Without a weapon or a clue as to how he could help, Theo ran after her, only dimly aware that he was being followed.
He was able to catch up with her quickly because tendrils also enveloped him and dragged him along, hastening their reunion. Considering the speed at which they were traveling, Theo was amazed that they weren't being battered bloody against the walls of the tunnel, but the tendrils wrapped around them served as a cushion. Tight enough that he couldn't move his arms or legs, but loose enough that he could breathe comfortably. The plant must like to digest its meat alive...
The movement slowed as soon as they were out of the corridor and back into the village. The plant moved them closer together, keeping them upright and facing each other, making Theo think of a pair of action figures in the hands of a small child.
Gillian's eyes were closed, her face was pale, but she seemed to be breathing.
"Gillian... are you ok?" he asked.
She didn't speak, but her eyes opened and they told him everything. That was the stupidest fucking question anyone had ever asked her.
The hissing sound grew louder, reminding Theo of the sense of being followed. He turned his head and looked back toward the tunnel.
From it, a massive grey and black snake was slithering into the village.
Gillian screamed and the plant clutched them closer together.
The snake was so large that Theo could hardly imagine that it fit through the seven foot diameter tunnel, but there it was, Nidhogg, the serpent of Minik's legend.
Gillian made the connection at the same time, and kept repeating, "Nid, Nid, Nid..."
Theo wanted to comfort her, to reassure her, but kept silent to avoid saying the second stupidest fucking thing anyone had ever said to her.
Nidhogg was not silent. Its entire length out of the tunnel now, it raised the upper half of its body high into the air, opened its mouth wide—an impressive extension of about fourteen feet—and hissed, showing off six foot long, gleaming white fangs each as thick as a man at their base that curved into needle-sharp tips that aimed backwards toward a blood-red gullet. True to many troglofaunal species, it had no eyes. True to many snakes it did not need them for its primary sensory organ was its skin and its tongue. Nidhogg's tongue was at least twenty feet long, red and moist, it flicked in and out of it's mouth tasting the air and searching for more molecules of Theo and Gillian. It zeroed in on them and the snake's reared back again, preparing to strike.
The plant clutched them tighter together again, so much that their faces were almost touching. More tendrils grew, forming a protective barrier between them and the snake...
Nidhogg struck.
And the plant deflected the monster with a tendril that matched it in size, knocking the snake across several village buildings, annihilating them.
Nidhogg struck again, sinking its teeth deep into a stalk. Theo and Gillian felt the great plant shudder. The stalk in the snake's mouth first turned brown and then melted into dust. Angrier now, the snake struck again.
Theo watched in horror and fascination as several of the plant's tendrils grew around the snake, trying to wrench it away from the stalk it had bitten. The snake released the stalk and bit furiously at the attacking tendrils.
"Moving," said Gillian. "Up."
At first Theo was annoyed that their view was growing smaller then Gillian's comment registered in his brain. They were indeed moving up toward the ceiling of the chamber, lifted by the plant. Fresh air filtered down with the fading rays of the sun.
Below, the battle continued as they rose among the stalactites toward the myriad holes and cracks in the roof of the cave. Finally the movement stopped just feet below a fissure large enough for them to fit through. The plant relaxed its grip. Theo and Gillian stared at each other, both thinking at first that this must be a trap of some kind. The plant gently shook and moved up a few more inches. That was all the incentive they needed. Theo boosted Gillian out first and then scrambled out of the cave and onto the flat, rocky surface of Greenland himself, the cold air and wind making him acutely aware that he was without pants.
He peered back into the fissure to see the outcome of the great battle. The cavern was empty. No giant demon snake. No unusually ambulatory plant. And no lost village.
Gillian joined him at the edge of the crevice. "Where did it all go?"
"Nowhere," Theo said. "It's just an optical illusion. Everything is still there."
"It looks pretty clear to me," she argued. "That cave is empty."
