Thor's Haven

by Richard S Young

  The Romans originally arrived in Britain in 55BC, but their initial military presence was only for a short time. They then returned as an invading force in AD43 and eventually made their way into Scotland around AD80, reaching Perth about AD83. When you consider those dates and timings, then add them to established history, how could it have been possible for a Roman to have been born in Scotland in the decade either side of 20BC to fit the time-frame that enables him to be the Prefect of Judaea in AD26 at the time of Jesus Christ? And this is where the legend or myth about the whole Pontius Pilate story becomes interesting, because it would appear, that during these intervening years between the Romans’ first visit to Britain and their full-scale invasion some 90 years later, Caesar Augustus dispatched a series of envoys to establish diplomatic relationships with important British, Caledonian and Pictish chieftains. One of these envoys was Pilate’s father, a high-ranking Roman diplomat tasked with negotiating a treaty of sorts with a local Pictish chieftain called Metellanus, whose tribal seat of power was at the head of Glen Lyon. During these treaty negotiations, Pilate’s father sired a child with a woman from Metellanus’s tribe, and after birth, this child was subsequently returned to Rome with his father and then brought up to be the Pontius Pilate that we know about. The local Scottish folklore has Pontius Pilate being born under the yew tree at Fortingall, the village at the mouth of Glen Lyon.

  The city of Perth has been a human settlement zone since prehistoric times with masses of archaeological data factually proving that the whole area was occupied by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers going back some 8,000 years or so. There are numerous historically important sites with Neolithic standing stones and circles that can be dated back to about 4,000BC, while the name Perth comes from the Pictish language meaning ‘copse’ or ‘wood’. Factor in that the most important Norse rune is called ‘Perth’ or ‘Pertho’ and in mythology, it suddenly appears and reveals itself underneath the Norse tree of life, Yggdrasil, presumed to be a yew tree, and one that the main Norse god has crucified himself upon. You add to the folklore about the supposed birth of Pontius Pilate is under a yew tree and he then goes on to crucify Jesus Christ, who, on his resurrection is going to make people eat of the tree of life and then give them a white stone with a name on it. Christ is going to give out these stones here, at Pergamon, but according to the local legend in the Kashmir, Jesus Christ or Yuz Asaf, rocks up there, lives to the ripe old age of 120 and is buried in a tomb in Srinigar, where the Norse symbol Perth just so happens to also appear in some of the local Hindu manuscripts. And just to add even more mystery to the story, this same Norse rune symbol for Perth also appears in the Anatolian alphabet that was in use at the siege of Troy.

  I’m sorry, but while all of this seems very coincidental and would simply appear to be differing myths, legends, folklore and stories all connecting with each other, it is also very dangerous. There are a great many zealots out there in the big, bad world that would have a field day connecting all of this together to form some sort of errant belief. And that’s really my problem with this. If I go and express a Euhemerist theory that maybe joins all of these dots together, because I can and might want to, and that theory, in turn, becomes regarded as fact that could feed an opinion or understanding that deviates from what is actual reality and the truth, it becomes a dangerous piece of revisionist history. And that’s what does concern me with this circumstance, because the whole matter gets completely out of hand, and my hypothetical Euhemerist theory goes on to form a view, that becomes a belief, that mutates itself into a faith that, in turn, transmogrifies itself into an established attitude or perspective. Human history is littered with this type of thing occurring and just look at the oceans of blood that have been spilled as a result.

  I think you should be slapping me.” said Debbie and she laughed at herself.

  “Look at it from my point of view. I was at secondary school doing Latin as a subject when I had to translate a passage written by a man called Tacitus, probably the greatest of all the Roman historians. A lot of his writings detailed the various military campaigns of his father-in-law, Agricola, the man responsible for the conquest of Britain. But Tacitus wrote two historically important pieces of work called the ‘Annals’ and the ‘Histories’ that concentrate on the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus in 14AD to the First Jewish-Roman War in 70AD. The selected piece I had to translate was particularly scathing about Christianity and it resonated with me at the time because of its content and that I had also visited the alleged birth-place of the man it refers to. If you give me a minute, I will find the passage in my notebook.”

  She sat down on some rocks and thumbed her way through her notebook, occasionally pausing at particular pages before continuing on with her search. She found the text she was looking for and read it out aloud to Daniel.

  “Tacitus mentions the execution of a ‘Christus’ by Pontius Pilate in his ‘Annals’ book. The passage reads as ‘a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.’

  The importance of that short passage is that it provides historians with a factually crucial, but independent and non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It had an effect on me at the time, and now that I do think about it, it was the defining trigger-pulling moment that caused me to follow the path of my chosen vocation.”

  Daniel just blew a long whistle as he walked a few paces ahead of Debbie, stopped, and then turned around to face her.

