The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  Their pilot removed his pipe, spat into the sea, and mumbled a warning. “No use that name.”

  Apparently, such superstitions had not fully died away.

  Mac lowered his voice. “I’ll wager those old stories were the true source for someone choosing to name this glacier Helheim.”

  Elena searched around and asked the question nagging at her since she climbed aboard the boat. “Where exactly are we going?”

  Mac pointed to a black arch in the ice wall. They were close enough now to make out an opening, a shadowy rift cut into the glacier face. It was framed in azure ice that seemed to glow from within.

  “Last week, a large berg calved off there, exposing a huge meltwater channel.”

  She noted a stream running out of the rift, strong enough to push back the floating icy sludge that rimmed the bottom of the glacier. As they approached, the metal sides of the boat sliced through the loose broken ice with a scream of knives on steel. It set her teeth on edge. A new coldness settled into her bones as she suddenly recognized the trajectory of their boat and the lack of any beach in sight.

  “Are . . . are we going to travel inside the glacier?” she asked.

  Mac nodded. “Straight into the heart of Helheim.”

  In other words, down to the World of the Dead.

  9:54 A.M.

  Douglas MacNab kept wary watch on his passenger as they approached the face of the glacier. He cast sidelong glances back at Dr. Cargill, noting how much paler her countenance had grown, how her fingers had tightened on the boat’s gunwale.

  Hang in there, kid. It’ll be worth it.

  When he had first been told an archaeologist—a woman—was coming to Greenland from Egypt, he hadn’t known what to expect. He vacillated between picturing a female Indiana Jones and some bespectacled academic who would prove to be ill-fitted for such a harsh landscape. He assessed the reality to be somewhere in between. The woman was plainly overwhelmed, but she did not balk. Past the trepidation in her eyes, he recognized a stubborn curiosity.

  He also hadn’t expected someone so pretty. She was not overly curvaceous or photoshopped polished. Her form was lithe, but muscular, her lips full, her high cheeks rosy in the cold. Small lines crinkled the corners of her eyes, maybe from too much squinting into a desert sun or maybe from long hours of academic reading. Either way, it gave her a studious look, like a stern schoolteacher. He also found himself unduly fascinated by the lock of ice-blond hair poking out from the edge of her woolen cap.

  “Mac, eyes forward,” Nelson warned him. “Unless you want us to run into a submerged berg.”

  Mac stiffened and turned fully forward, both to hide the heat rising to his face and to peer into the depths ahead of their skiff. The blue waters had turned a murky brown due to the silty melt of the glacier.

  He returned to his job in the bow, watching for any hidden dangers, both in the waters below and across the surrounding calving face. But he knew John Okalik, their Inuit pilot, had a far sharper eye when it came to reading the ice. The native had been plying these treacherous waters since he was a boy, nearly five decades. And his family for generations before that.

  Still, Mac kept a closer eye as they drew up to the mouth of the meltwater opening. It stretched ten yards across and climbed twice as high. Another steel-sided boat came into view. It was tucked to one side and roped in place via ice stakes pounded into the wall. Two men sat there with huge-barreled rifles in their laps.

  John stood up at the stern and chatted quickly with the pair, relatives of his, which pretty much defined everyone from the village of Tasiilaq.

  As they spoke, Mac looked back and forth, trying to follow the conversation. He was somewhat fluent in Kalaallisut, the main Inuit language of Greenland, but the men here were using the dialect of their local tribe, the Tunumiit.

  Their pilot finally settled back to his seat by the tiller.

  “So, John, we’re good?” Mac asked.

  “My cousins say yes. River still open.”

  John goosed the motor and slipped past the other boat to enter the meltwater channel. The grumble of the outboard amplified in the enclosed space as the skiff fought the current.

  Mac noted Elena staring back at the shrinking arch of sunlight—and at the armed pair. “Why the guards?” she asked. “Do we have to worry about polar bears swimming out there?”

