Valhalla (4 page)

18 November
Jean Lesage International Airport
Quebec City, Canada

Hancock's Learjet had barely leveled off at twenty-five thousand feet above St. Paul when a young Eurasian woman dressed in a blue silk wrap arrived at Lexy's club chair and handed her a hand-inscribed parchment menu.

She remembered that the last thing she had eaten was a cardboard snack pack of cheese and crackers in the back of the Land Rover the previous night. She was suddenly ravenous.

After a glass of Pinot Grigio, she savored a plate of sautéed sea scallops with shallots in cream sauce, and a side dish of asparagus vinaigrette. Macaulay joined her at the polished teak inlaid table as she was finishing her crème brûlée. He had shaved and showered after boarding the plane, and changed into jeans and a blue work shirt.

Cleaned up, he looked even younger. There were
laugh or stress lines etched into the corners of his weary brown eyes. He had nicked himself shaving.

“How did you get the permission for us to take off?” she asked him.

“The world works in mysterious ways,” he said, ordering a dry martini.

It had been snowing hard when they arrived at the Minneapolis airport, and the flight manager at the private aviation terminal told Macaulay that all landings and takeoffs had been canceled until visibility improved. Flights weren't expected to resume until the following day.

The waiting room in the small terminal was packed with newly stranded travelers, all trying to rent cars and find accommodations. Macaulay had told her to wait there until he returned.

As the minutes passed, she began to wonder if the whole episode was some kind of ludicrous practical joke. On impulse, she used her cell phone to call her branch of the Pilot Grove Savings Bank in St. Paul. After she provided her personal data, the teller said, “Your current checking balance is $50,082.36.”

Twenty minutes later, Macaulay was back.

“Let's go,” he said.

“Back to St. Paul?”

“Out to the airplane,” he said. “I had to make sure it was de-iced before we take off.”

“But the flight manager said all flights were canceled,” she began, but he was already leading her outside.

The Learjet was airborne less than ten minutes later.

“Will they come after us?” she asked as Macaulay began chewing his first bite of rare prime rib.

“Who?”

“The sky police . . . How the hell do I know? You broke the law.”

“All in a good cause,” he said.

They landed in Quebec to clear customs.

“What do I say is the purpose of my visit?” she whispered as they approached the counter.

“Pleasure,” he said. “Pure pleasure.”

They were back in the air fifteen minutes later. When the plane reached cruising altitude, Macaulay asked the Eurasian girl to bring two snifters of Hancock's hundred-year-old Armagnac. Lexy found the first taste sublime.

“I'm going to make an assumption about why you're bringing me along on this escapade,” she said.

“Go ahead,” said Macaulay.

“In addition to the Viking ship you found up there, I'm guessing you found a tablet, or vellum scroll, or something else with rune markings on it.”

“Good assumption,” he said, savoring the brandy.

“So, what do you know about runology?” she asked.

“The same as you probably know about the Eighth Air Force missions to Schweinfurt in 1943,” he said with a lazy grin.

“August and October,” she said. “Sixty forts were lost on the first one and seventy-seven went down on the second. They creamed the ball bearing works the second time, but Speer had already diversified production.”

He stared intently at her for several seconds.

“Will you marry me?” he said.

She laughed.

“My grandfather was a B-17 pilot. He was lost over Berlin in 1944. Have you ever heard of the Kensington stone?”

“Your Dr. Benchley told me that it's a two-hundred-pound slab of rock covered in alleged Viking markings and that you're fixated on it. He said it was an elaborate hoax and that it would be a big mistake to bring you on our little lark. He volunteered to come himself.”

“I'm going to prove it's genuine,” she said, pulling several sheets of paper out of an old leather satchel case. She laid the first one on the table in front of him.

“This is the inscription on the Kensington stone,” she said.

Macaulay gazed down at a mass of odd-looking symbols, letters, characters, and what appeared to be stick figures, all bunched together in what might have been separate lines of possible text. He hadn't slept in two nights and was having difficulty concentrating. His weariness was compounded by the brandy and by this unsettling young woman.

“It looks a little like hieroglyphics,” he said.