"Are you trying to tell me it didn't happen?"
"Of course it happened," Gillian said. "But where is it?"
Theo stood up. "It's an optical illusion. Something to do with the quality of the sunlight, I'm sure. The sun is lower on the horizon and the minerals in the stalactites are interfering with our optical nerves."
Gillian stood as well and began walking away.
"Where are you going?" he called after her.
"Away from here!"
"Be careful—there are more holes..."
"I see them," she said as she jumped over another crevice. "Where the hell is Minik?"
Theo turned in a circle to get his bearings. "To the west," he said. "Your left."
Gillian changed direction and continued stalking angrily.
"We're going to need a big team for this one," Theo said. He stopped to peer down another hole. Nothing.
"Well, count me out," Gillian told him.
"Just when it's getting good?" he asked, incredulous. "We've made the find of the century! The find of the millennium!"
"Shut up," she said, interrupting him, "shut up, will you? The last thing I need right now is a fool who is excited about how a giant plant with retractable tentacles saved us from being eaten by a giant blind snake, both of which became magically invisible along with an entire abandoned village. So please, just shut up!"
"Look, Gillian, I don't—"
"No, just, seriously shut up Theo."
He caught up with her and grabbed her hand, making her stop and face him. "Look, here's the truth about archaeology. You never know what you're going to run into. Sometimes it's nothing more dangerous than a sandstorm or a hostile government. Sometimes it's something truly freaky, truly insane, and just plain impossible."
"Like being rescued by a giant plant?"
"Like a—" His teeth were chattering so hard he had to start over. Damn, but he was cold. "Like being saved by a giant plant. Right. You never know what's going to happen in true archaeology."
She snorted. "I don't think you can categorize anything that happened down there as archeology. And if that is what this was then I don't think this life is for me."
"Why not?"
"Are you serious? Why not? Because I'm not okay with giant snakes battling giant plants!"
"That's a shame," he said.
"Oh, really? And why's that?"
"It would be a shame for you to quit this life," he said to her, "because you're damned good at it and I think if you think about it you'll see that you actually loved it."
"Theo, you have lost your mind." Gillian freed her hand and walked on. "I'm a practical girl. I prefer to live with facts instead of fantasy."
"But this was fact," he said. His words were swept away by wind. Not wind, but helicopter backwash. Minik was approaching fast, his round smiling face beaming down at them as he landed a few yards away.
"Welcome, welcome!" Minik said. "I'm pleased to have found you!"
Gillian climbed aboard and took her seat silently in the back of the chopper.
Minik looked Theo up and down and smiled at his bare legs. "You lost something, my friend..."
Chapter 11
THE MUTTEN BAR in Nuuk was dark inside, lights hanging from the ceiling burning low and giving the place an intimate feel even with all the people packed inside. Almost everyone here was a foreigner. Theo sat alone at the bar and was glad he didn't recognize any of them.
He and Gillian had disappeared in
to their respective hotel rooms as soon as Minik brought them back into town. After a hot shower, Theo's body still ached, but he was too keyed up to sleep. He figured that a beer or two would calm his nerves. Tomorrow, he would have to start the serious business of organizing a proper archaeological examination of the underworld of Greenland. Not to mention finding some way to protect against a large aggressive snake and one of the most bizarre species of plant that he'd ever seen.
"What do you think these people would do if they knew what was to be found underneath Greenland?" Gillian slipped into the seat next to him and sipped at a bottle of Iced Flower beer. The stuff looked a little thin to Theo.
"I think they would evacuate to somewhere closer to the equator," he said. They clinked the long necks of their bottles together now and tipped them back for a long sip. Gillian put a small object down on the bar in front them.
Theo looked down at it, doing a little double take. His eyes brightened as he picked it up. "Hey! It's the little soapstone seal you found down in the village. I thought it was lost down there."
