Macaulay stood up from his chair.
“J.L.,” he said, “take a minute to think this through. Our team is exhausted. Just look around. They’re out on their feet.”
Hancock glanced at the men napping in front of the communications bank.
“A week from now, we’ll be in total darkness, Steve,” said Hancock.
“The United States Air Force ran a war up here for four years in the dead of winter,” said Macaulay. “We can work up here for as long as it takes. If we push the guys too hard, there’s going to be an accident or worse.”
“Okay,” Hancock finally conceded. “We’ll all get a good night’s sleep and get started in the morning.”
Sir Dorian wasn’t finished. He stood over Hancock, his mottled cheeks flushed with anger.
“I must strongly advocate that you do not take these precipitous actions,” he said. “This could be one of the most important archaeological and scientific finds in history. It deserves far more careful planning than you have suggested.”
“Thank you for your opinion, Sir Dorian,” said Hancock, “but we’re quite experienced in these matters.”
“But you can return with your team in a few months and do these things in the spring with all the necessary protocols,” came back the old man.
Hancock laughed. “Do you think we’ll be able to keep this discovery a secret for the next four months? Half the countries in the world will find a way to claim ownership of everything we discovered down there. Just be grateful it was the Hancock team that found it. We know what to do.”
“You must not do this,” said Sir Dorian, looking to the other archaeologists for support.
“Mr. Hancock,” began Jensen, “I must confess that Sir Dorian makes a reasonable point. Depending on what’s written in those rune markings, this could be a find worthy of Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings. You just can’t pack it all up and cart it off to Texas.”
“Why not Texas?” said Hancock. “Do I need to remind you and Sir Dorian that the British Museum in London is crammed with artifacts looted from ancient civilizations all over the world? Dallas will make just as good a destination for this find.”
Privately, Lexy supported Sir Dorian. To ransack the cave was almost sacrilegious to her, but the reality of modern archaeology was that there were no longer any sacred canons. On most of the major digs in which she had participated, there had been brutal rivalries between archaeologists over who would win the glory and where the objects would go.
She was about to speak, when Hancock stood up and said, “We’re done here. I’m going to bed.”
Returning to her own tent, Lexy saw that the temperature was still dropping. Although the space heater was turned to its highest setting, her breath was condensing in the light of the gas lantern. The bottle of water she had left on the stand next to her cot was frozen solid.
It took her ten minutes to thaw the moisture inside her mummy bag by drying it over the space heater. Before she crawled in to get warm, she placed her flashlight inside it, clipped her doeskin-lined gloves to the leather cord strung above the cot, and turned off the lantern.
She slowly fell asleep to the wail of the wind and the constant hum of the diesel generator that powered most of the camp complex. Later, she dreamed she was in the belly of a great spacecraft sailing through the trackless universe.
TWELVE
21 November
Schloss Falkenberg
Koblenz, Germany
After he finished listening to the voice message recorded on the secure phone in his private study, Johannes Prinz Karl Erich Maria von Falkenberg, the ninth prince in the succession of the royal house of Falkenberg, was overcome with emotion.
As he gazed out the arched window facing the north parapet of his castle above the Rhine River, tears of unalloyed joy slowly began coursing down his pale cheeks. For several minutes, he continued to watch the soft, wet snow falling gently on the outer battlements, the scene illuminated by floodlights emplaced along the gorge that surrounded the shield walls.
The neo-Romanesque castle, rising majestically above the great river, stood at the pinnacle of a deep gorge. Through the centuries, it had withstood sieges and attacks by the French, the Italians, and most recently the Americans at the end of the Second World War. Since 1215, it had been the ancestral home of the royal house of Falkenberg.
Prince von Falkenberg’s personal staff had retired many hours earlier, and the private study was silent except for the crackling of the log fire in the immense stone grate. Above the marble mantelpiece, his late wife, Ingrid, gazed down at him from an oil painting commissioned shortly after their wedding.
He shook his head again in wonder. The news was simply astonishing, and he made a silent prayer in gratitude for still being alive to witness its potential impact on the world.
Holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for his heroism as a young panzer group commander on the Russian front, he had survived the war’s horrors only to come home to the destruction by Allied bombers of most of his family’s industrial holdings, and the rape and murder of his wife, Ingrid, and their three daughters at his estate in Koenigsberg by marauding Russian troops in 1945.
Only his fervent unwavering faith had sustained him through those times. It had been the root of his being since he was a boy, and the only true cause he had ever worshipped. He and his family had shared only contempt for Hitler and his henchmen.
Never remarrying, he had spent many decades restoring his family fortune before regaining his place as one of the richest men in Germany. At ninety-five, he was still slender and fit, with a full head of pomaded white hair and a thin aquiline nose.
Putting on a blue Chinese silk brocade robe over his silk pajamas, he sat down at his desk and recorded the key elements of the telephone message on a sheet of monogrammed notepaper, before adding a complete set of instructions. When finished, he rang for his personal manservant, Steiger.
