Roman Ice

by Dave Bartell

  Scottish authorities had blocked off the road to the cave and prevented everyone from going back in the cave while Her Royal Majesty’s armed forces brought Karl’s body out. Ian was being detained by the Scottish Police as a person of interest because of his ties to Karl. They had interviewed each of the group, including Pétur, who was recovering in Edinburgh. So far, the questioning revealed that Karl acted alone when killing Jón and kidnapping Stevie. They also corroborated that Karl was going to trigger another explosion to seal them in the cave. There would be an autopsy, but it sounded like the police considered Karl’s killing an act of self-defense.

  Zac and Stevie had remained scarce once giving their official accounts of the expedition. In her only press interview, she pleaded for saving the art in the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave. When a BBC One interviewer asked how a French lady came to be named Stevie, she became a meme, hash-tagged #edgeofseventeen.

  Fame came with some perks. At the conclusion of their call, the prime minister told Darwin that she had arranged for a luxury bus and a police escort to Edinburgh. In the meantime, Darwin walked to the local police station to visit Ian. While most of the team continued to despise Ian, Darwin believed Ian did not want the violence that occurred.

  “How’s it going?” asked Darwin when he arrived.

  “Just like the lava tube,” Ian motioned around the walls enclosing him.

  “What happens next?”

  “They’re trying to figure that out. I’m South African. And any crime, if they can prove it, happened in international ‘waters,’” said Ian.

  “I’ll help.”

  “I know you will. What about the others?”

  “I think they’ll stick to their stories. It’s the truth, like you said. Pétur’s alive, so there’s less reason for vengeance,” he said.

  “You heard about Robert?” said Ian.

  “No. What happened?”

  “He pissed off some powerful people and was wanted by the French police. It turns out Jón was the son of the head of the diamond cartel.”

  “What! Did you know?”

  “Robert told me who he was.”

  “Why did he go?” asked Darwin.

  “To estimate the value of the discovery and cost of extraction. If he thought the diamond cache was large enough, my role was to help the cartel take control,” said Ian.

  “Fuck! What is it with you people and diamonds? Is that why Karl tried to kill us?” asked Darwin. His fingertips were white from squeezing the end of the table.

  “Like I’ve told you all before, Karl went rogue,” said Ian, his eyes glancing up at the camera near the ceiling. “He was fucked up from what happened to his family in Zimbabwe. I think he wanted to kill us all along.”

  Darwin let go of the table and cracked his knuckles.

  “What about Eyrún?” asked Ian.

  “Eyrún?” said Darwin, sitting back in his chair. “What does she have to do with this?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. I’ve watched the two of you for weeks. Don’t let her go.”

  “What’s it to you?” asked Darwin, trying to keep his feelings out of this conversation.

  “Nothing,” said Ian. “But from the moment Karl blew up the diamond chamber to now, I’ve been thinking how stupid I was. The woman I love and who wants to marry me is in South Africa right now wondering if I’ll ever get home. Eyrún cares for you, Darwin. You found your lava tube, now go find a life,” said Ian.

  What do you know of my life? thought Darwin and let their conversation end. They shook hands and said their farewells.

  Darwin got outside the police building and wandered toward the canal that connected the lochs. He stared down at the pavement, watching his shoes flash in and out of his vision. His phone vibrated. Unknown caller. He switched to silent mode. The press meetings and phone calls had become tedious, and, besides, the only person he wanted to talk to had rushed off to Edinburgh to see Pétur. He looked again at her text from this morning on the disposable mobile that had Zac given him.

  Darwin: Hi, it’s me Darwin. New phone. I miss you. Coming down later today.

  Eyrún: I know. We need to talk. See you soon.

  “Need to talk”? What the hell.

  The last couple months had been full of planning and purposeful action, and the five years leading up to the Iceland tube discovery were consumed by looking for clues to the Lacroix quest. In fact, Darwin could not remember when he had not thought about the wonders in the Box and the potential discoveries alluded to in the scrolls. Now he had nothing to do. I can’t just go back to Berkeley.

  He turned under an arch in a stone wall that surrounded a church. The path went by grave markers that heaved at odd angles and ended at a labyrinth in a corner of the grounds. He paused at its entry point recalling some distant lecture about an ancient Greek man who constructed a labyrinth to contain a beast, the Minotaur. Darwin’s monster was in his head and he entered the labyrinth hoping to calm his brain.

  Why would people want to destroy such an important discovery? And kill Jón! He shivered as if adjusting to a sudden chill. The path soon looped near the center, but he knew it was a tease as the convoluted trail turned outward again. Is this how Emelio and my forebears felt—so close to a breakthrough and hitting another dead end?

  He tried putting thoughts aside and ambled along the snaking pathway. His anger diffused along the sweeping arcs on the labyrinth’s backside and his thought reel shifted to replay moments with Eyrún: her take-charge attitude on the day they first discovered the lava tube and their awkward night together in the cabin. His scalp tingled at the memory of her fingers in his hair after their dinner in Reykjavík, but recoiled at her scolding “it’s personal for all of us Darwin” when they met to conspire on the journey.

