Von Falkenberg could see the sacred burial place in his imagination. It was so close. Once more he silently prayed for the chance to gaze on his personal divinity before entering the halls of Valhalla. He thought about the chosen ones, those who would be imbued with Eriksson’s DNA to become progenitors of a new race founded on a bloodline now hidden behind the veil of antiquity. His reverie was interrupted by one of Bjorklund’s junior officers who arrived with a printed message. He read it quickly and smiled at Jensen.
“It would appear that we are much closer to locating our island,” he said, getting to his feet and walking with Steiger’s help toward the compartment door. “Have the Lynx meet me in my stateroom.”
The commando leader arrived after von Falkenberg received another morphine injection.
“You will have the honor of assembling the party to capture the two American archaeologists who have apparently located our objective.”
The Lynx read the printed message.
“Professor Jensen and I will be following behind you to wait at a secure destination,” said the prince. “You are to bring me the archaeologists unharmed, both mentally and physically. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said the Lynx, remembering the woman who had escaped them on the ice cap. “Unharmed.”
“If necessary, you are to eliminate anyone who stands in the way of the success of your mission. But you must remember that Maine is not Greenland,” added the prince. “You cannot move about with impunity or without fear of exposure.”
“I understand, Your Grace.”
“One of the ship’s transport helicopters will deliver you, your men, and two vehicles to a location within a few miles of your destination. From there you are on your own.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“No one is to know you were ever there.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Do not fail me,” said the prince.
“I will not fail, Your Grace,” said the Lynx.
FORTY-SEVEN
4 December
The Dorothy B.
North Atlantic Ocean
Off Bailey Island, Maine
God, the North Atlantic was bleak in the winter, thought Macaulay as the boat plunged through a deep trough and rose to meet the next precipitous wave. In the initial run across Merriconeag Sound, the water had been relatively calm, but as soon as they rounded the tip of Bailey Island and headed out into the ocean, they ran straight into six-foot seas.
Behind them, Bailey had long ago disappeared into the mist. Ahead of them was a dense bank of unbroken fog. They hadn’t seen another boat during the entire course of the trip.
“It should clear up some when we get closer to the island,” Grubb shouted over the noise of the engines.
They had been at sea for nearly an hour. After they entered the fog bank, Captain Grubb had turned on the boat’s Furuno radar system and navigated the boat electronically.
The Dorothy B. was not rigged for winter. Even with the protection of the overhanging roof above the wheelhouse, they were exposed to the bitter wind, and it cut through the still-weakened Lexy. She kept her gloved hands gripped around the warm exhaust funnel from the engine compartment as she stared forward into the thick haze.
Her mind was still focused on Barnaby, and she hoped he was resting comfortably back at the cottage. They would need to get him to a doctor at some point, with luck after they had found the tomb.
A few minutes later, the shoreline of the island began to appear out of the gloom. Although it was still only late afternoon, light was already failing as Grubb began steering the Dorothy B. toward a pebbly beach on the island’s western shore.
“Please take us all the way around,” said Lexy.
“I thought you needed to go ashore to find the prize,” he came back.
“I’ll let you know if and where I want to land,” she said, looking down at the leaping wave crests.
First she wanted to get a feel for its entirety, particularly the eastern side, where Eriksson and his men would presumably have been driven ashore. Grubb turned north, staying about twenty-five yards out from the shoreline.
Lexy used a handkerchief to wipe the mist off her binoculars and began to survey the unfolding landscape. The western edge of the island was low to the sea, mostly rock ledge crowned by patches of green spruce trees. Along the northern edge, the rocky escarpment grew higher as if the island itself had long ago erected its own defensive barrier against the worst of the North Atlantic storms.
Through the binoculars, she observed a line of black-backed gulls, quietly perched like sentinels above the sharp clefts. Along the steep-faced wall of rock, the sea seemed to sigh, like some great hibernating beast.
The Dorothy B. began to pitch more violently as they ran down along the eastern edge. Another line of mature spruce trees crowned the striations of ancient rock formations. Beyond the shoreline, she could see what looked like a small grove of gnarly fruit trees and what might have been traces of a settlement.
“What are you looking for?” asked Macaulay when they were about halfway around.
“I don’t know,” said Lexy.
In truth she was waiting for that familiar subliminal signal from somewhere within, the intuitive recognition of something in the landscape that would comport with what she had imagined after deciphering the rune markings, the moment when her nerve endings would come alive with excitement.
Macaulay watched as a lone seagull began to follow the boat, flying in their wake about fifteen feet above them. The bird was obviously hoping for a handout. They swung around past the southern tip and began closing in on the pebbly beach where Grubb had started the run.
Lexy put down her binoculars.
“There is no point in landing,” she said to Grubb. “Let’s go back.”
“I still get my money, right?” he said.
“Of course,” she answered.
The Norsemen had never been there. It wasn’t the place. She was sure of it. She would have felt it inside.