  “Thanks for telling me all of this. I was really confused before today, but your analysis has actually helped me to possibly understand what the stone is all about and what has been going on since I unearthed it last week. You’ve given me clarity to all the information that I had but you have also filled in most of the gaps that I have been looking for. The white stone is either someone’s ploy to join various religious and mythological stories together for some reason or to prove that various religious and mythological stories are actually intertwined with each other in some way. Whatever the reason is though, people have been killed because of that white stone and I’m going to try and find out who they are and why. I owe it to an old man in India and his grand-daughter. They were killed because I asked about that stone and there was no need for them to die. And rest assured, I will avenge their deaths and no-one is getting that stone because I alone know where it is and I alone know where it is going to be, forever.”

  Not another word was said by Daniel and Debbie as they walked back towards the wooden huts. As Daniel reached his vehicle, he thanked Debbie for her help and assistance and wished her all the best with her LIDAR survey and that he looked forward to coming back to Pergamon to see the results of her project. He took out his phone and started to scroll through the photographs that he had stored in it. He found what he was looking for and asked Debbie if she could help him with one final question.

  “Sorry to ask you another question, but I still have a loose-end that needs to be tied up. Can I show you a photograph of a peculiar tattoo that appears on the forearm of some of the people that tried to attack me in Pakistan?”

  She nodded agreement and looked at the image on display on Daniel’s phone.

  “That’s simple. That relates to that castle at Montségur in France I was telling you about. The one, where that man, Otto Rahn, was convinced that the Holy Grail was hidden inside it somewhere. The cross is a Cathar cross and those numbers, ’1244.03.16 – 63’, are a particular date and reference to an off-shoot Christian sect called the Cathars. The Catholic Church mercilessly persecuted these Cathars and their followers as they were viewed by the main church as heretics. The Cathars made their last stand at the Montségur fortress against overwhelming numbers of massed French and Papal troops who laid siege to the castle for months. When the castle eventually fel
l, the survivors were given a choice of forsaking their Cathar faith or being put to death. The Cathars refused and hundreds of them were burnt at the stake at the foot of the castle. The first eight numbers are the date, 16th March 1244, and the last two numbers refer to the 63 Cathars who could be identified as having died at the stake. There’s a memorial stone at the site with that cross commemorating the date that the siege ended and lists the names of those 63 Cathars that were burned alive. It’s called ‘Prairie de la Brûlée’, the ‘Meadow of the Burned’.”

  “Right.” muttered Daniel as he processed the fact that that final snippet of information from Debbie had made him become fully aware of the gravity of his situation. The explanation of the tattoo lettering now confirmed to Daniel that whoever was interested in him, or this white stone, was fully prepared to go to extreme lengths to get whatever it was they wanted, and they were prepared to kill for it while accepting the fact that they could also die in doing so. That was not the type of zealous adversary Daniel really wished to face or confront, as he knew from his own bitter military experience, that any attempts at negotiation or trying to establish a dialogue with them always fell on deaf ears. It tended to be a ‘their way or no way’ attitude and nothing was ever up for debate.

  He spun the vehicle around in a semi-circle to head for the exit out of Pergamon when he caught sight of Debbie jogging towards him while waving her arms and trying to attract his attention. He stopped and rolled down the window to see what the fuss was about as she leaned in and handed him a white envelope.

  “I printed something off from my notebook that you might want to read later. When you do get a chance to yourself, think about everything you have learned so far about this white stone, its markings and then consider all the information that you have collected. Try to formulate all of it into a context that you can understand but also relates to what you have encountered or discovered so far. When you’ve done that, read what is inside that envelope, but believe me when I tell you that that when you do, the covers will be lifted from your eyes.”

  Daniel pocketed the envelope.

  “I am going to hold you to that opinion Debbie and I’ll be coming back here to tell you if you were right.” then smiled at her and put the vehicle into gear and drove off.

  14.23pm – 14th April, present day.

  Interpol, 200 Quai Charles de Gaulle, Lyon, France

  It had been a long day travelling for Daniel already, and it became clearly obvious that his day was about to get even longer for him as Hélène Lecacheux parked the car in the expanse of the underground car park that serviced Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon. The two hour flight from the Izmir NATO base to Perpignan NATO air base had been uneventful flying but the long drive to Lyon was not something he had really enjoyed. It was a distance of 280 miles (450 km) and had taken nearly 5 hours to complete, and as a passenger in a vehicle driven by a woman who constantly questioned him, it had been a difficult and uncomfortable journey. The whole trip had seen the back seat of the vehicle occupied by two DGSE operatives whose own conversation matched that of the suits that they were both wearing – dull, plain and devoid of any variation that would make them seem imaginative.

  On board the aeroplane flight, Daniel had engaged in some casual conversation with a group of French Foreign Legion troops who were returning back to their home base, and after explaining that on arrival in France he was then travelling to Lyon, he had established a basic knowledge of the urban geography of southern France. Perpignan was the southern-most city in the Occitanie region of France and not far from both the Andorran and Spanish borders.

