The Gods of Laki

by Chris Angus

  Fritz offered a weak smile, still completely in the dark as to why he was here. “Quite extraordinary, Reich Commander. It’s even more magnificent than I’d heard.”

  His host beamed.

  Time had not been kind to the man. Like all Germans, Fritz had followed newsreels of Goering’s career. Instrumental in Hitler’s rise to power, he’d been rewarded with numerous titles and positions, including Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe. He was considered the number two man in the Third Reich. But that began to change following the Battle of Britain, when Goering made the great tactical error of switching from attacking British fighter defenses to the massive nighttime bombings of London in September of 1940. The move gave British defenses time to recover and resulted in the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of England. Hitler never forgave his Reich Commander and the subsequent failures of the Luftwaffe on the Russian front and in protecting the Homeland from bombing, exposed Goering’s incompetence as Supreme Commander.

  By 1943, Goering was being eclipsed by Himmler, Goebbels, and Speer. Martin Bormann’s intrigues had further undermined him and even Hitler had come to despise the man who had orchestrated the Führer’s rise to power. Goering had grown fat, discredited, and isolated. In short, he was reduced to grasping at any straw that might increase his influence at the same time that his mental stability was disintegrating.

  Fritz was aware of only bits of this history. It was widely known that Goering valued personal heroism and denigrated scientific know-how. He had actually promoted the idea of ramming enemy aircraft as an aerial technique. As a scientist, albeit one without an advanced degree, Fritz had little respect for the pseudo-science that permeated Hitler’s Germany. The deportation and murder of the Jews had largely stripped the country of its best minds.

  “You are familiar with Iceland, I understand,” Goering said.

  Fritz almost choked. What the blazes was the man going on about?

  “Yes, Reich Commander. I studied at the university in Reykjavik for several years.”

  “A fine institution, I have heard. One of my advisors recently informed me about the history of volcanic eruptions on the island, especially of a volcano called Laki.”

  Greta’s face, frozen in fear and slipping past him down into that terrible maelstrom of ice water, flashed before his eyes. He shook his head. It was an image that would never leave him.

  He managed a weak, “Yes, Reich Commander.”

  “I want you to lead a group of our finest scientists, experts in geology, volcanology, and earthquake tectonics,” Goering said. “You will be taken to Iceland by U-boat, along with whatever supplies you may need. We will also supply troops and explosives experts who will operate under your command.”

  Fritz’s face showed bewilderment. “What will be the purpose of the mission, Reich Commander?”

  “The purpose is to cause an eruption of Laki similar to the one that occurred in 1783.”

  Fritz’s heart nearly stopped. He tried to cover his astonishment. “Reich Commander, I know the history of the Laki eruption you mention, but nothing at all about explosives. And isn’t Iceland occupied by the Americans?”

  Goering waved a hand. “The Americans have only a token force on the island. As for explosives, you will have the best experts the Homeland can provide. Your expertise will inform them where best to place the charges and how to maximize the effects. With luck, we will alter the course of the war. You . . . and I . . . will be heroes of the Reich.” His gaze wandered off to the distant woods. “The Führer will learn to appreciate my abilities once more.”

  The idea of returning to Iceland did not immediately dismay Fritz. He had missed the stark beauty of the place, but memories of Greta and of his deportation still left a bad taste in his mouth, even after three years. The idea of causing an eruption he believed to be a complete fantasy, something to be expected from the mind of a pseudo-scientist like Goering. But perhaps he could use the situation to remove himself from Berlin. Anyone with half a brain could see that the war was going badly. Berlin would not be a happy place during the next year. He would play this to his own best advantage, which was what everyone in Germany was doing at this point in the war.

  “How soon do I leave?” he asked.

  Chapter Ten

  Present Day

  Mahmoud Farshidi was crisply efficient. The oil minister was his sole concern. He’d been taking care of Ali Akbari for more than ten years, through some very interesting times. An assassination attempt his first year with the minister had cemented their mutual trust, as Farshidi had seen the bomb carrier at the last moment and pushed Akbari behind a concrete barrier just before the assassin set himself off. Neither of them had been hurt.

