by Chris Angus
“But in this case, Sahar needed someone to talk to,” said Dagursson. “And now, I believe, she can talk to you as well. That is very good news, I think, for everyone.”
The man nodded. “I am grateful for what you did for my daughter. Her mother and I had thought something must be wrong, but we assumed it had to do with her inability to make friends. This . . . situation . . . could not continue. I tell you now,” his voice tightened and his body seemed almost to vibrate. “If I knew where these boys who did these things were, I would kill them with my bare hands.”
“As police commissioner, I would have to arrest you if you did,” Dagursson said. “As a father myself, I’d probably want to help you.”
Hassan nodded. “I wish to repay this debt.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I was just doing my job. Frankly, it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve been able to accomplish in a while.”
Sahar sat silently, saying nothing. Dagursson wondered what was going through her head. But her hand reached out and took her father’s and their eyes met. Hassan’s eyes were moist.
“Nevertheless,” Hassan said, “I repay my debts, and I think you will find what I have to say interesting.”
Dagursson and Hauptmann waited.
Hassan took a deep breath. “I have worked for the same man for almost fifteen years, as a personal assistant. We have traveled to many countries and I have done whatever was asked of me. There were things about this man I grew to dislike over time, but . . . I needed the job.”
He looked briefly at Sahar. “The man’s name is Rashid.”
The name meant nothing to Dagursson. He looked at Hauptmann, who shrugged.
“Rashid is very wealthy, though he does not pay his employees particularly well. For some time, I have known that he has been intensely involved with an effort to set off explosives on Laki. I do not know why he wanted to do this and I did not like the idea very much but did not see how setting off explosives in such a remote area would cause any problems.”
“We believe those explosions may have begun the process that led to the earthquakes,” said Dagursson.
“I realize that now, and I am sorry I did not report it earlier. But now I have learned something else . . . something almost impossible to believe. Rashid intends to set off a nuclear explosion on Laki.”
Dagursson had been leaning back in his chair. Now he came forward with a loud thump and stared at Hassan. Hauptmann’s eyebrows were working a mile a minute.
“Mother of God!” Dagursson said. “Would such a thing be possible?”
“I have worked for this man, as I said, for many years. He does not tell me everything, but I know pretty much what goes on. There were communications over a six-month period leading up to the delivery of the device. I did not understand everything at first. But later, I began to put it together.”
“Do you know when this is going to happen?”
“I do not know when it will happen, but I believe the process is underway.”
Hassan stood up, still holding Sahar’s hand. “What you do with this information is up to you. I believe I owed you a debt, but more than that, I cannot be any part of something such as this—that may kill many innocent people. Again, I thank you for helping Sahar.”
Sahar smiled widely at her father and then transferred some of the wattage to Dagursson.
“Thank you,” she beamed, and they left.
***
Cardinal Wormer sat at the head of a heavily carved oak table in an elegant, church-owned chateau in the woods outside Berlin and listened to the debate raging around him.
Rabbi Levitz was the most forceful. “We must do something!” he said. His long beard was sprinkled with gray and reached nearly to the center of his chest. “We’ve debated, some of us, for thirty years, and our predecessors for another thirty before us. Laki was contained, or so we thought. But not anymore.”
Wormer had been chair of the highly secretive religious council for more than a decade. Though the endless theological discussions resulted in precious little concrete action, he had plans. His control of the group would continue to augment his influence inside the church. He was an ambitious man with an eye to rising in church hierarchy. The idea that Laki was some sort of god or devil he had long dismissed. But he’d used the argument . . . religiously . . . to buy the attention of the prime minister and to manipulate the members of his group. Fear was a very useful tool in the business of self-promotion.
However, what the Rabbi had said was true. Things were getting out of hand. Laki was in the news daily now. Earthquakes, lava flows, scientists reporting unusual seismograph readings and still stranger findings of cosmic energy, quasars, and dark holes. Most of the information was difficult to understand, vague, abstract, and occasionally frightening. The world press was eating it up.
Wormer considered the other members. It was a volatile group, a dozen representatives of the world’s major religions. The organization first came to the table shortly after the Second World War, when Karl Müller contacted leaders and suggested that something unnatural was happening beneath Laki. Since then, appointments to the council had been handed down secretly.
Each member took his position seriously. Wormer suspected most reported to their church elders, though it was hard to say how many others knew of the group’s existence. It couldn’t be many.
The suggestion that life-enhancing effects were emanating from the volcano had at once been seen by members as a threat to their very existence. Why should followers obey the tenets of their faiths in exchange for their promised reward in the afterlife if Laki was offering eternal life here and now?
Bishop Müller had been a believer in the longevity effects that had so intrigued the Führer. But like Fritz Kraus, he’d grown fearful of the strange events that went on underground, the visions, and hallucinations. One day, Kraus had shown him the chrysalis in the underground laboratory.
From that moment on, Müller had believed that whatever was happening on Laki was a manifestation of the supernatural. Whether good or evil, he had no idea, though he leaned toward the latter. He had agreed with Kraus that the underground research lab should be shut down.
