by Olivier Truc
He sipped his coffee. The geologist who had made the old map was becoming something of an obsession with him. He wanted to discover his secret, find out who he was. His taste in women. Or men. His sexual likes and dislikes. Was he the average type, or an adventurer in the field? Racagnal liked to think of himself as an adventurer, a man unafraid to experiment, pushing the boundaries of convention.
He firmly believed that a man’s sexuality spoke volumes about his willingness to venture into new, unexploited terrain. He turned to the Sami, stretched out in a corner of the shelter, his gaze lost in the flames. Racagnal thought about the woman he had seen in Aslak’s tent. He’d seen plenty like her on his first trip here. Had some fun with one or two. They had been less willing than the Scandinavians. He wondered if the Sami had a taste for young girls, too. What red-blooded man wouldn’t? he thought.
The sky was clear now. He collected his things and held a second pack out to the Sami, who took it without a word. They stepped outside into the cold and began making their way slowly upstream, along the frozen river.
* * *
10 a.m., Malå, Sweden
After a night in a Reindeer Police refuge on the Swedish side, Patrol P9 continued south. The landscape now was a vast, almost unbroken expanse of thick forest, mostly pines and birch trees, nothing like the dwarf birches of the vidda. Yet they were still in the Sápmi interior and very far north. Roads plunged straight through the forests, occasionally touching the shorelines of small lakes, or following the banks of broad rivers.
Nina was discovering this part of northern Sweden for the first time. It seemed scarcely more populated than the Norwegian section of Sápmi, but was clearly more exploited. In places, tracks disappeared into the forest, which had been evidently replanted and carefully managed. Signs pointed to mineworks at regular intervals. Tall pylons supporting thick electric cables soared above the birches and pines, crossing the road and marching into the distance down deep cuts through the trees, carrying electricity to the rest of the country. They passed through hamlets of houses painted Falun red, each settlement arranged around a central gas-station-cum-general store. Finally, after more pine trees and birches stretching monotonously for miles, they arrived in Malå.
The Nordic Geological Institute stood on the edge of the small town. Some of the archives were still held in their respective countries, but for practical purposes the Nordic countries had grouped everything relating to Sápmi—and its unique geology—here. Malå was served by just one road connecting it to the Gulf of Bothnia several hundred miles to the southeast, but it was visited regularly by mining company representatives from all over the world, preparing to explore in the region. The Nordic archives had joined the Swedish institute, established here for over a century with its own, unique archive collection, especially on the results of drilling carried out since 1907.
Klemet and Nina reported to reception in the main administrative building. The director’s office was one of several leading off the reception area. The director greeted them in person and escorted them to a corner fitted out with tables and a coffee machine.
Eva Nilsdotter had a bad-tempered look about her. Her thick gray hair was piled on top of her head in a bun she clearly couldn’t be bothered to keep under control. Her fine, sharply lined features were lit by magnificent eyes of an intense, pale blue. She had worked at the NGI for twenty-seven years, she said, including the last five as director. If everything went according to plan, she would hold the post until she retired in two years’ time. She hoped the Reindeer Police weren’t planning to rock the boat, as it were.
“So what do you want, exactly?” The tone was direct, even abrupt. Her jaw worked busily, chewing gum. “Our director of information is away in Uppsala. He hasn’t the faintest idea of the amount of work we get through out here. He’d do better to get his ass off his office chair, in my humble opinion. He told me to see you, so I’m seeing you. But I’m warning you now, I don’t like probing questions. We get a lot of visitors here who mind very much about discretion. The bedrock of our reputation, you might say. Geologists know they can work here in complete confidence. Many of our clients are listed on the stock exchanges in Asia and North America, if you get my drift. They come here to prospect and, ultimately, possibly, to invest a great deal of money. They don’t like people making waves. So we ask uniformed officers of the police—even a couple of good-lookers like you two—to be discreet. And the more so since our dearly beloved ministry has ordered us to pay our way, making money on the backs of our users, instead of providing the service for free at the expense of the taxpayer. But you’re in luck. It’s quiet today.”
She paused to light a cigarette, flouting the no-smoking rule strictly enforced in all Scandinavian public buildings.
Klemet and Nina hadn’t expected a welcome like this. Nina wondered how such a woman—clearly not a natural diplomat—had managed to get where she was and hold on to the job. Eva Nilsdotter seemed to read her thoughts.
“Didn’t even need to sleep with anyone, dear. But you know what, I’ll tell you a secret: I was the best. For a long time, no one wanted to give me any responsibility—I was too good. They needed me as a geologist out in the field. One day, I’d had enough of seeing complete incompetents promoted to the top jobs because they had to be parked somewhere. So I got angry. Decided I’d be the boss. And you know what, I was the best at that, too.” She stubbed out the remains of her cigarette.
Nina stared at the director in disbelief, Klemet in delighted amusement. He recognized the tough, dyed-in-the-wool character of women from the north, unconcerned with social niceties and politesse.