"Nope," she said with a smile. "It managed to travel with us all the way home. Of course, if I'd managed to lose my pants like you did, it'd be gone, too."
"Don't think I lost my pants just to impress you."
The bartender interrupted them. "Can I get the two of you any—"
The man stopped dead. He had a thin face with thick lips, which gave him the appearance of a fish, especially now with his eyes bugging out like that. Following his locked gaze, Theo found the man was staring at the statue.
Could the guy recognize it for what it was? Was that even possible?
The man backed away from them, never taking his eyes off the little statuette until he rounded the bar and broke quickly for the back room.
"What was that all about?" Gillian asked him.
Theo turned the seal over in his hands. "We'd better put this away, before it attracts any more attention." He put the little seal into the pocket of his jacket.
"Hey," Gillian protested. "That's mine!"
"I think it needs to stay secret for a while."
"Like everything else that happened today?"
"You're ready to admit that it all happened? Fact instead of fantasy?"
Gillian sighed. "I was there. I have the scrapes and bruises to prove it. And we'll have a whole team with us when we go back."
"We?" asked Theo.
"We," she said. "I'll be damned if I let you take all the credit." She drained the last little bit out of her beer and slapped the bottle down on the bar. He found her even sexier now that he knew she wasn't one of those girls who sipped wine and White Russians.
She stood up from the bar. "I need to use the little girl's room."
He nodded at her and she left. Thrilled that she was going to remain part of the team, Theo tried to focus on all the things they would need to tomorrow. He made a list in his mind. It grew longer by the second. They had to call Saul and get more funding. They had to cordon off that moulin and make sure no one else messed around with it. There had to be other people brought in, people they trusted. He knew some of the best people in the business. Well, not as good as him, of course, but good enough. And there were even a few he trusted for this kind of endeavor.
Theo sat back up and reached for his beer.
A thick hand grabbed the bottle and pulled it away from him first. Theo followed the arm the hand was attached to up to a man's heavily muscled shoulder. There, on the black sleeve of the man's jacket, was a patch that read "Danish National Police."
A heavy face glared down at him. The eyes in that face were less than friendly.
Theo sat up the rest of the way. "Is there a problem, officer?"
The policeman sat down in the chair Gillian had been in. Theo noticed there were four men just as big as this one and wearing the same uniforms standing around the bar now. His highly trained sense of danger told him there was something wrong here.
"Sir," the officer sitting at the bar with him said, "I am Captain Kurkul of the Danish National Police. We are the police force here in Greenland, by the grace of Queen Margrethe the Second and the Kingdom of Denmark. We need to speak with you."
"Can I just say something Captain Kraken?" Theo asked.
"It's Kurkul, Captain Kurkul. What is it you wanted to say?"
"You speak English really, really well."
The man's scowl darkened.
Theo didn't know what local law they had run afoul of. But it wasn't the first time a police agency or government functionary had gotten their hackles up over some minor thing he'd done. Or, in some cases, some major infraction that he'd committed. He knew the look. This was the look. Over the man's shoulder, Theo spotted Gillian across the crowd. She stopped, staring at Theo and at the police officers surrounding him. They hadn't noticed her yet. Theo couldn't let her walk into this.
He shook his head in a barely perceptible motion. He could see in her face that she read his message loud and clear. Don't come over here. Leave. Get out of here now.
She turned and slipped into the mass of people around her just as Captain Kurkul turned to scan the crowd in the direction Theo was looking.
He turned back to the table, still holding on to Theo's beer. "Where is the woman who was with you, sir?"
Theo shrugged. "I was trying to pick her up. She was damned pretty, but apparently immune to my charm. She left without even giving me her phone number."
Which was true, he realized with a grimace. He had no way of contacting her again, if she did the smart thing and disappeared out of the country. Well, he could ask Saul for her number. But that probably wasn't a good idea.
