Crusader Gold

by David Gibbins

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Your sub-bottom borer,” Jack replied with a grin. “Maybe if things work out in the Golden Horn, we could approach the Mexican authorities and suggest a shift to operations here.”

  “Do you think there’s a chance?”

  Jack rubbed his chin and squinted against the glare off the rock. “From what Jeremy’s been telling us, this is the place where trophies of war might have been presented to the gods. Let’s imagine Harald and his crew made it ashore somewhere north of here, then were captured.”

  “God, I hope not,” Costas said. “That would have been a major letdown after all they’d been through.”

  “For the Vikings who weren’t lucky enough to die in battle, there was only one fate. The warriors would have their hearts ripped out back there at the temple.

  Any retainers who survived might have been enslaved. Maybe your friend who somehow made the trek back to the cairn.”

  “The scars on his wrists and ankles,” Costas said. “Shackles.”

  Jack nodded. “Others might have been brought here to this very spot for sacrifice. A spectacular procession from the temple to the cenote, the climax of the ritual of victory. Just like a Roman emperor’s triumph. Crushing the Vikings would have been a big deal for the Toltecs, victory over blond, bearded giants with their fearsome weapons of iron. They’d come here like foreign gods, and the Toltecs had vanquished them. The spoils of war would have been presented to the gods.”

  “The menorah would have been a pretty spectacular sacrifice.”

  “How much did you reckon it weighed? Three hundred, maybe three hundred and fifty pounds?”

  “That’s an awful lot of gold to throw away.”

  “It is an awful lot.” Jack looked at the shimmer of green on the pool below them, then back at Costas. “And the Toltecs did like their gold.”

  Jeremy reappeared over the limestone ridge and began to make his way down towards them. He was tottering slightly, and he sat down heavily on a rock.

  They could see he was ashen-faced.

  “The heat’s getting to you.” Costas looked at him with concern, and passed over his water bottle. “Drink this and let’s get into the shade.”

  “It’s not that.” Jeremy’s voice was hoarse, barely audible, and he let the bottle slip from his fingers. “I just spoke to Ben. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.”

  He looked up at Jack, his face stricken. “The worst.”

  Jack felt a cold dread grip his stomach. He had tried to prepare himself. He had hoped they would beat the odds.

  “It’s from Iona.” Jeremy looked bewildered, blinking the sweat out of his eyes.

  His voice was barely a whisper. “It’s Father O’Connor. He’s been murdered. And Maria’s missing.”

  17

  LATER, HOW MUCH LATER SHE COULD NOT TELL, Maria surfaced from a terrifying pit of darkness, her mind clawing its way out of some unremembered horror. She seemed exhausted beyond belief, spent by her struggle against the faceless demon of her dreams, yet she felt weighed down by the heaviness that follows deep sleep. For what seemed an eternity she lay motionless, drifting in and out of consciousness, waiting for her body to respond. She sensed her breathing, felt the hardness of the surface beneath her, a crick in her neck. She was lying in a foetal position on her right side, her hands tucked between her legs. Slowly she opened her eyes. It was dark, but not as dark as her dreams.

  From the corner of one eye she saw a flickering, a candle. The wall in front of her was covered with shapes, colours. She saw splashes of red.

  Her breathing stopped. She went rigid. O’Connor’s study. She shut her eyes tightly, yearning for that darkness again, anything to blot out a reality she scarcely believed, a horror she tried desperately to push back into her dreams.

  She felt a burning pain in her left cheek. A light touch seemed to play across it, a hint of a breeze. Suddenly she shrieked and sat bolt upright, her heart pounding and the blood rushing in her ears, frantically slapping at her face as she scrabbled backwards. She hit a wall, her breath coming in ragged gulps, then heard the flutter of wings swoop over her and disappear.

  She raised her hand and felt a sticky wetness on her cheek, then looked up. The candle revealed a pointed ceiling, high-sided, made of small stone blocks covered with patches of plaster. It looked old, decayed. At the apex she could make out a line of darker shapes, hanging in a row.

  They had been feeding on her.

