The Valhalla Prophecy (19 page)

“IBUs?” Tova asked.

“Inflatable Buoyancy Units. Air bags, basically—they lift stuff underwater. Those look like two-hundred-fifty-kilo bags, and you’ve got eight of them, so it could be anything up to two metric tons?”

“The runestone that was stolen weighs about nine hundred and ninety kilos,” the Swede told him.

“Stolen?” Matt gave Nina a look of weary suspicion. “And let me guess, the guys who took it probably want to get their hands on its twin as well?”

“Uh … yeah,” she admitted. “They killed a guard at Tova’s museum to steal it, then tried to kidnap her as well.”

“Right. Why am I not surprised?” He shook his head. “One of these days I’ll learn to ask you about this kind of stuff
before
I bring all my gear out into the field!”

“It, ah … sounds as if you have experienced this sort of thing before,” Tova said, with slight worry.

Matt made a sarcastic sound. “Oh Christ, yeah. I’ve lost count of the number of times these galahs’ve almost gotten me killed! Let me tell you about it—”

“No, don’t,” Eddie cut in with a grin. “It’ll give her nightmares.”

“It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds,” Nina insisted, seeing that the older woman seemed to be reevaluating her decision to join the expedition. “And I made sure the IHA’s security procedures were put in place. The number of people who know what we’re doing is very small, and they’re all aware of the need for secrecy given what happened in Stockholm—there shouldn’t be any trouble.”

“Famous last words,” said Matt.

“Nobody knows we’re here. Tova and I worked out the location of the second runestone, and outside of this group, only a couple senior Norwegian officials, Seretse, and a few people at the IHA know exactly where that is.”

“Someone else might,” Eddie suggested darkly.

“Who?”

“The people who stole the first runestone.”

“Yeah, I was kinda hoping that wouldn’t come up. But,” Nina went on, “their expert doesn’t have nearly the amount of local knowledge and experience that Tova does, or any more access to the IHA database.”

“Wait, wait,” said Tova. Now it was her turn to adopt an expression of dawning suspicion. She chose her words carefully. “You
know
who stole the runestone and shot Arvid?” When Nina did not answer immediately, she continued: “You
do
know! Why did you not tell me?”

“I … yes, I know,” said Nina, shamefaced. “I didn’t tell you because it’s a security issue—an
IHA
security issue. One of the robbers—possibly even their leader—used to work for us before we fired him.”

The Swede was outraged. “I cannot believe you did not tell me! Have you told the police?”

“The UN told your government, and Interpol. I don’t know if they passed the information to the Stockholm police, although I’d certainly hope they did. But there’s no record of him entering or leaving Sweden, so he’s presumably traveling on a fake passport. We don’t even know if he’s still in the country.”

Tova stared at the icy ground, processing what she had learned before fixing the American with a stern gaze. “Who is this man?”

Nina hesitated, then decided that after what she had been through, the older woman deserved to know the truth. “His name’s Logan Berkeley.”

Tova blinked, surprised. “I have heard of him.”

“He was the IHA archaeologist overseeing the dig at the pyramids a couple of years ago. So yeah, his face was all over the papers and TV—he was big on self-publicity.”

“He’s keeping a lot lower profile now,” said Eddie.

Tova nodded. “He opened the chamber under the Sphinx—but you were already inside!”

“And he never forgave me for upstaging his big moment,” Nina said. “He sold out to the people who tried to raid the site—and went to prison for it. He was released about six months ago. It looks like he’s been selling his services again.”

“Wait,” said Matt, puzzled, “if this guy’s an Egyptian expert, why would he know anything about Vikings?”

Nina was a little affronted. “I’m the Atlantis expert, so why would I know anything about Alexander the Great or ancient Rome, right? Archaeologists aren’t fixated on one era from the moment they’re born.”

Eddie laughed. “No, you’re fixated on
all
of ’em.”