  He pictured her face up close after whacking his head in the diamond chamber and felt the same warmth radiate from his insides. His focus returned to the tangled path as he traversed the long outside arc and followed its turn toward the center. His heartbeat picked up. The Lacroix quest would go on, but he had already found a most unexpected treasure. Eyrún.

  His feet had stopped on the center of the labyrinth. I need to get to Edinburgh. He turned and cut across the labyrinth for the stone gate.

  105

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  Once on the bus, Darwin withdrew back into his own universe of thought. Zac told everyone to leave him be that he was just tired. Three hours sped by and they soon rolled to the rear entrance of the medical center. Some reporters and curiosity seekers stalked the bus as it stopped at the staff only door. As he disembarked, Darwin heard people talking around him and others deferring questions, but it was just noise. His mind was already upstairs searching for Eyrún.

  “C’mon,” said Zac putting a hand behind his shoulder as if sensing Darwin’s worry. They exited an elevator into a corridor. There she was. The late afternoon sun slanted in the long hallway windows and warmed the passage. Her back was toward them and the bright light reflected a few strands of red in her dark brown hair. She heard them coming and turned around. Her mouth spread into a smile.

  “Hey, Darwin,” she said.

  “Hi, Eyrún,” he said, swiftly closing the gap between them.

  She kissed him on each cheek before hugging him and saying “I missed you.”

  He was about to reply when he was crushed by another hug. Assa had run out of Pétur’s room and tackled him.

  “You saved him! Pétur told me all about it,” she said, stepping back to look at him. “Get in here!” She grabbed his hand and pulled him through the door. He glanced back at Eyrún, who shrugged and laughed.

  After the helicopter medevac, they flew Pétur straight to the spinal trauma unit at the University of Edinburgh Medical Center, where surgeons removed a bone fragment from his fifth lumbar vertebrae that had lodged against spinal cord. Doctors injected the bones with a super glue to stabilize the fractures. Assa flew in from Reykjavik, arriving right after his surgery,
and had not left his side since. By the second day post-op, tingling returned to his legs, and he moved his toes. He could move his feet and legs on day three. The physicians said they expected he would regain full motion, but he had three weeks of healing before beginning limited rehabilitation. They called him the miracle patient because they could not believe his friends hauled him for days underground wrapped in a tarp.

  Darwin was relieved to see Pétur’s progress and positive prognosis. They spent an hour visiting before Pétur tired and Assa shooed them away so he could rest. Later that evening Darwin, Eyrún, Zac and Stevie declined a paid for dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant in favor of anonymity at a local pub. Zac announced that he was going back to California. While it thrilled the USGS to be associated with the lava tube discovery, he did not have unlimited vacation. Stevie surprised Darwin and Eyrún by saying she was going with Zac. “For a little while,” she said.

  “Good for me the French only work part time,” said Zac, smiling.

  After dinner, Darwin and Eyrún walked in the summer twilight back toward the hotel. She slipped a hand in his as they strolled in the warm humid air. Damp grass and floral scents from the adjacent park mingled with auto exhaust to form an eclectic urban aroma. Darwin thought about what might be below them underground and shuddered.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “I thought about being in the lava tube,” he said.

  She stopped walking and moved to face him. She took his other hand and looked at him. The warm yellow glow of the streetlamp added a tinge of sea green to her glacier blue eyes. “It was terrible what happened, but it wasn’t your fault. No one expected what Karl did,” she said.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he replayed his conversation with Ian. There was no need to bring up Karl’s motivation as it would only ruin the moment. He exhaled and opened his eyes. “No, we didn’t. And Karl’s reasons for doing it died with him. He was a damaged soul. Anyway—” He paused. “You said you wanted to talk,” he said, feeling a squeeze in his heart.

  “Let’s sit,” she said walking to a bench at the corner of the park. They faced each other as best they could, their opposite knees touching. She grasped both his hands.

  “I want to talk about us,” she began.

  Darwin’s heart jumped up in his throat.

  “But first, I wanted to say thank you. If it wasn’t for you, we would not have gotten out,” she said. His brain hit a wait-state. She’s building me up for the letdown.

  “If it wasn’t for me, we wouldn’t have been in that mess,” he heard himself say.

  She laughed. A real laugh. Not polite or contrived. “No, we wouldn’t. But like you said, the other day. You didn’t make us go in. We all wanted it. I wanted it,” she paused. “We made the discovery of a lifetime. The past couple days while sitting with Assa, I realized that Pétur belongs to her. They didn’t need me, so I wandered the halls and kept thinking of all the things I wanted to do next. The thing I thought of most…” Darwin leaned toward her. “Was being with you,” she said squeezing his hands.

  Darwin felt his heart restart. She leaned toward him and they kissed, clumsily at first because of the angle. He slid in next her and they melted together.

  “Where do you want to go?” she asked when they came up for air.

  “I was thinking Reykjavik,” said Darwin.

  “Now?”

  He laughed. Gotcha. “Maybe tomorrow. I have another idea for tonight.” He stood and held out his hand.

