businessmen, particularly. I should never have allowed things to go so far between us but…’
She groped for the right words.
‘You’re against the army. So what?’ Steve said.
‘It’s not that simple,’ Kristin repeated. ‘I’m opposed to the NATO base. Not as a member of an organisation or anything like that, but in my heart; I just can’t stand the thought of an army on Icelandic soil, whether it’s American, British, French, Russian or Chinese. Never, over my dead body, will I accept its presence here. And the more the debate has come to revolve around money, unemployment, redundancies and the economy, the stronger I’ve felt about it. It should never have come to this. It’s unthinkable that we should be financially dependent on an army. What does that make us? What have we become?’
‘But…’
‘War profiteers. No better than war profiteers. The whole damn Icelandic nation.’
‘Aren’t you just a Commie bastard?’ Steve asked, with a wry smile.
‘I should be of course but I’m not. I’m…’
‘A nationalist?’
‘An opponent of the army.’
‘But the base’s activities have been massively scaled down. They may close it any day now.’
‘I think you’re here to stay. For a thousand years. Don’t you see? For eternity. And you can’t imagine how horrific I find that prospect.’
They raced along the road, a beam of light piercing the darkness at a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour.
‘I’m not the American army on Midnesheidi,’ Steve pointed out at last.
‘No, I know. Perhaps we took things too fast. Perhaps we should have got to know each other better.’
‘Let me tell you who I am, so there’s no doubt about it,’ Steve said. ‘I’m a New Yorker. No, that’s not quite right, I’m from Albany, New York, and you’d know what I’m talking about if you’d read any William Kennedy.’
‘
‘Did you see the movie?’
‘I did.’
‘The book’s better but I don’t really see how else they could have filmed it. Anyway, Albany’s full of Irish like me. Plenty of Quinns. The salt of the earth. My great-grandparents emigrated at the turn of the century to escape the poverty. They settled with their family in Albany and led a hand-to-mouth existence but left their children better off. Granddad went into the wholesale business, importing goods from Ireland, and made a decent living from it, and Dad took over from him. You couldn’t call it a business empire but he does okay. The Albany Irish fought and died in the wars the US fought in Europe, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. They were no soldiers but they joined the army because they believed their country needed them. As for me, I chose to study political science because I wanted to understand what led the US to establish bases in places like this, to understand what turned us into the world’s police force. I know all about people’s hostility here but what about them getting their snouts in the trough? The truth is I’ve hardly gotten to know this place at all. Still, someone once told me you’re all descended from the Irish, so perhaps you’re safe sharing a car with me after all.’
‘There were a few Irish hermits living here over a thousand years ago.’
‘There you go.’
‘But I don’t think…’
They started when the car-phone began to ring. They stared at it, but when Steve moved to answer it, Kristin said:
‘Oh, leave it. It’ll just be my ex, pissing himself about his fancy jeep.’
By the time they drove into Jon’s yard, the blizzard that had blown up on the way there had developed into a complete whiteout. The old farmer was standing in the doorway, visible through the thick curtain of snow, lit up by the porch light, a stooping figure in jeans and felt slippers. There was no sign of the soldiers; they had moved all their equipment up to the glacier, and the wind, which was gusting strongly here at the foot of the ice cap, had filled their tracks and tyre-marks with drifting snow. Kristin and Steve ran from the jeep to the farmhouse and Jon closed the door behind them, showing them into his living room where Kristin took in old family photos, bookshelves and thick curtains in the dim lamplight. The heating was turned up high and a powerful odour of the stables hung in the room’s stuffy air. Jon went into the kitchen to put on some coffee while they made themselves comfortable.
‘I heard about the shooting in Reykjavik,’ he said quietly, his eyes on Kristin as he invited them to take a seat. His voice was hoarse and quavered a little. He had thick hands, callused with hard work, slightly bow legs and strong features long since mellowed by age.
‘And I suppose you’re the Kristin they keep asking about on the radio,’ he added.
‘My brother is dying on the glacier,’ Kristin said slowly and clearly. ‘He fell into the hands of some American soldiers up there; they took him and threw him down a crevasse. He was found by his rescue team but they think he’s unlikely to live. The friend who was with him is dead. We hear that you’ve helped these soldiers over the years, guided them on the glacier, done whatever needed doing.’
The accusatory note in her voice did not escape Jon and he looked surprised. What an extraordinary young woman she was. He had always kept the promise he and his brother had given Miller long ago and never told a soul what he knew, had kept quiet all these years. Even after Karl died. And now here sat this woman, accusing him of colluding somehow in her brother’s death. What would Karl have done in his shoes? he asked himself.
‘The expedition leader goes by the name of Ratoff,’ he volunteered.
‘Ratoff!’ Kristin exclaimed triumphantly. ‘That’s him. That’s the man they mentioned.’
‘He’s not like Miller.’
‘Who’s Miller?’ Steve asked, catching the name, although they were speaking Icelandic.
‘A colonel in the American army who was in charge of the first expedition. In 1945.’
‘So the plane on the glacier’s American, not German?’ Kristin asked, once she had translated Jon’s reply.
‘No, on the contrary, I think it’s much more likely to be German,’ Jon said slowly. ‘It crashed at the end of the Second World War; flew over our house and vanished into the darkness. We knew it had gone down. It was flying too low. Miller told my brother and me that the plane was carrying dangerous biological weapons – some kind of virus that the Germans had developed. That was why they had to find it urgently. It didn’t occur to us not to help them.’
‘So it crashed before the end of the war?’
‘Shortly before peace was declared.’
‘That fits in with what Sarah Steinkamp told us,’ Kristin said, looking at Steve. ‘She said there were Germans on board. Hang on, a virus?’ she said to Jon. ‘What kind of virus?’
‘Miller was very vague about it. I got the impression he’d given away more than he should have done. We were on good terms; Karl and I would never have dreamt of betraying his trust.’
Jon looked from Kristin to Steve and back again.
‘Miller said the pilot was his brother,’ he added.
‘His brother?’ Kristin said. ‘In a German plane?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jon replied. ‘He didn’t mean to tell us; he was under a great deal of pressure and it just slipped out.’
‘Did Miller tell you the plane was German?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why was an American pilot flying it?’ Kristin asked, perplexed.
‘When my brother and I saw the plane fly over the farmhouse in the dark all those years ago, we reckoned it was big enough to be a Junkers Ju 52. Of course no one would know it nowadays. It was the same model as Himmler’s private plane. We didn’t know then that it was German.’
She looked at him blankly.
‘The war was something of a hobby for my brother and me,’ Jon explained. ‘Especially the aircraft. Karl knew all about the aircraft they used and said straight away that it looked like a Junkers.’
She continued to stare at him, still not quite sure what he was talking about.
‘Miller was tireless in his hunt for that plane. We didn’t understand why until he told us about his brother. Karl