  It was a reasonable guess. There remained a persistent threat of those giant white carnivores, especially with their astounding ability to swim long distances—though the shrinking Arctic ice pack was straining even their considerable ability.

  “Not bears,” Mac answered her. “Once we get to the site, you’ll understand.”

  “Where—?”

  “It’s not much farther,” he promised. “And I think it’s best you see it without any expectations.” He glanced to Nelson. “It’s how we discovered it. I came in here three days ago with Nelson, mostly for the adventure of it, but also to better understand what’s going on underneath Helheim’s frozen white face. Drilling out mile-deep cores and analyzing the ancient gasses trapped in the old ice can only give you so much information. Here was a rare chance to travel to the source, to the heart of the glacier.”

  Nelson spoke as he struggled to open his watertight pack. “I came along to take samples at this depth, searching for any mineral treasures ground up by this massive ice shovel carving its way across the face of Greenland.”

  “What’s even out here?” Elena asked him.

  Nelson grunted as he finally tugged open the wax-sealed zipper. “Greenland’s true wealth lies not in the amount of freshwater trapped as ice, but what is hiding beneath it. A cornucopia of untapped riches. Gold, diamonds and rubies, huge veins of copper and nickel. Rare earth elements. It promises to be a huge boon to Greenland and those that live here.”

  “Not to mention filling the deep pockets of AGM,” Mac added pointedly.

  Nelson dismissed this with a derisive snort as he extracted a handheld device and set about calibrating it.

  Elena turned her attention to the tunnel. The blue ice grew ever darker as they continued deeper. “How far does this tunnel go?”

  “All the way to the rocky coastline,” Mac said. “We’re traveling through a tongue of ice that extends three-quarters of a mile out from the shore.”

  10:02 A.M.

  Oh, god . . .

  Elena’s breathing grew heavier with this news. She tried to imagine the weight of ice above her head, remembering Mac’s description of a berg the size of lower Manhattan calving off this glacier.

  What if that happened while we’re inside here?

  It eventually became so dark Mac switched on a light at the bow of the boat, casting a beam far down the tunnel, igniting the ice to a bluish glow, revealing darker veins within, like some ancient map, marking traceries of mineral deposits scoured from the distant coast.

  She took a deep breath, doing her best to calm her nerves. While she had no problem crawling her way into tombs, this was different. Ice was everywhere. She tasted it on her tongue, drew it in with every breath. It encircled her completely. She was inside the ice; the ice was inside her.

  Finally, a glow appeared out of the darkness, beyond the reach of the bow lamp.

  Mac glanced back to her, confirming what she hoped. “We’re almost there.”

  With a final whine of the motor, the skiff rode up the river to where blue ice ended in an archway of black rock. The meltwater channel continued farther, flowing down a series of cascades formed of broken stones and ice. But a single battery-powered lamp pole marked the end of their journey, a lone lighthouse in a frozen world.

  Elena gasped at the sight illuminated before her. It was as if this lighthouse had lured a ship to this cold harbor.

  “This is impossible,” she managed to eke out.

  John angled their skiff to an eddy at the side of the river, where Mac roped their bow to a stake screwed into the ice wall.

  Elena stood up, balancing
herself, oblivious to the dangers of the icy waters. She craned her neck to take in the breadth of the huge wooden ship, its keel and planks turned black with age.

  “How could this be here?” she mumbled.

  Mac helped her from the boat to a spit of wet rock. “If I had to guess, the sailors sought shelter in what was once a sea cave.” He waved an arm to the black rock that hung over their heads. “They must have gotten trapped here, become frozen in place, until eventually the ice swallowed them completely.”

  “How long ago was that?” Elena asked.

  “From the age of the ice,” Nelson said, as he climbed out to join them, “we estimate it was shipwrecked around the ninth century.”

  Mac stared back at her. “Everyone thought Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in 1492. Then he lost that title when it was discovered the Vikings had settled in Greenland and northern Canada in the late tenth century.”

