that the circumstances were highly unusual; they were beyond protocol.
The unrelenting din of the C-17’s engines had taken its toll on Miller by the time he finally succeeded in hacking a hole in the sheeting covering the rear half of the plane. Crawling inside, his head throbbing, he switched on his torch again, shone its beam into the tail-end and immediately spotted the unmistakable outline of the body-bags in the gloom. There were several, each two and a half metres long and the width of a man’s shoulders, fastened with zips running their length. They had been set on the floor of the aircraft. The bags were unmarked, so Miller got down on the floor and began to struggle with the zip on the nearest.
He was met by the blue-white face of a middle-aged man in German uniform. His eyes were closed, his lips black and frostbitten, his nose straight and sharp, a thick mop of hair on his head. Miller half expected the figure to come alive and felt a renewed trepidation at the thought of finding his brother. He dreaded seeing the face he had known so many years ago, lifeless, bloodless, deep frozen.
Hesitantly, he opened the second bag but it was another stranger. By the time he reached the third he was beginning to have doubts – perhaps his brother’s body was still lost in the wastes of the glacier, undiscovered and now surely destined to remain so for ever? He balanced the torch so as to illuminate the bag and, steeling himself, tried to unfasten the zip but it proved to be jammed. It was not completely closed though: a fairly large opening had been left. Not enough to enable him to see inside but enough to push his hands through and grip the sides of the bag. Tugging at the zip with all his might, he managed to haul it up, but when he tried to pull it down again, it jammed. He wrenched again and again until finally the zip gave way.
He was met by a face so different from the first two that his heart lurched. In the dim light of the torch and with his mind ablaze with memories, he believed for an instant that he was seeing his brother as he had been half a century ago. His lips were red, his cheeks ruddy, his skin pale pink. For an instant Miller was gripped by this unnerving illusion. Then it occurred to him that his brother must have grown his hair since their final meeting. This mouth, this nose, the shape of the face – it was all unfamiliar. In fact, he did not remember these features at all.
Miller reeled back, losing his balance, as the corpse, to his stunned amazement, opened its eyes and glared at him. He sprawled on the freezing metal floor of the hold.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Kristin spat, rearing up out of the bag.
Chapter 38
C-17 TRANSPORT PLANE, ATLANTIC AIR SPACE,
SUNDAY 31 JANUARY, 0515 GMT
She had kept up her ceaseless struggle with the zip ever since she had been left alone, but in vain. Now and then her mind drifted back to the stomach-turning noise of a rifle butt making contact with Julius’s face, followed by the dull thud of his body landing on the ice. More soldiers had entered the tent and soon she had felt herself being picked up and carried outside.
She had heard Ratoff telling Bateman that the body-bags were to be placed in the wreckage of the German aircraft and taken away by the choppers. For a brief moment no one was watching them in the tent as the helicopters were taking off. Julius tried to tear her away from Steve but he was not strong enough. He yelled in her ear but she behaved as if he did not exist. Bending down, he struck her hard on the face and she finally broke off her howling. He prised Steve’s body out of her grasp and laid him gently on the snow. Kristin came to her senses and started frantically looking for a way out and saw some empty body-bags by the wall in the corner where the corpses were laid out. Julius did not understand when she indicated the body-bags to him; he merely tried to drag her out of the tent again. Still resisting, she pointed to herself and then to the body-bags, put her mouth to his ear and shouted:
‘Help me into one of the bags.’
He stared at her, dumbfounded, then shook his head.
‘No way,’ he shouted back.
Tearing herself away from him, she ran to the bags by the wall and started opening the first one she reached. Julius knew their time had run out. His only thought was to save Kristin. Running over, he helped her unzip the bag and climb inside, then zipped it up again, leaving only a small gap. He laid the bag against the wall beside the other bodies just before the soldiers arrived.
The body-bag was very roomy, with handles at each corner. Four soldiers lifted it easily. She lay on her back, trying to keep still, making herself as rigid and inflexible as possible, regardless of what happened. Through the zip that Julius had left slightly open a tiny ray of light entered. She glimpsed the starry sky overhead.
The bag was dumped roughly on the floor of the plane and before long the light disappeared from the zip opening. She heard the noise of a helicopter again, this time directly above her head. There was an abrupt jerk as the wreckage began to lift away from the ice, then swung in the air beneath the helicopter as it set off on its westerly course.
She tried to open the zip and managed to force it down a few centimetres before it jammed. After that, no matter how hard she tried, she could budge it no further. Although she had sufficient oxygen to breathe, she was enveloped in impenetrable blackness.
She hardly felt the impact when the helicopter gently laid down the rear half of the plane on the C-17 transport pallet at Keflavik Airport, nor when it was driven into the yawning hold of the freight plane. She tried to envisage what could be happening, only guessing that she was on board a plane when the C-17 took off and she experienced that hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach that she always felt when she travelled by air. Her ears popped and the bass roar of the engines warned her that she was embarking on a much longer journey than she had imagined. She was still wearing the thick winter snowsuit but, although better than nothing, it provided limited protection against the cold that now penetrated the body-bag.
The damn zip was still stuck fast and she was beginning to doubt she would ever get out of the bag. At this rate, she thought to herself grimly, she would indeed end up in a mortuary, ready-wrapped. Her fingers were bloody from her battle and she was growing afraid that she would freeze to death from the cold when suddenly she heard a rustling sound from within the cabin of the German plane. Someone was close by. She saw a small beam of light through the gap in the bag. Could it be Ratoff?
She heard asthmatic wheezing and groans as if someone were struggling with something nearby, then all of a sudden there was fumbling at her bag. Ham-fisted attempts were being made to unfasten the zip. When it finally gave, Kristin closed her eyes and held her breath until she thought her chest would burst. As she opened her eyes at last, it was to find Miller leaning over her with a look of utter bewilderment on his face.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Miller cried, starting back, his eyes fixed on Kristin as she reared up out of the body-bag. Corpses coming to life – it was enough to kill a man.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Kristin demanded, before he could gather his wits. ‘Where am I? Where are you taking the plane?’
‘Who are you?’ Miller asked, stunned. ‘And what are you doing here?’
She had climbed out of the body-bag and was on her feet, looming over the old man who had fallen back on to the floor.
‘Your people killed my friend on the glacier,’ Kristin said accusingly. ‘My brother is hardly expected to live. I would like to know exactly what is going on.’ Her voice rose: ‘What’s happening, for Christ’s sake? What’s so important about this plane that you’re prepared to kill for it?’
She came close to kicking the old man in her desperation, her foot drawn back and her thigh tensed, but thought better of it just before she allowed herself the release of lashing out. Miller, prone and vulnerable on the ground, did not dare move a muscle. She was glaring at him as if demented and long moments passed before she regained control of herself, her features softened and some of the tension left her.
Miller had recovered a little from his shock and sat up on one of the two crates of gold that were on board the plane. She glimpsed the outline of a swastika on the box.
