Wolf Winter [antikvár]

In the unrelenting chill of the Cold War, two Norwegians are shot dead after straying into the frozen Soviet wilderness. For Halvard Starheim, adventurer and mountaineer, their deaths are both a personal and professional tragedy. Haunted by the suspicion that they were betrayed, he resigns from the army and seeks solace in the isolation of his secluded island farm. But neither the unexplained deaths nor his deepening love for Ragna, beautiful widow of one of the men, will let him rest in peace. Starheim embarks on a mission to find out what really happened. A mission that will unearth a deadly conspiracy, leading him and Ragna to a final confrontation with the enemy in the freezing wastes of an Arctic wolf winter . Prologue North Norway, January 1945 The night was cold and brilliantly clear. You could see for miles: peak after peak of ice-mountains rose into the dome of the sky, jagged crystal teeth squeezed between the deep inroads of the jet-black fiords. High in the mountains the near-full moon cast long shadows and lit the snow with transparent brilliance so that visibility was particularly good. Which was just as well for die two young men who were making a quick but properly cautious descent of the mountain known by the Lappish name of Goalsvarre. At4,230 feet the peak was not the highest in the Lyngen Alps -there were several higher, many of which were tantalisingly unclimbed - but Goalsvarre was close to the village of Lyngseidet and convenient for the bus and ferry ride back to Tromso. Most people, had they known of this expedition, would have considered it foolish. It was irresponsible enough to go mountaineering in the depths of a winter night, but to do so when the place was thick with Germans was ?king for trouble. But no one did know. And even if they had, the young men would have argued that winter was die best time to go mountaineering - the snow was firm and powdery - and that at sixty-nine degrees north, well within the Arctic Circle, the long hours of darkness at this time of year made night climbing more or less unavoidable. And as for the Germans - well, the Occupation had lasted five years and if one waited for it to end one might wait for ever.