The Resurrection Key

by Andy McDermott

  ‘There is,’ said Cheng. They both looked at him. ‘The letter, A to D, is the longitudinal quadrant where the iceberg was first sighted. The number is its position on the list of icebergs that have been tracked.’

  ‘Thanks, Wiki,’ said Eddie. ‘When did you look that up?’

  The young man looked abashed. ‘I, ah . . . I like to learn. I read about all sorts of things. Not just archaeology.’

  ‘That’s a good attitude,’ said Nina. ‘The broader your experience, the better. And it’s helped us, because if this iceberg is a big one, it won’t have melted to nothing in just four months – some of them can drift for years. Which means it’s still out there . . . and so is the ship!’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll be home soon, love,’ Eddie assured Macy over his phone as he paced across the hotel room. ‘No, I know we were supposed to come straight back, but something cropped up.’ He listened to his daughter’s angry protest. ‘Yeah, I know! But your mum thought it was important.’ He didn’t need to add even if I didn’t for it to be clear.

  Nina shot him a glare, but she was in the middle of a phone call of her own. She and Cheng had used the young man’s laptop to track down the owners of the Dionysius in Cape Town. After some phone tag – it was, after all, a Sunday – they’d eventually got hold of the company’s boss, a man named Janco Vorster. The possibility that his lost ship might still be intact immediately caught Vorster’s full attention. He explained it had been chartered to carry out a feasibility study about towing an iceberg to South Africa to alleviate its water shortages.

  Now she was talking to one of the expedition’s organisers, a woman called Imka Joubert. ‘Is . . . is this a joke?’ she said after Nina explained the situation, a hint of hope overlaid by a much greater fear that it was about to be dashed.

  ‘No, I assure you it’s not,’ said Nina. ‘I’ve spoken to Wim Stapper in Rotterdam, and—’

  ‘Wim?’ she cut in. ‘How is he? Is he . . . better?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. But he told me some things you deserve to know. Is D43 an iceberg?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Imka confirmed. ‘It was the main candidate for the survey.’

  ‘Wim said the Dionysius went inside it, into a cave, to rescue him and a woman called Sanna.’

  ‘Sanna Onvaan, yes. Oh God, did he say what happened to her?’

  Nina hesitated before answering. ‘I’m sorry, but . . . Wim said she died.’

  Silence for a long moment. ‘Oh. Oh no.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘Did he . . . did he tell you anything about the other people on the ship?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Something happened inside the iceberg. I don’t know what, Wim wasn’t making much sense, but I think the ship became trapped in the cave. Wim managed to get out, but he didn’t say if anyone else did.’

  Imka struggled to keep her emotions in check as she spoke. ‘Something happened before the Dionysius went inside. I was talking to Arnold . . . my fiancé.’ Her voice almost cracked. ‘There was a lot of shouting, and they said Wim and Sanna were in trouble. I remember hearing the captain say he didn’t want to launch a lifeboat, something about protecting the crew. Arnold told me he would call back as soon as he found them. He . . . he never called.’ The last words emerged as a choked gasp of grief.

  ‘If the iceberg’s still intact, the ship might be too,’ Nina said, wanting to give the distraught South African some thread to cling to. ‘Would it have had enough provisions to support everyone for this long?’

  Imka took a deep breath, trying to recover her composure. ‘The survey was planned to last for two months, at the most,’ she said. ‘If everyone cut down to minimum rations . . . perhaps.’ Then, almost pleading: ‘If they’re still alive, can you help me find them?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Nina. ‘Maritime rescue isn’t my area of expertise. I got involved because Wim found an archaeological relic inside the iceberg.’

  ‘A relic? Nobody told me about this.’

  ‘Nobody knew – one of the rescue ship’s crew stole it from him. It could have come from something buried in the ice. Can you still track the iceberg?’

  ‘The currents will have moved it, but . . . yes, I’m sure I can find it.’ Urgency entered her voice. ‘And if I can, then we can launch a rescue mission! Janco has another ship. We can use it to reach D43, and find Arnold and the others!’