  Nevertheless, he always addressed the man he now considered his friend as Mr. Minister.

  “There have been inquiries from the families of the four men who disappeared on Laki, Mr. Minister,” he said.

  They were alone in a sauna in downtown Tehran, a luxurious spa that Akbari rented in its entirety whenever he wanted to use it. The men sat, like two wrestlers preparing for a match, sweat pouring from their glistening bodies.

  “Rashid was an idiot to send them,” Akbari said. “He tries to prevent anyone from going to Laki and ends up instead with police swarming over the place.” He sighed. “Pay the families off. And make sure they understand that they had better be quiet once they get the money.”

  Mahmoud nodded. “It will not be hard. Or expensive. The families are not well-to-do, and they have no idea what happened in any event.” He hesitated.

  “What is it, my friend? Something else is bothering you.”

  “The meeting of the Laki Working Group.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s to be held in Iceland. At our facility outside Reykjavik.”

  “I know.”

  “It may be hard to keep secret. The arrival of half a dozen high-level officials is sure to attract attention. The press will want to know what’s going on.”

  Akbari shrugged. “Perfectly normal for the minister of oil and a few of his employees to periodically visit IranOil headquarters around the globe. What is so unreasonable about that?”

  “Senator Graham will be there.”

  “What the American majority leader does is up to him. I understand he plans to mix business with a family vacation to visit his daughter. No one could question his having a meeting with the minister of oil when they both happen to be in the same place. These are difficult times. All sorts of American leaders have asked me to discuss the price of oil.”

  “Perhaps,” Mahmoud said. “But Rashid has indicated he wants to be at the meeting.”

  For the first time, Akbari raised an eyebrow.

  “How did he find out about it?”

  “I don’t know. His resources are considerable. I told him it was a closed group, by invitation only.”

  Akbari stared at the floor. “Do you think he knows?”

  “He knows something is going on. He doesn’t know what. My sense is he’s only interested if it might interfere with his own agenda.”

  “Play along with him, then. Tell him just what you must. Nothing more.”

  “I wish I had your confidence, Mr. Minister. His knowing about the meeting means there’s a leak somewhere. That’s not good. And Rashid, as you know, is single-minded. He goes forward with his plan. He’s convinced his lunatic scheme will work. And he sees opposition everywhere. I suspect it’s why he thinks the Laki Group may be a threat to him and why he wants to attend the meeting.”

  “Perhaps we should simply invite him, so he can see we have no interest in what he’s doing.”

  Mahmoud looked shocked. “Do not joke, Mr. Minister. You should not trust him with such information. Besides, as you know, if he were to be successful, it could mean the end of our own endeavors.”

  The minister patted his hand. “Of course you are right, Mahmoud. I did not mean it seriously. He is still a long way from carrying o
ut his plans, is he not?”

  Mahmoud’s brow furrowed. “I think that is true,” he said slowly, “though we really don’t know. Frankly, our sources are not as good as Rashid’s. I believe he is already on the ground in Iceland.”

  “So far along? Truly?”

  “Yes. That’s why he wanted to get rid of the Graham woman. Her presence was slowing down his ability to execute his plan.”

  Akbari’s face clouded. “If that is so, we do not have a leak. We have a broken water main. Tell me again, Mahmoud. Do you think what Rashid intends could be possible?”

  ‘No,” Mahmoud answered without hesitation.

  “Good. Then let him play his games. It will keep him occupied and out of our business.” The minister flicked the sweat off his forehead. “Let’s keep our eyes on the real prize, my friend. We will change human history . . . and get even richer than we already are.”