  Epilogue

  80 AD

  Rome

  Early one morning Agrippa slipped out of Rome and walked to the tunnel exit he and Nero had found in those fateful last days of the emperor. Agrippa reached the location as the town residents began their days’ work. He turned up the hill toward the hut that marked the crack in the rocks, glancing back to make sure no one followed. It looked even more decrepit than he remembered and leaned so hard a stiff breeze would take it to ground. He paused and looked around again before walking through the rock opening. He pulled a lamp from under his robe, lit it, and eased his way into the main tunnel following the marks he had left a decade earlier.

  After an hour, the branch widened, and a niche opened on the right. He turned in and his flame amplified and danced across the walls. Gold. He had expected it to be gone, but there it lay, untouched. Either Nero was brilliant or the civil war had distracted would-be gold seekers. Agrippa suspected the latter.

  He gathered as much gold as he could carry and found the trip wire at the entrance he knew Nero would have installed. When he was sure the mechanism would not kill him, he stepped into the main corridor and pulled the rope.

  A roar of rocks and rush of dirt confirmed the gold would remain hidden from anyone who did not know its exact location. He sat against the wall covering his face with his tunic as the dust settled. He relit the lamp and made more detailed marks on the tunnel walls on the way out. Once outside, he scanned the horizon and documented his location against three hilltops. If he never made it back to Rome, he intended that one of his ancestors knew how to find the gold. He shouldered his pack and headed toward Londinium.

  88 AD

  Londinium

  Quintus winced as the rasp of marble on marble sent a stinging wave down his spine. The echo receded, leaving the small group standing in silence. Only the loud breathing of one man punctured the dreary atmosphere. The grave robbers had forced Quintus to show them Agrippa’s tomb. Now he backed away and looked to escape, but forgot he was holding the torch.

  “Bring it here, you idiot,” waved the leader, a thin man who had rushed up to the sarcophagus. He snatched the torch and moved it about to cast light as his other hand probed inside.

  “Lift it,” he yelled at his men. “I can’t see.”

  The men lifted the outer edge of the lid and propped it against the wall. The thin man held the torch close to the body as the men holding up the lid leaned their heads away from his careless swinging of the flame. One man gagged.

  “It’s not here,” the thin man swung around. The others set down the lid and covered their noses with their tunics. The miasma of decay and smoke caused the young man to feel his bile rise up. He swallowed hard to regain composure.

  “What’s not here? This is Agrippa’s tomb,” said Quintus.

  “The scroll, boy—where’s Agrippa’s scroll?”

  Quintus looked at the spot on the wall where his father had hidden the jar with the scroll, coins, and diamonds. He had told Quintus that men would try to steal it and it was not safe in the sarcophagus.

  “What are you looking at, boy?” asked the thin man as he followed the boy’s gaze to the wall. He smiled as if realizing something was hidden in the wall. “Give me the hammer,” he shouted.

  Soldiers poured into the tomb. The thieves raised their weapons, but it was over in seconds. Two soldiers held the thin man between them while their colleagues wiped bloody swords on the robes of the slain thieves. A Centurion stepped into the tomb, surveyed the carnage and turned to the boy. “Quintus, are you okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Quintus looking up from the brass chest plate to the face of the human tower in front of him. The Centurion removed his helmet and went down on one knee to get eye level with Quintus. “I am Appius Pollio. Your father was a good friend.”

  “My mother?” asked Quintus, his stomach surging.

  “She is safe. Lucky for you, her servant regained consciousness and snuck away to find me. We freed her from the thieves at the house and forced them to tell us where you had gone.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Quintus, trying to choke back tears.

  “What were they looking for?” asked Appius.

  “Gold,” said Quintus.

  “There’s nothing in here besides a body,” said a soldier looking into the tomb.

  “What did you want with the hammer?” Appius asked the thin man.

  “To break up the sarcophagus and kill the boy,” he snee
red.

  “Kill him. Leave the bodies here and seal the entrance to the tunnel,” said Appius. Back on the street level, he turned to Quintus. “Will you be all right, son?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Quintus.

  “See him home,” he commanded two soldiers, and then walked away.

  Today

  London

  Darwin sighed at a pleasant memory as he sat in the British Museum Reading Room. He was taking a research leave for the fall semester at UC Berkeley, but a story deadline loomed and he was checking his facts. After the chaos of the lava tube discovery died down, Eyrún had also taken leave and they travelled together to Ajaccio and Herculaneum. The closest they got to being underground was Emelio’s basement to get the Box so that Eyrún could see how it had all started.

  A couple days earlier, she had flown back to Iceland to work on a government-sponsored exploration of the North Atlantic Tube, or NAT as they now called it. Darwin was to rejoin her in Reykjavík this weekend after submitting the article.

  He refocused on the task at hand. Somewhere in the City of London, lawyers from Scotland, England, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland were arguing about sovereign territorial extensions and mineral rights. The media called him a discoverer akin to Leif Ericson, but he felt cheated. The Vatican was considering his request to explore the tube in Clermont-Ferrand, and Scotland was allowing no one in the cave until sorting out the territory spat with England.

  Ugh! The Lacroix Curse. Two steps forward, one step back. He rubbed his temples and noticed a message on his mobile that must have come in while it was on silent.