The Gods of Laki

by Chris Angus

  “What is that?”

  They felt the snow beneath their feet tremble.

  “Earthquake!” Sam said.

  But Ryan shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think our friends down below have set off more of their charges.”

  “My God! You think they’re actually trying to cause an eruption, like the Nazis wanted to do? Why would anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know, Sam. But you said yourself you thought it would be impossible. So there’s nothing to worry about, right?”

  “Nothing to worry about? If some crazy SOB’s actually attempting something like that, anything could be the result. It doesn’t have to be a massive eruption. There are all sorts of other scenarios. And whatever happens might not happen right away. It could cause subtle changes in the fissures and subterranean levels that might take time to work their way through. The entire area could be de-stabilized.” She looked around uneasily. “We need to get out of here. That much I do know.”

  “All right. I can’t disagree with you there. It’s going to be a grunt getting down off this ice field, but it can’t happen too soon for my comfort.”

  ***

  In fact, it took hours to scramble off the glacier and make their way back to Laki, where they used the radiophone to call for one of Dagursson’s men to come and get them. Their driver delivered them straight to the commissioner’s office in Reykjavik to report the circumstances of being nearly buried alive and their incredible discovery of the subterranean laboratory.

  But what they found instead was near chaos. Several hundred citizens were massed in front of police headquarters. A pretty young mother, holding onto her child’s hand, was speaking stridently to the crowd through a bullhorn. Evidently, a series of earthquakes had occurred, the largest measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale. People were scared. When Dagursson saw Sam and Ryan, he herded them through the assemblage and into his office.

  “I blame you for this,” he said to Sam, waving a hand at the angry crowd. “You’ve been getting everyone’s attention with your articles. Now that we’ve had a big quake, people think the end of the world is coming. They want to know what to do. Well, so do I. What the hell’s going on, Miss Graham?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to check my seismograph readings,” Sam said. “But someone set off explosives on Laki. We were on the icecap when it happened and felt the tremor.”

  “I thought your plan was to catch them, Baldwin, before they pulled their cockamamie scheme,” Dagursson said with irritation.

  “Look,” Ryan said, “Whoever’s behind this, they’re serious. We’ve learned that much. They’ve tried twice to shoot us and then they blew up the tunnel to bury us alive. These people are playing for keeps. I have no idea why they’re doing this, but I’d say you’re lucky Sam’s writing scared the tourists away. If you had a crowd of people up there right now, you’d be facing a huge evacuation and an international panic that would be a hell of a lot worse than what you’ve got outside here. As it is, we can continue to monitor the situation and determine if the explosions have set off any sort of chain reaction.”

  The commissioner stared at him. “What chain reaction?”

  “It seems the Nazis gave up on their scheme to cause an eruption,” said Sam. “Maybe they came to their senses, but it’s starting to look more like they had something else in mind. We uncovered a major research laboratory up there, constructed secretly under the very noses of the Icelandic government. Now some other party seems to be moving on an agenda of their own. The blasts have obviously not caused an immediate eruption, but there’s no telling what else might happen, any number of things, from more earthquakes to major subsidences or mudslides to lava outbursts or even flash floods from meltwater. And we can’t count out a major eruption either. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t.”

  Dagursson looked ill. “What am I supposed to tell those people out there?” he asked.

  “You have contingency plans for volcanic activity,” she said. “Break them out. Order people back to their homes and tell them to monitor emergency broadcast stations for instructions. Get the prime minister to go on TV and announce there’s no cause for immediate alarm, that the situation is being watched closely. If I were you, I’d close the southern portion of the Ring Road and place the Laki craters completely off limits.”

  Ryan looked up to see a white-faced Eva standing in the doorway.

  “Eva? What are you doing here?”

  “Is it true?” she asked. “There’s been an earthquake in the south and you’re planning to close off access to Laki?”

  “I think it would be the wisest course,” said Sam.

  “I . . . ” Eva struggled for words. “I sent Jon up there two days ago to see what he could find out. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him since.”

  “Uh-oh,” Ryan stared at her. He looked at Dagursson. “You need to send someone up there to find him.”

  “Miss Graham here just advised me to close off the area. Now you want me to send my officers down there. Is it dangerous or isn’t it? You’re talking about one man. How many others should I put at risk to save him?”

  “That’s your job, isn’t it?” asked Sam. “I mean, that’s why you became a policeman, isn’t it?”

  Dagursson sighed. “I suppose we need to send someone anyway to try to determine if any . . . chain reaction . . . as you put it, may be underway. You’re the most knowledgeable person we have on that subject. Are you willing to join my men in a search?”

  Ryan looked at her quickly, knowing what her answer would be. She felt a degree of responsibility that came with her scientific knowledge of their circumstances.

  Sam met his eyes, seeing something in them she hadn’t seen before . . . an almost physical longing . . . and worry.

  “Yes,” she replied simply.

  There was a commotion in the hallway, as a highly agitated Stanley Budelmann bulled his way into the office.

  Dagursson threw up his hands. “Budelmann! What next? The last thing we need right now is a goddamned reporter. What the hell do you want?”

