His thoughts strayed to the director of the operation and he wondered if he had put his faith in the wrong man when he chose Ratoff. Ratoff could be trusted to get things done but he exacted a high price in human lives in the process. Back in the early seventies, Carr had personally recruited him as a military intelligence agent; he had proved his worth but no one who worked with Ratoff felt any warmth towards him. He was a man people would rather not know, would rather turn a blind eye to. Eventually he became a type of invisible operative within the service, the subject of unconfirmed rumours that most preferred to ignore.
Carr’s knowledge about his background before he joined the organisation was better than most, but still sketchy. He had signed up to the marines in 1968 and served in Vietnam for two consecutive tours of duty. By the time he came from Vietnam to meet Carr he already had the scar. Ratoff had a simple explanation: an unfortunate accident; his rifle had caught between the door and door-frame in his barracks, firing a bullet into his face. The doctors had described it as a miracle that he did not hit an artery, his brain or spine, escaping with nothing more serious than damaged vocal cords. Carr, however, had sent a man to check up on his story who questioned the men in Ratoff’s platoon and heard various different accounts: Ratoff was a sadist who could always be trusted to go further than anyone else in trying to extract information from the enemy, even when there was no information to be had; he had maimed and killed to his heart’s content and it was said, though never confirmed, that he collected body parts from his victims as trophies. He would not have been the only marine to sport a necklace of human ears but Carr’s stomach turned at the thought. What was common to their stories was that Ratoff got his wound when a young Vietnamese woman managed to seize his gun and force him down on his knees in front of her, shooting him in the face. She had shot herself dead immediately afterwards.
However distasteful his reported conduct, Ratoff had proved valuable to army intelligence in South America in the early seventies. He served in El Salvador and Nicaragua, then Chile and Guatemala, involving himself with the troops that the government sent in to support dictators. When the US government later cut back on its support for right-wing dictatorships following vociferous protests at home, Ratoff was relocated to the Middle East. There he continued with his old habits, gathering information by means that Carr preferred to remain ignorant of. He was stationed in Lebanon, serving for a period with Mossad. By this time Ratoff did not officially exist. His intelligence records had been taken out of ordinary circulation and Carr had become one of only a handful of senior officials who knew of his existence. That was another qualification to lead this operation. No one would miss him.
A piercing wind blew about Carr as he stood by the hangar, wondering what kind of race could endure living in such perpetual cold and dark. He did not hear the serviceman approach or speak, remaining sunk in his thoughts and unaware of him until the newcomer took the liberty of touching his heavy woollen overcoat. Carr started.
‘There’s a man here asking to speak to you, sir,’ said the serviceman, who was dressed in air force uniform. Carr did not recognise him.
‘He’s come over from the States to find you, sir,’ the man repeated.
‘To find me?’
‘Landed fifteen minutes ago, sir,’ the man said. ‘On a civilian flight. I was sent to inform you.’
‘Who is he?’ Carr asked.
‘Name of Miller, sir,’ the man said. ‘A Colonel Miller. He landed at Keflavík Airport fifteen minutes ago, on a civilian flight.’
‘Miller? Where is he?’
‘He was in a hurry to see you, so we brought him here, to the hangar, sir,’ the man said, looking over his shoulder. Turning, Carr saw a door open and Miller enter. He was wearing a thick green anorak with a fur-lined hood that almost completely obscured his gaunt, white face. Carr strode hurriedly over. This was the last thing he had expected; they had not discussed Miller’s further involvement, indeed he had not heard from him since their previous meeting and he was completely wrong-footed by his sudden presence in the hangar.
‘What’s going on?’ he called while he was still ten yards away. ‘What’s the meaning of this? What are you doing here?’
‘Same pure, fresh air,’ Miller remarked. ‘I’ve never been able to forget it.’
‘What’s going on?’ Carr repeated. He glanced at the men who had brought Miller to him, three intelligence agents in civilian dress who accompanied Carr wherever he went.
‘Relax, Vytautus,’ Miller said. ‘I’ve always wanted to visit Iceland again. Always wanted to breathe this cold pure oxygen.’
‘Oxygen? What are you talking about?’
‘Would you be so good as to step aside with me,’ Miller said. ‘Just the two of us. The others can wait here.’
Carr walked slowly over to the hangar doors, each one a steel construction the size of a tennis court. They stopped in the opening where an overhead heater was struggling to keep the bitter cold at bay.
‘The first time I came to this country,’ Miller said, ‘a lifetime ago now, at the end of the war, it was to meet my brother. I sent him on that mission and I intended to be there to meet him when he made a stopover with the Germans to refuel in Reykjavík. I was going to fly back with them. That was the plan. I know it’s absurd, but I blame myself for what happened to him. It was selfish of me to put him in that position. I took him off the battlefield. Well, I was punished for that. He lost his life here in the Arctic instead. Died in the crash or froze to death afterwards – we never did find out which. Or I never found out. All because of that preposterous operation that should never have been set in motion.’
‘What’s your point?’ asked Carr impatiently.
‘I haven’t heard anything from you. What have you found up there? Are there any bodies and what sort of state are they in? Do you know what happened? Tell me something. It’s all I ask.’
Carr regarded his former commanding officer. He understood what motivated Miller; knew he had been waiting for the greater part of his life to find out what had happened to the plane. There was a light in his eyes now that Carr had never seen before, a gleam of hope that Miller was trying but failing to disguise.
‘Most of them are intact,’ he said. ‘Your brother too. They’ve been preserved in the ice. Apparently the landing wasn’t that bad. They must have had to cope with a fire but nothing major. As you know, the weather conditions were severe when they crashed and they would have been buried by snow in no time and trapped in the plane. It’s irrelevant, anyway. They couldn’t have survived the cold even if they had dug themselves out of the ice. There are no signs of violence. It’s as if they simply passed away, one after the other. They were all carrying passports and only one appears to be missing: Von Mantauffel wasn’t on board or in the vicinity of the plane.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which might mean that he tried to reach help. Tried to get to civilisation.’
‘But never made it.’
‘No. I don’t think we need worry about him.’
‘Good God. He must have frozen to death.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Any personal documents on board?’
‘Nothing that Ratoff has reported. Do you mean a message from your brother?’
‘We exchanged weekly letters throughout the war. We were close. It was a habit we got into – a way, I suppose, of explaining to ourselves everything we were witnessing. I thought he might perhaps have written something down, a few words or thoughts, if he survived the crash. His regrets.’
‘I’m afraid not, no.’
‘And the documents?’
‘Ratoff has them.’
Neither man spoke.
‘You’re complicating things,’ Carr said. ‘You know that.’