“Please awaken Ernst,” he said to Steiger when he appeared a few minutes later. “I want this message encrypted and sent to Sorensen in Reykjavik immediately. Mark it urgent.”
“At once, Herr Hauptmann,” he said, referring to von Falkenberg’s wartime rank.
During the Battles of Kursk in Russia in 1943, Steiger had saved the prince’s life during a machine gun attack, and come back to Germany minus his right leg and left hand. Unable to work, he had been reduced to begging on the bomb-ravaged streets of Berlin. Von Falkenberg had tracked him down after the war and offered him a place in his personal household as long as he lived.
Leaving the prince’s private study with the handwritten message, Steiger wondered what could have possibly happened to restore such a beatific smile to the Hauptmann’s face after so many years of total impassivity.
THIRTEEN
22 November
Base Hancock One
Greenland Ice Cap
Lexy bolted awake. The battery-powered digital clock on the stand next to her cot read 02:07. The wailing of the wind and the hum of the generator were exactly the same, but she sensed another person was with her.
Slowly unzipping the top of the sleeping bag, she pointed her flashlight across the tent and switched it on. Rob Falconer stared back at her, his long mane of raven hair covered with snow. Little icicles were frozen into his beard.
He was kneeling at the end of her cot with one of her boots clutched in his left hand. Her small leather-bound archaeological journal, which she always placed in one of the boots before going to bed, was in his right.
His grin shattered the tiny icicles around his chin. Raising the journal in the air like a magician conjuring a familiar trick, he carefully inserted it back into her boot, and placed it next to the other one by the space heater.
“All safe and sound,” he said.
“Your latest larceny won’t bring you any reward, Rob,” she
said. “I haven’t made any notes yet in my journal.”
“I couldn’t be sure you were holding out on me,” he said, moving closer to sit on the edge of her cot.
“Only you would think that way,” she said.
“My sweet, sexy Lexy,” he said, leaning down toward her. “Is there room for me in there with you?”
In the glare of the flashlight beam, his pale amber eyes were glowing with exhilaration.
“What have you done?” she asked.
“I haven’t done anything—yet,” he said.
“I know you,” she said. “You had the same look after you hacked into my computer and stole my thesis.”
He laughed.
“I’m going to rewrite history,” he said, “and I could be persuaded to allow you a place in the sun.”
There was a faint petroleum smell on him, and she noticed an oily smudge on the chest of his thermal suit.
“Where have you been?”
“Can I trust you?” he said.
“You’ve never trusted anyone,” she said.
“Let me show you,” he said, leaning down to kiss her.
She slammed him in the head with her flashlight, and he fell back on the floor.
“Goddamn you,” he hissed.
“Get out of my tent or I’ll scream all the way to Valhalla, and then you can explain what you’re doing here to John Lee Hancock.”
He got up from the floor and began backing away, rubbing his temple. She kept him in the beam of her flashlight until he slipped through the tent’s inner and outer flaps into the wind-driven snow.
Lexy thought about getting dressed and going over to wake Steve Macaulay, but she was bone weary from the long air trip and everything that had happened since. She decided to wait until morning. Zipping up her mummy bag again, she fell back into a deep sleep.
Shrill noises began insinuating themselves into her brain. A few moments later, she came up out of the fog of sleep, fully awake. She could hear voices shouting outside in the darkness.
The air in the tent was frigid, and she could no longer hear the hum of the generator. Unzipping the mummy bag, she slipped on an additional layer of long johns, followed by her thermal suit, gloves, and boots.
Stepping outside, she saw several members of the expedition team running across the compound with flashlights. She walked over to the operations tent, where she found Hancock, Cabot, and Macaulay standing in front of the now-dark communications array. The tent’s space heaters were as cold as the one in her tent. Two small gas lanterns provided minimal illumination.
“Someone sabotaged the main generator,” said Macaulay. “We’re trying to patch in power from two of the smaller backups.”
Hancock’s manner remained calm and assured.
“Right now, heat and communications are the top priority, even if we have to suspend the recovery operation. If we can’t get the heat restored, Steve, you’ll have to ferry the team back to Kulusuk in the transport chopper.”
“What the hell is going on here?” said Cabot as he left to find the cause of the problem.
“I don’t know,” said Hancock, “but I’d say we need reinforcements.”
“Obviously, there is someone here attempting to sabotage what we’re doing,” said Macaulay. “The question is who.”
Lexy quickly told them about Falconer’s visit to her tent, and how she had caught him trying to steal her journal.
“What time was that?” asked Macaulay.
“About three hours ago.”
“Why didn’t you wake one of us up?”
“I’m sorry. . . . I didn’t think it was all that important.”
“It was,” said Hancock. “If he was the one who wrecked the satellite phone, he could have used it to arrange a rendezvous. He might even be on his way to the coast right now.”
