Operation Napoleon

German plane should have crashed on the glacier. What did puzzle him was that it should have happened in the closing stages of the war when it could not have taken off from Norway, which was no longer occupied by then. It could only have come from Germany.

Jon also told Kristin about an American military aircraft that crashed on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier during the war. There had been little information about the accident at the time due to the news blackout, but everyone had survived and made it safely back to civilisation.

‘When Miller first turned up here, Karl and I remembered the Eyjafjallajokull accident and were eager to do anything we could to help him. I suppose our sense of loyalty may have been a bit exaggerated but we gave him our word and we kept it. We kept our promise. That’s all there is to it.’

Steve ran his hand over the German jacket again, examining the three medals on the breast. He did not recognise them or know what they would have been awarded for but they indicated that whoever owned the jacket must have been fairly senior in the German army. He wondered what the German officer had been doing up there on the glacier all those years ago.

‘There was a box half-buried in the ground beside the German,’ Jon said at last, as if as an afterthought. ‘I took that as well. It looked as if it had been handcuffed to him. He still had the cuff round his wrist. Must have lugged it down off the glacier.’

‘A box!’ Kristin exclaimed.

‘Yes, or something of the sort. It should be here as well.’

Jon rummaged around in the chest again. Kristin and Steve looked round at the horses which were watching them with ears pricked.

‘I don’t really know whether to call it a box or a case,’ Jon said. ‘It’s made of metal. Here it is.’ He lifted up a scratched and dented metal box, the size of a small briefcase, with a handle and a lock that had clearly been tampered with. The metal had rusted clean through in places. Jon opened the box.

‘I found some papers inside. All ruined. Nothing else. I haven’t taken anything out.’ He passed the box to Kristin. She inspected it for any outer markings, then looked inside and saw the papers. They had been badly damaged by the weather, years of relentlessly alternating heat and cold, and fell apart when any attempt was made to separate out the sheets, but the odd word could still be made out on the most intact piece. The documents had been typewritten but the individual letters were now mostly blurred or illegible, though she could tell they were in German. In one place it was still possible to make out the words ‘Operation Napoleon’.

‘Have you any idea what this means?’ she asked Jon.

‘I don’t understand a word of German,’ he said. ‘But it must have been important if he was prepared to lug that case on his wrist all the way over the glacier in the middle of a storm.’

‘Thompson said something about a bomb on board the plane,’ Steve reminded Kristin.

‘What was that?’ Jon asked. He had been a farmer all his life and had never seen any reason to learn English or German or any other language, for that matter, apart from his native Icelandic.

‘We heard there was a Nazi bomb on board that the Americans were transporting to the States.’

‘A bomb?’

‘Yes. A hydrogen bomb that the Germans had been planning to drop on London at the end of the war. Or on Russia. Who knows?’

‘Wait a minute, didn’t you say you’d put a cross on the German’s grave?’ Kristin asked. ‘Is it still there?’

‘No, it isn’t, I’m afraid. I didn’t do a very good job. I don’t really know why I did it at all. It was just two pieces of wood nailed together. I haven’t been there for a long time but the cross fell down years ago. I…’

Jon broke off.

‘What?’ Kristin prompted.

‘I don’t like to say. I’m rather ashamed of myself.’

‘Why?’

‘I marked the cross.’

‘Marked it?’

‘I carved a name on it.’

‘A name? You mean you knew the German’s name?’

‘Goodness me, no. It wasn’t a man’s name.’

‘Not a man’s name? What do you mean?’

‘I had an old dog that I was forced to put down at around that time, so I buried him with the German. I don’t know what came over me. Bloody disrespectful, I know. I rather regret it now, but I comfort myself with the thought that he probably didn’t deserve any better. Few of them did.’

‘So you marked the cross with the name of the dog?’

‘Yes, Ogre.’

‘Ogre?’

Jon looked at his feet and smiled ruefully as he recalled his ill-tempered and mangy old companion. ‘He was a tiresome dog.’

Kristin glanced at Steve who shrugged.

‘Could I use your phone?’ she asked Jon.

He mumbled his assent. They went back out into the blizzard, Kristin carrying the metal box, Steve the uniform jacket, and followed Jon into the house, oblivious to the incessant ringing of the car-phone in the jeep.

Chapter 25

VATNAJOKULL GLACIER,

SATURDAY 30 JANUARY, EVENING

We’re trapped inside the plane. I can’t hear the wind any longer and it’s not as cold as before. We have two kerosene lamps; I don’t know how long they’ll last. Don’t know how long we’ve been here. Don’t even know where ‘here’ is. Probably the Vatnajokull glacier. At times the fuselage groans as if it’s being wrenched apart. Our only hope is Count von Mantauffel, but it’s not much of a hope. We’ll probably never be found. He took the metal box with him, handcuffed to his wrist, as if he didn’t even have a key to it himself. And if he doesn’t, who does? Or maybe it contains something so important that he daren’t leave it behind. I’m sitting in the cockpit, keeping away from the Germans. There are two of them still alive, talking their gibberish, scowling at me occasionally. Blaming me for everything.

If we could force the door off its hinges we might be able to dig our way out. The windows are too small to squeeze through. We didn’t realise we’d be trapped. Crazy weather the whole time. We haven’t started thinking rationally yet. It’s horrible having the corpses in here, all battered from the landing. I didn’t see the glacier until we crashed into it. God! I couldn’t see a thing. I thought I was off the south coast. One minute we were in the air, the next I was skimming the ice. The two men who were standing over me in the cockpit were hurled back into the cabin. Killed instantly. I’d asked them repeatedly to sit down.

We’re trying to keep ourselves warm. We don’t talk much. Sometimes I hear them mention von Mantauffel. I haven’t told them but there’s a chance we were spotted. I was flying so low that I saw buildings below me through the blizzard. That’s when I knew we were done for. I tried to gain height but we were too near the glacier. There were two men standing by the house gazing up at the plane – they must have seen us. They’re bound to report it. They have to report it.

Berlin was bombed flat like London. The airport had been destroyed, so we took off from outside the city. The delegation I’d arrived with stayed behind. Who was the Swede? An exceptionally courteous man. Seems they’re all counts there. I’m going to try to write down what happened in case you ever find us. It passes the time, too.

After we parted in Copenhagen I went to meet the two intelligence officers you mentioned. They never told me their names. They were waiting for me in the park just like you said. They drove me out of the city in