her grip and succumbing to an overpowering sense of helplessness. Everything that had happened to her was reduced to a jumble of hallucinations, a long, intense nightmare in which she was on the run but could never move fast enough. Was she in fact still lying at home on the sofa? The sight that met her eyes made it hard to put the events in any sort of context, hard to distinguish between this outlandish reality and her own delirious imaginings.
She saw the Pave Hawk helicopters perched side by side, their immensely long rotor-blades extending in all directions. About thirty tents of varying sizes were arranged in a semicircle; snowmobiles, tracked vehicles, trailers carrying oil-driven engines and portable generators, floodlights and satellite dishes and a host of other equipment she could not put a name to littered the area. Scores if not hundreds of personnel were milling around on the ice. Some, she now noticed, had begun to take down the tents – they were starting to clear up after themselves. She understood. They were finished here. Soon there would be no trace of them: the snow would obliterate their tracks. Deep down the realisation struck her, triggering a warning bell that gradually restored her wandering wits: they were leaving the glacier.
Only then did she see the plane. It lay, cut in half, in a shallow depression in the ice. Two groups of people were busy fixing strong, thick slings around each half, attached to cables which extended in the direction of the helicopters. Evidently the helicopters were there to remove the plane wreckage and after that it would not take the soldiers long to disappear too.
It was very still, several degrees below zero. The black vault of the night sky arched over the area, reflecting the glow of the powerful floodlights. The journey had been uneventful; she and Steve had been forced to ride pillion on the snowmobiles behind their captors, who maintained radio contact with the camp throughout. After fifteen or twenty minutes they had ascended a small ridge and the tents had come into view below them. The vehicles careered down the ridge and into the camp, stopping by one of the larger tents. She and Steve were shown inside, past two soldiers who stood guard either side of the opening.
‘Are you okay, Kristín?’ Steve asked once they were at the back of the tent, as far from the guards as possible.
‘Yes, and you? Are you all right?’
As she looked at him, her thoughts strayed to what had happened between them at Jón’s farm. For a brief moment her present surroundings faded and she pictured a future with him.
‘Could be better,’ Steve said. ‘Could be at home watching basketball. There’s a big game on tonight, Lakers against the Bulls.’
‘It could hardly beat this,’ Kristín said. Neither of them smiled. Looking at Steve, she saw her own anxiety reflected in his face.
She surveyed their canvas cell with a sudden sense of hopelessness. On the table sat a large gas lamp which lit up the tent and emitted a faint heat, but otherwise it was freezing inside. There were also four camp chairs and, at the back of the tent, close to where they were standing, they noticed several heavy canvas sheets spread out over the ice. She glanced towards the tent opening where the soldiers stood watching them.
‘I want to speak to Ratoff,’ Kristín called out but received no reaction.
‘Shouldn’t your rescue team be here by now?’ Steve asked under his breath, the worry just audible in his voice. ‘And the Coast Guard, or whatever it’s called? And the police and reporters and TV crews? Where’s CNN? Where’s the cavalry?’
‘I know,’ Kristín said. ‘Something must start happening soon. Look, let’s think for a minute. How can we get out of here? What is this tent anyway? What are they using it for?’
She looked down at the sheets of canvas.
‘What’s this?’ she asked in a low voice, backing further into the tent. Steve moved unobtrusively towards her. Distracted by the commotion outside, the guards had lost interest and gone back to watching the spectacle of a small army erasing all trace of itself. From under one of the tarpaulins, the corner of a grey body-bag could be glimpsed.
‘What have they got here?’ Steve whispered.
Kristín stepped on the corner of the canvas and drew it quietly towards her, then repeated the movement. Her legs were stiff from the walk up to the glacier and weak from lack of food; it took all her concentration to stop the muscles in her thigh from going into spasm. The canvas shifted and she continued dragging her foot until she had partially uncovered what lay beneath. The body-bag was open at the top, the heavy-duty zip which joined the bag’s shiny grey folds drawn back perhaps ten inches. A peaked cap met their eyes, bearing the eagle and swastika insignia. When Kristín tugged with her foot a little more, a face appeared beneath the cap. They stared speechlessly at the body. It was a middle-aged man whose deathly pallor was almost as translucent as the ice. Kristín could hardly grasp what she was seeing; she stood in silent wonder, her attention riveted on this new discovery.
Her heart nearly stopped when a hoarse voice spoke behind them.
‘Pretty sight, don’t you think? As if he’d died no more than a week ago.’
Ratoff had entered the tent, with Bateman at his heel. Kristín instantly recognised the man who had twice tried to murder her; she also knew in her bones that she was finally standing face to face with Ratoff. She had formed an image of him which in no way fitted the man before her. He was so short that she almost burst out laughing. She had imagined a man well over six feet tall, yet here he was, a man with no physical presence whatsoever; in spite of his padded ski-suit, she could tell that he was nothing but skin and bone. For a moment it crossed her mind that he might be suffering from some incurable disease. His features looked vaguely Slavonic: a bony face, the cheekbones and chin jutting through the taut skin, a narrow, dead straight nose, and small, sharp, deep-set eyes. As he came closer she noticed that he had white rings round his pupils that made his eyes appear eerily bright. His ears were small and grew close to his head, and his mouth seemed to underline the cruelty above, but her attention was drawn irresistibly to the scar under his left eye. She could not stop staring at it. It was round like a little sun, radiating tiny grooves down his cheek.