Valhalla (7 page)

22 November
Base Hancock One
Greenland Ice Cap

Lexy bolted awake. The battery-powered digital clock on the stand next to her cot read 02:07. The wailing of the wind and the hum of the generator were exactly the same, but she sensed another person was with her.

Slowly unzipping the top of the sleeping bag, she pointed her flashlight across the tent and switched it on. Rob Falconer stared back at her, his long mane of raven hair covered with snow. Little icicles were frozen into his beard.

He was kneeling at the end of her cot with one of her boots clutched in his left hand. Her small leather-bound archaeological journal, which she always placed in one of the boots before going to bed, was in his right.

His grin shattered the tiny icicles around his chin. Raising the journal in the air like a magician conjuring a
familiar trick, he carefully inserted it back into her boot, and placed it next to the other one by the space heater.

“All safe and sound,” he said.

“Your latest larceny won't bring you any reward, Rob,” she said. “I haven't made any notes yet in my journal.”

“I couldn't be sure you were holding out on me,” he said, moving closer to sit on the edge of her cot.

“Only you would think that way,” she said.

“My sweet, sexy Lexy,” he said, leaning down toward her. “Is there room for me in there with you?”

In the glare of the flashlight beam, his pale amber eyes were glowing with exhilaration.

“What have you done?” she asked.

“I haven't done anything—yet,” he said.

“I know you,” she said. “You had the same look after you hacked into my computer and stole my thesis.”

He laughed.

“I'm going to rewrite history,” he said, “and I could be persuaded to allow you a place in the sun.”

There was a faint petroleum smell on him, and she noticed an oily smudge on the chest of his thermal suit.

“Where have you been?”

“Can I trust you?” he said.

“You've never trusted anyone,” she said.

“Let me show you,” he said, leaning down to kiss her.

She slammed him in the head with her flashlight, and he fell back on the floor.

“Goddamn you,” he hissed.

“Get out of my tent or I'll scream all the way to Valhalla, and then you can explain what you're doing here to John Lee Hancock.”

He got up from the floor and began backing away,
rubbing his temple. She kept him in the beam of her flashlight until he slipped through the tent's inner and outer flaps into the wind-driven snow.

Lexy thought about getting dressed and going over to wake Steve Macaulay, but she was bone weary from the long air trip and everything that had happened since. She decided to wait until morning. Zipping up her mummy bag again, she fell back into a deep sleep.

Shrill noises began insinuating themselves into her brain. A few moments later, she came up out of the fog of sleep, fully awake. She could hear voices shouting outside in the darkness.

The air in the tent was frigid, and she could no longer hear the hum of the generator. Unzipping the mummy bag, she slipped on an additional layer of long johns, followed by her thermal suit, gloves, and boots.

Stepping outside, she saw several members of the expedition team running across the compound with flashlights. She walked over to the operations tent, where she found Hancock, Cabot, and Macaulay standing in front of the now-dark communications array. The tent's space heaters were as cold as the one in her tent. Two small gas lanterns provided minimal illumination.

“Someone sabotaged the main generator,” said Macaulay. “We're trying to patch in power from two of the smaller backups.”

Hancock's manner remained calm and assured.

“Right now, heat and communications are the top priority, even if we have to suspend the recovery operation. If we can't get the heat restored, Steve, you'll have to ferry the team back to Kulusuk in the transport chopper.”

“What the hell is going on here?” said Cabot as he left to find the cause of the problem.

“I don't know,” said Hancock, “but I'd say we need reinforcements.”

“Obviously, there is someone here attempting to sabotage what we're doing,” said Macaulay. “The question is who.”

Lexy quickly told them about Falconer's visit to her tent, and how she had caught him trying to steal her journal.

“What time was that?” asked Macaulay.

“About three hours ago.”

“Why didn't you wake one of us up?”

“I'm sorry. . . . I didn't think it was all that important.”

“It was,” said Hancock. “If he was the one who wrecked the satellite phone, he could have used it to arrange a rendezvous. He might even be on his way to the coast right now.”

