“I gave them my personal oath,” he said. “Perhaps they could be useful in our underground facility at Tromso. See to it.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said.
The prince suddenly hunched forward as if he had a terrible stomach cramp, and collapsed to the stone floor. Steiger rushed to assist him to his knees. Together they began to pray.
Von Falkenberg could finally let himself go. The vision of Einherjar came to him, pure and glorious, the heavenly resting place of Valhalla. He had accomplished everything he had set out to do.
Jensen joined the others at the rope ladder.
The Lynx was already planning what to do with the two archaeologists after they resealed the tomb. Especially the woman. Unlike the prince, he had made no pledge and Jensen would not care. Jensen was a coward.
The Lynx sent the commando up the rope ladder first. When he disappeared into the cavern above, he turned to Barnaby. This one wouldn’t get out of the upper cavern, he decided, motioning him to go.
Barnaby looked into the blond man’s eyes. He knew with certainty what was going to happen to them once the prince was sealed into his tomb. He slowly began to climb up the rope ladder.
“You next,” said the Lynx, placing his hand on Lexy’s hip as she waited for Barnaby to clear the ladder.
The Lynx removed his short-range pocket transceiver from his belt.
“Horst, we are coming up,” he radioed to the commando he had left standing guard at the outside entrance to the tunnel. Jensen stood beside him, waiting for his turn to go up next.
The Lynx waited for the radioed acknowledgment as Lexy made her way up the rope ladder. There was only silence. Something had gone wrong. As always, he could sense it.
“Halt!” he shouted to Lexy as she approached the top of the nine-foot ladder.
Launching himself from the stone floor, he leaped to the fourth rung; from there he reached up and grabbed her left ankle. She screamed as he pulled his Glock from its holster and vaulted up the rest of the way.
As the Lynx climbed over the edge, he saw the commando lying on his side, his dead eyes staring back at him. The man the Lynx thought he had killed on the ridgeline was kneeling on the stone floor with a blood-soaked bandage around his head, holding on to the woman’s arms and dragging her away from the opening to the crypt.
Still clutching the woman’s ankle, the Lynx leveled his pistol at the man’s head for a second time and smiled. He would not miss again.
Standing behind the inverted stone slab, Barnaby swung Leif Eriksson’s broadaxe in a wide arc and slashed the two lines that held it suspended four feet above the opening.
The four-thousand-pound slab slammed home.
Sobbing with joy at the discovery that Macaulay was still alive, Lexy folded herself into his waiting arms as the Lynx’s severed head rolled across the cavern floor and came to a stop, his vacant blue eyes staring into oblivion.
SIXTY-ONE
8 December
The White House
Washington, DC
Jessica Birdwell swept through the anteroom of the Oval Office, her elation impossible to mask. The president had just offered her Ira Dusenberry’s job, now that Ira was moving up to become national security adviser.
As she headed downstairs to the intelligence management center to share the news of her promotion, she almost ran headlong into a man who stepped out of one of the offices along the second-floor corridor.
“I was hoping you might have a few moments to talk to me, dear girl,” he said.
Her first reaction was that he looked like a seedy undertaker from Mississippi. There were liver spots on his cheeks and he was wearing a rumpled seersucker suit with a yellow bow tie. She had no idea who he was or why he would want to engage her.
“I’m sorry, but I’m in something of a hurry right now,” she said brusquely as she brushed past him. “Call my secretary for an appointment.”
He kept right up with her as she continued along the corridor. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but she couldn’t remember why. He certainly didn’t look like he belonged in the White House.
“Now would be a very good chance to talk, my dear,” he said with a grandfatherly smile.
For the first time, she noticed the two other men trailing behind him. There was nothing seedy about them. They looked military, or possibly ex-military, both about thirty-five and very fit.
“Do you recognize this, my dear?” said the man, holding up a golden pendant.
She stopped to look at it. The locket was hanging from a thin gold chain. She had one similar to it in the secret compartment in her bedroom floor. In a moment of sickening realization, she realized it was hers.
It was the Mjolnir.
“It’s all over, Freya,” he said.
Only the highest echelon of the Ancient Way knew her real name. After so many years, was it possible they had uncovered the truth? Almost frozen with apprehension, she kept her poise.
“I’m not sure who you are looking for, but my name is Jessica Birdwell,” she said, her voice steady, “and I’m late for an appointment.”
“Jessica Birdwell disappeared at the age of seven when a tornado destroyed her home in Topeka, Kansas,” he said. “She was never found—until you assumed her identity thirty-one years ago. It wasn’t easy unraveling the trail, but you can give us a fuller picture of it in the days ahead.”
“I must talk to the president,” she said, pivoting in the crowded corridor.
“The president is being informed of your true identity right now,” said Tommy Somervell. “You will never be seeing him again.”
He motioned to the two men behind them, and they moved up on each side of her.
“We have a car waiting by the south entrance,” he said.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
“To a place where you will be able to appreciate the simpler pleasures,” responded Somervell. “Have you ever enjoyed a sunset over Guantanamo Bay? They are truly quite lovely, dear girl. And you will be in such good company.”
