Cold War

The Cold War is the political and military backdrop against which the novel connects American intelligence, the strategic value of Iceland, and the contested presence of foreign troops on Icelandic soil. Its legacy outlasts the period itself: the surveillance systems and military relationships built amid superpower suspicion continue to shape later decisions, including a secret operation on Vatnajökull Glacier.

Intelligence Built for Superpower Suspicion

Building 312, a converted warehouse near the Capitol in Washington, D.C., houses an intelligence organization established shortly after 1960, during what the novel describes as the most intense period of mutual suspicion. Its original task was to analyse satellite photographs of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other countries regarded as enemies of the United States. The organization controlled eight satellites orbiting between 800 and 1,500 kilometres above Earth, turning images received from space into a continuously processed and catalogued stream of intelligence.

The organization’s work changes after the Cold War: monitoring terrorist bases in the Middle East and conflicts in the Balkans becomes part of its remit. The change of targets does not mean that the machinery of surveillance has disappeared. Under General Vytautas Carr, the institution retains both its satellite network and the capacity to raise an alert when its analysis detects something irregular. The novel thus presents the Cold War not only as a concluded rivalry, but as the formative period of an intelligence system that continues to act after its original adversaries cease to define its mission.

Iceland’s Strategic Position

Carr’s understanding of Iceland is framed by its place in Western defense planning. Keflavík Air Base was established after the Second World War on Midnesheidi, amid lava fields about an hour’s drive southwest of Reykjavík. During the Cold War, Iceland’s position in the North Atlantic made the base a valuable vantage point for monitoring Soviet submarines, shipping, and aircraft in the Arctic region. The island’s importance arose not from its size but from its location within a wider system of surveillance and defense.

That system had developed through successive occupations and transfers of responsibility. Britain occupied Iceland at the beginning of the war, and the United States took over the country’s defense role in 1941. The American force expanded to include the 5th Infantry Division under Major General Cortlandt Parker and reached a peak of about 38,000 troops. These earlier arrangements help explain why the base remained strategically important during the Cold War, while also placing its presence within a longer history of outside military authority in Iceland.

Alliance, Dependency, and Icelandic Opposition

The military relationship was politically contentious from the beginning. The 1949 defense treaty triggered a riot outside the Icelandic parliament, and left-wing parties continued to oppose the base over the following years. The government’s declared policy was that Iceland should derive no profit from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s presence on its shores; the military therefore did not pay directly for its facilities at Keflavík Airport.

That principle coexisted with less direct forms of economic dependence. Civilian contractors and service companies received tens of millions of dollars for work connected to the military, while neighbouring villages had come to rely on the Iceland Defense Force. When operations at Midnesheidi were scaled down at the end of the Cold War, local residents protested vociferously. The contrast exposes the limits of a policy against profiting from the military presence: even without direct payment for facilities, the base had become embedded in local livelihoods and political relationships.

The same tension governs later negotiations over the glacier operation. American officials tell Icelandic ministers that military activity within and around the country’s borders is monitored under the defense treaty, and that satellite images have revealed an aircraft on Vatnajökull Glacier. They describe plans to excavate it and move it through Icelandic territory to the base, while insisting on secrecy and asking for cooperation. The Icelandic foreign minister recognizes that the operation requires the government’s permission; the general, by contrast, abruptly says that the matter is not Iceland’s concern. The exchange makes visible a continuing dispute over whether alliance commitments give the United States authority to act on Icelandic territory without Icelandic consent.

A Postwar Legacy in a Later Secret Operation

The Cold War has ended by the time Carr is required to account for the C-17 transport plane and Delta Force operators in Iceland, but its institutional habits remain. He recalls covert operations from a time when they could remain covert, resenting the need to keep elected officials informed of military intelligence activity. The later operation therefore takes place in the shadow of a defense structure built for Cold War priorities, even as its secrecy collides with Icelandic political oversight and public opposition to military manoeuvres.

The glacier scenes also set the Cold War’s surveillance and military apparatus against a much older physical history. During excavation, soldiers uncover a body beside the aircraft, dressed as a high-ranking German officer and preserved in the ice. Inside the wreck, Ratoff finds further bodies, including men in German and American uniforms, and a locked aluminium briefcase handcuffed to the wrist of a two-star American general. These discoveries do not belong to the Cold War’s original rivalry; they expose the wartime secret buried beneath the later operation. Against the glacier’s preservation of evidence, the continuing intelligence system and its insistence on concealment make the past both a military problem and a political one.