  Budelmann looked around at the assembled people. The crowds out front and the earthquake he’d felt along with everyone else had convinced him that his exclusive story couldn’t remain exclusive any longer.

  “I want to know what the hell is going on,” he said. “And whatever it is, I think it’s got something to do with a certain private research center I discovered outside Reykjavik.” He looked at Sam. “Are you Samantha Graham?”

  She nodded uncertainly.

  “Well, your father is mixed up in this somehow.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you didn’t know he was in the country, slipped into Keflavik Airport like Elvis on the lam . . . two days ago.”

  Sam looked at Ryan in disbelief. “I thought he went home after we saw him.”

  “He must have if he came back just two days ago,” said Ryan. “What are you getting at?” he asked the reporter.

  “Just this. I saw Senator Graham arrive at the airport—even talked to him and he denied who he was—but I’ve seen him before. There was no doubt. I followed him. He joined up with Ali Akbari, the Iranian oil minister and they drove to this research center I told you about. There was a big meeting, lots of people I didn’t know. Your father,” he looked at Sam, “was at the center of it all. Then I discovered something pretty incredible.”

  Dagursson was getting annoyed. “What the hell are you talking about? What was incredible?”

  Budelmann realized he was about to give up total control over his story. But it was too late to stop now.

  “I . . . I took some bones out of that research lab and gave them to one of your forensic people, Dr. Leif Haarde, to study. He says they’re at least a thousand years old . . .”

  “The Vikings!” Sam looked at Ryan. “They took them. My dad . . .” she looked completely baffled.

  “I don’t know if they were Vikings or not,” said
Budelmann, a little miffed that his astonishing story had been interrupted. “Anyway, what Dr. Haarde determined was that the bones came from an extraordinarily old individual, well over a hundred and that they were . . . well . . . not the bones of an old person.”

  “You just said they came from an old person. Now you’re saying they didn’t. What the devil are you going on about?” Dagursson asked.

  Budelmann heaved a sigh. “Dr. Haarde said he thought it must be some kind of hoax, because what he was seeing wasn’t possible. The bones of a very old person that showed no signs of any age deterioration whatsoever.”

  The room was silent. They could hear the angry cries of the crowd outside. Sam stared at the reporter with astonishment on her face. She turned to Ryan and leaned close to him.

  “All of a sudden, this is making a horrible kind of sense to me,” she whispered. “One of the things my dad has been interested in for a very long time has been the science of longevity. If they’ve discovered something that those ancient people used somehow to extend life . . . well, dad would be all over it. It was a passion of his.”

  “And if he snuck into the country without telling anyone, there had to be some surreptitious reason, right?” Ryan glanced at the others, who were looking at them expectantly.

  Except for Dagursson, who was already on the phone. He spoke quietly and then turned to Sam. “My men leave in twenty minutes by helicopter. You going with them?”

  She nodded, but Ryan knew he had something else he had to do.

  ***

  Ali Akbari was seething. The eyes of the frightened little man who sat across from him flitted back and forth. The man was nothing, a nobody, and he knew it. His life hung in the balance and he was ready to tell whatever he knew about the man who had hired him.

  He looked again at the two men who had abducted and escorted him straight to Akbari’s IranOil office. The men, their main job completed, now stood by the door, clearly bored. He had no illusions as to what they were capable of if he didn’t cooperate.

  “Tell me again,” said Akbari. “Are you certain? Rashid has already set off explosives on Laki?”

  The man nodded eagerly. “Yes, sir. It happened two days ago.”

  Mahmoud looked at the minister. “About the time the earthquake was reported. But news accounts I’ve seen suggest there’s no danger and that the government is monitoring the situation.”

  Akbari swore. “I thought you said he wasn’t anywhere close to carrying out his maniacal plan.”

  “I said we didn’t know what his timetable was. We don’t have good intelligence on his movements. As you know, he has many highly placed friends in Tehran.”

  “Damn the man. We don’t have a clue what that SOB is up to. He’s a loose cannon. Now this imbecile . . .” the minister waved a hand “says explosives have been set off. What if they trigger an eruption? What if lava flows cover the entire region with ten feet of rock? It’ll destroy everything, the moss, the mushrooms. It could even alter the composition of the gases being vented.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Mahmoud soothed. “We don’t know if any of that will happen. Personally, I’ve never believed that explosives could cause what Rashid intended, and so far, it apparently hasn’t. Could there be further earthquakes? Certainly. But nothing on the order of the horrendous events Rashid wants has occurred. He has failed utterly.”

  The man sitting in front of them looked suddenly very frightened. His eyes darted from one to the other of his interrogators. “I . . . I,” he began to stutter.

  “Well, what is it? Do you know something more?” asked Akbari. “Out with it, or I’ll have these men flay the hide off your miserable body.”

  The man cringed. “Rashid was furious that more didn’t happen when the explosives went off. There was no eruption, no lava or gas release, nothing on the scale he’d hoped for. He . . . he intends to move at once with an alternate plan.”

  Akbari raised one eye. “What alternate plan?” he asked in a low, menacing voice. “Speak up!”

  “He . . . he has a small nuclear device. He intends to use it to force the eruption, to completely destabilize the rift.”