Macaulay sent Doc Callaghan over to search Falconer’s tent. He returned a few minutes later to say that the archaeologist’s personal gear was gone.
“One of the snowmobiles is also missing,” he added.
“This has to be related to the Viking discovery,” said Hancock. “Someone needs to go down there—one of the people who’s seen everything.”
Looking at Lexy, Macaulay said, “I’ll do it.”
“I need you here, Steve. You may be flying people out soon, and the transport chopper will have to be checked for more sabotage. As for the others . . .”
“I’ll go,” said Lexy, hoping the first jolt of fear she had just felt wasn’t registering on her face.
FOURTEEN
22 November
Base Hancock One
Greenland Ice Cap
“Maybe we could send Doc Callaghan down with her,” said Macaulay, knowing John Lee wasn’t aware of her claustrophobia.
“I’ll be all right,” she said.
“Good,” said Hancock, turning to a member of his communications team. “As soon as we get power back, I want you to get Dallas on the horn. Tell them I want a fully equipped security team up here in the next twelve hours. I don’t care how they have to do it.”
“Use the walkie-talkie if you get into trouble,” Macaulay whispered to Lexy. “I’ll come right down.”
“Aye, aye, General,” she said with a mock salute.
“Wrong branch,” he said to her departing back.
She rode down the bigger of the two shafts with George Cabot. When they reached the first cavern, he used his security code to activate power to the second winch and then attached a set of metal stirrups to the cable for her next descent.
Staring down into the small black hole, Lexy realized she was no longer afraid of the descent. Maybe it was because she had already been down there, or because she was so excited to see more of the discovery. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for the emotional reprieve.
She was about to step into the stirrups when she looked up and noticed an oily substance dripping from the power winch onto the cable.
“Not to worry,” said Cabot, following her eyes. “These things leak oil all the time.
As the cable slowly began cranking her downward through the shaft, Lexy kept her flashlight beam trained on the ice wall in front of her. She began to notice a recurring pattern of furrows, interspersed with small round fissures in the ice every forty or fifty feet.
She had done some rock climbing over the years, and the tiny fissures resembled those left by a piton. She then remembered that Rob was an experienced climber. It would have been easy for him to rig up a chest harness. The only thing he would have needed to rappel down the shaft was enough stout line.
In the glare of the flashlight beam, the base of the shaft finally arrived beneath her. Stepping off the rig into the black tunnel, she turned on her flashlight.
The Viking ship looked untouched to her, but she saw that someone had been there since their last visit. The block of ice that Steve Macaulay had placed in front of the cave opening had been shoved to one side, and the hole was now uncovered.
Inside the cave, ice melt was drizzling from the ceiling, although the bodies of the Norsemen appeared to still be free of decomposition. When she looked down at the flaxen-haired Viking whose outer garment had been trimmed in red and gold braid, she saw that his cloak had been ripped open and the side pockets of his tunic torn out. Whatever he had possessed was gone.
At the back of the cave, the stonecutter was still lying where they had left him, but when she raised her flashlight to the rune stone, she saw that the ice shield that had covered it was no longer there.
She saw how Rob had done it. On their first visit, the Norsemen’s iron firepots had been lying on their sides, empty. Now, two of them sat upright at the base of the stone. An empty plastic Coke bottle lay next to them. She sniffed its remaining contents. It was diesel fuel.
Her hands were trembling as sh
e knelt in front of the stone and examined the top row of the inscription in the beam of the flashlight. Some of the symbols had been so crudely etched that she could not immediately interpret the individual characters, and thus their meaning. A few of the other symbols were unfamiliar to her, reflecting an idiom she had never encountered in translating other ancient texts.
She quickly concluded that a full translation of the saga would require hours of research, including an analysis of all the early Norse phrases and symbols she had catalogued back in St. Paul.
There were enough legible characters for her to conclude that if the stonecutter was recording true events, it was the most important archaeological discovery since the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
We have come through the storm and survived, she read.
Her instincts had been correct. They had been part of Leif Eriksson’s final expedition to Vinland in 1016. On their way back to Greenland, they had encountered something fearsome and powerful on an island where they had been forced to seek shelter. In battling it, Eriksson had been killed and was buried there.
He lies in the hallowed place. . . .
A voice suddenly startled her. It came through the earphones of her radio transceiver.
“Lexy, you need to get up here right away,” said Steve Macaulay.
“All right,” she said, her mind involuntarily continuing to translate the remaining symbols in the next row.
The next markings were meant to be a set of signposts for a new expedition of Norsemen to find Eriksson’s burial place and whatever was buried there with him. The stonecutter had recorded descriptions of landmarks to help them find their way back there, places that had existed a thousand years earlier.
Under the tail, she read from the next line.
“George says you’re not in the stirrups yet,” called out Macaulay over the radio in a worried tone. “Is anything wrong?”
“I’m coming,” she said, reluctantly retracing her path through the cave and out into the tunnel.
Valhalla Page 6