driven off the glacier, exhausted and defeated, and by the time the weather improved, the plane had vanished, if it was ever there. Like I said, Leo and the others often used to discuss it but I don’t know how much is true, though the astronauts did come here, that’s for sure.’
‘If the plane has emerged from the ice and the soldiers saw my brother…’ Kristin left the sentence unfinished.
‘I don’t know,’ Thompson replied. ‘I don’t know what to say, dear. You must hope for the best but there’s something about that plane. According to one guy, it crashed shortly after the end of the war and the plan had been to dismantle it and remove it from the glacier. He claimed it had come from Berlin. For a long time there was talk of gold, the Third Reich’s last gold reserve. The story went that American soldiers stole it from the Germans and meant to fly it across the Atlantic. But it was also rumoured to be carrying a cargo of those art treasures the Germans plundered from all over Europe.’
Nobody spoke.
‘And what do
‘You heard what I said. There are so many possibilities.’
‘What do you regard as most likely then?’
‘Someone said it was carrying a bomb built by the Nazis that we intercepted before the Russians could lay hands on it and that we were trying to get it back to the States.’
‘A bomb?’ Steve asked. ‘What kind of bomb?’
‘I don’t know but it might explain why they’re so obsessed with finding the damn thing.’
‘Do you know who Ratoff is?’ Kristin asked.
‘Never heard the name,’ Thompson said. His mind was clearer now; he had a good memory and had no difficulty recalling the distant past once he had got going.
‘Where did they approach the glacier from? Do you know?’
‘From the south. I can’t remember what the place was called. A couple of brothers lived nearby and acted as their guides. Farmers. That’s all I know, I swear to God. And that’s nothing but gossip and half-truths. I don’t believe anyone knows the whole truth.’
Arnold’s head snapped back as Bateman struck him a violent blow to the face and a new cut opened above his eyebrow. He would have screamed but they had bound him to the chair and gagged him with duct tape. He breathed frantically through his nose, his eyes goggling at the two men in white ski-suits. Blood seeped into his eye.
They had burst into his apartment, demanding to know if he owned the old Toyota in the parking lot in front of the building. Their tracker dogs had stopped by the car, refusing to budge, and the bonnet felt warm to the touch. It had taken a single phone call to trace the owner, and Arnold’s name was on the doorbell. This was the second time Arnold had been woken that night and he was in such a foul temper when the men tried to question him over the entry-phone that he refused to let them into the building. Before he knew what was happening, the door to his apartment had been kicked in.
He told them what he knew: he had taken the couple to the archives and left them there. But the men wanted to know far more – what Steve and Kristin were looking for, where they were now and how they intended to leave the area. Arnold inwardly cursed that son of a bitch Steve.
His face was covered in blood; these men did not waste time. It was not the first occasion Arnold had been in trouble with the military police but he had never seen these two before, nor had he experienced their methods of interrogation. They tied him to a chair and quite simply beat him to a pulp. He did not have a clue where Steve and the Icelander were or what they were looking for. He held out as long as he could, determined not to tell his interrogators the one thing that might come in useful, but his stamina was limited.
Bateman took out a thick roll of silver tape and bit off a ten-centimetre strip. Like Ripley, he was wearing white rubber gloves. Holding the tape in both hands, he stuck it firmly over Arnold’s nose and mouth, then stood in front of him, observing his vain attempts to gasp for oxygen with scientific detachment. When it looked as if Arnold was losing consciousness, Bateman grabbed one corner and tore it away from his nose, leaving a red welt where it had taken a small piece of skin with it.
Arnold’s nostrils flared frantically as he sucked in air. The tape still covered his mouth but he inhaled with all his might. Bateman picked up the roll of tape again, bit off another strip and wordlessly fixed the tape over his nose.
‘I’m not going to resuscitate you if you keep this up much longer, Arnold,’ Ripley said to him.
He writhed in the chair, his blood-drenched face becoming as suffused and swollen as a balloon. Bateman tore the tape off his nose again, this time removing it from his mouth as well.
‘I own a Zodiac,’ Arnold shouted breathlessly, when he could finally speak between desperate gulps of air. ‘Steve knows where it is. He’ll use it to get off the base. Don’t do it again; I beg you, for Christ’s sake, let me breathe.’
‘A Zodiac?’ Bateman asked.
‘I use it for smuggling. I smuggle drugs in and out of the base. I’ve been doing it for two years. Mostly cocaine but also speed and dope and… I sell it in Reykjavik. I have two contacts there called…’
‘Arnold,’ Ripley said in a level voice. ‘I’m not interested in your little schemes. Tell me where the boat is.’
‘I keep it in a bay to the west of the base. There’s a gap in the perimeter fence where the road from the big tool store takes a right turn into the lava field. The boat is hidden about five hundred yards away, pretty much directly below the gap in the fence.’
‘Excellent. And where are they headed, Arnold?’
‘To a beach just outside Hafnir. You’ll find it on the map.’
Chapter 17
REYKJAVIK,
SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, 0415 GMT
‘There have been some funny goings on here,’ observed the scruffily dressed detective in his early fifties, surveying Kristin’s flat.
Just before midnight the police had received a phone call from a man in the neighbourhood reporting a young woman in a distressed state who had burst into his family home, demanding to use their phone and speaking incoherently of murder – presumably at her house – before borrowing some clothes and vanishing. He had not intended to report the incident and it was more than three hours before he made up his mind to do so, largely at his wife’s urging. Although he did not say as much, he was rather ashamed of himself for having let such a thing happen to his family.
The police took a statement and checked the phone’s display to identify the number called by the mysterious woman. No one was home at the corresponding address but on investigation they discovered that the house-owner had a daughter. Her age seemed consistent with the description of the woman who had forced her way into the family’s home; she also lived in the same neighbourhood and this was deemed sufficient grounds to dispatch two officers. No one answered when they knocked on the door of the flat, located in a two-storey maisonette. The occupants of the upstairs flat said they had been out all evening.
Noticing a small hole in Kristin’s door, conceivably made by a bullet, the police called a locksmith. When they entered the flat the first thing they saw was a body lying slumped on the desk.
The detective stood over the man’s body, inspecting the contents of his wallet. According to his business card his name was Runolfur Zophaniasson and he was involved in ‘Import-Export’. Apart from that his wallet contained a driving licence, some money, a sheaf of restaurant receipts, and debit and credit cards. The detective glanced around the flat: the furniture appeared to be in place, all the pictures hung straight on the walls, nothing on any of the surfaces seemed to have been disturbed, and there was no sign of any weapon. The body might just as well
