Valhalla Rising (47 page)

“This can’t be where Dr. Egan conceived and designed his magnetohydrodynamic engines,” Pitt said firmly.

“Why do you say that?” asked Thomas cautiously.

“This room is a chemistry lab, no more. Dr. Egan was a brilliant engineer. I see no drafting tables, no computers programmed for displaying three-dimensional components, no facilities or machinery to construct working models. I’m sorry, but this is not where an inventive mind would create a great advance in propulsion technology.” Pitt paused and stared at both Kelly and Thomas, whose eyes were cast on the stained wooden floor. “What I can’t figure out is why you’re both stroking me.”

“Kelly and I are hiding nothing from you, Mr. Pitt,” said Thomas seriously. “The truth is, we do not know where Elmore conducted his research. He was a fine man and a good friend, but he had a secretive streak that was nothing short of fanatical. Elmore would disappear for days, sometimes weeks, in a secret research laboratory whose location was known only to him. Kelly and I tried to follow him on different occasions, but he somehow always knew and eluded us. It was as if he were a ghost who vanished whenever he desired.”

“Do you think the secret lab is here on the farm?” asked Pitt.

“We don’t know,” replied Kelly. “When we were certain Dad had left the farm on business or research trips, Josh and I looked everywhere, but never found a clue to its location.”

“What was Dr. Egan researching when he died?”

Thomas shrugged helplessly. “I have no idea. He refused to take me into his confidence. He only said it would revolutionize science and technology.”

“You were his closest friend,” said Giordino. “It’s odd that he never confided in you.”

“You’d have to have known Elmore. He was two people. One minute the absentminded but lovable father and friend. The next, a paranoid master engineer who trusted no one, not even those closest to him.”

“Did he ever take time for pleasure?” inquired Pitt.

Josh and Kelly looked at each other.

“He was incredibly passionate about researching the Vikings,” said Thomas.

“He was also a dedicated fan of Jules Verne,” added Kelly. “He read his works over and over.”

Pitt motioned around the laboratory. “I see no indication of any such passions.”

Kelly laughed. “We haven’t shown you his library.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“It’s in a separate building beside the house overlooking the river. Dad built it almost twenty years ago. It was his home away from home, his sanctuary from the pressures of his work.”

The building that housed Egan’s study was made of stone and appeared to be designed after an eighteenth-century grain mill. Slate covered the roof, and ivy rose on the rock walls. The only admission to modern convenience were the skylights in the roof. Thomas used a large, old-fashioned key to unlock the thick oak door.

The interior of the library was what Pitt had imagined. The rows of mahogany bookshelves and the paneled walls oozed finesse and refinement. The big overstuffed chairs and couch were leather, and the desk, still littered with research papers, was a huge rosewood rolltop. The ambience smothered the visitors with comfort and solace. This library must have fit Egan like a snug, well-worn glove, Pitt thought. It was an ideal setting in which to conduct research.

He walked along the bookshelves that ran from floor to ceiling. A ladder with wheels on its upper frames moved along a track, enabling Egan to reach the top shelves. Paintings of Viking ships hung on the only open wall. On a table below the paintings sat a model of a submarine nearly four feet in length. Pitt guessed the scale at a quarter of an inch to the foot. As a marine engineer himself, Pitt studied the model closely, noting the exacting craftsmanship. The boat was rounded on the ends, with portholes along the sides and a small tower that sat toward the bow. The propeller’s blades were shaped more like paddles than the curved tips of modern designs.

Pitt had never seen a craft quite like it. The only comparison he could think of was a diagram of a submarine he’d studied once that had been built by the Confederates during the Civil War.

The brass plaque on the base beneath the model read,
Nautilus. Seventy meters in length with an 8-meter beam. Launched 1863.

“A beautiful model,” said Pitt. “Captain Nemo’s submarine, isn’t it? From
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea?
”

“Dad designed it from an etching in the original book and found a master model builder by the name of Fred Torneau to construct it.”

“Classic work,” said Giordino admiringly.

Pitt continued his tour, examining the titles of the books on the shelves. They all covered the Viking era from 793 to 1450
A.D.
One entire section was devoted to the runic alphabets used by the Germanic and Norse people from the third to the thirteenth centuries.

Kelly watched Pitt’s interest in the books and came up, holding his arm. “Dad became expert at translating the characters found on rune stones throughout the country.”

“He believed the Vikings came this far south?”

She nodded. “He was convinced. When I was little, he dragged mother and me around half the midwestern states in an old camper while he copied and studied every rune stone he could find.”

“Couldn’t have been a large number,” said Giordino.

“He found and recorded over thirty-five stones with ancient runic alphabets.” She paused and pointed to one entire shelf of binders and notebooks. “It’s all right there.”

“Did he ever intend to publish his findings?” asked Giordino.

“Not as far as I knew. About ten years ago, it was as if a light switch had been turned off. He suddenly lost all interest in his Viking research.”

“From one fixation to another,” said Thomas. “After the Vikings, Elmore immersed himself in Jules Verne.” He swept a hand across one entire bookcase. “He collected every book, every story Verne ever wrote.”

Pitt pulled one of the books from the shelf and opened it. The covers were leather bound. Gold lettering on the spine and front cover read
Mysterious Island.
Many of the pages were heavily underlined. He returned it to the shelf and stepped back. “I see no bound papers or notebooks concerning Verne. Apparently, Dr. Egan read the books, but wrote no commentaries.”

Thomas looked exhausted from the traumatic events of the day. He slowly lowered himself into a leather chair. “Elmore’s dedication to Verne and the Vikings is something of a mystery. He was not the kind of man who drove himself to become an expert on a subject purely for pleasure. I never knew him to gain specific knowledge without a purpose.”