  Mahmoud and Akbari stared at the man in total disbelief.

  “You can’t be serious,” said the minister, though even as he said it, he knew that Rashid was just single-minded enough and crazy enough to go ahead with such a plan.

  “Where is this device?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I really don’t, but I think it must already be in Iceland. I heard them talking like it was a done deal. That they just had to plan to be as far away from the site as possible before it went off.”

  Akbari slumped in his chair. He waved a hand at his guards, who at once grabbed the man and removed him from the room.

  “What do we do?” asked Mahmoud.

  Akbari shook his head dejectedly. “It’s a complete disaster. Rashid will do anything to get what he wants.”

  “If he detonates a nuclear weapon. . . .” Mahmoud could barely voice the words.

  Akbari completed his thought. “He’ll turn all of Laki and most of southern Iceland into a radioactive wasteland. It will completely destroy the mushrooms, the moss, maybe even collapse the entire honeycomb structure, making the ventholes where the gas is created unreachable. It will be the end of everything, and the world will lose possibly the greatest discovery in the history of mankind.”

  “Maybe . . . ,” Mahmoud said, ready to grasp at any straw, “Maybe we should tell Rashid what it is that he’ll be doing. What will be lost. If we just explained to him. . . .”

  Akbari picked up the phone. “Anyone crazy enough to come up with something like this is beyond reason. He doesn’t have the intelligence to see the import. I know him too well. He is single-minded. Nothing will stop him now.”

  “Who are you calling then?”

  “To begin with, we can order our people to try to find Rashid and eliminate him. Maybe there’s still time. Then, we’ll see if the pieces can be picked up.”

  ***

  As soon as Sam and the others left, Ryan latched onto Budelmann and pulled him aside.

  “You’re taking me to that research center you talked about outside Reykjavik,” he said.

  “Christ, I don’t want to go back there,” the reporter said. “I was lucky to get away the first time.”

  But Ryan had an iron grip on the man’s arm. “Just get me there,” he said. “Then you can leave. I’ll do the rest.”

  “What . . . what do you intend to do?”

  “I’ll figure that out when the time comes. But one thing’s for certain. I’m going to find out what the hell is going on. If Senator Graham is there, then he knows a lot about this, and he’s going to tell me if I have to pull his teeth out one by one. I’m tired of being pushed around, shot at and buried alive. Now his own daughter’s heading back into the heart of this—and one of my employees is down there too.”

  Budelmann could see he had little choice. “Something I didn’t mention in Dagursson’s office,” he said.

  Ryan waited.

  “They were testing something else besides the bones of the Vikings. They had big vats of a liquid. I took a sample and had it looked at by Dr. Haarde.”

  “What was it?”

  “Haarde said it was some sort of fungus. Something they were probably trying to concentrate, but he didn’t know why.”

  “Fungus?

  The man nodded.

  Ryan blinked in frustration. Could there possibly be any more mysteries?

  “How well was this place guarded?”

  “I didn’t see any security at all. I don’t think they’re worried about that. Or maybe they just don’t trust having security guards knowing what they’re up to.”

  “Well, small thanks for that anyway,” said Ryan. “Come on, we’re wasting time. I don’t like having Sam back on Laki, even if Dagursson’s whole police force is with her. There’s something dangerous about that place, and I’m beginn
ing to think it’s got nothing to do with the volcano.”

  Barely an hour later, Ryan pulled his car off the side of the road by the gated entrance to the research center. They got out and Ryan pocketed the keys.

  “Afraid you’ll have to walk back,” he said. “I’m going to need the car.”

  Budelmann shrugged. “Won’t be the first time. Be careful. They may not have security, but there were plenty of people around.”

  Ryan pulled out his SIG. “I won’t be completely alone,” he said.

  Approaching the building unseen in the rocky landscape wasn’t difficult. He skirted the outside, checking all the rooms. No one seemed to be around, though he knew there were probably large sections he couldn’t see. The laboratories also seemed deserted, except for one, where a man in a white frock was bent over a microscope.

  It seemed as good a place as any to begin. The doors were locked, but it took only a moment to pick a keyhole, and he found himself inside. He stood, listening for a minute. There was the sound of humming computers and a heating system somewhere, but he had the sense that the man in the white frock was working alone.

  He slipped into the room and stood a few feet behind as the man peered into a microscope until something in the way his head suddenly went still, told Ryan he’d been detected. Slowly, the man raised his head.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m here to see if you have all the necessary permits to run this place,” Ryan replied, moving forward.

  The man stared at him with a puzzled look.

  “I know. It was a poor joke. How about this?” He pulled his gun out and pointed it straight at the man. “Tell me what you’re doing here.”

  His eyes went wide. “I-I’m just a scientist. Doing my job.”

  “And what would that be?” Ryan asked, holding the gun more casually. “Let’s begin with this. Who do you work for?”

  “I’m employed by IranOil, at least nominally. My paycheck comes through them. I’ve never been really clear who’s in charge. When Mr. Akbari is in town, everyone defers to him, but he doesn’t show up too often.”

  “And what do you do for that paycheck?”