  ***

  Ryan sat on his tiny balcony and stared at the small park across the way without really seeing it. He had a lot to think about. IranOil’s empty corporate headquarters for one. For another, Professor Hauptman’s story about Nazi plans to make Laki erupt. It was a fantastic scheme and a bizarrely improbable one.

  He’d long since come to the conclusion that Mother Nature was not so easy to control. Plumbing the depths of thermal power for his business had helped him realize how puny humans truly were. It was the ultimate in hubris for those Nazi geologists to have thought they could cause an eruption that would affect the course of world history.

  He watched as three cars pulled up in front of Bjorg’s little hostel. Two of them were obviously police vehicles, their lights flashing. He stood up as a man got out of the third vehicle and quickly made his way into the hotel.

  He knew this man. In a moment there was a sharp rap on the door. He opened it to find an agitated Johann Dagursson facing him. The national police commissioner walked past him into the room without being invited.

  “Come in, by all means,” Ryan said, a bit ruffled at the abrupt nature of the visit.

  “We have a situation, Mr. Baldwin,” Dagursson said without preamble. “The prime minister has asked me to show you and Miss Graham a recent discovery made near the volcano of Laki.”

  Ryan’s surprise was evident. Could the bodies of the Vikings have already been discovered? So much for keeping that particular find under wraps.

  The door to the room opened again and a young police officer entered with Sam, who looked as surprised as Ryan.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Good. I’m glad you’re here too,” Dagursson said. “I’ll give you the details on the way.”

  With that, the commissioner turned abruptly, and they could only follow him to the cars out front, leaving an astonished Bjorg gaping at the door.

  Ryan and Sam got into the back seat of the cramped police vehicle while Dagursson got in the passenger seat and motioned for the driver to head out.

  The commissioner was quiet for the first few minutes, leaving Sam and Ryan exchanging looks of puzzlement. Finally, as they passed out of the city and began to pick up speed, he put one gnarled hand over the seat and looked back at them.

  “The prime minister is in an awkward situation,” he said. “Our small country is in continuing financial crisis, more serious than most of our people realize. As a result, we’re hard pressed to ignore the contributions the Iranians have made to our bottom line.”

  “You mean cheap energy,” said Ryan.

  “Partly. Also, they’ve contributed to many local and national charities and have made substantial loans to numerous businesses. No one really has any idea why IranOil has decided to invest to such an extent in Iceland. However, my men have discovered something very unsettling on Laki that perhaps you . . . Miss Graham especially . . . may be able to shed some light on.”

  Before Sam could respond, the cars whipped into a military installation and pulled up to a waiting helicopter. A few moments later, they were airborne. The noise of the aircraft made conversation difficult, and Dagursson lapsed once more into silence. An hour later they hovered over Laki, staring down at a volcano now crawling with tiny figures.

  “Oh my God!” Sam said. “What’s going on down there?”

  Dagursson simply raised a hand for them to wait as the helicopter slowly settled to earth near the parking lot where Ryan and Sam’s cars had had their tires mutilated the previous week. The barren lot now sported more than a dozen official-looking vehicles.

  They followed the commissioner as he walked quickly along the side of the volcano to a place where neither Ryan nor Sam had been before. It was an area below the rim where the volcano connected via a ridge to the next volcanic cone in the Laki chain. He proceeded past a small clutch of men, who parted like the Red Sea to let them through, and then stopped.

  Dagursson waved a hand, indicating a stretch of the landscape that encompassed an unusual-looking rift, a sort of overhang of volcanic rock. Ryan could see at once that the overhang would not have been readily seen by someone climbing or working around the rim of Laki itself. It cast a shadow along a crevice hiding something that now struck Sam like a thunderbolt.

  “My God!” she said. “What in the world?”

  “Yes,” Dagursson said. “My men have been crisscrossing Laki looking for any signs of the four men you say were killed . . . and for the other tourists who have disappeared in the past few months. Instead, they found these.”

