‘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.
‘You Icelanders have a very ambivalent attitude. You discourage all contact and behave as if the army has nothing to do with you, but then you say you can’t manage without it. I don’t understand you. You make a huge profit out of us; we pump billions into your economy, have done for decades, yet you behave as if we didn’t exist. Sure, you’re a small nation and I can understand that you want to protect your independence. You’ve always protested, standing outside the gates here with placards and chanting slogans, but now the Cold War’s over and the military operations are being scaled down, suddenly those voices are silenced and instead everybody wants to keep the base. Just so long as you don’t have to have anything to do with it. We’re the ones who are effectively living on an island out here on Midnesheidi.’
‘If that’s the case, why are you still here?’ Kristin asked.
‘
The white Ford Explorer pulled up in front of the administration block where Steve worked. The doors opened and Ripley and Bateman climbed out. They had found Steve’s car and followed the trail to this building, accompanied by military police and a number of soldiers in jeeps. With the cooperation of the admiral, Ripley and Bateman had organised a manhunt; search parties were moving through the base, stopping traffic, setting up roadblocks and searching the buildings, aircraft hangars and residential blocks. Information was also being gathered about any friends and colleagues Steve might conceivably turn to on the base.
Ripley and Bateman walked up to the entrance of the office block and tried the door. It was locked. They walked round the building to the back door.
‘And here they are,’ Ripley announced, eyeing twin sets of tracks that led away through the fresh snow in the direction of the oldest residential quarter.
‘Who did he call?’ Bateman asked, as they set off to follow the trail on foot.
‘Her name’s Monica Garcia. Works for the Fulbright Commission.’
The snow crunched underfoot.
‘We need dogs,’ Ripley said.
Kristin put down her coffee mug on the table, staring at the old pilot in surprise. Steve understood nothing of their conversation after they switched to Icelandic. Like most Americans stationed in Iceland, he knew no Icelanders apart from Kristin and rarely left the base except on official business. The base was a world to itself, with all the services necessary to support a small society. In that it was no different from any other American military base around the world. A number of Icelanders worked there but they lived in the surrounding towns and villages and went home at the end of the working day. The base had always been cut off, not merely geographically but also politically and culturally, from the rest of Iceland.
‘You mean an Icelandic woman?’ Kristin asked.
‘She had one of those unpronounceable names you lot go in for: Thorgerdur Kristmundsdottir, but I knew her as Tobba which was much easier to say. She passed away several years ago now. Lived in a village not far from here. Taught me Icelandic. But she was married and wouldn’t dream of leaving her husband. She worked at the store on the base – that’s how I got to know her, how we were able to meet. She awakened my interest in this country and little by little I became as captivated by Iceland as I was by Tobba. Then the whispering started: that she was involved with a Yank up at the base. I suppose that’s the kiss of death for an Icelandic woman.’
Kristin glanced at Steve who was watching them uncomprehendingly.
‘I kept applying to stay on – you have to do that every three years, and after she died I didn’t know where else to go. They gave me a special dispensation and now they’ve stopped bothering me. I travel around the country a lot in summer; I’ve even worked as a guide taking small groups of servicemen to the historical sites as well as the usual tourist spots: Gullfoss, Geysir and Thingvellir.’
Thompson fell silent.
‘I sometimes visit her at the cemetery,’ he added.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Thompson,’ Kristin said. ‘But we’re in a desperate hurry…’
‘Yes, of course. The biggest commotion over that plane was in 1967,’ Thompson said, gathering himself. He seemed to have returned to the present and had reverted to speaking English. ‘I believe four soldiers lost their lives on the glacier that time. Are you old enough to remember the astronauts?’
‘The astronauts?’
‘Armstrong and co.?’
‘Neil Armstrong? The first man on the moon?’
‘The very same. Well, did you know that he and a number of other American astronauts came to Iceland for a training exercise two years before he landed on the moon?’
‘Sure, everyone knows that.’
‘Well, for a time in ’67, Leo was in command of surveillance flights. It was a routine job, all the pilots had to do it. But on one flight Leo thought he saw something below him on the ice and flew back and forth taking photographs. I wasn’t involved; Leo told me this afterwards. They tried and failed to land a helicopter but it was in the middle of winter, like now. So they sent a small expeditionary force up there with a metal detector and after that preparations began for a major operation, conducted in the utmost secrecy. But everyone heard about it; it’s a very small community here.’
‘Who are
‘Military intelligence, mainly. They knew the Icelanders were sensitive about troop movements, especially in those days, so someone had the brainwave of sending Armstrong and the astronauts to Iceland for training exercises in the lava fields to the north of the glacier. The Icelanders welcomed the astronauts with open arms, of course, and were very understanding about all the military manoeuvres connected with the mission. You were told that the landscape in the interior resembled conditions on the moon. Preposterous! But you guys swallowed it. In actual fact, it was designed to deflect attention from the biggest movements of troops and equipment undertaken by the Americans in Iceland since the war. Whatever that plane contains, those are the lengths some people are prepared to go to in order to find it.’
‘But why not go to Hawaii if they needed to practise in a lava field?’ Steve asked.
‘I have a notion where the idea came from,’ Thompson continued, seemingly invigorated by recounting these long-ago events. ‘There was a pilot here with the Defense Force from around 1960 who flew Scorpion fighter jets: Parker, Captain Parker was the name. When a group of astronauts made a refuelling stop here at Keflavik, incognito, in the summer of ’65, the press office decided to cash in on the fact and the story really caught the public imagination. This guy Parker was in charge of the group. So when they needed to send an expedition to Vatnajokull in ’67 without attracting any attention, Parker had the bright idea of inviting Armstrong over, figuring that it would cause even more of a sensation, because by then Armstrong had commanded a spaceflight, the Gemini 8 mission.’
‘And nobody knew about this?’ Steve asked.
‘So many people were involved that something must have leaked out, though none of it could ever be confirmed. They failed to find the plane – if indeed it exists. The whole thing was a complete fiasco. It was rumoured that the secret service had taken control of the embassy in Reykjavik during the operation, as well as the base here in Keflavik. The leader of the expedition was called Carr, General Vytautas Carr. Old-school. Hard as nails.’
‘But they didn’t find the plane?’
‘I don’t know what happened. It was April but winter was far from over. There was one of those Easter blizzards, as you call them – a storm that blew up out of nowhere and lasted for days. They simply weren’t prepared for Arctic conditions in April, became blinded by wind and snow, and had to get off the glacier, losing four men in the process. Two of them fell into a crevasse, the other two got separated and died of exposure. They were