“Logan had just as broad a grounding in history and archaeology as I did. And you too, I imagine,” she
added to Tova, who nodded. “We may have specialized in certain areas, but that doesn’t make us ignorant of everything else.”

“All right, Jesus!” said Matt, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Didn’t mean to impugn the entire archaeological profession.”

“And actually, there was a connection between the Vikings and the Egyptians,” Tova said. “The Vikings’ voyages were very far reaching—they traded with Byzantium and the Caliphate of Baghdad, and are also believed to have had trade links with Egypt.”

“How far did they go?” asked Eddie.

“A long way. They reached the Americas centuries before Columbus, and also colonized Greenland and Iceland, traveled into Russia all the way to the Caspian Sea, deep into France and Germany—and Britain, of course. By the eleventh century they had settled most of England. Your own ancestors may even be Vikings!”

Matt put a finger to his chin, studying the Englishman with affected interest. “You know, I can see that. Eddie the Balding.”

Eddie held up a warning finger. “Oi.” His friend grinned. “That’s a pretty impressive amount of conquering, though,” he told Tova. “Didn’t realize they’d gone so far.”

“I guess you were only listening to the gory bits when they taught you about the Vikings at school,” Nina joked. He seemed confused. “You know, when you learned about eitr?” she prompted.

“Oh yeah, yeah,” he replied, before quickly changing the subject. “Anyway, Berkeley—a security camera caught him coming out of the museum with the guys who stole the runestone, so we know it’s him. I suppose the big question is: Why does he want it?”

“Maybe he just needs the money,” Matt suggested. “The IHA fired him, his professional reputation’s up the Swanee—he might want a nest egg.”

“But even if he’s only doing it for the money, that means someone else paid him—and all the other people involved—to take the runestone and presumably decipher
it,” said Nina. “So why do
they
want it so bad? What do they think they’ll find at Valhalla?”

Tova’s flare of anger had subsided. “Perhaps we will find out if we locate the second runestone.”

“In that case, I guess we’d better get cracking,” said Matt. “And I’ve got just the thing for the job. I hope so, anyway—it’d be a bloody great waste if I’d had it flown all the way here for nothing!”

He gave the photo back to Nina, then led them to his pickup truck, dropping the tailgate and hopping into the bed. “Here’s my new toy,” he announced with pride as he pulled back the tarp. “Ain’t he a beaut?”

“If submarines are your thing, then sure,” Nina replied. The machine was a pale blue rectangular block around five feet long and three high and wide, thruster pods protruding from its sides. Gleaming steel manipulator arms were folded like insect limbs on each side of a “head” containing cameras and spotlights. Painted along its flank was the word
NELSON
. “So what does that stand for? Nautical Exploration, uh, Logistics Submersible … something beginning with
O
 … no, I got nothing.”

“It doesn’t stand for anything,” said Matt, amused. “It’s in capitals because I liked the font, that’s all. It’s just a name. You know, from Admiral Nelson?”

“Oh. Yeah. That works too.”

“But he’s designed for endurance work, including under ice, so he should be just what you need. The OSO commissioned me to build him to work in the Arctic—give it a few years, we’re going to see some major disputes over territory and drilling rights, so the UN wants to be able to check that one lot isn’t slant-drilling into someone else’s oilfield, that kind of thing. Full sea trials aren’t scheduled for another few months, so I was able to borrow him.”

Eddie took a closer look. “How’s it controlled?”

“Fiber-optic remote link.” He pointed at the head and its baleful mechanical eyes. “Got three-D cameras, plus a LIDAR for longer-distance scanning. My usual bag of
tricks. Endurance should be about twenty hours on a full charge.”

Nina glanced out at the frozen waters. “How much of the lake will you be able to cover in that time?”

“It’s a bloody long lake,” Eddie added.

Matt patted the fiberglass outer casing. “He moves at a decent clip, no worries. And when you told me that what you’re after probably has a lodestone set into it, well …” He crouched, indicating a black box mounted on an equipment rack at the bow. A long metal rod extended backward from it beneath the craft’s belly. “That’s the MAD.”

