Valhalla (3 page)

16 November
Helheim Glacier
Greenland Ice Cap

They were down to little more than three hours of watery sunlight each day, or at least on those days the sun actually emerged through the leaden clouds. In two weeks, they would be in total darkness.

One of the recovery teams, equipped with acetylene torches, began cutting
March Hare
into sections that would fit into the twelve-foot shaft. A second team loaded the retrieved components into the de Havilland Twin Otters, which flew them to a former United States Air Force base at Narsassuaq. A third team drilled the WEASEL ever deeper toward the mysterious target.

When an air force honor guard arrived to remove the bodies of
March Hare
's crew, work was briefly suspended while the expedition team stood in falling snow to participate in a flag service.

A day later, the last sections of
March Hare
were
brought to the surface. Another winter storm struck without warning that afternoon. Six feet of dense snow buried the tent complex, and flights in and out had to be canceled while the airstrip was cleared with the bulldozer.

Shortly after midnight, Macaulay was napping on his cot in the operations tent, when an engineer woke him to say that the WEASEL had reached bedrock more than five hundred feet beneath the ice cap.

“Let's go,” said Macaulay, heading over to wake Hancock.

George Cabot was waiting for them at the edge of the new shaft a hundred forty feet below the surface. A power winch had been rigged to allow one man at a time to stand on stirrups attached to a steel cable and ride slowly to the bottom.

“I sent two men down there with the steam hoses an hour ago,” said Cabot.

“You still don't want to go, George?” said Macaulay, smiling.

“I may be small, but I'm not stupid, Steve,” said Cabot, puffing on his meerschaum pipe. “I don't fancy climbing down a fifty-story building inside a three-foot sewer line.”

“You don't have to climb down, George,” Hancock added. “Just close your eyes and the power hoist will have you at the bottom in twenty minutes. Besides, it's only about forty stories more. We're already fourteen down.”

“No, thanks,” said Cabot. “I'll stick to the instrument readings.”

Macaulay stared down into the hole. It was no larger than a manhole cover.

“No lights along the way?” asked Hancock.

“With the steam hoses, there isn't enough room to string floods,” said Cabot. “You'll have to use flashlights.”

The radio receivers suddenly crackled.

“My God, you've got to see this,” yelled one of the men at the bottom of the shaft.

Cabot turned on the power hoist and Hancock stepped into the stirrups. He was gone a few moments later. Macaulay quickly followed him down the hole. Watching them disappear into the blackness, Cabot crossed himself.

Inside the narrow shaft, Macaulay couldn't move his arms without grazing the ice walls. In spite of the thermal suit, he felt a profound coldness penetrating him as they went deeper.

It wasn't physical fear. As a child, he had walked away from the horrific automobile accident that had killed his parents. He had also survived a ditching in the Persian Gulf after shooting down his second Iraqi MiG during Desert Storm. This was different. It was something unreasoned. Whatever was down there filled him with dread.

Reaching the bottom, they stepped out of the stirrups and turned in the direction of the light. The two other men were shining their powerful flashlights at an object less than twenty feet away.

Macaulay almost gasped aloud. The steam hoses had exposed the front section of an ancient ship. The bowsprit swept up and away from the lap-straked hull in an arcing swirl that looked like the coiled head of a sea snake. Intricate carvings of weapons and battle scenes were engraved on the outer gunwales.

Stepping onto an ice shelf, Macaulay looked down inside the hull. Nestled in the bow section was a sea chest,
studded with what looked like silver or pewter fittings. Three rowing benches were exposed behind it.

“I've seen paintings of craft like these that the Phoenicians used about a thousand years ago,” he said.

“The Norsemen adapted their ship-building designs from the Phoenicians,” said Hancock. “Their ships were propelled by either sail or oars, just like this one.”

He pulled out his jackknife.

“I'm going to take a wood chip for carbon dating,” he said.

“George said there was another metallic impulse beneath the ship,” said Macaulay.

The two other men aimed their steam hoses at the ice shelf below it.

A few minutes later, a rock-edged wall hole materialized in the bedrock, and then a small black opening. Hancock ordered them to shut off the hoses. He shined his flashlight through the opening.

“It looks like a cave,” he said.

Using his gloved hand to expand the hole, Hancock crawled inside. Watching from the ice tunnel, Macaulay could see Hancock's flashlight beam gyrating in all directions. Less than a minute later, he crawled back out.

His stunned face said it all.

“Seal it up again,” he ordered. “No one comes down here.”

17 November
Ostlund Lake
Solem, Minnesota

Alexandra Vaughan had just experienced the most thrilling day of her life.

Its genesis was three years earlier when an old farmer plowing a rocky field near Solem discovered a broken axe blade by the marshy headwaters of Ostlund Lake. It had odd carvings along the edges, and the farmer had sent it to the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul for analysis.

