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.
Júlíus 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 diminishing 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 Kristín, 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 shiny, 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.
Júlíus 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 Júlíus 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, makeshift 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 Júlíus’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 Reykjavík 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,’ Júlíus 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 Júlíus’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.
‘Don’t move,’ the officer ordered. He walked over to the door of the tent where he saw Ratoff’s back disappearing into the helicopter. With an even greater commotion, it gradually rose to hover thirty or forty feet above the ice. The noise was deafening and the helicopter whipped up so much snow that it could barely be seen. Below it, the dangling thick steel cables tautened and soon the fuselage of the old plane began to shift, inch by inch, off the ice, swinging in the glare of the floodlights. Higher and higher it rose, the helicopter then rotating itself westwards before setting off on its course and slowly melting into the darkness. The other would be minutes behind it.
When the officer turned back into the tent he was met by nothing but a man-high slit in the canvas wall. He leapt through it but Júlíus was nowhere to be seen.
Júlíus was fairly sure which tent he had seen Kristín being taken into and sprinted over to it. Without a moment’s hesitation he slashed the canvas from top to bottom and stepped through the opening. He was met by a horrific scene. In the middle of the floor a man lay face down. One of the tent’s walls had been spattered with blood and there was a gaping hole in the back of the man’s head. A short way from him a young woman was prone on the ice, apparently unconscious. His heart lurched. Who else could these be but Kristín and Steve?
Júlíus stooped over Kristín’s slack body and slapped her cheek repeatedly. Her skin was tinged with blue and cold to the touch. To his surprise, she opened her eyes after a few seconds and stared at him. Quickly he forced his hand over her mouth and laid his own face close to her ear.
‘It’s Júlíus,’ he said. ‘I’m alone.’
Chapter 35
VATNAJÖKULL GLACIER,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY
It was a close calclass="underline" the helicopter nearly failed to lift the wreckage off the ice and for a moment it appeared as if it would plunge back to the glacier. It seemed that this half of the German aircraft had not been loosened sufficiently and the attention of the men standing around was fixed on the helicopter’s battle with its cargo.
Ratoff had found himself a seat in the hold of the Pave Hawk and sat, hunched tensely at a small porthole, trying to get a glimpse of the steel cables and their load. The helicopter rose with infinite slowness, jerking slightly and stopping its ascent momentarily as it took up the full weight of the Junkers’ fuselage. Little by little the wreckage rose from its icy tomb until it was free. Then the helicopter accelerated away and Ratoff watched the blur of the camp recede steadily into the surrounding night.
The noise in the cabin was mind-numbing but Ratoff was wearing earphones and could communicate with the two pilots in the cockpit via a helmet radio. They proceeded at a sedate pace, at an altitude of five thousand feet, the load dangling from three thick steel cables; this was the front half of the German plane. Before long the second helicopter would lift off the tail section, containing the bodies from the wreck. Both halves had been removed from the ice with their contents untouched and the openings sealed with heavy-duty plastic sheeting. He heaved a sigh of relief; the mission was in its final stages and had been largely successful, despite the inconvenience caused by Kristín and the rescue team. The plane had been safely excavated and he was on his way home. Soon it would be over, or this episode at least.
Ratoff was the only passenger. He tried to prepare his mind for what lay ahead while listening to the radio traffic between the pilots and air traffic control at the Keflavík base. The scheduled arrival time at Keflavík was in just over twenty-five minutes. Flying conditions were ideal – cold but windless – and the journey passed without incident. The helicopter would fly directly to the C-17 and set down its load on a special pallet where each half of the German aircraft would be loaded on to the transport plane. The air force referred to it as the Keiko plane, after a killer whale which, with the world’s animal lovers watching, had recently been flown to Iceland from Newport, Oregon. To save time and prevent discomfort to its unusual passenger, the C-17 had refuelled in mid-air and would do the same during the present mission. Very soon, the C-17 would take off and the Icelandic phase of the operation would be over. What followed would be a flight halfway round the world.