But Müller never lost his fear of the unknown forces that existed beneath the volcano. What he did know was that they represented a threat to the German Catholic Church and to all world religions. So he undertook to create the council in order to find some way of reacting to this force . . . religious entity . . . Devil or God. Whatever it was.
“I have no doubt that you are correct,” Cardinal Wormer said to the Rabbi. “For the past two years, as reports of seismic events have increased, I, too, have been worried. For more than sixty years, we’ve contained Laki, but now. . . .” His hand fell gently upon the cross that hung from his neck. He had to fight back a laugh at how gullible the others were. He would use their silly fears to his own ends.
Ayatollah Majd, the Shia cleric, stirred in his black robes at the foot of the table. He was a soft-spoken man but had proven his great wisdom in the past.
“I do not believe we have contained anything,” he said. “What Laki represents is inscrutable. We don’t know if the volcano is a manifestation of the Holy One or some power altogether unknown to us. Perhaps we are not meant to know. However, recent events certainly suggest the spirit of Laki is no longer content. The question remains, what is our reaction going to be?”
“We must do nothing!” said Maharishi Brahmachari, the Hindu leader. “It is presumptuous to believe we have such power. Laki, in whatever manifestation, acts in ways we cannot understand. We must watch and wait.”
“And if Laki decides to reveal the secret of life . . . of extended existence . . . here and now?” asked the Rabbi. “What do we tell our constituents?”
Cardinal Wormer rolled his eyes. “So . . . we are calling them constituents now, my friend?”
“You know what I mean,” the Rabbi said petulantly. “We are expected to provide answers.”
>
Wormer sighed. “Most of the world thinks Laki is simply a volcano, perhaps struggling to come to life. For now, it is nothing unusual, and I doubt that even the histrionics of the press will change that.”
“And if there is a revelation?” asked the Maharishi.
“Then we must offer a united front. The leaders of all our churches must make a joint pronouncement.”
“Saying . . . what? That we accept the revelation of a new God? That we will kowtow to some . . . thing . . . beneath a volcano? That we encourage our flocks to worship this being and to give up our own beliefs? Is this what you seriously offer us?” The Maharishi shook his head. He stared at the Cardinal, whose enjoyment of the trappings of power was well known to all of them. “This will not do your reputation in your own church any good,” he said.
Wormer knew the Maharishi’s take on the matter was shared by the others. They believed that all of their career paths might rest in the hands of the unknown. Wormer was alone in his feeling that Laki was nothing but a volcano. His realism would lead to his elevation in the church once Laki subsided in its fury, provided he played his cards right. He had to keep his colleagues’ fanciful notions alive for the time being, however.
“Talk, talk, talk,” said Rabbi Levitz. “It’s all we ever do. For sixty years, we talk.”
“Maybe this time,” said Wormer, “Laki will be the one to talk . . . and all we will be able to do is listen.”
***
Sam sat at the foot of the chrysalis that called itself Amma. For many hours, she had tried to absorb the occasional words . . . pronouncements she had come to think of them . . . that emanated from the bizarre presence. The voice had a disembodied quality. Though the mouth opened, the sound seemed to come from another place. Sometimes it was the high wailing that she had first heard. Others, it was much more human-like.
Her ability to understand the ancient Norse language had been almost nonexistent at first. But then she began to more fully comprehend the words, as though she had somehow received an immersion course in the language. Still, she wished Hauptmann were here.
She understood now that the thing was, in fact, Amma, the tenth-century Norse shaman described by Hauptmann. The volcano had the ability to absorb things . . . people . . . and was able to keep them alive. That this could be possible troubled her deeply. She was a scientist after all and didn’t really believe in God. Certainly, Laki had done strange things to her, given her visions, made her paranoid. But up to now, she had tried to tell herself it was the effects of volcanic gas or her own personal lapses.
She stood suddenly and shook herself. The ground was rumbling again. She peered into the face of the frozen entity on the wall beside her. It appeared to be asleep or at least no longer aware of her. She considered touching it, remembering the vision that had come to her and Ryan after touching the skull in the cave. But she couldn’t bring herself to touch the chrysalis.
Amma had told her many things. Sam now knew what Laki was, or at least what Amma thought it was. That knowledge brought a chill to her very core, so that she could barely function if she thought about it too deeply.
What she wanted most was to get out of here. To return to the world of the living, to sunlight, to a place where what she saw and what she heard made any kind of sense. To be so totally alone down here was almost too much to bear. She wanted to see Ryan again.
But which way to go? The large cavern with its many branching tunnels provided too many choices. It was like a hall of mirrors, each tunnel the same as the next. She moved forward out of simple indecision. It was better to move than to remain still.
After a time, it seemed the tunnel she’d selected began to descend. She stopped, again indecisive. Then she heard voices. Not the wailing that Amma had made, but real, human voices. They were coming toward her, and in a moment, she stared as two men appeared out of the gloom.
They looked as lost as two little boys, and about as filthy. One had some sort of slick, gooey material all over his clothes. The other man also had some of this and his hair and clothes were completely disheveled.