  She began to retch, folding her arms tight against her stomach and leaning to one side. She smelled the metallic breath again. She tried to throw up, retching over and over, desperate for something to expiate the revulsion she felt, the stain of death and violation that overwhelmed all her thoughts, that was all she could remember of what had gone before.

  She gave up, tried to calm herself, panting. She closed her eyes, her bleeding cheek pressed hard against the damp wall, desperately seeking strength. She was pouring sweat, rivulets of it dripping over the caked blood on her face. She looked down. She was only wearing her khaki trousers and a T-shirt, torn and soiled. Someone had stripped off her sweater. Her watch was missing. She was burning hot, feverishly hot. She suddenly felt terribly dehydrated, desperate for a drink, and began to lick the sweat and blood off her lips.

  She pushed herself upright again, swallowed hard and forced herself to look around. Everything looked damp, covered in green slime. She was in a rectangular chamber about ten metres long and five metres wide. There was some kind of entranceway at one end, a deep cut into darkness.

  She thought of the buildings she knew at Iona, the old chapel on the north side, the refectory. She quickly dismissed all of them. The floor where she was now was natural rock, limestone by the look of it, smoothed in places but nothing like the granite bedrock at Iona. In the centre was a circular slab of wood, like a lid, as if this were a well-hood. The lid looked like an exotic hardwood, darker even than old oak. At the other end of the chamber was a mass of fallen masonry, clogging the space from ceiling to floor. From the white patches in the rubble she could see where stones had been recently removed, flung out on to the floor. Where the wall protruded from the rubble it was covered with wooden boards, a crude protective screen that extended for three metres or so towards the centre of the chamber opposite her.

  Maria raised herself, pushing up against the wall behind, feeling woozy and unstable. She stood for a moment while a wave of dizziness passed, then hesitantly stepped to where she had seen the splashes of colour. The heat was stifling, like walking in a sauna. One thing was for sure, she was no longer in the western isles of Scotland. The walls looked as old as the monastery, but everything else told her she was almost inconceivably far removed from Iona. It was a possibility her mind simply refused to analyse any further.

  She tottered across to the wall opposite. The single candle that provided the only illumination stood on a small flat stone in front of her. She picked it up, throwing shadows in a demented dance all round the chamber, then held it with both hands to stop it shaking. She peered at the wall.

  Her jaw dropped in amazement.

  She blinked hard. She knew her body was on its last reserves, that she had been without food and drink for hours, days. She could be hallucinating. She looked again.

  The red splashes were truly there. They were blood. But they were not real blood, as in O’Connor’s study. This was a different kind of horror. She saw blood spurting out of necks, blood gushing from bodies gouged open, blood spilling in a livid slipway down a stepped slope.

  It was a fresco, a wall-painting of unimaginable barbarity, a mass execution.

  Naked victims were being led up one side of a high temple. At the top, one was splayed out and held down on an altar, the executioner’s hands plunged into his innards, another figure holding up a ripped-out heart. Maria felt her stomach convulse again. The executioner was a fearsome giant, stripped to the waist, with a sloping, flat forehead and hooked nose,
wearing a loincloth and an elaborate headdress. Above him were stylised symbols. Jaguars, birds, garish monsters. The symbol directly above the executioner looked familiar. Maria flashed back to the moment the nightmare began, when she had been in her study at Iona, peering at the picture of the eagle-god pendant Jack had sent her.

  She blinked hard, trying to register what she was seeing. She took a few faltering steps back, the candle wavering in her hands. To the right she could see the victims assembled, like prisoners after a battle. The wall-painting was clearly a narrative, a progression of scenes in a story, going from right to left.

  She looked at the ceiling again. She tried to marshal her thoughts, to think like someone whose mind was highly trained. As if in another lifetime, she remembered her tutorials years before when she and Jack were undergraduates together, on the history of architecture. Corbel vaulting. One major civilisation had built all their vaults this way, had never learned to make an arch. One civilisation, famous for its architecture, infamous for its cruelty.