“Very good, General,” she said, smiling. “The Norsemen used the same principle in creating the runic alphabet. Runic inscriptions date back almost two thousand years, and until Christian monks introduced Latin to Scandinavia in the eleventh century, the runic alphabet was used to record all their important events. It's fairly simple, with these sixteen characters being the most frequently used. Later on, the basic characters were augmented with what are called dotted runes.”

Macaulay looked up to see the big violet eyes focused on him. In the light from the bulkhead lamp behind her, he could see glints of old gold in her thick auburn mane of hair. She was undeniably attractive, but the last thing
he needed at this point in his life was another woman. Not after Diana.

“Most of the runic stones from the eleventh century are either memorials to the departed, family sagas, or accounts of famous expeditions. They were carved by skilled stonecutters. Two years ago, I translated a rune stone dating from 1050 that was unearthed in Norway. It recounts the discovery of Vinland the Good by Leif Eriksson fifty years earlier.”

“Where is Vinland?” asked Macaulay.

“Theories have ranged from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod, but no one has ever found archaeological evidence to prove it.”

“So what happened to Eriksson?”

“No one knows.”

She placed another piece of paper in front of him.

“This is an interlinear transliteration of the rune markings on the Kensington stone,” she said excitedly. “Would you like me to translate them into English for you?”

Macaulay looked down at the confusing jumble of letters. It was the last thing he wanted her to do.

8 : göter : ok : 22 : norrmen : po :

...o : opþagelsefärd : fro :

vinland : of : vest : vi :

hade : läger : ved : 2 : skLär : en :

dags : rise : norr : fro : þeno : sten :

vi : var : ok : fiske : en : dagh : äptir :

vi : kom : hem : fan : 10 : man : röde :

af : blod : og : ded : AVM :

frälse : äf : illü.

“How did you get interested in all this?” he asked.

“I'm half Norwegian,” she said. “My maternal grandmother was an amateur archaeologist and my first inspiration.”

Macaulay couldn't help yawning.

“Let's get some rest,” he said. “We'll land in Goose Bay in a few hours to refuel, and then it's four more to Kulusuk Island on the east coast of Greenland. Fortunately, we won't need to check in with customs there. They assume that if people are crazy enough to want to come, why bother.”

“Sleep would be good right now,” she agreed.

“You're welcome to J.L.'s cabin,” he said. “It has the most comfortable bed you'll ever find at thirty thousand feet.”

He was right.

20 November
Kulusuk Airfield
Ost Greenland

Dawn was creeping past the curtains of her compartment porthole when Lexy heard a light knock at the door. It slowly opened, and the Eurasian girl's face appeared around the edge.

“We'll be landing in thirty minutes. Do you wish to have breakfast with General Macaulay?”

She could smell fresh coffee brewing and discovered she was hungry again.

“I'll be right there.”

She dressed in the same combination of clothing she always wore in the field, loose-fitting corduroys, a Scotch plaid flannel shirt, and rubber-soled leather hunting boots.

“You're going to need to ramp up your winter gear when we get there,” said Macaulay when she joined him at the breakfast table. He was enjoying a western omelet with coffee and orange juice, and she ordered the same.

“I've checked in by radio with our base camp on the ice cap. Your three colleagues have already arrived,” he told her. “It's blowing a gale there, but I'm hoping we can make it over in one of the team helicopters.”

*   *   *

Gazing through the windows at the endless landscape of ice and rock, Lexy felt a deep sense of isolation at the enormity of it all. Some of her ancestors had come here more than a thousand years ago.

Macaulay had followed her eyes.

“In some places the ice is two miles deep,” he said. “Who knows how many secrets it holds?”

Toward the horizon, she saw the jagged edge of a gigantic iceberg floating calmly on a slate gray sea. It almost looked big enough to land on. As the Learjet slowly descended toward the desolate coast, they passed over a small Inuit settlement. The simple huts were gaily painted in red, blue, and yellow. Near the settlement, a man was running behind a dogsled.

A few minutes later, they landed on a long, ice-bordered runway.