Tova raised her eyebrows. “Why is it mad?”

“It takes after the bloke who built it,” said Eddie.

The Australian’s round face creased into a half grin. “Cheers, mate. No, it stands for Magnetic Anomaly Detector. This one was designed to track pipelines; anything metal causes a change in the earth’s magnetic field, and the MAD picks it up. If the lodestone’s as big as the one you just showed me, it’ll easily find it. It’s just a matter of following a search pattern until something pings.”

“How soon can you start looking?” Nina asked.

“How soon can you chop me a big-enough hole in the ice?” came the cheeky reply. “He’s fully charged, so I’ll just need time to put up a shelter for the remote console and the support gear; then we use the crane to lower him into the water.”

Nina nodded. “Okay, I’ll tell Mikkel”—their Norwegian liaison and guide—“and his people to start making a hole for you. Eddie?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said with a sigh. “Don’t tell me: I’m on ice-breaking duty, am I?”

“I don’t think you’ll be going out there with a pickax,” she assured him. “I saw a couple of chain saws in one of the trucks.”

His face brightened. “Chain saws? Oh, well, if you insist …”

Nina laughed. “Okay—let’s break the ice.”

To Eddie’s annoyance—“I’ve been conned!” he protested—Mikkel limited use of the chain saws to himself and one of his small team, the Yorkshireman joining the other Norwegians in the more strenuous job of hauling out the blocks of ice cut from the hole in the frozen lake. But the operation was accomplished with practiced efficiency, an opening twelve feet by eight being sliced into the surface before Matt had even finished assembling his equipment inside a pop-up tent.

At this time of year the ice was well over two feet thick, more than enough to take the weight of the crane truck and the Remotely Operated Vehicle now suspended from it. All the same, its journey from the shore—Matt had picked a point sixty feet out from the lake’s edge to be sure that the water beneath was deep enough for
Nelson
to maneuver—was made with great patience, Mikkel and his companions constantly checking how much stress was being put on the surface. Nina was unnerved by the squeals and crackles coming from under the truck’s chain-wrapped tires, but it made it to the hole without incident.

Matt came out to oversee the lowering of his charge into the frigid depths. “All right, start bringing him down,” he called, once he was sure the submersible was well clear of the hole’s edges. “Gently now.”

The crane operator said something in Norwegian with a long-suffering tone, prompting laughter from his countrymen. Tova, who had strolled onto the ice with the unconcerned air of someone well used to the potential dangers, giggled. “He said, ‘No, I thought I would drop it straight in,’ ” she told the Australian, who was not amused.

The ROV began its leisurely descent. Eddie walked out onto the lake to watch; Nina, still nervous about being on the ice, hesitantly followed. A stiff wind blowing down the lake made her shiver. Even though the sky was fairly clear and the sun was shining, it was still bitterly cold. She looked along the opposite shore. Nothing but snow-draped trees for miles in either direction. For the first time, the isolation of the location really struck
her. If anything unexpected happened, they were a long way from help.

She tried to shake off the unsettling feeling as Matt called out, “Okay, ease off! Release the cable!”
Nelson
was in the water. Everyone gathered around the hole to watch as he unwound a cable from a relay box he had placed on the ice, then hopped onto the submersible’s back and screwed it tightly into a connector. “Control line,” he explained as he returned to the ice. The relay box was linked via another cable to the remote controls in the tent. “The spool’s on the sub rather than the surface, so if the water freezes over, the line won’t snag.”

“How long’s the line?” Nina asked.

“Long enough, don’t you worry!” He crouched to check the connection on the box, then stood, satisfied. “Okay! I just need to run the diagnostics, then we’re good to go.” An apologetic smile. “Afraid that’s where the boring part starts. No telling how long it’ll take before the search turns anything up.”

“We are not far from where the old records said the Viking site was found,” said Tova. “That is the most likely place for the runestone to be.”