  “If you’re correct about the age, it would mean this ship landed a full century earlier,” Elena said. “And this is no Viking ship.”

  “That’s what we thought, too, but we’re no experts.”

  Nelson nodded. “That’s why you’re here.”

  Elena now understood. While she had a dual degree in paleoanthropology and archaeology, her specialty was in nautical archaeology. It was why she was picked to unearth the Egyptian port city swallowed by the Mediterranean. Her field of interest was in pushing back the date when humankind first dared to ply the seas. She remained endlessly fascinated by such endeavors and the engineering history behind each advancement. It was a passion likely instilled in her as a girl, when she and her father used to sail each summer off Martha’s Vineyard. She still cherished those childhood memories, those rare moments when the two could spend quality time together. Even in college, she had been part of her university’s crew team, rowing scull to an Ivy League championship.

  “Any guesses as to where this ship came from?” Mac asked.

  “I don’t have to guess.” She headed toward the exposed stern of the boat. The forward bow was still encased in ice. “Look at how the sheathing planks are stitched together. Even the bindings are coconut rope. It’s all a very characteristic design.”

  “Did you say coconut?”

  She nodded and stepped toward where a pair of masts had broken long ago and now stuck out of the cave like two flags. The torn remnants of their sails were still preserved. “Those two lateen sails . . . they’re made of palm-leaf matting.”

  Nelson frowned. “Coconut and palm leaves. So definitely not Vikings.”

  “No, this is a Sambuk. One of the largest dhows of the Arab world. This one appears to even have a deck up there, which makes it one of the rare oceanic merchant vessels of the Arab world.”

  “If you’re right,” Mac said, “which I don’t doubt, then this discovery could prove it was Arabs, not Vikings, who first set foot here.”

  She wasn’t ready to assert that. Not until she could carbon-date the vessel. Still, her friend—the colleague who had urged her to come here—had been right. This discovery had the potential to rewrite history.

  Nelson followed her, waving his handheld device. “Unfortunately, these poor sailors never made it back home to tell their story.”

  “Or at least, one didn’t,” Mac added. “We found only a single body aboard the ship. No telling what happened to the rest.”

  Elena turned sharply back, nearly blinded as Mac flicked on a flashlight. “So, you’ve been inside?”

  Mac pointed toward where a boulder had cracked open the side of the hull. “It’s the other reason you were recommended. This isn’t all we discovered. Follow me.”

  He led the way to the trapped ship and twisted sideways to fold his large form through the crack in the hull. “Careful where you step and try not to brush against any supports. We’re lucky this boat wasn’t crushed flat by the ice. The roof of this cave must have protected it all this time.”

  Elena climbed in after Mac, with Nelson trailing. John stayed with the boat, still smoking his pipe. With the motor switched off, the place was now deathly quiet, as if the world were holding its breath. As her ears adjusted, though, she could still hear the ice. The walls moaned and sighed. A low grinding echoed throughout the tunnels as if some massive beast were gnashing its teeth.

  The reminder of the danger tempered her excitement—but not enough to stop her from exploring the ancient ship.

  Mac’s flashlight illuminated the main hold, which was supported by ice-blackened timbers. They crossed quickly through this dead forest. The air had a vague oily smell, like mineral spirits or gasoline. To either side, giant earthenware jars stood shoulder-high, lining the curve of the walls. One had shattered long ago, looking as if it had exploded from the inside. She caught a stronger whiff of wet asphalt as she passed it, but any evaluation of the contents would have to wait.

  Clearly her guide had a goal in mind.

  Mac led them toward the boat’s bow, where steps led up to a door in a wooden wall. “We guessed this was the captain’s quarters.”

  He climbed and entered first, bowing low to pass through. Once inside, he stepped aside and offered his hand to help her up. She took it, already feeling weak-kneed by the breathless excitement of it all. Along with a measure of terror.

  She joined Mac in the windowless quarters. Shelves lined either side, where books and scrolls had long decayed into moldering ruins. A desk filled the forward part of the tiny cabin, abutting the arch of the ship’s wooden prow.