The police captain was looking at him intently. Finally the man shrugged and set the matter aside. "Imagine that," he said. "But I'm not here to talk about your private affairs. You have something that belongs to Greenland, and by extension, the Kingdom of Denmark. I'd like you to hand it over to me. Now."
Theo laughed. "Officer, I don't have anything belonging to Denmark, not even any Danish currency. I hope they'll take American Express to pay for these beers."
Captain Kurkul leaned in closer, his teeth ground together. "You have a piece of national heritage in your pocket. You will return it. Now."
Theo understood. The soapstone statue.
He expected everyone in the bar to be watching the spectacle of five police officers interrogating a foreigner. But looking around the room, he saw that everyone was keeping their eyes carefully averted. No one wanted any part of what was happening there, lest they get caught up in it, too. They didn't want to risk guilt by association.
Kurkul's big hand stretched across the bar, palm up. Theo swallowed. This was not going well.
Slowly he took the little seal out of his jacket pocket and placed it in Kurkul's hand.
The police captain lifted it up to his eyes to examine it. Then he nodded, as if satisfied that it was what he had been sent for.
He palmed the statue into his hand and it disappeared from Theo's view. "Take him."
"Whoa," Theo said, really alarmed now. "Take him? Take him where?"
Hands grabbed his arms and hauled him back roughly. As he was being walked out of the bar he heard someone shout, "Have fun scrap-booking..." And then he saw him—George Dingo, sitting at a corner table with Waterson and Ives.
"Payback's a bitch Cutro!" Waterson laughed.
This was not good—not good at all!
Chapter 12
NOT THAT ANY part of Greenland was particularly warm, but the holding room Theo sat in was definitely cold. The floor was bare concrete. The walls were made of metal. The chair he sat in was metal, just like the one on the other side of the rectangular metal table in front of him. The mirror on the wall opposite him was obviously a two-way piece of glass and Theo had to wonder who was sitting on the other side, watching him.
He had been in this room for maybe an hour, he figured, after Captain Kurkul and company brought him to this building
on the outskirts of the city. There had been no insignia on the front of the place. No lettering. Nothing to indicate what its purpose was at all.
Well, he knew its purpose now. Interrogation of prisoners. This was definitely the weirdest arrest Theo had ever experienced.
As he was thinking on that fact and what it said about his life, a man walked in through the room's only door, closing it tightly again behind him. He was a short man with a round belly, wearing a dark suit and a silver tie, with an unruly tuft of dark hair on top of his head. There was a folder open in the man's hand as he walked over and sat in the chair across from Theo.
For long minutes, the man said nothing. Just leafed through papers in the folder.
Theo waited. He was familiar with the tactics of interview and interrogation. The man had his little games to play. Let him play them.
"Where are you from, Professor Cutro?" the man asked finally in a heavily accented voice.
So. They knew who he was. Which might mean a lot, or might mean nothing. "You know my name. I'm sure you already know where I'm from."
The man's hand hovered over a form, holding a pen.
"I'm from New York. In America," he specified.
The man looked up at him. "Is there any other?"
"Well, there's a Greenland in New Hampshire. Just thought we should be specific."
The man scribbled on the form and then snapped the folder shut and squared it neatly with the table's edge. "My name is Kalleg Neilson."
"Just Kalleg Neilson?" Theo asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "Not Captain Neilson? Or Chief Inspector Neilson?"
Kalleg Neilson waved a hand through the air. "You're thinking of the national police force, Professor Cutro. I am not a member of that agency."
That caught Theo's attention. "Then who are you with?"
"We," Neilson answered, "are the Defense Command. The police here are under our direct authority. Now then, introductions out of the way. Good. Shall we begin?"
Theo clamped his mouth shut. The Defense Command was the government defense ministry in Greenland. It answered to no one, other than directly to the Prime Minister of Denmark. Oh, he was in deep. Deeper than he'd ever been.
Forgotten Love: An Action-Packed Adventure Romance (The Forgotten Chronicles) Page 7