* * *
8 December
RV Leitstern
North Atlantic Ocean
The nor’easter had finally lost its ferocious menace and the deck was no longer vibrating to the towering waves that had exploded over the steel bridge rails, buckling them in several places before sluicing away.
Although the wind had died to little more than a whisper, winter had set in with a vengeance and the ship’s superstructure was gleaming with ice. Crewmen with hammers and fire hoses braved the cold to clear it away.
“Aircraft bearing south southwest,” called out one of the bridge lookouts.
Captain Peter Bjorklund glanced down at the search radar scanner and saw what appeared to be an entire armada of aircraft converging on his ship. For a moment, he wondered if they might have stumbled into a major military exercise.
In the next few minutes, his plotters in the ship’s combat information center registered the arrival of a full strike fighter squadron of American F/A-18 Super Hornets, followed by four EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare aircraft.
In the wake of the Prowlers came a swarm of MH-60 Seahawk helicopters, the bridge lookouts reporting that they were equipped with air-launched torpedoes and Hellfire missiles. Twenty minutes later, a Los Angeles–class nuclear attack submarine was detected on the sonar scanner.
Standing next to Bjorklund on the bridge, the Marquess Antoinette Celeste de Villiers knew precisely why it was happening. Two hours earlier, she had received a coded message from Matthiessen, the commander of the crash boat that had carried Prince von Falkenberg and his party to the small island of Manana off the coast of Maine.
Matthiessen had radioed that he was about to be boarded by a heavily armed United States Coast Guard cutter. Before communications were cut off, he reported t
hat he had received no word from von Falkenberg after he was transported to the island, and that all the commandos assigned to the mission had either been killed or were missing, including their commander, Major Joachim Halvorsen. Hjalmar Jensen, the archaeologist who had accompanied the prince, and the prince’s valet, Steiger, were also missing.
After reading the message, de Villiers ordered Captain Bjorklund to set a course for Fredrikstad, Norway, at the ship’s maximum speed. The Leitstern was already well beyond the twelve-mile limit of United States territorial waters as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but de Villiers was taking no chances.
While the warplanes and helicopters continued to circle menacingly overhead, two United States Coast Guard frigates materialized out of the murk ahead, blocking their path of escape.
The officer of the deck handed Captain Bjorklund a radio message that had just been sent in the clear from the American Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. The message ordered the captain of the RV Leitstern to stop its engines and prepare to be boarded.
“They have no legal right to board this ship,” said the Marquess de Villiers to Bjorklund. “We are no longer in U.S. territorial waters. Ignore the message.”
De Villiers had already signaled key advocates in the European governments that the Leitstern might soon be pursued by U.S. naval forces, and they were already sending official communiqués of protest to Washington.
Over the ship’s PA system, Bjorklund warned his crew that an attack could come at any time. Without deviating from his course, he headed for the coast guard ships blocking his path. When a collision seemed almost imminent, the other two ships turned away, allowing them to pass.
“As I thought,” said de Villiers in a jubilant tone. “They do not wish to force an international incident.”
Per Larsen sat at his desk in his private compartment two decks below the bridge and finished writing a letter to his wife. If all went well, she would never receive it, but it gave him the chance to express all his tortured thoughts. Their next meeting would be in Valhalla.
Removing his white lab coat, he put on the set of green overalls worn by the maintenance crew that he had taken from the laundry earlier that morning. Since the ship was on full alert, every member of the crew was required to wear a Spectra battle helmet and inflatable life vest. The helmet served to further conceal his face.
Picking up the red toolbox, he left his compartment in the laboratory suite. Crewmen were rushing past in both directions as he walked purposefully along the passageways and stairwells that led to the lower decks.
No one gave him a second look as he turned the circular door wheel to open the watertight hatch that led into the compartment containing the ship’s main propulsion engines.
The Leitstern was powered by two new General Electric LM2500 gas turbines, which generated forty-one thousand shaft horsepower and rested side by side in the center of the compartment. They each weighed twelve tons and were bolted to a steel platform eighteen inches above the deck.
Once inside the compartment, Larsen spun the door wheel to seal the hatch behind him and walked across the catwalk suspended above the two gigantic turbines. It was very hot and the blast of sound was overpowering. At the other end of the catwalk, he descended to the deck.
Two ratings wearing ear-protection muffs under their helmets were checking one of the right turbine’s fuel nozzles as he walked to the back corner. They took no notice of him either.
Between the engine room and the sea were only the bottom shell plating, the keel frame, and the steel hull itself. Momentarily out of view, he knelt down and opened the red toolbox. After removing a can of lubricating oil, he set the battery-powered, digital alarm clock inside the box to ring in five minutes.
Shutting it, he shoved the box as far as he could reach under the steel grating beneath the turbine. Standing up, he spilled the lubricating oil on the deck. When one of the engineer ratings came around the back corner of the turbine, he saw a maintenance man on his knees mopping up a small spill with a cleaning rag.