Alexandra had recently completed her doctorate in Norse archaeology at Harvard. Now thirty, she was working in a staff position within the society's archaeological unit. The axe blade ended up on her desk.

Simply holding it in her hands had sent a thrill of excitement through her. She had seen identical blades in the collection of Norse weaponry at the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen.

Although St. Paul was being battered by a winter gale, she got in her old Land Rover and drove up to Solem. After interviewing the farmer, she was sure he was telling the truth about how and where he had found it. A week later, carbon dating confirmed that the axe blade had been fabricated more than seven hundred years ago.

She took her findings to Dr. Benchley, the head of the archaeology unit, and recommended they undertake a comprehensive dig at the Solem site. After briefly reviewing the folder of material, he laughed at her.

“Lexy, it's another Kensington stone,” he said, “a complete hoax. The Norsemen never reached Minnesota. This farmer probably bought the axe from a cousin in Norway. He's looking for his fifteen minutes of fame.”

“The jury is still out on the Kensington stone,” Lexy replied hotly. “And I happen to believe the rune markings on it are genuine. That's what brought me out here.”

“Fine,” he said. “Why not go out and find Sasquatch while you're at it.”

Undeterred, she spent her two-week vacation camping in the fields and rock-strewn slopes near the spot where the farmer had discovered it. The place was very remote and she had to ford two streams in the Land Rover to get there.

Her first efforts yielded nothing. It might have been sheer stubbornness, but her instincts told her there was something important to be found there if she searched long and hard enough.

Using most of her personal time, Lexy returned to Ostlund Lake six times over the next two years, eventually combing the area with probes and a metal detector. On the sixth trip, she expanded her search to include a
nearby rocky slope dotted with aspen trees and thick undergrowth.

While crossing a spiny ridge, she noticed a depression in the earth that covered a vein of the rock ledge. Running her metal detector over the ledge, she received a positive hit.

She began to dig. When the excavated defile reached a depth of six feet, she was rewarded with the discovery of a cleft in the otherwise solid rock. After removing nearly a foot of soil and detritus from inside it, she uncovered her first find.

It was a flattened section of beaded metal, possibly part of a battle shield. She brought the object back to the historical society and subjected it to radioisotope dating. It was seven hundred years old.

She was now sure it was a Norse burial site, and that whoever was entombed there had been buried with his weapons for the journey to Valhalla, the mythical home of the Norse gods. She hit pay dirt on her next visit, unearthing another axe blade, and then the hilt of a sword with a cocked-hat-style iron pommel. A Norseman's sword. She had seen one identical to it at the Wikinger Museum in Hedeby, the largest Nordic city during the Viking age.

The discovery was why she had taken the job in Minnesota in the first place, passing up prestigious fellowships in London and Istanbul. She was descended from the ancient Norsemen on her mother's side. Some of her earliest memories were the Viking tales told to her by her Norwegian grandparents. The Vikings were in her blood.

During her trip back to St. Paul, the Land Rover
stalled out in one of the streams, and she had to rig a pulley hoist from a tree on the opposite shore to hand-winch it into the shallows. By then, her boots, corduroys, and anorak were caked in mud.

An hour out of St. Paul, the brakes began to fail. As she drove through the gate of the historical society, the brake pedal went all the way to the floor, and she had to use the emergency brake to bring the vehicle to a stop in the employees' lot.

Grabbing her specimen case, she used her electronic key to enter the labs in the subbasement, taking a shortcut through the suite in which the society was restoring Minnesota's Civil War flags.

A tall man was standing in front of the display case holding the battle flag of the 28th Virginia that had been captured during Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. He was unshaven and dressed in rumpled khakis and a navy blazer.

“Dr. Vaughan?” asked Macaulay as she kept walking toward the archaeology lab.

“This is a restricted area,” she said. “The public exhibits are upstairs.”

She looked back and saw that he was following her.

“What do you want?” she said, turning to face him.

The girl's violet eyes made Macaulay regret he hadn't shaved in three days. She reminded him of his late wife, Diana. . . . She had the same intelligent good looks and, despite her mud-caked clothes, more than a hint of sexuality.

“Can we talk for a few minutes?” he said.

“I don't have time right now,” she said without slowing down.

“Dr. Benchley told me he thought you would be able to give me a little time,” he said.

She paused in her tracks, not wanting to tick off Marvin Benchley any more than she already had.

He handed her a card and she glanced down at it. A colorful logo surrounded the words
ANSCHUTZ INTERNATIONAL
. The name underneath it was
BRIG.
GENERAL STEVEN MACAU
LAY, UNITED STATES AI
R FORCE (RETIRED)
.

