FIFTY-THREE
6 December
Boothbay Harbor
Maine
“The wind is coming from the southeast and we should have a good following sea heading out there,” said Chris as his boat cleared the harbor. “The full force of the nor’easter won’t hit Monhegan until tomorrow morning when the wind swings around to the north.”
As soon as they were out of the sheltered lee of the harbor, Macaulay was sure the Finn had gotten the forecast wrong. They were pitching about so wildly, it was hard to believe it could get any worse.
Along with the mammoth waves that crashed over the bow every fifteen seconds, the wind was coming in fierce, slashing gusts, driving the snow sideways and penetrating the canvas curtain behind the small wheelhouse. Macaulay was grateful for the foul-weather gear that Chris had given him before they left.
He hadn’t been impressed with the boat when they first boarded it in Boothbay. The name Different Drummer had been freshly painted on its stern. That was the only evidence of new paint on the whole boat.
It was a steel fishing trawler that had obviously seen hard use. The window fittings were grimy and corroded. One of the plate glass windshields was cracked, its riveted hull was streaked with rust, and there were numerous scrapes and divots in the wooden trim of the superstructure.
“I just bought her,” Chris growled, after noting Macaulay’s dour expression. “By next spring she’ll be a honey.”
When he started the engine, Macaulay felt a bit reassured. It sounded smooth and powerful. He decided to remain with Chris in the wheelhouse while Lexy went below to the forward cabin.
The cabin, which reeked of fish and motor oil, was a dismaying jumble of half-open drawers stuffed with gear, five-gallon buckets filled with engine parts and tools, blankets, life jackets, buoys, and rope. She found a place next to the small heating unit mounted on the bulkhead, and pulled a blanket around her.
Once they were out into open sea, the savage roar of the waves crashing above her head almost drowned out the low steady snarl of the engine, but she felt no hint of seasickness. After everything she and Macaulay had already endured, it seemed almost trivial.
She remembered being on a bucking horse as a teenager and the subsequent wild ride across rough, hilly terrain. This was no different, really. It only added to her excitement at the potential discovery awaiting her.
Her mind was drawn back to Barnaby. Where was he on this night of all nights? She prayed that he was safe and unharmed and could somehow be there with them when they entered the tomb.
After a thousand years, she wondered, would the discovery change the course of archaeological history? She pulled out the notes she had written while the two of them were deciphering the rune inscription back at the Long Wharf.
Five by five squared.
She tried to visualize it, just as Barnaby had taught her. She imagined the Norsemen sealing the entrance to the cavern with a thick slab of rock cut roughly to five feet square. What would that slab look like after a thousand years? How would she be able to identify it from the surrounding rock formations? What if it lay under standing water or under a bed of scrub growth?
It lies under shadow from the dawn.
With a nor’easter coming, it was unlikely there would be any definitively visible sunrise over Monhegan in a few hours. Would there even be a hint of shadowy light? Perhaps there would be something helpful in Ray Phillips’s papers at the museum on Lighthouse Hill that Chris had mentioned. That would be her first destination. Her mind turned to Barnaby again before she fell into a restless sleep.
Macaulay stared ahead through the cracked windshield into the stormy night.
“Are you and the lady going steady?” Chris asked almost harshly.
Macaulay hadn’t heard that expression since he was in high school and smiled at the recollection. Chris took it as an insult, concluding that Macaulay was laughing at him.
“I could knock that goddamn smile right off your face,” he said.
“Listen, I know you probably eat crowbars for lunch,” said Macaulay, “and you would prefer to have the lady all to yourself, but yes, we’re going steady and yes, we sleep together. Is that a problem for you?”
Chris thought about it for a while as he gazed forward into the darkness, puffing on his pipe.
“No,” he said finally, his feelings seemingly assuaged. “I never poach another man’s woman.”
“Let’s drink to the fine ones,” said Macaulay, uncapping the bottle of Laphroaig he had stolen along with the motorbike and handing it to him. Chris knocked back a long swallow. Macaulay did the same.
“This stuff is good,” he said. “Thanks.”
When Macaulay went below, he was amazed to find Lexy asleep in the pounding din. He spent five minutes rummaging through the five-gallon buckets until he found a can of charcoal lighter fluid and some clean rags. Pulling out the automatic pistol, he removed the silencer and the magazine and gave the gun a thorough cleaning.
Lexy came awake to a careening wave that almost hurled her from the bunk.
“It was probably a night like this that Eriksson and his men were driven ashore,” said Macaulay.
“Chris would tell you this is nothing,” she said, returning his smile. “We’re going to need to trust him.”
“Why?” asked Macaulay.
“I’ve been thinking it through,” she said. “If we find the stone slab, we won’t be able to raise it by ourselves. I know he seems quirky in some ways, but he looks very strong and able. We have no other choice at this point.”
One of the locker doors suddenly banged open and Macaulay’s eyes were drawn to a slim object standing about two feet high behind a gaff hook. To Lexy, it looked like a toy weapon.
“What’s that?” she asked as he extended its metal collapsible stock.