“I’m going to lie down in the cabin,” she said, heading below.
“So what’s with her?” asked Grubb as he turned the Dorothy B. to the southwest and headed back to South Harpswell. “Sore loser?”
Macaulay just shook his head and stared forward.
* * *
Barnaby sat asleep in Mike Grubb’s easy chair in the growing darkness of the cottage. He was sailing in a Viking longship through a greenish yellow fog. The smell around him was dank and repulsive, reeking of corruption. Over the side of the ship, men were floating on a sea of blood, the corpses of men long drowned. Below the dense surface lay something horrible, unutterable, rising steadily toward him.
A voice intruded on the feverish dream.
“Where are the others?” asked the Lynx.
Barnaby awoke and took in the coarse-grained blond hair and piercing blue eyes.
“It is useless to lie to me, Herr Finchem,” he said. “I know they were here with you.”
He was just as Lexy had described him, the cool, merciless commando leader who had wiped out Hancock’s expedition team in Greenland. He was no longer dressed in the one-piece thermal winter suit she had described with the Mjolnir crest emblazoned over the breast. He now looked like a model from an L.L. Bean catalogue. Only the automatic in his belt and the submachine gun in his right hand confirmed his lethality.
Barnaby glanced out the window into the fading light and saw two more armed men in the glow of the dock lamps. One was entering the small fish house that housed Captain Grubb’s gear, while the second disappeared down a ladder at the end of the dock.
“They’ve gone on,” said Barnaby.
“And left you here?”
He nodded.
“We will wait for them to return,” said the Lynx.
The
fire had gone out in the woodstove, and it was very cold in the room. Barnaby wrapped the blanket tighter around his shoulders as the blond man went to the windows, staring out at the water.
Barnaby checked his pulse. In spite of all the hard mileage he had subjected his heart to for almost seventy years, the beat was steady and reassuring, and he felt no residual pain or discomfort from the most recent incident. Good to go, he decided, whatever comes.
Barnaby’s ears pricked up at the distant sound of an engine. At first he thought it might be a car, but it was coming from beyond the window, somewhere out at sea. The sound grew increasingly louder.
It was almost certainly Captain Grubb’s boat returning from the island, and if they weren’t warned, they would all fall into the same net. Barnaby had little doubt what would happen to them once their usefulness in finding the tomb was ended.
The Lynx remained at the window, gazing out to sea. He had deployed his men at every edge of the property with two waiting at the dock. He slid a shell into the chamber of the Czech-made Skorpion Evo III submachine gun.
Barnaby surveyed the bare living room for some means to warn them, taking in the sagging Christmas tree, the array of empty beer cans, two overstuffed trash baskets, and several fishing rods leaning against the wall. He was wondering how he might employ the fishing rods as a weapon, when his eyes landed on the light switches above Grubb’s chair. He had used one of them to turn the dock lights on.
Barnaby could hear the boat engine begin to slow down as it approached the dock from the misty sea. He threw off the blanket and noisily attempted to get out of the sprung chair.
“What are you doing?” demanded the Lynx, training the automatic on him.
“Water,” said Barnaby, seemingly choking as he held up the pill bottle. “My heart.”
“Stay in your chair or I’ll kill you,” he said, stepping quickly through the open door into the kitchen.
Barnaby could hear the sink running as he reached over and pulled the switch, throwing the dock area into darkness. The Lynx was back a moment later, handing him the water glass. It took him only a few seconds to notice that the dock lights were out.
“What have you done, you miserable old swine?” he demanded, knocking the water glass out of Barnaby’s hand and jamming the barrel of his automatic into his ear.
* * *
“I don’t like it,” said Mike Grubb from the steering console of the Dorothy B.
“What is it?” asked Macaulay.
“Someone just turned off my dock lights—probably that English circus freak.”
“It could be an outage,” said Macaulay.
“There are still lights up at my house,” said Grubb. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“Stop your engines,” demanded Macaulay.
He had to assume the worst. Somehow they had tracked them all the way from Boston to Maine. Barnaby was either dead or their prisoner. Either way, he and Lexy had to try to escape.
“I’m heading on in,” said Grubb. “You pay me what you owe me and we’ll call it even.”
“I said stop the engines,” repeated Macaulay.
“Fuck you,” said Grubb, continuing to steer toward the darkened dock.
Macaulay pulled out the silenced semiautomatic pistol and leveled it at him.
Grubb hauled back on the two power throttles, and the boat slowed to a crawl.
“I never seen a reality show like this one,” said Grubb.
“I want you to drop us off farther up the coast,” said Macaulay. “After that you’re free to go where you want. Now turn it around.”
Grubb swung the bow around.
“Open it up,” demanded Macaulay, and the captain obliged.
FORTY-EIGHT
4 December
Eagles’ Cleft
Seal Harbor
Mount Desert Island, Maine
Barnaby rode in the backseat of the Jeep, his massive head enclosed in a black cloth hood that had breathing holes for his nose and mouth. Men sat on both sides of him to block access to a passenger door.
