“Yes, unfortunately it’s not uncommon, especially in the winter. Greenland is a big country, and in certain conditions if you wander off course then it’s far from a given you’ll be found again.”
They moved in closer and studied the photographs. The top one was a portrait that showed a smiling young woman who barely resembled the one in the hole below them, apart from her long, black hair. Below the portrait was an informal picture of the woman, taken in summer while holding a trout in front of her with both hands. The pose was meant to be humorous as the fish was small enough to be held easily in one hand. A lock of her dark hair was caught by the summer breeze and drifted behind her like smoke.
Simonsen studied the bottom picture thoroughly. When he was done, he grimaced and asked, “So what brought her out here?”
“It was her work. Have you ever heard of the DYE stations?”
Both men shook their heads.
“They were a kind of radar outpost from the base in S?ndre Str?mfjord. There were five such stations, simply designated DYE-1 to DYE-5, and three of them rank among the world’s most isolated places, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest settlement. All five were built in the early 1960s as part of the American atomic early warning system, a chain of radar stations from Alaska across Canada to Iceland that were supposed to detect Russian bombers and later intercontinental missiles. The first four DYEs are spread along a line that roughly corresponds to the northern polar circle, starting with DYE-1 on the west coast at Sisimiut over the ice cap, and finally DYE-4 on the east coast at Ammassalik. DYE-5 is an exception, pretty far north of the other DYEs and, as I said, over three hundred kilometres from the base in S?ndre Str?mfjord. I have no idea why it was not built in a line with the others. Maybe there is a perfectly reasonable explanation if you’re a radar engineer or maybe it’s a military secret, who knows?”
Simonsen asked, “How big was it?”
“Not very big in circumference, but high. You can see a few pictures when we get back to Nuuk. It wasn’t pretty.”
“What does DYE stand for?”
“As far as I know, it comes from the Canadian town of Cape Dyer on the east coast of Baffin Island towards the Davis Strait. Cape Dyer was also part of the radar system, but I’m not sure about the linguistic connection. In any event, all five DYE stations were taken out of service in the late 1980s. The technology was antiquated by that point as Russian rockets could then be tracked better from satellites. The first to be shut down was DYE-5—that was here where we’re standing—and unlike the other four it was removed completely. That was down to some desk decision or other in Copenhagen about not compromising Greenland’s wilderness. The Americans were told to clean up after themselves so to speak, which they did quite effectively as you can see—or perhaps I should say, don’t see. Later the Self-Government had to reverse the procedure so that the other DYEs were allowed to remain more or less as they were, and today two of them are used occasionally by climate researchers overnighting on the ice cap.”
“Was it only Danes who were stationed on these outposts?”
“The agreement between Washington and Copenhagen allowed the station to be mixed. But the DYE commander and the radar operators were always Americans.”
“Did the Danes have security clearance?”
“Yes, of course they did, though the process wasn’t that thorough based on all the stories I’ve heard over the years about the DYE employees. There were, shall we say, some characters among them—not exactly the sort you’d encourage to wander around a top-secret installation today. In fact, though, the information they could have passed on was probably quite limited. The American Army can rightly be blamed for a lot of things, but being lax about national security is definitely not one of them. Especially not in the middle of the Cold War.”
Simonsen nodded his agreement without completely understanding what the man was talking about. Then he asked, “How many employees were there at a radar station like this?”
“It varied from DYE to DYE. At DYE-5 there were twelve Danes on six-month periods of service. After that they were supposed to be relieved, but often they simply switched to serve a further six months at another DYE. That was one of the reasons many of them became noticeably strange. Some of them were out on the ice for years. At the same time they earned a very respectable salary without having any way to spend the money. When they finally got back to civilisation, things often went very wrong for them.”
“And Maryann Nygaard was one of these workers?”