30 January

30 January is the novel’s central day of converging emergencies: detectives investigate a death in Reykjavík, Kristín and Steve evade their pursuers, and Icelandic and American officials confront the secret behind a German aircraft on Vatnajökull Glacier. The Saturday’s repeated place-and-time headings make the day feel at once expansive and compressed, joining parallel movements across Iceland and Washington, D.C. with a wartime account preserved inside the glacier.

Morning: Investigation, escape, and memory

The day opens in Reykjavík at 0415 GMT, with a scruffily dressed detective surveying Kristín’s flat and remarking on the strange events there. The investigation has reached a dead man with a hole in his forehead; one detective considers whether a government lawyer could have killed him, while his older colleague scrutinizes the wound and answers with sardonic skepticism. The scene establishes that Kristín’s flight is unfolding alongside a police inquiry whose facts remain uncertain.

At 0500 GMT, the action shifts to Keflavík Air Base. Arnold’s directions have taken Kristín and Steve there, and before leaving them at the administration block he explains to Steve how to get out without using a gate or climbing the wire. Kristín cannot guess what favor Arnold owes Steve, only that it must be considerable; she chooses not to dwell on it. The escape route is practical, but the unexplained debt gives their passage through the base a private history the reader does not yet know.

At the Foreign Ministry in Reykjavík, marked 0730 GMT, the immediate crisis opens onto Kristín’s older life. She has cared for Elías since his birth, when she was ten, and recalls wanting a younger sibling because she was lonely as an only child. Her parents worked long hours and valued quiet; she learned to move through the house without disturbing them and to look after herself. Set beside her present effort to protect her brother, this recollection gives her vigilance a long personal history: caring for Elías is not a new duty imposed by the day’s events, but a bond that began in childhood.

The same date also follows Vytautas Carr in a Washington, D.C., control room. Among employees at satellite consoles and flickering screens, he watches Vatnajökull Glacier disappear from view and understands what Ratoff is doing. He then leaves for his office, calls for a Buenos Aires number, and asks for a flight to Iceland. The sequence turns observation into intervention: Carr recognizes that the operation has reached another stage and begins his own next move.

1800 GMT: Two crises in parallel

At 1800 GMT, the dated narrative places two sharply different scenes side by side. In South Iceland, Kristín and Steve are driving east in a Pajero. They stop twice for petrol, and Kristín drives the entire way. Although a severe storm affects the east and northeast, the southern lowlands have only drifting snow. The highway is dark and increasingly empty; occasional headlights briefly illuminate the vehicle before the road falls dark again. Their movement away from Reykjavík is measured not by a safe arrival but by the thinning traffic and the persistence of pursuit behind them.

At the same hour in central Reykjavík, the two detectives who inspected Kristín’s flat the previous evening stand at the bar of an Irish pub surrounded by the aftermath of violence. Police tape and cars cordon off the building; floodlights illuminate the premises as bystanders gather and reporters seek comment. Ripley and one fisherman have been hospitalized. Snow melts against the lights while the older detective removes his hat and scratches his head. Elsewhere, Ratoff has reported that the authorities have not yet heard from the Icelandic government, and that Kristín has been too occupied evading them to warn anyone. He also says she has been framed for murder. The public wanted notice and the damaged pub therefore belong to the same expanding effort to make her appear culpable while keeping her away from those who might respond.

The glacier’s wartime record

In south-east Iceland, also on the evening of 30 January, Kristín examines a tattered German uniform jacket recovered from the wreck. She feels the cloth, checks its buttons, pockets, and lapels, and notices three medals pinned to the left breast before handing it to Steve for inspection. The jacket makes the wreck’s history tangible: it belonged to a German officer who died in it near the glacier. Alongside it is a metal box whose significance remains uncertain.

A separate account dated that evening at Vatnajökull Glacier gives the wreck’s past an immediate, precarious voice. Its narrator describes being trapped inside the plane, with two kerosene lamps and no clear sense of how long the survivors have been there. The fuselage groans; two Germans remain alive and blame the narrator. Their only hope is Count von Mantauffel, who has taken the metal box handcuffed to his wrist. The narrator wonders whether the Count even has a key, or whether the box contains something too important to abandon. The account does not resolve the box’s secret, but it links the object in Kristín’s hands to the desperate circumstances of the crash and makes the glacier’s buried history part of the present-day investigation.

2100 GMT and 2300 GMT: The secret named

At 2100 GMT, the second secret meeting between the Icelandic government and American military authorities takes place at the prime minister’s holiday retreat on Lake Thingvallavatn. The four-bedroom house has modern comforts, including a sauna and hot tub, and overlooks the lake; the setting contrasts with the gravity of the discussion inside. The justice minister has joined the Icelandic delegation. Across the table sit the admiral representing the American Defense Force at Keflavík and Immanuel Wesson, provisional head of the U.S. embassy in Reykjavík.

The admiral identifies the aircraft’s secret as a broken arrow: a nuclear weapon lost through an aircraft accident or another mishap. He tells the prime minister that this is their first such loss and that the weapon is on Vatnajökull; Wesson adds that it is still live and extremely dangerous. The revelation changes the meaning of the glacier operation. What had appeared to be a concealed recovery of a German wreck is also an urgent effort to control information about a lost nuclear weapon, with Icelandic sovereignty and public safety implicated in the secrecy.

By 2300 GMT, a party is moving on Vatnajökull Glacier. Jón has provided powerful torches, climbing boots, and warm winter overalls, but the earlier storm has left the snow soft and difficult to cross. The temperature, which had risen after the storm, is falling again; the moon appears and disappears behind clouds, briefly lighting the glacier’s rim. The date ends not with the secret contained, but with people struggling across the terrain where the wreck, the metal box, and the live weapon have become inseparable stakes.