“It’s a Sten gun,” said Macaulay, “a British-made 9 mm submachine gun. . . . Second World War vintage . . . simple design, very reliable, and very illegal these days.”
“Do you think it still works?”
Macaulay pulled three fully loaded magazines out of the locker.
“I would imagine so,” he said. “It looks like it’s in perfect condition.”
He left the machine gun on the bunk as they went topside together. On deck, Lexy saw that a two-inch white blanket of newly fallen snow covered the stern and wheelhouse.
“As if the storm weren’t enough,” said Lexy, “we won’t be able to see anything if this keeps up.”
A moment later, she heard the dull clang of a weather buoy.
“That’s Manana, almost dead ahead,” called out Chris as the boat skewed crazily again. “That flashing white light you see every fifteen seconds is from the Monhegan lighthouse just beyond it.”
The turbulence of the waves abated as they drew closer to the first dark land mass.
“Do you know how to use that Sten gun down in the cabin?” asked Macaulay.
Chris turned to him, his eyes suspicious at first, and then nodded.
“My grandfather carried it when he fought with the Finnish resistance,” he said. “He taught me how to use it during the Monhegan lobster wars, but I’ve only used it on tomato juice cans.”
“We might need it against some tomato juice cans that shoot back,” said Macaulay.
“Chris, I want you to know how we got here,” began Lexy, telling him that they were on the run from an organization that had murdered dozens of innocent people in their quest to learn a vital secret that was apparently part of a shadowy plan to achieve world domination, and that somehow part of this secret could be buried in an underground cavern on Manana Island.
Even as she spoke, she realized the whole thing sounded totally ludicrous. Only a fool would believe her. Chris kept staring forward, smoking his pipe, as she told him that she hoped to find the clues to its
exact location in Ray Phillips’s papers at the museum. When she was finished, he didn’t even ask what the secret was. He turned his head to look at her, his weathered blue eyes already infused with excitement.
“I was expecting something like this,” he said, as if he had known about the Ancient Way all along. “Just tell me we’re on the right side.”
“We’re on the right side,” said Macaulay, “and a lot is at stake—maybe the world as we know it.”
“I think a large stone slab covers the entrance to the cavern,” said Lexy. “It’s probably rectangular in shape and about five feet square. We’re going to need your help removing it.”
Chris smiled again.
“I’ve moved ten tons of stone a day building rock walls on Monhegan,” said Chris. “With my iron bars and the right fulcrum, I can lever up just about anything.”
“You should know that the people we’re talking about won’t hesitate to kill us,” said Macaulay.
“The lady already said it was dangerous,” said Chris as the dark mass of Manana Island emerged out of the darkness ahead of them.
“Monhegan is just past the southern edge,” said Chris. “I’m going to put you ashore there at the wharf,” said Chris. “While you’re up at the museum, I’ll batten down my boat. We can meet back at my fish house on the beach.”
The landscape of Manana somehow looked sinister to Lexy as it rose starkly out of the surging black sea, denuded of trees and very primeval.
“Old Ray’s little shacks were right up there,” said Chris, pointing to a cluster of rubble and debris on its nearest slope. “Most of them burned down about twenty years ago.”
He was turning into the small harbor beyond Manana when they entered what appeared to be a dense gray cloud lying low against the water. Standing on the open deck, Lexy felt as if a thicket of nettles were stinging her face as they passed through the foglike mist. The air inside the cloud was bitterly cold.
“Sea smoke,” said Chris. “It forms over the sea when really cold air connects with warmer water.”
The icy presence swirling around her felt mysterious and timeless, as ancient as the thousand-year-old mystery she hoped to solve.
It felt like coming home.
FIFTY-FOUR
6 December
Monhegan
Island Maine
Macaulay stared up at the dark, windswept bluff above the Monhegan wharf.
After dropping them ashore, Chris had called out, “The museum is at the top of Lighthouse Hill. Turn left on Main Street.”
An unpaved rock-strewn path rose steeply from the wharf. It led past a phalanx of boarded-up summer cottages. At the crest of the bluff, they passed a three-story building with wraparound porches facing the sea. It was closed for the winter. A sign next to it read ISLAND INN, C. 1816.
A hundred yards farther along the road, they came to Main Street. It had to be Main Street because the road ended there, but there were no sidewalks or lights. It was another fifteen-foot-wide dirt path studded with a buried rock ledge that wound up toward another hill.
“We have to hurry, Steve,” said Lexy as they passed a succession of cedar-shake cottages and stacks of neatly piled lobster traps. “Dawn is almost here.”
An even steeper hill pointed the way to the lighthouse and a fog light that swept over them every fifteen seconds. They were nearly exhausted by the time they hiked up the final yards of the ice-covered path.
From the summit, Macaulay looked back down and saw a fenced graveyard dotted with ancient markers on a small plateau. Below it, the island settlement led to the harbor. He could see Chris’s boat chugging slowly toward a protected anchorage, but it was too far away to hear the engine.
The houses in the settlement were all dark. Wood smoke was rising lazily into the snowy sky from a few of the chimneys. Macaulay envied the islanders sleeping snug in their beds on such a raw night.
