Ratoff, glacier-operation chief

Ratoff, glacier-operation chief, is the officer directing the military recovery of the aircraft from Vatnajökull. His command initially seems defined by orderly procedure and confidence in the mission: he controls access to the wreck, manages the response to its collapse, and insists that no one enter without his permission. But the discovery of the aircraft’s contents unsettles that certainty. The anticipated treasure or weapon is absent; what remains is a collection of documents whose implications he recognizes before Kristín confronts him with the name Operation Napoleon.

Command at the Wreck

From a communications tent, Ratoff’s superior, Vytautas Carr, watches the recovery progress remotely. When the aircraft begins to break apart, Ratoff leaves the tent and hurries through the gathered men to the wreck. The front of the plane bends, then the fuselage breaks in half under its own weight and crashes onto the ice, while the tail remains partly submerged. Ratoff responds at once: he orders the severed section prepared for removal and forbids anyone to enter the plane without his express permission.

The order makes control of the wreck as important as the physical work. The men with blowtorches move aside, and Ratoff becomes the first passenger to enter the cabin in more than half a century. Four Delta Force officers guard the entrance while the soldiers return to their tasks. Outside, the operation resumes almost as if the collapse had not happened; inside, the long-sealed aircraft offers a different kind of discovery.

In the cabin’s weak daylight, Ratoff finds two bodies: one in the uniform of a German army officer, the other dressed as a two-star American general. The American’s insignia are unfamiliar to him, and a heavy-locked aluminum briefcase is handcuffed to his left wrist. The juxtaposition of the two uniforms and the locked case turns the wreck from a recovery problem into a mystery. Ratoff keeps the discovery under his control, communicating with Vytautas Carr over the Delta Force closed channel rather than allowing the communications officer to remain in the tent.

From Expected Treasure to Documents

Ratoff’s expectations are exposed by his reaction to the finds. He has heard years of stories about what the aircraft might contain, and the possibility of something spectacular has sustained his anticipation for the mission. Yet, as he considers the briefcase, a chart, and books, he concludes that there is no gold, bomb, biological weapon, recognizable missing Nazi war criminal, art treasure, or diamonds—only documents. His disappointment is not simply a judgment about the objects’ material value: it marks the collapse of the mission’s imagined prize.

He takes the papers to his own tent, where a camp bed, chair, and collapsible desk provide a makeshift place to examine them. First he checks the log book for the aircraft’s departure and intended flightpath. Then he turns to a red exercise book and notices that the pilot kept a diary during his last days on the glacier. He sets it aside and opens the briefcase, which contains three files bound with thin white straps. The first two hold documents in German; although Ratoff knows some German from two years stationed at the US base in Ramstein, he cannot understand their precise meaning.

The third file changes the tenor of his examination. Its documents are in English and marked confidential, including a single unsigned memorandum. Ratoff reads quickly, then begins piecing together what the papers contain. He rises and paces inside the narrow tent, whispering in disbelief. Afterward, he studies the names and signatures again; they are familiar to him, though the evidence does not yet disclose their full significance. His response establishes that the papers are not worthless scraps to him: they connect the wreck to knowledge he already possesses, and their meaning unsettles him.

Authority and Unease

Ratoff’s exchanges with Vytautas Carr show both his position within the operation and the limits of his control. When Carr calls, Ratoff asks whether he is being watched. Carr answers that the equipment exists to be used and asks what Ratoff has found. Ratoff first clears the communications officer from the tent, then continues on the closed channel. Surveillance and secrecy are thus part of the practical structure of their command, not incidental details: Carr can observe the glacier from afar, while Ratoff controls what is said from the scene.

Later, when the communications chief reports that the rescue team is moving, Ratoff orders a call to the embassy. The radar screen shows two dots approaching from the south as the rescue team comes down from the north. Ratoff has already sent soldiers to intercept the rescue party, intending to stop or delay it, but the southern approach is unexplained. He suspects that it may be Kristín, the young man’s sister, and recalls that she has already made fools of Bateman and Ripley, putting one of them in hospital. His attention to the radar and his immediate identification of Kristín show that the recovery operation has become entangled with the people trying to reach the glacier.

Confrontation with Kristín

When Kristín encounters Ratoff in a tent on the glacier, she has just uncovered a body beneath canvas. The heavy-duty body-bag is open at the top; a cap bearing an eagle and swastika appears first, followed by the pale face of a middle-aged man. Ratoff enters with Bateman and comments on how recently preserved the corpse appears. The discovery places the aircraft’s past physically before the characters, but the encounter quickly shifts from the body to the secret Ratoff has found among the wreckage.

Kristín recognizes Ratoff as the man who has twice tried to murder her, although his appearance differs sharply from the imposing figure she had imagined. He is short and gaunt beneath his padded ski suit, with a bony face, sharply projecting cheekbones and chin, small deep-set eyes, and a scar under his left eye. Her attention fixes on that scar as she faces the person behind the operation. The contrast between his slight build and the danger he represents makes the confrontation personal as well as strategic.

Ratoff dismisses Kristín’s claim that she knows about Napoleon and asks what she actually knows. She answers that she knows about the Napoleon documents, or Operation Napoleon, and identifies the aircraft’s secret as papers in a briefcase—not a bomb, gold, or virus. Her accusation brings the discovery in his tent into direct conflict with his effort to control access and information. The available scene ends with Ratoff challenging her knowledge and Kristín asserting it in anger; it does not resolve what he will do next. His role is therefore defined not by a disclosed explanation of the documents, but by the transition from guarding a wreck to guarding a secret whose existence Kristín has now named.