“So what brings you to my neck of the woods? The Reindeer Police. What the hell is that? Never heard of you.”
“Well, I think with a little imagination you can probably work it out,” said Klemet. “All you need to know is we’re investigating a murder. And we have reason to believe that it may have something to do with a story relating to a mine.”
“And in particular, a story related to an expedition to Lapland in 1939,” Nina added. “Something about a cursed gold seam, that has brought great misfortune on the Sami people, and––”
“I see.” Eva lit another cigarette. “Go on. I adore anything about old treasure maps. That’s what got me into this business in the first place.”
Klemet spent the next fifteen minutes delivering a summary of what they knew so far. The theft of the drum, Mattis’s death, the suspicion of foul play between breeders, the 1939 expedition, the legend of the gold mine, the rumors of a curse. Everything. Eva Nilsdotter listened with rapt attention, interjecting with enthusiasm, indignation, sympathy, and compassion as the story unfolded. Klemet made a good job of it. Even Nina was surprised to find herself hanging on his every word.
The director sat in silence for some minutes. Then she jumped to her feet, disappeared into her office, and returned with a perfectly chilled bottle of Chablis and three glasses.
“To our collaboration! Because you haven’t said as much, but I’m guessing you’re after the location of the mysterious mine. Am I right?” she asked, popping the cork, before downing her first glass in one gulp, while Nina looked on in astonishment.
* * *
Half an hour later, the first bottle had been finished—there were more in the fridge, Eva promised, having drunk three-quarters of it herself—and the director of the NGI and Patrol P9 were walking slowly through a hangar on the other side of the road. It was one of several large buildings housing tens of thousands of flat wooden chests, each containing ten geological core samples measuring three feet in length and several inches in diameter. Eva seated herself on a stack of chests.
“You see, each core sample is numbered. These chests contain a series labeled ‘U.’” She pointed to the coded labels. “For uranium. Great for warming your backside!” She gave a husky smoker’s laugh, lit another cigarette, and blew out a cloud of smoke, mingling with Klemet’s and Nina’s breath in the icy air.
Eva’s question met with a heavy silence.
“I see. You do know that Lapland covers an area of some four hundred thousand square miles? Bigger than the whole of Finland, or Japan?”
“All we’ve got is some information on the areas the French geologist was planning to explore,” said Nina.
Eva moved over to a desk installed in a corner of the hangar, switched on a computer, and entered the coordinates from Racagnal’s second application into the database. She studied the maps on the screen and fetched the corresponding paper maps—on a readable scale—from a plan chest nearby, then spread them out on a huge reading table.
“Here are the places your Frenchman is planning to go for a stroll,” she said. “Is he alone?”
Eva bent over the maps, running her finger over the symbols, following the curves of terrain, grunting and muttering to herself.
“You see, when a geologist draws a map, he notes down a multitude of details and readings taken out in the field. The maps we have here are simplified, based on the originals. When someone plans to go prospecting, they start by visiting our website, to check the geological maps, like these. Then there’s a list of reports on the targeted areas. Those are the archives we hold here, together with the core samples all around us in this building. We get out the reports people ask for. Some of them date from before the Second World War.”
“The expedition photos,” Nina suggested.
She took out her portable computer and began showing Eva the scanned pictures. “The expedition took place in the summer of 1939. The French organized it and took with them a Swedish research team, a German geologist, and––”
“What was the German’s name?” Eva interrupted.
“He was called Ernst, but we don’t know his family name. We know he was from the Sudetenland,” said Klemet.
Eva frowned and noted the name on a piece of paper. The police officers said nothing for the next few minutes, trying to decipher the changing expressions on the director’s face. She lit another cigarette, taking her time, poring over each picture. She spent a long time looking at the pictures featuring the German geologist.
Nina broke the silence. “We think they took metal-detecting equipment with them, too.”
Eva took a long drag on her cigarette. “Metal detection. Yes…but that’s not all. What you see there is a Geiger counter, the very first portable model—though the things weighed about fifty pounds.”
“A Geiger counter?”
“Well, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t jump to conclusions. No one was looking for uranium as such around here, in those days.”
“But the first atomic bomb was made during the war, so people must have known about uranium in order to carry out the research and develop it?” said Nina.
“Yes, they obtained it from a mine in the Congo. But I don’t think this expedition has anything to do with uranium.”
“So why the Geiger counter?”
“Before the war, uranium was just something people were interested in for its luminous properties. Radium was a useful component in phosphorescent paint, for watch dials and other instruments, for medical applications, too. Of course, today we howl at this, but at the time we knew nothing about the effects of radioactivity. Marie Curie, mother of us all, worked on ores from Joachimsthal in Germany, or from Czechoslovakia. Can’t remember which.”
“So the German geologist might have been looking for radium?” asked Nina.