She looked up at him again. His thick brown hair was just beginning to gray, and his face had a square-jawed leanness along with brown eyes and a dimpled chin.

“You look too young to be a general,” she said skeptically.

“I've got a painting up in my attic that does all the aging. Have you ever heard of a man named John Lee Hancock?”

“The billionaire oilman whose core philosophy in life is to drill for oil and gas in every wildlife refuge?” she said.

“Let's just say he's a strong advocate for energy independence.”

“I'm sure he's for truth, justice, and the American way, but right now I'm busy,” she said, using her other electronic key to open her lab door.

“Five minutes,” said Macaulay.

She thought of Benchley again.

“Come into the lab,” she said.

The big high-ceilinged room was antiseptically clean. Wooden cabinets with glass doors lined three of the walls, each holding dozens of objects on the shelves. Lexy placed her specimen case on a square table centered under a
bank of surgical lamps, and motioned him over to the chair near her desk.

“We have made an interesting discovery that would benefit from your knowledge and expertise,” he began.

“Where?” she asked.

“The Greenland ice cap.”

He saw the first hint of interest in her eyes.

“We were up there to recover a Second World War bomber. J.L.—Mr. Hancock—is the founder of the Cactus Legion, which has recovered and preserved rare war birds all over the world.”

“I'm glad he believes in preserving something.”

Macaulay ignored her sarcasm.

“While we were recovering the plane, we found something else a lot deeper down in the ice. It appears to be a Viking ship.”

“Is it rigged?”

“I don't know,” said Macaulay. “Most of it is still encased in ice.”

“No one has ever found a fully rigged Viking ship. The Gokstad ship discovered in 1880 was almost intact, but it had only the barest remnants of its sail and rigging. So you may have made a good find.”

“Will you come up and help us determine its significance?”

“I've recently made my own find, and I believe it's of far greater value to archaeological history. It will prove that the Norsemen came to this country two hundred years before Columbus.”

“Only two hundred years?” asked Macaulay with mock innocence.

“We'll never know now.”

“We carbon dated a wood chip from the ship yesterday, and the trees that were felled to build it were cut down more than a thousand years ago,” he said.

“That's not surprising,” she said. “Erik the Red, Leif Eriksson's father, established his first settlement on the southwest coast of Greenland in 982. Your ship might have been part of one of his supply vessels.”

“What if I told you that we made another discovery aside from the ship?”

“What is it?”

“I'm afraid I can't tell you that until you get there.”

“Sorry,” she said with finality. “Is that all?”

“Time is of the essence, Dr. Vaughan. Winter is about to set in up there and the weather is deteriorating. We only have about three hours of sunlight each day.”

“I told you I can't come.”

“We're bringing in three other archaeologists on this,” said Macaulay. “Maybe you've heard of them—Professor Hjalmar Jensen from Norway, Sir Dorian St. George Bond from England, and Rob Falconer from Berkeley.”

“Sir Dorian wrote the canon on Norse navigation techniques,” she said. “Jensen is the leading authority on Norse genealogy. Falconer is brilliant if a bit ruthless. You're in good hands.”

She didn't mention that Falconer had once been her lover. He had almost cured her of men.

“We would like you to come too.”

“Why?”

“Professor Finchem, your mentor at Harvard, told me yesterday that when it comes to runology, no one in the field has more instinctive ability to translate early Norse
markings than you do. He referred to you as ‘the code breaker.'”

She laughed.

“Barnaby knows more than I'll ever know about rune markings. You should get him to go.”

“Actually, he was our first choice,” said Macaulay. “Unfortunately, he's recovering from open-heart surgery and is not up to the rigors of the ice cap. He recommended you.”

“That's very flattering, but it's still no,” she said. “I have a job here, General Macaulay, and I've used all my personal and vacation time.”

“Your Dr. Benchley is all for your going,” he replied. “He's very grateful for the contribution Mr. Hancock has just made to the historical society's capital fund. I have one other inducement to offer. If you go with me, I'll transfer fifty thousand dollars into account number one-one-four-five-six-three at the Pilot Grove Savings Bank before we leave this room.”

It was her checking account number.

“How can you do that?”

He held up his smart phone.

“Your bank information is already registered in here.”

Money had never been important to her. It wasn't now, although the thought of her Land Rover sitting outside with no brakes, along with her graduate school loan payments being six months overdue, made her pause.

“I have a Learjet waiting for us at the airport, Dr. Vaughan, and I'll have you back here in four days to continue your own work.”

“This is crazy.”

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,” he said.

“So you also have time to read Fitzgerald.”

“Long time ago.”

She hoped she wouldn't regret her decision.

“I'll need to go to my apartment,” she said, “to shower and gather my gear.”

“No problem.”

“My car is not functioning right now.”

“I have a rental right outside.”