Macaulay sent Doc Callaghan over to search Falconer's tent. He returned a few minutes later to say that the archaeologist's personal gear was gone.

“One of the snowmobiles is also missing,” he added.

“This has to be related to the Viking discovery,” said Hancock. “Someone needs to go down there—one of the people who's seen everything.”

Looking at Lexy, Macaulay said, “I'll do it.”

“I need you here, Steve. You may be flying people out soon, and the transport chopper will have to be checked for more sabotage. As for the others . . .”

“I'll go,” said Lexy, hoping the first jolt of fear she had just felt wasn't registering on her face.

22 November
Base Hancock One
Greenland Ice Cap

“Maybe we could send Doc Callaghan down with her,” said Macaulay, knowing John Lee wasn't aware of her claustrophobia.

“I'll be all right,” she said.

“Good,” said Hancock, turning to a member of his communications team. “As soon as we get power back, I want you to get Dallas on the horn. Tell them I want a fully equipped security team up here in the next twelve hours. I don't care how they have to do it.”

“Use the walkie-talkie if you get into trouble,” Macaulay whispered to Lexy. “I'll come right down.”

“Aye, aye, General,” she said with a mock salute.

“Wrong branch,” he said to her departing back.

She rode down the bigger of the two shafts with George Cabot. When they reached the first cavern, he used his security code to activate power to the second
winch and then attached a set of metal stirrups to the cable for her next descent.

Staring down into the small black hole, Lexy realized she was no longer afraid of the descent. Maybe it was because she had already been down there, or because she was so excited to see more of the discovery. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for the emotional reprieve.

She was about to step into the stirrups when she looked up and noticed an oily substance dripping from the power winch onto the cable.

“Not to worry,” said Cabot, following her eyes. “These things leak oil all the time.

As the cable slowly began cranking her downward through the shaft, Lexy kept her flashlight beam trained on the ice wall in front of her. She began to notice a recurring pattern of furrows, interspersed with small round fissures in the ice every forty or fifty feet.

She had done some rock climbing over the years, and the tiny fissures resembled those left by a piton. She then remembered that Rob was an experienced climber. It would have been easy for him to rig up a chest harness. The only thing he would have needed to rappel down the shaft was enough stout line.

In the glare of the flashlight beam, the base of the shaft finally arrived beneath her. Stepping off the rig into the black tunnel, she turned on her flashlight.

The Viking ship looked untouched to her, but she saw that someone had been there since their last visit. The block of ice that Steve Macaulay had placed in front of the cave opening had been shoved to one side, and the hole was now uncovered.

Inside the cave, ice melt was drizzling from the ceiling,
although the bodies of the Norsemen appeared to still be free of decomposition. When she looked down at the flaxen-haired Viking whose outer garment had been trimmed in red and gold braid, she saw that his cloak had been ripped open and the side pockets of his tunic torn out. Whatever he had possessed was gone.

At the back of the cave, the stonecutter was still lying where they had left him, but when she raised her flashlight to the rune stone, she saw that the ice shield that had covered it was no longer there.

She saw how Rob had done it. On their first visit, the Norsemen's iron firepots had been lying on their sides, empty. Now, two of them sat upright at the base of the stone. An empty plastic Coke bottle lay next to them. She sniffed its remaining contents. It was diesel fuel.

Her hands were trembling as she knelt in front of the stone and examined the top row of the inscription in the beam of the flashlight. Some of the symbols had been so crudely etched that she could not immediately interpret the individual characters, and thus their meaning. A few of the other symbols were unfamiliar to her, reflecting an idiom she had never encountered in translating other ancient texts.

She quickly concluded that a full translation of the saga would require hours of research, including an analysis of all the early Norse phrases and symbols she had catalogued back in St. Paul.

There were enough legible characters for her to conclude that if the stonecutter was recording true events, it was the most important archaeological discovery since the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We have come through the storm and survived,
she read.