“The Germans were interested in it at the time, for instruments or whatever. And with this equipment, your geologist would have been able to identify areas containing it. Which doesn’t mean he was looking specifically for radium, either. Like most geologists, he was probably after various different ores at once. Letting Lady Luck be his guide. And, don’t forget, radioactivity exists everywhere in nature, all around us. Take the tiniest chunk of granite and pass it in front of a Geiger counter, you’ll soon see!”
Eva Nilsdotter went back to examining the photographs, leaving Klemet and Nina to their thoughts.
“Your German may have been looking for your fabulous gold mine. But I can tell you where he disappeared, at any rate,” she said suddenly.
Klemet and Nina stared at her in complete incomprehension. Eva burst out laughing.
“Oh, look at the pair of you, poor dears! Now, see here and listen closely. The last photos with our man Ernst were taken on the Norwegian coast. You see, in the distance, that mountain peak, the sort of hooked nose, and, just behind, the lake shaped like a little dinghy sail. No doubt about it.”
Eva fetched a map of the region. “The lake is here, and the crooked mountaintop is there. Given the angle, and the distance, I’d say the picture was taken…here.” She pointed to a spot on the map, took a soft red crayon and marked it with an X. “So that’s the last picture with Ernst. You told me earlier they had come from Inari, which is here. So they must have passed this way. And now, let’s see the picture where your Sami guide makes his reappearance.”
She pored over the picture showing Niils after his return. “Given the direction they took, you’ve got the Sami camp here. It’s abandoned today. I camped there myself in my younger days. But it was on a reindeer migration route, with this river, and the rather unusual delta—not at all common in the region. So—” she brandished the red crayon again “—the second photo was taken…here!”
Ernst had died somewhere between the two points, searching for the mine. Or perhaps he had found it.
“And now,” Eva continued, “let’s see if we can define a radius within which Niils and Ernst traveled. Because they set off on foot, you say? We don’t know how many days’ walk it took them to reach the spot Ernst wanted to explore, nor how long they remained there.”
“But we know that Niils walked there and back,” said Nina.
Eva was studying the map again. She moved around the long table, poring over the three maps corresponding to the areas Racagnal planned to explore. She went back to the little desk and seated herself in front of the computer. Tapped something in, peered at the screen, picked up a telephone, and began talking in English to someone at the other end. She waited a long time, saying nothing. Then her interlocutor came back on the line. Eva noted an e-mail address on a piece of paper and ended the call.
“Log your machine on to the institute’s Wi-Fi,” she instructed Nina. “And send the photos of your German to this address. Just tell them in the message who it is you’re trying to identify.” Eva’s tone was firm, brooking no questions or objections. “The difficulty is, we don’t know whether your German back in 1939 and our French geologist today are after the same mine. Nor whether you are after the same seam or another one altogether. So, one mine, or two, or three?”
“I think we’re after the same mine as Ernst,” said Klemet. “It’s a hunch, but I’m trusting my intuition for once. The cursed seam…Niils knew about it. The drum spoke of it, one way or another.”
“And the French geologist?” Nina broke in. “All we see here is that he set off to explore three different places, with the required permits. Eva, can you see any common characteristics in the three areas, anything hinting at what he might be looking for?”
Eva bent over the maps, saying nothing for a long while. She smoked two cigarett
es before she spoke again.
“Look,” she said finally. “First factor in common: the course described by the main river crossing the map in each case. On all of them it flows, broadly speaking, from the northwest toward the south, then curves back up to the east, then bends around and down again to the southeast.”
Klemet frowned slightly, but Nina nodded in agreement.
“Then there’s the relief,” Eva went on. “The altitudes are different, the surfaces are different, but in all three cases you clearly have the higher ground—the high plateau—with a lake to the southeast, and the presence of fault lines and fractures in the northeast.”
Nina nodded vigorously. Klemet maintained his frown.
“I’m not giving you a precise, clinical description here,” said Eva. “More of an Impressionist landscape than your Flemish Masters. Big blocks of color, blurred detail. I see strong similarities. And I haven’t said anything about the third factor yet—the geological composition.”
“OK, suppose you’re right,” Klemet cut her short. “I get that the Frenchman doesn’t know exactly where he’s headed. But he’s looking for somewhere that corresponds to the criteria someone else has provided. From those, he has deduced a fairly precise geography for the area he’s after, and he’s looking for places that correspond to that.”
“Spot on!” declared Eva. “He must be one hell of a professional to have isolated these three areas. I’m ready to bet there isn’t another spot anywhere in the region combining all these characteristics. But these maps cover vast expanses. If you’re planning to search them in detail, you’ll need weeks, perhaps months. Now, I think you’d better check your e-mail,” she suggested to Nina.
Nina read a message in English from a man named Walter Müller. “Ernst Flüger,” she said. “The German geologist is called Ernst Flüger. Trained in the mid-1930s at the Mining Institute in Vienna.”
“An excellent school,” Eva commented. “Shame they were all hired by the Nazis afterward. But that wasn’t the case with your Flüger. He died beforehand.”