‘According to our best intelligence, American soldiers stole a Junkers from the Luftwaffe, painted it in our camouflage colours, filled it with gold and took off from Munich. They made a secret stopover at Prestwick in Scotland and were intending to make a similar refuelling stop in Reykjavik en route to the States but met a storm and crashed on the glacier. None of them ever made it off the ice alive so we assume there were no survivors. Our sources, however, are not wholly reliable. Understandably, none of the men involved in the theft has ever come forward and admitted it, but there is no specific reason to doubt the broad truth of the story.’
‘How much bullion are we talking about here?’
‘Six to eight tons.’
‘That’s a problem all right,’ the secretary said, as if to himself. He was visibly shaken; the tables had been expertly turned on him by Carr, whom he had summoned for a tongue-lashing about the endless covert operations and private vendettas he was engaged in. He was not used to being so comprehensively wrong-footed but could not suppress a grudging respect for Carr’s expertise.
‘And that’s not all, Mr Secretary,’ Carr added.
‘There’s more?’ There was no mistaking the note of anxiety.
‘It makes this gold story a very sensitive issue for us, politically speaking.’
‘What? What is it?’ the secretary asked. His progress to date had been assured and free from blemish, a spotless record which was now under threat.
‘It concerns the origin of the gold.’
‘What do you mean? What about its origin? What’s so politically sensitive?’
‘The bulk of the gold was acquired from concentration camps,’ Carr replied.
The secretary took a moment to grasp the implications.
He groaned. ‘You mean this is Jewish gold? Teeth? Jewellery? You are telling me that we have a plane which crashed under US command full of plundered Jewish gold?’
Carr drove home his advantage. ‘If we said it was stolen by a handful of rogue American soldiers no one would believe us. The whole country would be under suspicion: the President, Congress, and of course the secret service organisations.’
‘My God.’
‘So as you see, Mr Secretary, it’s a delicate matter.’
The secretary considered his non-existent options.
‘You’re right. Absolutely right,’ he said finally.
‘Mr Secretary?’
‘That plane must never ever be found.’
‘That’s what the secret service is for, sir,’ Carr concluded, the hint of a wry smile playing around his mouth.
Chapter 6
VATNAJOKULL GLACIER, ICELAND
FRIDAY 29 JANUARY, 1900 GMT
Ratoff held the phone belonging to the boy who claimed his name was Elias and, as he walked into the communications tent that had been erected beside the aircraft, checked the last number he had dialled. According to the screen, the call had lasted long enough, Ratoff thought, for the boy to have described the area and their activities in detail. It was the only number that showed up on screen. Otherwise the phone appeared new and barely used.
‘Have the embassy trace this number,’ Ratoff ordered the chief communications officer. ‘And I need to talk to Vytautas.’
‘Vytautas, sir?’ the officer asked.
‘Carr,’ Ratoff breathed. ‘General Vytautas Carr.’
Ratoff left the tent again. The plane was now half clear of the ice. In the glare cast by four powerful floodlights a swarm of troops was busy digging it out with spades. The nose, which was relatively intact, jutted into the air like a raised fist. Ratoff could now confirm Carr’s theory that it was a Junkers Ju 52, known familiarly to Allied troops during World War II as ‘Iron Annie’ or ‘Auntie Ju’. The Ju 52s were Germany’s principal transport aircraft, often used for carrying paratroopers and powered by three vast BMW engines, the third of which was situated on the nose. And there the propeller still hung, its blades mangled by their collision with the ice. Below the window of the cockpit the outline of a black swastika was just visible under the flaking camouflage paint, while two of the seven windows that lined the sides of the plane could now be seen above the ice. The tail-end was still buried but the wings had evidently been sheared off and would probably never be found.
Ratoff understood the urgency of the situation. If these hapless boys on snowmobiles had managed to alert people to the presence of armed troops and a plane on the glacier he would have to act decisively. He must establish whom they had called and try to prevent the information from spreading any further, from dividing and mutating like a virus. The leak must be plugged at all costs. He had begun to realise just what a major undertaking this was and how difficult it would be to keep it under wraps. Smaller-scale operations involving less equipment and manpower and set in an urban environment were more his style, whereas Arctic wildernesses with weather conditions that could change drastically in a matter of minutes were quite outside his area of expertise. Nevertheless, he believed they had a good chance of getting away with it if they played their cards right, if everyone concerned did what was expected of them. He had done his research: Iceland was the backend of beyond; if there was anywhere an old secret could be dug up without word getting out, then surely it was here.
He heard someone call his name from the communications tent and went back inside.
‘It’s a Reykjavik number, sir. Registered to a woman named Kristin. She has the same patronymic as the owner of the phone. His sister, maybe. Married women keep their father’s name in Iceland. Here’s the address. It looks as if she lives alone. I have the embassy on the line.’
‘Get me Ripley.’
He was handed the receiver.
‘Her name’s Kristin,’ Ratoff said and dictated her address.
There was a silence while he listened intently.
‘Suicide,’ Ratoff said.
The man known as Ripley replaced the telephone. He and his colleague Bateman had arrived with the other Delta Force personnel, but Ratoff had sent them to the American embassy in Reykjavik with instructions simply to sit and await orders. To others, his ability to anticipate and plan for unforeseen contingencies was eerie.
Ripley relayed to Bateman the drift of the phone conversation. They were very similar in appearance, both tall, muscular and clean shaven, their fair hair combed into neat side partings. Over their neatly pressed, inconspicuous dark suits, smart ties and shiny shoes, they wore only waist-length blue raincoats. They could have been twins were it not for their contrasting features. One was more refined, with a narrow face and piercing blue eyes above a long, thin nose and a small, almost lipless mouth; the other somewhat coarser in appearance, with a square jaw, thick ripe lips, big chin and bull neck.
Having found the woman’s address, they identified the shortest route through the streets of Reykjavik, then borrowed one of the staff cars, an unmarked white Ford Explorer SUV, and drove off into the snowstorm. Time was of the essence.
The journey took no more than five minutes despite the heavy going.
When they pulled up outside her house on Tomasarhagi, Kristin was trying to contact the Reykjavik Air Ground Rescue Team. She was still wearing her anorak as she stood by the phone, trying all the numbers listed for the organisation in the telephone directory, without success. No one answered. She dialled her brother’s number again but there was still no reply. A recorded message announced that the phone was either switched off, out of range or all the lines were currently busy. Convinced now that he was in danger, she fought down the dread rising within her.
