Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason Page B

transmitter. The boys were both tall, blond and good-looking. Ratoff, short and unremarkable himself, assumed that all Icelanders looked like this.
    Their snowmobiles had been picked up on the little Delta Force radar screen, and Ratoff had watched as they broke away from their main party and branched out on their own. They maintained a course directly towards the plane and he had been unable to think of a plan to deflect them. At least the main rescue team, located some forty-five miles away, posed no immediate danger; the only members to leave the party were these two boys.
    The Icelanders were escorted to Ratoff’s tent where they waited, flanked by armed guards. They had seen the plane, the swastika below the cockpit, the team digging the wreckage out of the ice; they had seen upwards of a hundred armed soldiers moving about the area, and although they could not have any understanding of what was going on, they had seen too much. Ratoff would have to conduct his interrogation with care; there must be no visible signs of violence, yet neither could it take too long. Above all, it was imperative to prevent the rescue team from searching for them in this sector. Ratoff was up against the clock, but it was how he worked best.
    Elías and Jóhann were too frightened to feign ignorance of English. In fact, like most Icelanders they spoke the language remarkably well. And they were too naive to dream that they had anything to hide.
    ‘Kristín,’ Ratoff said in a dry, rasping voice, walking up to Elías. ‘She is your sister?’
    ‘How did you know that?’ Elías asked in surprise, glancing from Ratoff to the armed guards and back again. It was barely fifteen minutes since his phone had been confiscated.
    ‘Did you call anyone else?’ Ratoff asked, ignoring his question.
    ‘No, no one.’
    ‘You weren’t in contact with your team at all?’
    ‘My team? Why? How did you know about my sister? How do you know her name’s Kristín?’
    ‘Questions, questions,’ Ratoff sighed. He looked into the middle distance as if lost in thought, then backed away from the boys, glancing around until his gaze alighted on a tool box which stood on a trestle-table at the back of the tent. He went over to the box, opened it and nonchalantly rummaged inside with one hand, first taking out a screwdriver and contemplating it thoughtfully before replacing it in the box. Next he took out a hammer and weighed it in his hand before returning that too. Elías spotted a pair of pincers. The boys were staring at the little man with blank incomprehension. He gave the impression of being very composed, almost polite: his manner was cool, calm and deliberate. They had no idea what a dangerous scenario they had stumbled upon. Closing the tool box, Ratoff turned back to face them.
    ‘How about I promise not to stab your friend, would that put an end to your questions, I wonder?’ he asked Elías, as if weighing up the possibility. His hoarse voice was soft enough for Elías to miss the violence of his threat at first.
    ‘Stab?’ Elías repeated in shock, his eyes on his friend. ‘Why would you do that? Who are you? And what’s that plane with the swastika?’
    He hardly saw the movement. All he knew was that Jóhann shrieked, clutched his right eye and fell on the ice where he lay writhing in agony at his friend’s feet.
    ‘If I promise not to stab him again, would that encourage you to stop wasting our time?’ Ratoff asked Elías. His voice was difficult to hear over Jóhann’s screams. In one hand he was holding a small metal awl.
    ‘What have you done?’ Elías gasped. ‘Jóhann, can you see? Talk to me.’ He tried to bend down to tend to his friend but Ratoff seized him by the hair, dragged him upright and pushed his own face close to Elías’s.
    ‘Let’s try again. What coordinates did you give your team before you set off?’
    ‘None,’ Elías stammered, dazed with shock. ‘We said we were going to test-drive our snowmobiles