He was astonished to still be alive, sure that the commando leader was about to kill him at the cottage when Grubb’s boat had turned around and disappeared into the night. His right ear was still bleeding from the blunt force of the pistol barrel.
Barnaby had watched the Norwegian’s facial muscles quiver as he fought to control himself. Finally stepping away, he had made a call on his cell phone, requesting in Norwegian that a helicopter be dispatched immediately to track the path of Grubb’s boat. The request was apparently denied, after which he smashed everything within reach, including the living room window.
Sitting in the silence of the SUV, Barnaby pondered how they could have been tracked down so quickly, concluding that Delia must have revealed the information, almost certainly unwillingly.
Still weak from the fainting episode, he found himself dozing off, coming awake again when the car began bumping heavily over a road surface studded with potholes. One of them elevated him off the seat.
“Langsamer du Narr,” spat a voice in German, breaking the silence.
A few minutes later, the car rolled to a stop.
It was raining again when they hustled him out of the car and into an open field. His shoes sank into soft, marshy ground and his clothes were soaked by the time they made it across. He heard the low whine of an idling helicopter engine. Someone helped him inside the machine and strapped a safety harness over his chest.
The jet engine surged to life and he felt the helicopter leave the ground. About thirty minutes later, he sensed they were descending again. After another short run in a car, he heard the soft crunch of the tires on a gravel driveway; then it came to a stop.
Outside, the rainy air was scented with pine needles. The men on each side of him walked him into another building and up two sets of stairs. He could smell wood smoke as he heard a door close behind him. The hood was removed.
A young red-haired woman in a scarlet pantsuit welcomed him with a convivial smile. They were alone in a high-ceilinged bedroom decorated with fine old English pine furniture, wide plank floors, and a stone fireplace. A log fire crackled in the grate as rain pelted the windows.
“The prince thought you might like a hot bath and a refreshing libation after your difficult journey,” she said.
“You don’t know how difficult, my dear,” he replied. “Tell the prince, whoever he is, that both ideas sound bloody marvelous. And feel free to join me.”
She blushed furiously before leaving him alone with a snifter of brandy. He went to the windows and looked out into the rainy night. In the distance, he could see the revolving beacon of a lighthouse. Heavy rollers hammered into a rocky shoreline.
* * *
It was finally starting to make sense, the reason he had not been liquidated. Hjalmar Jensen hadn’t been able to decipher the rune inscription or effectively interpret its clues. Apparently, their only hope for a quick discovery lay with him or Lexy. What was the urgency? he wondered. And who was the prince?
When he climbed out of the Jacuzzi, Barnaby found a pair of silk pajamas waiting for him on the bed, along with a thick flannel dressing gown and padded slippers. There had to be a secret video camera in the room, because as soon as he was dressed, there was a knock at the door.
A butler in white tie and tails led him down a mahogany staircase and into a vast great room in which another log fire was roaring. Two of the commandos he had seen at Grubb’s cottage flanked the entrance. A blond woman in a black cocktail dress stood in front of the fire with an elderly man in a blue suit.
As he drew closer, he saw that she was at least sixty. Nature or plastic surgery had kept her face unnaturally taut, with wide cheekbones and full lips. Her figure was still slender and athletic.
The man was much older, with a thin, long-nosed, aristocra
tic face. His face was seamed with lines of trouble or pain and his skin looked like delicate parchment. They were both holding cocktail glasses.
“Welcome to Eagles’ Cleft,” said the woman without formally introducing herself or the old man. Barnaby was sure he had never met him, but there was something familiar about the woman. The butler asked Barnaby if he wanted refreshment, and he asked for another brandy.
“I’m told that you were forcibly blindfolded before being brought here, Dr. Finchem,” said the old man. “That was the grievous mistake of an overzealous subordinate.”
His accent was unmistakably German, cultured, and aristocratic.
“I assumed it meant I had a better chance of surviving the night,” said Barnaby.
An oil painting of the mansion towered over the mantelpiece. It was the kind of house the Astors and Rockefellers once called a summer cottage, ten thousand square feet of oceanfront elegance, fifteen-foot-high ceilings, fireplaces suitable for human sacrifice, and walls of glass facing the sea.
Barnaby remembered who the woman was. She had been one of the television successors to Julia Child, who had ridden her intelligence and magnetic smile into a personal empire of branded housewares, clothing, furnishings, and decorator items. For many years, it had been hard to turn on a television set without seeing her face. Then she had dropped out of sight.
“I am told you are a renowned Norse archaeologist, Dr. Finchem,” she said with the radiant smile he remembered. “Do you follow the Order of the Ancient Way?”
“I’m in full retreat from all organized religion,” said Barnaby.
“I pity you,” she said. “You will never know the salvation of Valhalla.”
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