Pitt looked at Kelly. “Did he ever tell you why he was so absorbed in the Vikings?”

“It wasn’t so much the lore and history of the culture as the runic inscriptions.”

Giordino took one of Egan’s Viking notebooks from the shelf and opened it. His eyes squinted as he thumbed through the pages, his face registering bafflement. He flipped through the pages of a second notebook, then a third. Then he looked up, utterly mystified, as he passed the notebooks to the others standing beside him. “It looks like Dr. Egan was more of an enigma than any of you knew.”

They all studied the notebooks and then looked at each other in puzzled incomprehension.

All the pages in all the notebooks were blank.

“I don’t understand,” said Kelly, looking totally lost.

“Nor I,” added Thomas.

Kelly opened two more notebooks and found them empty as well. “I vividly remember the family trips into the backwoods searching for rune stones. When he found one, he would highlight the rune fonts with talcum powder before photographing them. Then, while we camped nearby in the evening, he would translate the messages. I used to pester him, and he’d shoo me away as he scribbled in his notebooks. I saw him make notations with my own eyes.”

“Not in these books,” said Pitt. “None of the pages look as if they’d been removed and replaced with blank pages. Your father must have hidden the original notebooks elsewhere.”

“No doubt gathering dust in the lost laboratory you talk about,” said Giordino, whose respect for Elmore Egan had dropped a couple of notches.

Kelly’s lovely face was flushed with bewilderment, and her sapphire blue eyes seemed to be trying to see something that was not there. “Why would Dad do such things? I always remember a man who was so straight and honest he didn’t have a devious bone in his body.”

“He must have had a good reason,” Thomas said, in an attempt to comfort her.

Pitt looked down at her compassionately. “It’s getting late. We’re not going to solve anything tonight. I suggest we sleep on it and maybe we’ll come up with some answers in the light of day.”

No one gave him an argument. They were all dead tired. All, except Pitt. He was the last one to leave the library. He pretended to lock the door before he handed the key to Thomas. Later, when everyone was asleep, he quietly returned to the library and entered through the unlocked door. Then he turned on the lights and began searching through Egan’s research material on the rune stones. A trail and a story began to emerge.

By four in the morning, he had found what he was looking for. Many answers still eluded him. But the mud in the water had cleared just enough for him to get a glimpse of the bottom. Happily satisfied, he fell asleep in one of the comfortable leather chairs, inhaling the quaint smell of the old books.

G
iordino surprised everyone by making breakfast. Afterward, Pitt, tired and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, dutifully called Sandecker and brought him up-to-date. The admiral had little to report on the investigation into Cerberus and mentioned in passing that Hiram Yaeger was mystified as to how Pitt had filled Egan’s leather case with oil behind his back. Pitt was mystified, too, and couldn’t fathom who was behind the trick.

Giordino joined Thomas, who had some work to do in the lab while Pitt and Kelly returned to the library. Kelly noticed the books and papers stacked on the rolltop desk. “Looks like a little fairy was burning the midnight oil.”

Pitt looked at her. “Believe you me, it was no fairy.”

“Now I see why you look like the morning after,” she said, smiling. She came over and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. “I thought you might have visited me last night instead of Dad’s library.”

Pitt started to say “business before pleasure,” but thought better of it. “I’m not good at romancing women when my mind is a million miles away.”

“Back a thousand years in time,” she added, studying the open Viking books on the desk. “What were you after?”

“You said your Dad traveled around the country and translated thirty-five rune stones.”

“Give or take a couple. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Do you recall the locations?”

She tilted her head back and forth trying to remember, her long maple-sugar brown hair curling down her shoulders. Finally, she held up her hands emptily. “About five or six come to mind, but they were so far off the beaten track I couldn’t tell you how to get anywhere near them.”

“You won’t have to.”

“What are you driving at?” she challenged.

“We’re going to launch an expedition to retrace your Dad’s trail to the rune stones and have them translated.”

“To what end?”

“Call it gut instinct,” said Pitt. “But your father didn’t chase around the country looking for Viking inscriptions and then hide or destroy his translations for laughs. He set out to accomplish something. He had a mission. I believe it ties in somehow with his experiments.”

Her lips were set in doubt. “If so, you’re seeing something I fail to see.”

Pitt grinned at her. “Can’t lose by trying.”

“Dad destroyed all his notes revealing directions to the rune-stone sites. How are you going to find them?”

He leaned over the desk, picked up a book and handed it to her. The title was
Messages from the Ancient Vikings,
by Dr. Marlys Kaiser. “This lady has compiled a comprehensive record of more than eighty rune stones throughout North America and their translations. Her earlier works are here in your dad’s library. I think it might pay to visit Dr. Kaiser.”

“Eighty runes —” She stopped herself, a thought tugging at her mind. “But Dad only studied thirty-five. Why did he stop at that number and not study the other forty-five?”

“Because he was only concerned with the inscriptions that related to the particular project he was pursuing at the time.”

There was a glint in her blue eyes as curiosity dug deeper into her mind. “Why didn’t Dad leave a record of the inscriptions he translated?”

“I’m hoping Dr. Kaiser can provide us with answers,” he said, squeezing her hand.

“When do we leave?” she asked, excitement building within her.

“This afternoon, or as soon as your new security guards are positioned around the farm.”

“Where does Dr. Kaiser live?”

“A little town called Monticello. It’s about sixty miles northwest of Minneapolis.”

“I’ve never been to Minnesota.”

“Lots of bugs this time of year.”

Kelly gazed at the books on Vikings lining the shelves of her father’s library. “I wonder if Dr. Kaiser knew Dad?”