“Welcome to Kulusuk,” said Macaulay. “In its glory days, this place was part of the old DEW Line radar defense system for providing an early warning of a Soviet attack. It's fallen on hard times since we pulled out.”

A small cluster of ramshackle old buildings flanked the landing strip. A Bell 412EP jet transport helicopter was parked on one apron near two twin-engine planes, all of them bearing the logo of Anschutz International. As soon as the engines were turned off, she could hear the howling wind.

“The weather may look rugged to you, but I can fly
the Bell in this,” said Macaulay. “Before we leave, you'll need to put on some warmer gear. There's plenty of it inside the Kulusuk Four Seasons over there.”

They stepped off the plane into fierce, gusting wind. Ice particles lashed Lexy's face as Macaulay led her to the largest of the frame buildings. Inside the foyer, the moan of the wind was barely diminished. The waiting room smelled of frying bacon.

“Steve!” came an anguished cry from the small barroom across the lobby.

“Oh no,” groaned Macaulay as Melissa came rushing toward him.

“Thank God,” she said, wrapping herself in his arms in a cloud of bourbon. “I've got to get out of here, Steve. The sun barely rises in this place and then it is night again. You have to tell J.L. that if he doesn't want me here anymore, I need the Lear to fly me back to Dallas.”

“I'll tell him,” said Macaulay.

“Seriously, I think I'm going to die here, honey,” she said, tears beginning to stream down her milkmaid cheeks. “He loves that goddamn dog of his more than me.”

Melissa's eyes focused on Lexy.

“Who is she?” she demanded.

“Dr. Vaughan is an archaeologist,” said Macaulay. “I'm flying her out to the base camp.”

“Why does she get to go and not me?”

“It's important, Melissa.”

“She's J.L's new one, isn't she?”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Don't leave me here, Steve. I swear I can't take it anymore.”

“I told you I'll talk to J.L.,” he said. “Just hang on a bit longer.”

He led Lexy up the stairs to find the winter gear.

“What was that all about?” she asked while putting on a thermal suit over her clothes.

“How would you like a brand-new Porsche Carrera 911?”

“I don't understand.”

“Inside joke,” he said. “John Lee enjoys the company of beautiful women and he appreciates having them available, which isn't that often when he's feeling the high adventure like this one. Anyway, he usually treats them to a new Porsche.”

“I see.”

Ten minutes later, they were outside again and heading for the Bell 412EP jet helicopter. It was the team's principal transport chopper. Hancock's ground crew had completed its flight inspection and warmed up the two Pratt & Whitney engines for him.

It was a dual-control ship and Macaulay motioned Lexy into the copilot's seat. She could already feel it rocking back and forth from heavy wind gusts before they were even off the ground.

“Don't worry,” he reassured her. “It's going to be bumpy, but the trip will only take about fifteen minutes unless we run into a serious snow squall.”

It ended up taking thirty, and she was airsick most of the way. The combination of updrafts and downdrafts was vicious. One moment they were rocketing upward and the next careening wildly down. For the first time in her life, she understood the meaning of having her heart in her throat.

She felt her first tremor of actual fear when they hit the snow squall. It was a total whiteout, and she lost all sense of their position in relation to the mountain range they were approaching. It was bad enough to be flying through milk, but then they would hit another wind gust and be plunging down again. She clutched the steel frame of her cushioned seat and held on.

Whenever she glanced at Macaulay, he appeared oblivious to it all, remaining calm and seemingly relaxed as he maneuvered the big helicopter through the treacherous air.

When they finally emerged from the squall, she saw that they were approaching a small tent city on the ice cap. Macaulay brought them down onto a helicopter pad ringed with landing lights.

“You did well,” he said after shutting down the engines. “Not a fun ride in that soup.”

Lexy didn't say anything. She was grateful that she hadn't thrown up all over the cockpit. Still queasy, she climbed out of the helicopter and followed him to the largest tent in the complex.

Inside, a dozen men were scattered around tables full of electronic equipment. One was standing in front of a briefing board. The others sat at tables deployed in a rough circle around two diesel space heaters. They all turned to look at the new arrivals.

“The code breaker is here,” one of them called out.

It was Rob Falconer.