Her instincts had been correct. They had been part of Leif Eriksson's final expedition to Vinland in 1016. On their way back to Greenland, they had encountered something fearsome and powerful on an island where they had been forced to seek shelter. In battling it, Eriksson had been killed and was buried there.

He lies in the hallowed place. . . .

A voice suddenly startled her. It came through the earphones of her radio transceiver.

“Lexy, you need to get up here right away,” said Steve Macaulay.

“All right,” she said, her mind involuntarily continuing to translate the remaining symbols in the next row.

The next markings were meant to be a set of signposts for a new expedition of Norsemen to find Eriksson's burial place and whatever was buried there with him. The stonecutter had recorded descriptions of landmarks to help them find their way back there, places that had existed a thousand years earlier.

Under the tail,
she read from the next line.

“George says you're not in the stirrups yet,” called out Macaulay over the radio in a worried tone. “Is anything wrong?”

“I'm coming,” she said, reluctantly retracing her path through the cave and out into the tunnel.

After restoring the block of ice to the mouth of the cave, she radioed George Cabot that she was ready to come up. In a few moments, the power winch began cranking and she was on her way.

Although it was past seven in the morning, there was no hint of daylight on the surface. Since her descent, the wind had died to a low moan, but it was still snowing.

She heard a dog barking in the distance as she made her way to the operations tent. The cries were deep and cadenced, and repeated every few seconds. It had to be Hancock's Alsatian.

Inside the tent, Sir Dorian was slumped next to the bank of space heaters, almost hidden under a mound of thermal blankets. His eyes were dull and unfocused. Jensen was helping him swallow some pills with a mug of water. Macaulay and Hancock were standing at the communications array, sipping coffee.

“Hap found something a little while ago,” said Hancock. “You may be able to help us identify it.”

He started to lead her out of the tent, when Hjalmar Jensen and Doc Callaghan stepped into his path. Jensen had an anxious look on his face.

“Sir Dorian has had some kind of heart attack or stroke. I believe he needs to be hospitalized as soon as possible.”

“I agree,” said Doc Callaghan. “His symptoms are consistent with an ischemic stroke in which an artery to the brain is blocked. With a blocked artery, the neurons can't make enough energy. At some point, the brain will stop working.”

“We'll fly him out on the Bell transport as soon as we get back,” said Hancock.

Outside the tent, he climbed onto a snowmobile and motioned for Lexy to join him. Macaulay followed on a separate machine as they crossed the compound and traveled out onto the dark ice field. Lexy noticed they were following the path of the heavy-duty fire hose that was used to pump meltwater out of the shafts.

Reaching the ice crevasse where the hose terminated, Hancock stopped his machine and got off. Someone had
mounted a battery-powered floodlight on a steel tripod that faced down into it. A member of the expedition team was standing at the edge, holding the excited Alsatian at the end of a leash.

“Hap smelled it and came out here to investigate,” said Hancock.

Stepping forward, Lexy looked over the edge of the crevasse. The body of a man was lying facedown about halfway down the slope. He had been stripped naked and his body had a bluish tint from the subzero cold. His head was frozen into the surface of the ice. She couldn't recognize it through the milky glaze.

“In another hour, the corpse would have been covered by snow and ice melt,” said Hancock.

“We think the hose pump was still running when they got him out here,” said Macaulay. “It froze around his head after they were finished.”

“There is only one identifiable mark on his body,” said Hancock. “It's a tattoo.”

Lexy stepped closer to the body. The torso looked like a male manikin in a department store window. There was a tattoo on the right cheek of the man's buttocks.

“It's Rob Falconer,” she said.

“How do you know for sure?” asked Macaulay.

“The tattoo . . . is in Sanskrit.”

“What does it mean?”

“It's not important,” she said, her teeth beginning to chatter.

“Let me be the judge of that,” said Hancock.

She hesitated a few moments before glancing up at Macaulay.

“It's Sanskrit for the name Alexandra.”