  She looked back at the wall. Corbelled vaulting. Narrative scenes from right to left. Fearsome warriors with flat foreheads. The symbols, glyphs. Human sacrifice on a temple altar, sacrifice on a prodigious scale. She began to think the unthinkable.

  The Maya.

  She staggered back, hit by a wave of dizziness, then rallied her strength and took a few steps to the right, until she was standing beside the wooden lid. She held the candle up against the wall. She was midway between two scenes, the first of the paintings. The scene at the outset showed a naval engagement, long canoes full of warriors, one with a square sail. The next scene showed a bloody battle, this time on land. Warriors dressed identically to the executioner were battling other warriors, those who would soon become prisoners. All had sloping foreheads, but the vanquished were even bigger, giants. All were stripped to the waist. In the foreground were the dead of both sides, some dismembered, some in a river, seemingly underground. The victors were wielding clubs and maces, the vanquished swords and axes.

  Maria stopped herself. Swords and axes.

  She looked more closely. She began to tremble, and made herself steady the candle. The sloping heads of the vanquished were not foreheads, but the nose-guards of helmets. They were stripped to the waist but wore leggings, not the kilts and loincloths of the victors. They were bearded. They were blond. They had broadswords and huge, single-bitted axes.

  Varangian battle-axes.

  Maria reeled. It seemed as if she were dreaming the final chapter of the story that had possessed her for days now, a chapter so extraordinary it could only be fantasy. She wished Jack were here next to her, his calm, reassuring voice telling her this was all the stuff of fiction. She looked back at the scene of sacrifice, to the altar and the executioner where the wall seemed to be oozing blood. She staggered back and sank against the other wall, shutting her eyes tight, desperately trying to wake up back in the monk’s cell at Iona, to feel the warmth and steady breathing of another beside her.

  “Dr. de Montijo. So good of you to come. The effects of the drug will wear off shortly.” A voice was addressing her, a real voice. “You are in Mexico.”

  Maria jolted blearily awake. “Yes,” she said, the word coming out even before she had registered what was happening. “I know.”

  “How?” The voice sounded shrill, testy.

  Maria tried to stand, but slipped down the wall again to where she had been lying. She could see nothing, her vision blinded by a torch shining directly into her face. Her mouth was bone-dry, and her voice was a croak. “I worked it out.”

  The torch snapped down and she saw a short, wiry man standing in front of her, his black hair slicked back from his forehead. She guessed he was about seventy, his hair obviously dyed, though he had the physique of a man thirty years younger. He had washed-out grey eyes.

  The truth dawned on Maria. She looked at him with sickening certainty, scarcely believing she was finally in his presence. Everything else, her appalling state, even O’Connor’s death, was eclipsed from her mind. He was the one. She fought to control her emotions, to keep her cool. She was suddenly wide awake. “Pieter Reksnys. I see your father taught you well. Lithuanian, I believe? The master race.”

  A hand shot out and gripped Maria’s neck like a vise, displaying lightning agility for a man of his age. He jerked her towards him and raised her up, holding her almost off the ground. Through the suffocating pain Maria sensed something familiar, a nasty tang to his breath, a familiar odour. “Never speak of my father again, Jew,” he hissed. “And don’t think he was the only one who pulled the trigger back then. I had plenty of diverting entertainment with the children.” He dropped Maria and stood over her while she coughed and retched. “I only wish my own son had been alive then. He would have done his grandfather proud.”

  He kicked Maria over on to her back, ostentatiously wiping his shoe on the ground afterwards. Maria saw another figure advancing on her. His head was held low, his hands clenching and unclenching, his movements sickeningly familiar. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her over to the wooden lid, kicking it roughly aside and shoving her over the hole underneath. She could see nothing but blackness, a yawning depth that brought with it a waft of cooler air, as if there were water somewhere far below.

  “Don’t worry.” She was yanked up against him, and she saw the ugly scar. “I reserved the blood-eagle for your boyfriend. When I throw you down into the underworld you won’t even die. At least that’s what the Toltecs told their victims.” The voice was hoarse, ugly, less refined than his father’s. He made as if to push her in, then pulled her back roughly. “My kind of people.” He laughed, an insane, high-pitched cackle, then hurled her down on the ground. “Now the félag has some use for you. Enjoy our little vacation hideaway while you can.”

