Kiev in the Viking age, traders and warriors who came down the rivers in longships from the north. Blond, bearded, impossibly tall, the very image of Harald Hardrada and his court.”
“Varangians,” Jack murmured. “The Rus.”
“Before my mother died, she told me something of her family for the first time. A story of intermarriage far back in our past, of family legend that had us descended from Rus nobility.”
“Thought so.” Jack smiled.
“Looks like I’m the only one here who doesn’t have a drop of Viking blood,” Costas said.
“Don’t count on it. Halfdan’s inscription of Hagia Sofia isn’t the only evidence of Vikings in that neck of the woods. There’s another runic inscription on an ancient sculpture in Athens. It looks like Harald and his boys had some fun in Greece too. They got pretty well everywhere.”
Costas was looking at a map he had sketched of their adventure. “In the western hemisphere, anyway.”
Jack was serious again. “I also just spoke to the IMU security chief in the UK,” he said, addressing all three of them. “As a precaution, just before she was taken by Loki, Maria emailed the penultimate draft of the dossier she was helping O’Connor prepare to the IMU security chief. As we speak Interpol are instigating a number of high- profile arrests. Apparently the felag were heavily involved in international crime, money laundering, drugs and arms, the antiquities black market. One of them was even implicated in an audacious robbery at the Roman site of Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples, right under the noses of the Italian authorities. It looks like our friend Reksnys wasn’t the only one using the power of the felag to line his own pockets.”
“Seems a long way from the heroic ideals of Harald Hardrada,” Costas murmured.
“The modern felag had nothing to do with that.” Jeremy’s voice had an edge to it. “They were a criminal organisation, pure and simple. They had about as much historical legitimacy as the Nazis.”
“Apparently the dossier you and O’Connor compiled was crucial, the missing link that allowed Interpol to tie all these characters together,” Jack said to Maria. “And now that they’re implicated in murder, I don’t think we’ll be hearing from the felag for a good while.”
“What about that shadowy character in the Vatican?” Costas said.
Jack nodded, and a flicker of concern passed over his face. “That’s the one exception, I’m afraid. Reksnys nearly gave it away when he was boasting about his informers back in the chamber, but he stopped himself. O’Connor suspected who it was but wanted to be certain before telling us. His murder cut that short. That was Loki’s one small victory. But whoever it is, you can be assured he’ll be covering his tracks right now, keeping a squeaky-clean profile until the investigation dies down. Meanwhile we might uncover more in O’Connor’s records, some clue to who it is.”
“I’m going back to Iona to finish the job.” Maria’s eyes had clouded, and she forced a smile through her tears. “At least Father O’Connor kept his honour to the end. You remember what he said about the Vikings? Your fate is predetermined, so what matters is your conduct in life, your uncompromising behaviour. So you can enter Valhalla and stand alongside the gods at the final battle of Ragnarok knowing you have kept your honour and that of your brethren intact.”
“He was one Hardrada would have been pleased to have had alongside him,” Jeremy said.
“Such a waste.” Maria looked down again, her voice hoarse with emotion. “All that knowledge, all that humanity.”
“Scholarship is about continuity,” Jack said gently, putting his hand on her shoulder. “About passing on wisdom to the next generation, knowing it can provide the basis for new discoveries, revelations you can hardly guess at.” He glanced at Jeremy. “I think Father O’Connor did that.”
“Speaking of which.” Jeremy looked at Jack with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, and patted a package resting on his knees. “I had this flown in via Goose Bay in Labrador on the last helicopter shuttle. I wanted to see the real thing with my own eyes before telling you.”
Jack smiled warmly. “I thought we hadn’t heard the last from you.”
“You remember that afternoon with the old Inuit, when we talked about the disappearance of the Greenland Norse in the fourteenth century? That haunting final account, about how the Scraelings had taken the entire western settlement?”
“Go on.”
“The Hereford library has really come up trumps. Big time.” Jeremy clutched the package, his face flushed with excitement. “It’s what Norse scholars have dreamt of for years, a discovery as fabulous as any of Harald’s lost treasure. Found dumped with all the rest of the old stuff in that abandoned staircase.”
“Let’s hear it,” Jack said.
Jeremy stripped the bubble wrap from the package and revealed the hoary leather binding of an old book. “It’s phenomenal.” He turned to Maria. “The lost saga of the western Greenland settlement, Vestribyg?a Saga. Written down in the fourteenth century.”
Maria drew in her breath with sudden excitement and peered over Jeremy’s shoulder as he carefully opened the medieval codex to the final page.
“Does it give any details of what happened?” Costas asked.
“It certainly does.” Maria had been scanning the lines while Jeremy was talking. “By now you should be pretty familiar with this.” She pointed at two words in the centre of the page, and Costas peered down. “Haraldi konungi, our true king,” Maria said. “Harald Sigurdsson.”
Costas whistled. “Harald Hardrada! The Norse Greenlanders remembered, almost three centuries after he left!”
“And check out the symbol after his name.”
“Don’t tell me. The menorah.” Costas grinned as they all peered at the symbol like a rune among the Latin letters of the text. “We seem to have come full circle. Constantinople, Iona, the icefjord and Vinland, the Yucatan and now back to the musty old cathedral library that started it all.”
“This closes one loop, but then leads off somewhere fantastic,” Jeremy said. “Wait till you hear what the text says.”
Maria translated slowly as she traced her finger along the lines. “Anno Domini 1332. The leaders of the Vestribyg? determined to follow their true king Harald Sigurdsson to the Nor?rseta, and across the sea to the west.” She looked up. “They were fleeing Church oppression, like the Crusader tax imposed on them in the twelfth century. The Norse Greenlanders were pagans at heart. To them Harald Hardrada was their true king, not some distant pontiff in Rome.”
“So where did they go?” Costas asked.
Maria continued, her finger farther down the page. “North to the great icefjord where Halfdan the Fearless set forth in his ship to Valhalla.”
“Good God,” Jack murmured. “It actually mentions Halfdan and the longship.” He glanced over at Costas. “The iceberg wasn’t just a dream after all.”
“Nightmare, more like.”
“They numbered one hundred and twenty people, men, women and children, and after packing their ships with provisions they set off northwest, never to be seen again. They were led by Erling Sighvatsson, Bjarni Thordarson and Endridi Oddsson.”
“I know those names,” Maria said excitedly. “They’re on the Kingigtorssuaq runestone, found on an island north of the icefjord. The only other runestone found in Greenland until the longship discovery.”
“Sometimes the pieces really do all fall together!” Jack murmured, shaking his head in wonder.
“So you’re saying Bjarni and these characters led the refugees from Greenland towards the Northwest Passage?” Costas said.
“That’s what the saga implies.”
“Any chance they made it?”
“No reason why not,” Jack said. “They were the hardiest seafarers ever. Look at where Harald and his depleted crew got to after Stamford Bridge. They almost circumnavigated the western hemisphere. If the passages through from Baffin Bay to the Beaufort Sea had been free of ice in the summer of 1333, then the Greenlanders could have made it.”
“Vikings in the Pacific in the fourteenth century,” Jeremy mused. “So much for ancient Chinese voyages of discovery. The Vikings would have to take the cake.”
“I think you might want to get some of your anthropology colleagues out there to run a few DNA tests,”