Standing on the bridge, Captain Bjorklund watched the strike squadron of F/A 18 Super Hornets head off to the southwest, followed by the fleet of attack helicopters and the EA 6-B Prowlers. Only a Grumman E-2 Hawkeye surveillance plane remained above them.
“It will be clear sailing from here to Fredrikstad,” said the Marquess de Villiers as the sun poked through the parting cloud layer above them.
Bjorklund had just ordered a stand-down from full alert, when the fitted charge of plastic explosives constructed by Per Larsen with laboratory chemicals and glazing putty exploded under the Leitstern’s right gas turbine.
The upward thrust of the explosion blew the twelve-ton engine fifteen feet up into the deck above. Its downward thrust ripped a gaping twenty-foot hole in the steel hull.
Twelve minutes later, the RV Leitstern was gone. Captain Bjorklund was the only officer among the twelve crew members pulled from the frigid water by the American nuclear submarine USS Timberville.
* * *
8 December
Maine Medical Center
Portland, Maine
“Call me Ira,” said the president’s new national security adviser as he walked across the room to Macaulay’s hospital bed and shook his hand.
“The president asked me to fly up to express his personal gratitude for the important service you have carried out on behalf of your country,” he said, as if delivering a State of the Union address, “and to extend his best wishes for your full recovery.”
Macaulay’s head was swathed in a white bandage that covered the thirty-two stitches in his scalp, and he still felt woozy from everything he had gone through in the previous week. Life before Greenland seemed a distant memory.
Dusenberry’s smile was quickly replaced by a look of sorrow.
“Of course, the president was deeply saddened to hear of the death of his friend John Lee Hancock, which was confirmed by our recovery team in Greenland. He will be buried with full military honors at Arlington.”
Looking on, Barnaby thought Dusenberry seemed more like a Turkish wrestler gone to seed than a senior presidential adviser. Although the room was almost chilly, he was sweating profusely and the fastener of his trousers was unbuttoned, as if he had just come off an eating binge.
Ira turned to Barnaby.
“And thanks to you, Dr. Finchem, we’ve arrested fourteen of the couriers who were carrying the canisters of viral agents to the phase one targets. Some of them had already emptied them into the water supplies, but based on your assurance that Dr. Larsen had replaced the viral agents with a harmless substitute, we decided to let them think they disbursed the real thing. When nothing happens, their superiors will assume the viral agents didn’t work.”
“Brilliant,” said Barnaby.
“My national security team wanted me to ask you about any lab notes and clinical data you think Dr. Larsen may have saved on those genetic formulas,” said Dusenberry. “We wouldn’t want those secrets to get into the wrong hands again.”
Just into the hands of your own scientists, thought Barnaby.
“Larsen was a true groundbreaker,” said Barnaby, “but even more important, he was a decent and caring man. He hated what they had done with his scientific breakthroughs and said that they were too important for any group or government to have. He told me that he had destroyed his formulas.”
Dusenberry couldn’t disguise his disappointment.
“You’re saying all his scientific discoveries died with him?”
“That’s correct, but since we’re speaking of important scientific discoveries,” said Barnaby, “Dr. Vaughan and I are preparing to make an announcement of our own with the discovery of the burial tomb of Leif Eriksson, along with the undeniable proof that he came to the shores of Massachusetts no later than 1016.”
&nbs
p; Dusenberry removed a vial of antacids from his jacket and popped four into his mouth. A moment later, his soulful look reappeared.
“I regret to tell you, Dr. Finchem,” he said, “that we have had to invoke a complete blackout on anything related to your discovery of that tomb.”
“And why?” demanded Barnaby.
“Because of important national security concerns,” said Ira.
“National security?” said Barnaby, his voice rising. “He’s been dead for a thousand years.”
“Everything related to the Order of the Ancient Way and its worldwide agenda has to be put under wraps. Right now, we’re attempting to discover which leaders among our European allies might be complicit. Even one of my own White House colleagues was found to be part of it.”
Ira remembered the last time he had seen Jessica as she was being escorted out of the White House in handcuffs. Serenely composed, she had never looked more beautiful to him. This female archaeologist was of that same mold, he thought, glancing over at Lexy again.
“By now, you know that the Ancient Way has a network of powerful believers all over the world,” he went on. “They believe Eriksson is a god. For you to sanctify him as the man who discovered our country would give them even greater power and influence.”
“You must be joking,” said Barnaby.
“To the contrary,” said Ira. “Just this morning, the secretary of Homeland Security expressed his strong concern that releasing this information would create a serious upheaval across the country.”
“Are we talking about Secretary Annunzio?” asked Barnaby.
“Yes, of course.”
“In other words, the president doesn’t want to lose the Italian American vote in the next election.”
“That’s an outrageous assertion,” said Dusenberry. “I hope you are prepared to apologize.”
“Another measure of courage along the Potomac,” added Macaulay from his hospital bed.
“Please thank the president for us,” said Lexy, leading him to the door.
“As soon as you’re better, General Macaulay, we would like to schedule a visit for you to the Oval Office so the president can express his appreciation personally,” said Ira.
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