  “The true félag died out seven hundred years ago.” Maria raised her head and tried to stare at Loki. “Harald Hardrada’s men would never have admitted scum like you. They wouldn’t even have considered you worthy of a blood feud.”

  Loki lunged at Maria, but Reksnys held him in check. “Not yet,” he muttered. He turned to Maria, speaking with mock apology. “My son still has these romantic notions. He thinks he’s in the SS.”

  “Too weak for that.”

  Loki lunged again and once more Reksnys held him back, then his voice hardened. “Our félag was a means to an end. No more, no less. And it looks like we will have the last laugh on Harald Hardrada.”

  Loki snarled and turned abruptly away, heading quickly out of the entranceway at the side of the chamber. Maria crawled back against the wall. Reksnys tossed her a small water bottle. “So now we have become acquainted. I need some expert assistance. You are going to help me.”

  He took out a digital camera and pointed it at her. Maria began to lose all feeling, sinking to the floor, then looked up at Reksnys and remembered what he and his son had done. O’Connor had ensured that justice was carried out against Reksnys’ father, had staked his life on it and had paid the ultimate price. She owed it to him to do everything in her power to see that the job was finished.

  And she owed it to herself.

  She would be strong.

  Jack stood pensively in the control room on Seaquest II, cradling a coffee and watching a cloudburst release a shimmer of rain far out to sea. The sky had an ominous grey overcast, the high clouds they had seen on the beach that morning having been replaced by a dark mass rolling in from the Caribbean.

  Where the sun shone through, curtains of light hung and twisted and mingled in the sky, like the northern lights they had seen in Greenland but heavy with the portent of weather to come.

  “It looks like we’re in for some rain.” The Canadian captain of Seaquest II came up beside Jack, peering out to sea through his binoculars. “We’re almost into hurricane season. As a precaution I’m closing down shop. We’re moving farther offshore and I’m battening down the helicopter in the hangar.”

  Jack grunted. It wa
s not the news he wanted to hear. “Thanks. Do what you have to do.”

  The captain left for the bridge and James Macleod got up from the computer console where he had been evaluating data from the icefjord. Everyone in the room was aware of Jack, but had been keeping their distance. Some of them had been on the first Seaquest and could remember the loss of Peter Howe in the Black Sea, how Jack had taken the responsibility personally. Maria had been enormously popular among the crew and scientists alike during their sojourn in the icefjord. Even Lanowski was subdued, quietly passing Jack a series of printouts of the longship in the iceberg he had finalised from the photogrammetric images.

  Macleod sidled up to the window beside him. “How long do you think we’ll be here, Jack?” he asked quietly.

  Jack turned and looked at him, his face drawn and distant, then stared back out to sea. “I don’t know, James. I just don’t know.” He pursed his lips and put down his coffee. They had been back on board for almost six hours now, and there was still no word from Iona. All they had to go on was a brief phone message to IMU headquarters from O’Connor’s colleague in the monastery, the man Jack remembered seeing briefly in the church. Apparently the police were keeping the scene completely under wraps, and there was a media blackout. But there was no doubt of the facts. Father O’Connor was dead, and Maria was missing.

  “We have to assume she’s been kidnapped.” Ben had been within earshot, and had moved up to Jack’s other side. “Until there’s a body, that is.”

  “I know.” Jack exhaled forcefully, then stood back from the railing with his hands on his hips, his usual demeanour returned. “We have to keep on top of this. We have to assume we’ll be hearing more soon. Until then there’s nothing we can do. It has to be situation normal.” He looked at Macleod, his expression grim but determined. “There’s your answer. My plan after visiting Chichén Itzá had been to collate all possible evidence from the north Yucatán datable to the second half of the eleventh century, to the time when Harald might have been here. Wall-paintings, glyphs, structures. Anything that might provide a clue.” He gestured to Jeremy, hunched over a screen in the corner, surrounded by open books. “I put Jeremy on it the moment we got back.”