  “Might want to brace yourself for this,” Mac warned.

  He shifted his large bulk so she would approach the desk. She took a step forward, then back again. A chair stood before the desk. But it was not empty. A figure sat there, nestled in a fur cloak made from the hide of a polar bear. His upper body lay collapsed across the desktop, his cheek resting against the surface.

  She took a deep steadying breath. She had examined mummies during her time in Egypt, even dissected a few. But the body here was far more disturbing. The skin had turned to blackened leather, nearly the same hue as the ancient desktop. It looked as if body and desk were one. Yet, at the same time, the body appeared perfectly preserved, down to the eyelashes framing the white globes. She almost expected him to blink.

  “It seems the captain went down with the ship,” Nelson said distractedly, his focus on his handheld device.

  “Maybe he wanted to protect this.” Mac shifted his beam to follow the corpse’s arms draped atop the desk. Skeletal hands framed a large square metal box, easily two feet wide on each side and half a foot thick. Its surface was stained as black as everything else and looked to be hinged on the far side.

  “What is it?” Elena drew alongside Mac, taking some comfort from the solidness of his presence.

  “You tell me.”

  He reached across the body and lifted the lid. Light blazed forth from within—but as she blinked away the glare, she realized the brightness was only the flashlight’s beam reflecting off the golden inner surface.

  Shocked at what was revealed, she leaned closer. “It’s a map.” She studied the three-dimensional rendering of seas and oceans, of continents and islands. She traced the main body of water in the center, which was rendered in priceless blue lapis lazuli. “That has to be the Mediterranean.”

  The revealed map encompassed not only the breadth of the sea but all of Northern Africa, the Middle East, and the full measure of the European continent and surrounding oceans. The map extended out into the Atlantic, but not as far as Iceland or Greenland.

  These sailors traveled beyond the edge of their map.

  But why? Were they explorers searching for new lands? Had they been blown off course? Were they fleeing a threat? A hundred other questions filled her head.

  At the top of the gold map, an elaborate silver device was imbedded there. It was spherical, six inches in diameter, half buried in the gold map. Its surface was divided by curved clockwork arms and encircled by longitudi
nal and latitudinal bands, all inscribed with Arabic symbols and numbers.

  “What is it?” Mac asked, having noted her attention.

  “It’s an astrolabe. A device used by navigators and astronomers to help determine both a ship’s time and position, even identify stars and planets.” She glanced back to Mac. “Most of the earliest astrolabes were simple in design, just flat discs. This spherical design . . . it’s centuries ahead of its time.”

  “And that’s not all,” Mac said. “Watch this.”

  He reached to where the dead captain’s hand rested near the flank of the box. He flicked a lever there, and a ticking arose from inside. The astrolabe began to slowly turn on its own, driven by a hidden mechanism. Movement drew her eyes to the gemstone rendering of the Mediterranean. A tiny silver ship began to glide away from what was modern-day Turkey and across the blue sea.

  “What do you make of that?” he asked.

  She shook her head, as mystified as Mac.

  Nelson cleared his throat. “Guys. Maybe we’d better leave that be.”

  They both turned to him. His gaze was fixed on the screen of his handheld device. He thumbed a dial, and a quiet clicking rose from it.

  “What’s wrong?” Mac asked.

  “I mentioned all the resources buried here in Greenland, waiting to be extracted. I failed to mention one. Uranium.” He lifted his device higher. “I forgot to bring a Geiger counter the first time we came down here and thought I’d use this opportunity to correct that mistake.”

  Elena stared upward, trying to peer through the deck to the rock and ice beyond. “Are you saying we’re standing in the middle of a uranium deposit?”

  “No. This is the first time I got a reading. After Mac opened the box.” He reached down and held the Geiger counter closer to the map. The clicking became more rapid and louder. “That device is radioactive.”

  Mac swore and quickly slammed the box closed.

  They all retreated.