Jon Gudnasson stared at Sam as though she were a ghost. “Who are you?” he asked. And before she could answer, “Do you know how to get out of here?”
She shrugged. “My name’s Samantha Graham. I came down here with a group of policemen to look for a man thought to be lost, named Jon Gudnasson.”
“That’s me,” said Jon, suddenly hopeful. He looked around. “Where are the police?”
“All dead.”
Both men stared at her.
“What happened?” asked Kraus.
“They were attacked by some . . . thing . . . down here,” Sam said. “The others were killed in a sudden lava outburst. I lost my light and have been stumbling around ever since.”
“I know who you are,” said Jon. “You’re the volcanologist who’s been telling everyone that Laki might erupt.” He glanced around uneasily, searching for more of the tentacles. “Seems you got that right, at least. You’re supposed to be some sort of expert on this place,” he said accusingly. “How the hell do we get out of here?”
“Sorry. I’m completely turned around. I have no idea which way is out.”
Kraus was nodding. “Our stories are remarkably similar,” he said. “This place is destabilized and unnatural. Have you seen the tentacles?”
She nodded. “Ryan and I first saw them in a sort of underground laboratory near the glacier. They seem to be everywhere. I don’t know what they are or where they come from.”
“I don’t know what they are, either,” said Kraus. “But I know where they come from.”
She stared at him.
“Where?”
“I’ll show you. It’s only a little way back down the tunnel.”
“Don’t be crazy!” Jon said. “We can’t go back there.”
“I fail to see what difference it makes,” said Kraus. “We don’t know which way is out. One direction is pretty much as good as another. If this woman is an expert, as you pointed out, she needs to see what we found.”
They headed back down the tunnel the two men had emerged from. Jon grumbled, but no way was he going to remain behind alone and wait for them to come back.
After a few minutes, Sam saw the tentacles appear once again on the walls. They grew quickly in size and soon gave off enough light to see by. Then she became aware of a growing wind.
“That’s really weird,” she said. “There shouldn’t be any wind down here.”
“None of this stuff should be down here,” said Jon grumpily. “But it is.”
Then the wind grew to gale force and the three had to fight their way along the tunnel. Kraus led the way with Sam at his heels. Jon fell back, in no hurry to revisit their last encounter.
Finally, they came to the strange hole that disappeared into the Earth. Kraus, his hair plastered back by the wind, shouted to be heard. “That’s where your tentacles come from,” he said, pointing. “Take a look.”
Sam needed no invitation. She fought closer to the opening, actually holding onto the cable-sized tentacles that now lined the tunnel. She pulled herself to the stone wall and stared down into the maelstrom.
What she saw was a vast blackness. An emptiness. The tentacles slipped over the side and disappeared into the depths. The darkness was so deep that it gave her vertigo. It was like staring into all bottomless eternity.
“What is this?” she shouted.
“Looks like a hole in the Earth, if you ask me,” Kraus said.
Chapter Twenty-One
If he’d done this rationally, Ryan thought, they might have had a better chance of finding Sam . . . or anyone for that matter. But what was rational? Should he have tried to return to the underground research lab? The tunnel he and Sam had taken together was now blocked from the explosives meant to seal them in.
He tried to think what Sam would do. She had no idea where Jon had gone. But one thing he knew for sure. She would have figured out pretty qui
ckly that Laki was destabilized and much too dangerous for anyone to be there. So by now she’d be looking for a way out to save the lives of herself and the police officers with her. She would avoid tunnels that seemed to go farther underground.
He looked around. Everything seemed different below ground than it had before. To begin with, the sounds were terrifying—subterranean movements, whooshing sounds of gas releases or perhaps glacial meltwaters. They regularly heard cave-ins, as pieces of ventholes collapsed. No tunnel could be relied upon to provide them with an assured retreat.
After two hours of more or less blind stumbling about, Ryan knew they were irretrievably lost. They were supposed to be looking for Sam, but it was just as likely she’d stumble upon them as the other way around.
“Can we take a rest?” asked Senator Graham.
Ryan nodded and the three men sank to the ground.
“You any idea where we are?” Akbari asked.
“Underground?” Ryan replied helpfully.
“Great.”
“Look. There’s nothing we can do but stumble around and hope we find someone.”
“If we’re down here when Rashid sets off his little toy, we won’t have anything at all to worry about,” Akbari said, looking defeated. “What a waste.”
Ryan considered the Senate majority leader, sprawled out on the ground, his clothes unkempt and dirt-covered. He looked completely drained. Much of this was his fault, and Ryan felt no sympathy for him. “Feeling any of that revitalization stuff yet?” he asked.
Graham glared at him. “You can make fun if you wish. I’ve heard it all before. My colleagues have joked about Graham’s ‘youth’ movement for nearly all of my forty years in public service. They all laughed at my support for longevity funding. But what I was pursuing made as much sense as what most of the rest of them fought for, increased military spending, support for one corporate boondoggle after another, cuts in taxes.”