  Her sudden surge of desperate hopefulness alarmed Nina. Whatever had happened to Stapper and the crew of the Dionysius could still be a threat, waiting in the ice. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

  ‘But we have to try! If Arnold’s still alive, I have to find him. And if . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I have to know,’ she finally said, solemnly.

  ‘I understand,’ Nina told her. ‘Look, let me give you my contact details. If you tell me what you’re planning to do, I might be able to help.’ She hesitated, aware that Eddie had broken off from his conversation with Macy to fix her with a warning look, but spoke anyway. ‘If you find the iceberg, and there’s an archaeological discovery inside it, I should be there.’

  Eddie’s expression changed to anger. Nina looked away. ‘I’ll call you again soon, okay? Please don’t do anything without letting me know.’ She gave Imka her contact information, then disconnected.

  Her husband concluded his own call, saying goodbye to Macy before rounding on his wife. ‘What? You want to go looking for this thing?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Eddie,’ she replied. ‘You know I’m going to. People have already died because of whatever Wim Stapper found.’

  ‘And it never occurred to you that he might have killed them himself and pretended to go crazy ape bonkers to cover it up?’

  ‘If he’s faking, there’ll be an Oscar heading his way for Best Actor. And why would he come up with such an insane story when he could have just kept it simple and said his ship hit the iceberg and everyone else drowned?’ She paused, thinking. ‘I’m certain the text on one side of the key is in the Veteres language. Their existence is a secret I promised to keep; we both did. Because if the truth gets out, it could throw half the world into turmoil – as if things weren’t bad enough already! If there really is some kind of Veteres outpost frozen in the ice, I need to see it.’

  ‘So you can decide what to do with it.’ It was not a question but a statement, annoyed at her assumption of authority.

  ‘If I have to. You’d rather someone else did?’

  ‘If it means we don’t have to leave our daughter behind for a week while we traipse around on a fucking iceberg, yeah.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Nina went on. ‘I wasn’t sure before, because the photo on the dark web wasn’t good enough to show all the details. But now that I’ve seen the key in person . . .’ She stood and headed for the door. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Cheng’s room. I want to show you something.’

  He reluctantly accompanied her to the neighbouring room. She knocked.

  ‘Uh – wait, please! Wait, please!’ the young man responded from within. A pause, long enough for the couple to give each other quizzical looks, then the door opened. Cheng blinked at them. ‘Oh! Professor, Mr Chase. Hi. Er . . . can I help you?’

  ‘Hi, Cheng,’ said Nina. ‘Is it okay if I look at the key?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. It’s right here.’ He led them to a desk. His laptop was closed on it, but she noticed that some LEDs set into the case were alight and the fan was still going, as if it were in the process of entering sleep mode.

  Eddie realised the same thing. ‘Catch you watching porn, did we?’

  ‘What? No, no!’ Cheng stammered.

  ‘Eddie!’ chided Nina. ‘Excuse my husband, please. He has a . . . youthful sense of humour.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ the Chinese replied hastily. ‘No problem.’ The
key was next to the computer; he presented it to her. ‘Here.’

  The side with the Veteres text was face-up. Nina looked at it for a moment, paying close attention to the edges of each character, then flipped it over.

  ‘It’s a different alphabet, isn’t it?’ said Cheng. ‘It looks a lot like Atlantean. At least, to me,’ he added, looking to her for validation.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ she said, holding the key up to the light. To her annoyance, she couldn’t quite focus on the fine details. ‘Damn it. I need my reading glasses! Back in a second.’ She handed the key to Cheng and hurried out, leaving the two men standing alone.

  ‘So, uh . . . Mr Chase,’ Cheng said awkwardly after a moment. ‘I, ah . . . I didn’t say thank you for getting me out of trouble earlier. So . . . thank you.’

  ‘No problem,’ Eddie replied. Another uncomfortable pause, then: ‘Your English is really good. You done a lot of travelling?’