  The Spanish city of Barcelona, he discovered, was only a two hour drive away, however, the 5 hour drive from Perpignan to Lyon would take him through the names of towns and cities that he had only ever read about and had never visited before such as Béziers, Montpellier, Nîmes, Orange and Montélimar.

  The French troops had asked him if he liked the sport of rugby and he had confessed, that as a Dane, it was a sporting pastime that he and his countrymen were very unfamiliar with. This frank admission on his part had quickly turned the conversation to the topic of football and it was suggested that if staying in the Occitanie area, and if he could manage, he should go and watch some of the local football matches played by very famous club sides such as going over the border into Spain to watch Barcelona, or if in France, go and visit Marseille, Saint-Étienne, Montpellier, Nîmes or Lyon. He politely replied that he didn’t really have the time to spare just now but once his work schedule allowed him to have some time off, he would try and catch a game or two. He had joked with them about the last football game he had attended was the Faroe Islands playing Andorra in a World Cup qualifying match in September 2017 at the Tórsvøllur stadium, but as he was an invited guest to the match, he spent most of it within the corporate hospitality suite.

  The French troops had been impressed with him that he had been at an international football match between two of the smallest nations participating on the world stage. They had asked him why he was there at the game in the first place and Daniel had described how while he had been living and working up in the Faroes at the time, he was taken along to sample the experience of a Faroe Islands international football match. This part of the conversation then led to Daniel verbally painting a picture in words that portrayed a place that he now treated as his second home and he was really looking forward to going back to very soon. His arrival at Perpignan had been met with by Hélène Lecacheux and her two escort companions waiting for him on the tarmac, and after a brief introduction, he had been guided, almost shepherded, into the confines of their waiting vehicle.

  To be fair to Hélène Lecacheux, she was doing her job and Daniel fully understood that 24 hours previously, he had been a person of some considerable interest to Interpol as a potential international malefactor, but then again, following his clearance from any alleged wrongdoing, he had fully expected that there would be some sort of reasonable interaction with his questioner as she listened to his account of recent happenings. Five hours had now passed by and the icy resolve of this Hélène Lecacheux had not melted in any way as she now escorted him to an interview room on the fifth floor of the building. Guiding him to take a seat across from her at a table, she passed over all the photographs she had been originally asked to identify. As she laid each one down flat, she reached into a folder and removed three files that had a head and shoulders shot of Daniel, Rama and Rifat on the covers and passed them over. Daniel turned his attention to the folders and gave each one of them a quick perusal to confirm that Interpol had the correct information. He stifled a smile when reading his own folder and how, in comparison, Rifat’s ISI file about him seemed to be substantially larger. He decided to try and break the ice with this Hélène.

  “So Hélène, you’ve had a good read of my file, had my service history searched, issued international alerts for my immediate apprehension, and now that you have me sitting in front of you inside your own headquarters, what do you want to do next?”

  Very softly, she replied to his baiting of her.

  “There is no need for you to be facetious with me Mr. Lauridsen. You are going to have to be reasonable and understand the situation that I have been thrust into, and ever since I got involved with this case, the investigation priorities have changed on a daily basis.”

  “Yeah? Like you’ve had to flee a number of countries, been framed for murder, had people try to kill you and also keep ahead of the game? I’m here in Lyon as you so requested and here to help you solve all your problems, so why don’t you start doing so? Me? The priority for me is to get back to the Faroe Islands and then wait to see who comes looking for me. And when they do, I’ll finally find out what this has all been about.”

  “Why do you need to go to the Faroe Islands, Mr. Lauridsen? What is the urgency? she asked him.

  “Because the white stone that seems to be central to everything that
has recently happened is there. I alone know where it is, and if it is so important to so many people, they can come and get it from me. I’m tired of running and I want to meet my pursuers head on. I have an idea what this is all about but there are still some gaps to be filled in the story but the real question that I want answered is this. Why do you really need me here?”

  Hélène Lecacheux considered Daniel’s question and was about to give her reasoning to him for her wish to interview him when she watched him open his backpack and place all his documentation on the table. He ordered it out into bundles and began grouping photographs and images together along the top of the table’s surface. Very quickly, he had arranged his information into some sort of order and beckoned on her to come and to join him on his side of the table to allow him to demonstrate his working theory. He watched her walk round the table to join him.

  Daniel picked up a photograph of the stone and began to explain what had recently happened to him, while at the same time, he took this opportunity to try and finally mentally untangle the mess that he had found himself in by physically examining every piece of information that he had been able to amass together so far. With him now methodically creating his understanding of the situation, piece by piece, and by providing an explanation to his findings from his notes or referring to the information he had collected from the internet, Jnyandeep Medhansh or from Debbie Gilbert, Daniel slowly revealed to Hélène what his own thoughts and feelings were about all of the recent events.