  What they were staring at seemed inconsequential enough. A line of pipes, like oversized car exhaust tailpipes, emerged from the earth. Each had a grillwork of metal around it. They were perhaps six inches in diameter and rose out of the earth to a height of several feet. At least seven or eight could be seen running along the overhang. They gave the appearance of being very old and looked to have been freshly uncovered by the workers who stood nearby, watching the commissioner.

  “One of my officers literally tripped over the first of these,” said Dagursson. “All of these protrusions you see were carefully concealed by piles of rock and ash. My men have since cleared around them. You can see that the line of pipes runs for nearly a quarter mile.”

  “But what are they?” asked Sam.

  “Manmade ventilation openings,” the commissioner replied.

  “Ventilation?” Sam seemed completely mystified, and Ryan had to admit he was baffled as well.

  “Come this way.” Dagursson led them around an outcrop to where there was an opening in the earth. It was about five feet in diameter and Ryan could see light coming from within. Two dirt-covered police officers emerged from the hole and nodded to the commissioner.

  “You can go in now sir,” said one of the men. “The place was booby trapped, all right. Pretty outdated stuff, but you can never tell with ancient ordnance. It could still be effective. And whoever did this clearly didn’t want their handiwork discovered. But we’ve cleared it. It’s safe now.”

  A mystified Ryan and Sam followed Dagursson as he picked his way down into the shaft.

  Ryan heard the dull thrum of a generator and saw that a string of lights had been strung along one side of the tunnel. But the lights were the least of the improbable sights before them.

  As they made their way along the shaft, a number of small openings appeared, carved out of the soft lava rock. There were a few bits of trash here and there, but for the most part, it seemed that what or whoever had once been here was long gone and had taken whatever contents there might once have been with them.

  Sam paused at the entrance to one of the spaces, leaned over and poked at a pile of earth, dislodging a filthy bit of cloth. She held it up, revealing that it was some sort of military garb. Then she caught her breath, as they all stared at the clear insignia of an SS officer.

  “This is a Nazi installation,” Ryan said softly, hardly believing the words coming out of his mouth.

  Dagursson too stared at the bit of cloth in wonder. “That’s the first indication we’ve had of who
might be behind all of this,” he said. “Do you have any explanation for what we’re looking at?”

  Sam dropped the cloth on the ground and poked farther into the room. “Hauptmann was right,” she almost whispered.

  “Who?” asked Dagursson.

  “Professor Hauptmann at the university,” Ryan answered. “He has a theory that the Nazis intended to try to cause an eruption on Laki during the war.”

  “An eruption?” Dagursson looked blankly at him. “What on earth for?”

  “The plan,” Ryan said, “was to cause an enormous eruption on the scale of the last one in 1783. That blast caused tens of thousands of deaths in Britain and Europe from sulfuric acids in the air. The Nazis thought it might also disrupt Allied shipping and maybe even the D-Day landing.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Dagursson seemed unable to get his head around the incredible idea. “Could such a thing have been possible?”

  “I doubt it,” said Sam. “But clearly the Nazis must have thought it was. Look at the way they constructed these openings, all along one side of Laki and connecting with the next volcano in the chain. If they placed charges in each of these recesses, they must have thought they could focus the blasts and cause some sort of split or rent in the sides of both volcanoes, perhaps setting off a cataclysmic release of hot gases and lava.”

  “But we’ve found no evidence of explosives or much of anything else at all down here,” said Dagursson.

  “Maybe they gave up on the idea,” Ryan said. “Maybe someone finally came to his senses and realized that Germany could be affected just as easily as Britain. Or maybe the war simply ended before they had a chance to finish.”

  “As long as we’re doing maybes,” said Sam. “Here’s another one. Maybe the men working down here got scared that they might get themselves killed in the process. Some of them must have known that what they were doing was incredibly risky. We should tell Hauptmann and get him down here. He might be able to piece together more of the plan.”

  “No,” Dagursson said firmly. “The fewer people know about this the better. At least until we figure out who’s behind the new opening.”