  Cheng shook his head. ‘No. The first time I left China was to come to New York! I learned English from, ah . . .’ He glanced at the door as if worried Nina might overhear. ‘From Marvel movies and Friends.’ A nervous giggle. ‘Could I be any more lame?’

  Eddie’s silent stare in response told him that he probably could not. Luckily for the student, Nina chose that moment to return. ‘Okay,’ she said, taking back the key and donning her glasses, ‘this is what I thought. It’s definitely a different alphabet from the obverse, as you said, Cheng.’ The young man beamed. ‘Proto-Atlantean, for want of a better term. But if you look closely, you can see another difference between it and the text on the other side.’

  She flipped the key over so they could make a comparison. ‘The text on one side is cast into it,’ Cheng said, almost immediately. ‘And so’s the skull. They were part of the original design.’

  Nina nodded. ‘But the words on the skull side weren’t. They were engraved rather than cast – even carved, looking at it. The edges are quite rough in places. They’re a later addition. Possibly quite some time later, looking at the weathering.’

  ‘So what are the words?’ Eddie asked. ‘You said one of them was—’

  ‘“Resurrection”,’ Cheng cut in. Nina and Eddie both looked at him in surprise. ‘I, er . . . after I first saw Mr Krämer’s pictures and thought the characters looked similar to the Atlantean alphabet, I worked on translating it.’

  ‘What does that mean, then?’ said Eddie. ‘Stapper said a demon woke up and killed his friends, then it turns out he was holding something that literally says “resurrection” on it? What, did the key bring the thing back to life?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nina. ‘But that’s another reason why I have to help find it. There’s . . . what we were talking about just now,’ she nodded towards their room, not wanting to mention the Veteres in front of Cheng again, ‘and the connection to Atlantis – what if it’s another vault like the one from Turkey? We know that would be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. And there’s the fact that anyone other than us won’t have a clue what they’re facing. We do – at least a little. But that might be the difference between coming out alive and ending up like Stapper’s shipmates.’

  ‘They could still be alive,’ Cheng pointed out. ‘If they are, then we have to rescue them.’

  Eddie’s expression made it clear he thought the odds of that were zero, but Nina nodded in agreement with her student. ‘We do. And the sooner we start, the better the chances of finding them. And whatever they discovered in the ice.’

  ‘I’ll make preparations,’ said Cheng, indicating his laptop, before hurriedly adding: ‘If that’s all right with you, Professor.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she replied. ‘Consider it another opportunity to impress me.’

  He smiled.

  The couple returned to their room. Eddie closed the door, then stood regarding his wife, arms crossed. ‘So we’re going, then.’

  ‘Well, I’m going,’ said Nina. ‘You don’t have to. I certainly know you don’t want to – and it’d be better for Macy if you went back to New York.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, with a heartfelt nod, ‘but if I don’t go, and something happens to you that I could have stopped . . .’ A long sigh. ‘Not going to let that happen.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said with a smile.

  He didn’t return it. ‘Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. And I know Macy won’t be. And nor will Holly or Olivia! So I’ll let you break the news to them.’

  It was her turn to sigh. ‘I asked for that, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah. You did.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll call them. And,’ she went on, ‘I’d better do some shopping. We’ll need to wrap up warm!’

  6

  The Southern Ocean

  ‘Oiceberg, roight ahead!’

  Nina smiled at her husband. ‘I’m glad you’ve recovered your sense of humour.’

  ‘Oh, I’m still pissed off, don’t worry,’ he replied. ‘But how often would I get to make that Titanic joke for real?’

  A week after the couple had left Rotterdam, iceberg D43 was now in sight. It had been a fraught seven days, the flight back to New York followed by a confrontation with an angry and upset Macy – understandably so, after being told her parents would be jetting off and leaving her behind again. At ten, Nina recalled with grim amusement, her daughter was old and savvy enough to protest that it was a form of child abuse, and she couldn’t entirely disagree. It was certainly not an ideal situation; Holly couldn’t take any more time off work, so childcare duties were being shared between her, Olivia and Lola Adams, a friend of Nina’s from her days at the IHA.

