The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [167]
‘That’s not quite what I’ll be doing,’ said Alderley irritably. ‘As a matter of fact, I was going to suggest that Mac comes with me to talk to some of these people. And Mr Jindal, too. Getting first-hand accounts from reliable sources can speed things up enormously.’
‘Will you be able to get us security clearance for the summit?’ Mac asked.
‘For an MI6 adviser and an Interpol officer? No problem. It’s not as though you’re disreputable types.’ He looked directly at Eddie, who mouthed an obscenity.
‘I’m happy to help as much as I can,’ said Kit.
‘Great. I’ll make the arrangements.’ He took out his phone. Mac stepped forward to speak to Nina and Eddie. ‘So, off to Greenland? Rather you than me. One of the best things about retiring from the Regiment was knowing that I’d never have to spend another minute on a glacier.’
‘Funny, I thought that too,’ said Eddie. ‘Didn’t quite work out.’
The Scot smiled. ‘Well, best of luck. And wrap up warm.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Nina assured him. ‘I’m not planning to spend one second longer than I have to in the cold!’
31
Greenland
Nina gazed out of the porthole of the de Havilland Twin Otter aircraft at the landscape ten thousand feet below. It was an unbroken, empty swathe of snow, and in the near-eternal night of the Arctic winter there should have been nothing to see . . . but instead, it was one of the most amazing natural sights she had ever set eyes upon.
The sky was alive with the shimmering glow of the aurora borealis, green and red and pink lights coiling across the dark dome above. The blank snowscape became a giant canvas, a piece of abstract expressionism on a grand scale as colours were poured over it from the heavens. ‘Eddie,’ she said excitedly. ‘You’ve got to see this.’
Eddie paused in his discussion with Walther Probst, Interpol’s Tactical Liaison Officer, to glance through another window, ‘Not bad,’ he grunted, turning back to the German.
‘That’s all you’ve got to say? “Not bad”?’
‘I’ve seen it before. The SAS does Arctic training in Norway. After a couple of days freezing your arse off, you stop noticing it. Actually, it’s kind of a pain because it makes you easier to see.’
‘I married a philistine,’ she complained before joining the two men. ‘How long till we get there?’
‘About ten minutes,’ said Probst. The de Havilland was nearing the end of its long northeasterly flight from Greenland’s capital of Nuuk, traversing the vast empty wastes of the huge island’s central glaciers. Its destination was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere.
As Kit had expected, the tail numbers of the two wrecked helicopters on Mount Kedarnath confirmed that the Khoils’ company had indeed hired them. As a result, he had convinced Interpol to issue a red notice on the Khoils - and now it was going to be enacted.
There were two officers of the Rigspolitiet, the Danish police service, aboard the plane, but their presence was largely a formality; Probst’s team of eight men, all armed and wearing body armour beneath their Arctic clothing, would carry out the actual mission. The objectives were simple - serve the warrant, arrest the Khoils for extradition to Interpol headquarters in Lyon, and search for evidence linking them to the artefact thefts. No advance warning had been sent ahead; the hope was that by the time their lawyers were able to take action, the Khoils would already be on their way to France.
The final preparations were being made, the team examining pictures of the building they would be searching. ‘What is this place?’ one of the men asked.
‘It used to be an American radar station,’ said Nina, having found the background on the giant structure known only as DYE-A unexpectedly interesting, a piece of modern-day archaeological research. ‘Part of a chain going right the way from the Atlantic coast of Greenland across Canada to Alaska. There were four others like it in Greenland, but this one was also part of a secret operation called Project Iceworm, where they tried to hide nuclear