Two clapboard buildings flanked the gray stone lighthouse at the summit. In the beam of his flashlight, Macaulay read the sign identifying the first one as the Monhegan museum.
Its stout entrance door was locked with a dead bolt, and he walked over to one of the side windows, hoping the museum didn’t have an alarm system to protect its valuable exhibits. Using the base of the flashlight, he broke a small windowpane, the opening giving him access to the latch.
Inside, he found himself standing in a narrow corridor that connected the museum to the base of the lighthouse. After blundering into a brass binnacle mounted on a pedestal along the wall, he walked back to the entrance and let Lexy inside.
Together, they went through the building, room by room. There were more than a dozen of them on the two floors, each containing relics, photographs, paintings, and exhibits related to different aspects of the island’s four-hundred-year-old history.
In one room, the faces of long-dead students who had once attended the island school peered out from black-and-white photographs. Another room was devoted to the lighthouse keepers and another to Captain John Smith of Pocahontas fame. The largest room was filled with early-American fishing and lobster gear, and also included relics of the ships that had been wrecked on its rocky shores.
On the second floor, Lexy found the tiny room dedicated to Ray Phillips.
With his long white hair and flowing beard, the man was strikingly photogenic. In one of the photographs on the walls, he was smoking a pipe while holding a baby lamb in front of the complex of driftwood shacks he had built on Manana. The next one showed a view of his sleeping room, with a straw-filled mattress and beside it a handmade table, which held an old battery-powered radio and a kerosene lamp. The last photograph showed the charred ruins of the shacks after the fire swept through them, long after his death.
“But where are your papers, Mr. Phillips?” demanded Lexy loudly as she searched unsuccessfully through the drawers of a pine washstand.
In the next twenty minutes, they went through the rest of the rooms in the museum, methodically hunting for the papers Chris had told them were there and finally coming up empty.
“He must have been wrong,” said Macaulay. “Maybe they’ve moved them.”
It was Lexy who found the museum’s archives in a set of oak drawers that had been cleverly built into the stairwell leading up to the second floor. The folders in the drawers were alphabetized and she quickly found the Ray Phillips material. The folder was disappointingly thin and largely made up of press clippings reporting his death.
Among the handful of original documents was a letter from the Veterans Administration informing him of an increase in the monthly pension from his active service in World War I. There was also a bill of sale for the purchase of his property on Manana Island for the sum of seventy-five dollars.
“Listen to this account of his death,” said Lexy, reading one of the clippings aloud. “‘According to Kole Gannon, an island resident, the night he died was bitterly cold. He reported looking out of his cottage window to see that the lantern in Phillips’s shack had gone out, which was unusual. The following morning, Donald, the hermit’s pet gander, was observed swimming across the harbor to Monhegan, apparently seeking help. When Gannon rowed across to Manana, he found Phillips dead on the bed in his shack.’”
“I don’t see how any of this helps us,” said Macaulay.
“It doesn’t,” agreed Lexy.
Macaulay checked his wristwatch.
“Chris said that dawn arrives this morning at seven fourteen,” he said. “That’s four minutes from now. Where do we need to be?”
“There was no lighthouse here a thousand years ago, and we are already at the highest point on the island,” said Lexy. “We can watch it from these front windows.”
As the minutes passed, they both gazed toward the smaller island, expectantly waiting for the first shards of light to illuminate its surface. Manana slowly emerged out of the gloo
m, but there was no perceptible shadow cast over its dark mass.
“It’s no good,” said Lexy as she prepared to leave. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
Feeble dawn light had slowly crept through the room near the front entrance, which held an assemblage of exhibits and relics that offered a broad overview of the island’s history and its people.
“Maybe not,” said Macaulay, leading her to an oil painting on the far wall.
The work was hanging above a glass case displaying an array of arrowheads from the Native American tribes that had lived on the island a millennium ago. Painted by an artist named Alison Hill, it was a contemporary landscape.
“Oh my Lord,” said Lexy, taking in its title, Sunrise.
The painter had been standing on Lighthouse Hill when she captured a burst of glorious sunlight breaking over Monhegan. The settlement still remained in shadow, as did the harbor beyond it. The top two-thirds of Manana was bathed in sunlight.
“Look there,” said Lexy, pointing to the area in shadow.
Her voice was tinged with disappointment. The shadowed section filled the entire lower end of the slope from north to south, and virtually all of it was blanketed with dense scrub growth.
“We’re going to need a little divine assistance,” said Macaulay.
FIFTY-FIVE
6 December
RV Leitstern
North Atlantic Ocean
Off Maine
Standing on the open wing of the bridge, Captain Peter Bjorklund ordered his ship turned into the wind before giving permission for the AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter revving its engines on the rear landing pad to take off.
Thirty seconds later, a second helicopter was launched from the forward pad. Hovering high above the Leitstern, two more Agustas waited to land after their arrival. Their mission was to pick up the remaining phase one team members and deliver them to the mainland.
Bjorklund was grateful that the capricious North Atlantic weather had cooperated for the launch. The nor’easter would reach its peak intensity in a few hours. According to the radio accounts, it was going to be a bear.
Valhalla Page 25