  But the sight of the iceberg reminded her there were other considerations. If the Dionysius remained intact inside, there was a chance, however slim, that its crew might still be alive. Imka was right: a rescue attempt had to be made.

  And then there was the question of what else was inside. Nina still totally dismissed the idea that it might be demons or aliens, but there was something – something connected to the long-lost civilisation of the Veteres.

  Which was why she had to be there, she told herself. As far as she knew, she and Eddie were the only people in the world with direct knowledge and experience of the ancient race. That edge could mean the difference between life and death.

  She turned from the angular blue-white iceberg to the other people on the bridge. Three days earlier, the research vessel Torrox, sister ship to the Dionysius, had set sail from Sydney, Australia. Vorster had joined the mission, the bearded shipowner constantly lurking behind the Torrox’s captain as if itching to take command himself. Imka Joubert was also there, the stress and frustration of enforced inaction during the voyage clear on her face. Even if her fiancé was still alive, there was nothing the slender blonde could do to help him until they reached their destination.

  But that time would soon come. Nina went to the last passenger on the bridge: Hui Cheng. The young Chinese was on his laptop, using a satellite link to download updated satellite imagery of D43. ‘Anything new?’ she asked.

  ‘This is from yesterday,’ Cheng said, showing her the picture. ‘Some more pieces have broken off,’ he indicated a cluster of white objects near the berg, ducklings trailing their mother, ‘but none are very big.’

  The captain, a languid Australian named Alan Tate, glanced at them. ‘Doesn’t mean it’ll hold together. This latitude, the water’s warm enough to work away at any cracks. The whole thing could split in half any time.’

  ‘Let’s hope it waits until we’ve finished,’ said Nina as Cheng zoomed in. She was impressed by the speed of his satellite link; she had used similar technology in the past, but it always felt like going back to the days of dial-up modems compared to the unthinkingly accepted transparency of a Wi-Fi connection. This was practically broadband speed, though, even in the middle of the ocean. Technology kept advancing behind her back.
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br />   Imka regarded the icy peaks, then, frowning slightly, asked Cheng: ‘Can you show me the picture Arnold sent when he first found D43?’

  She had given him access to a cloud folder of files regarding the iceberg survey; it only took him seconds to bring up the picture. Nina also peered at the berg ahead before returning her gaze to the laptop. ‘It’s different.’

  The South African nodded. ‘The topography has completely changed. This formation here,’ she pointed out a squared-off peak in the four-month-old photograph, ‘has gone.’

  ‘Wim said something . . .’ Nina tried to remember the Dutchman’s words. ‘Something about everything turning over. That could be what he meant.’

  ‘These things do roll,’ said Tate. ‘And you don’t want to be anywhere near them when they do. You could be hundreds of metres clear and still have part of the berg come up under you like a bloody whale.’ He stared at the distant iceberg. ‘That looks like clean ice, no snow on it. It’s been underwater. I’d say the whole thing flipped over.’

  Imka looked stricken. ‘If Arnold’s ship was inside the iceberg when that happened . . .’

  ‘There’s still a chance,’ Nina assured her, though she was far from confident herself.

  The Torrox sailed on. Vorster surveyed the growing berg through binoculars. ‘I can’t see any caves big enough to take a ship.’

  ‘Could be on the other side,’ said Eddie. ‘Anything on the radar?’

  The iceberg’s flank displayed as a crinkled, hazy line, smaller echoes dotted before it. ‘The S-band radar should show a ship inside the ice, as long as it’s not too deep,’ said Tate. ‘Or half a K underwater, which it might be after the thing rolled.’

  The addendum was not something Imka wanted to hear. Nina gave the younger woman another look of reassurance.

  Tate brought the Torrox into a clockwise orbit around the iceberg. Even though they were clear of the larger hunks that had calved from D43, growlers still occasionally clunked against the hull. Cheng flinched with every impact.