Crusader Gold

by David Gibbins

  “It was a strange period,” O’Connor said quietly, gazing at the floor. “The world started to go insane a few decades before the First World War, and we’re still not out of it.” He looked up and smiled thinly at Maria. “My grandfather was a scientist but dabbled in a lot of fringe stuff like many academics at the time, and eventually let this particular obsession consume him. Like my father before me I was sworn into the félag in my youth, went through the whole initation rite. I loathed it, hated the false rituals, and as soon as I found out about the Nazi connection I wanted out. I discovered my vocation as a Jesuit, and I could not reconcile it with membership of the félag. The félag has always professed to be pagan, to despise Christianity even while they worked within it. I believe they expected me to return to the fold, saw me as a useful future asset within the Church. They agreed to let me go with a vow of secrecy. It is a vow I have now broken.”

  “But you are not bound by their absurd rituals,” Jack said.

  “Indeed.” O’Connor looked down, and then gazed directly at Jack. “But I have stoked the fire of vengeance. Over the years I gathered all I could on Andrius Reksnys. I was merely contemptuous of the félag, but with Reksnys it was different. The more I found out about his murderous activities with the Einsatzgruppen, the more determined I was to bring him to justice, even if it meant breaking my vow of silence. The memory of Rolf Künzl drove me on. I took my creed from the old Varangian Guard, from the earliest félag, that our fate is predetermined, that Ragnarøk is inevitable, so what matters is our conduct in this world. It was my sole inheritance from the old ways. Somewhat at odds with my Jesuit calling, but it linked me to the nobility of the earliest félag and gave me strength.”

  “You can’t have acted alone,” Jack said. “Someone else shot Reksnys.”

  “Once I was in the Vatican, I brought a small group of trusted companions into my confidence. One is here in the abbey today. You may have seen him in the church. Jeremy was to be another. We came close to assembling enough evidence against Reksnys, but not close enough. We were determined that he should experience horror before death.”

  “You reawakened the cycle of blood feud,” Maria murmured.

  “Sometimes justice is best served by the old ways.”

  “And the félag know who you are.”

  “Earlier I told you that the Vatican had been penetrated by the félag in their heyday in the twelfth century. Today there is one again, one among my superiors who knows about the menorah, who has found out about your quest.”

  “How?” Costas said.

  “It could only have been an insider.”

  Jack felt a sudden chill at the thought that one of the trusted members of their team might have betrayed them, but he put his shock aside as O’Connor shrugged bleakly and continued. “I knew the Holy See would do all in its power to prevent the location of the menorah from being revealed, but then I realized that there was more to it than that. The félag will do anything to know what we know, to thwart and destroy us and carry on the search themselves. And there is one we should fear most.”

  “Who?” Jack asked.

  “The grandson. Andrius Reksnys is dead and his son, Pieter, is holed up somewhere in Central America. But the grandson is still at large. I believe he is now a sworn member of the félag. He’s a thug. He inherited the family genes.”

  “Like grandfather, like grandson,” Jack said quietly.

  “The father, Pieter, is no better,” O’Connor said. “Remember his early education on the Russian front. But he seems to be fully preoccupied running his criminal organisation in Central America. The grandson’s the one to worry most about.

  He’s the warrior of the félag, the point man. He grew up steeped in all the rituals, and it has become his creed. He bought into what I rejected. He’s used many aliases, most recently Poellner, Anton Poellner. Among the félag he calls himself Loki, the name of a particularly nasty Norse god. His absurd warrior creed led him to train as a mercenary, and he gouged a trail of blood through the Balkan conflicts. He honed his skills at a terrorist training camp on the eastern Black Sea, in Abkhazia.”

  “I think we can guess where that was,” Costas said.

  “When his grandfather was assassinated he went on a particularly murderous rampage in Kosovo and let his guard down. He was arrested by the British SAS

  and convicted in The Hague as a war criminal. Five years ago he was sent to jail for life in Lithuania, the country he claimed as his homeland. They opened up a mothballed jail from the Gulag specially for him, a place where captured SS

  officers had been held for years after the war before being executed. Then about a month ago a new judge decided the evidence against him was insufficient, and he was released.” O’Connor’s lip quivered in disgust. “He was only a child when I left the félag, but I can still remember his face. His father had refused to cut his palm until the time was right, so Loki flew into a rage and slashed his own face with an axe. He would taunt me with it, pulling his finger hard down the scar until I cried. It used to give me nightmares. And now he’s back. He knows I’m the one who hunted down his grandfather. It’s the blood feud that drives him on. We have precious little time.”

  Jack looked at O’Connor. “What will you do now?”

  “I’m staying here. Rome is too risky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something else has happened.” O’Connor looked grim, his eyes downcast. “I wanted to fill you in on the background before telling you. There’s been another murder. A modern one this time.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Vatican. Two days ago. The police think it was a mafia hit, because the victim was in the forefront of the battle against the antiquities black market.”

  “Who was it?”

  “The chief conservator.”

  “You mean the man who saw the secret chamber in the Arch of Titus with you?”

  “Alberto Bellini. One of the great modern scholars of Roman sculpture. A huge loss. And the only other man in the Holy See I could confide in.”

  “Do you think…”

  “I don’t think, I know. Alberto was a man who would put himself on the line again and again in the public war against the mafia, who needed armed guards every time he stepped outside the Vatican, but who had no inner strength when he was locked in a room with those who confronted him. He confessed to me the evening before his murder that they had forced it out of him, our midnight discovery at the arch and our interest in the menorah. That puts me in the firing line. And it means you too, I’m afraid.”

  “Do you know who is behind all this in the Vatican?”

  “There’s a kind of internal inquisition, run by one of the cardinals. It’s always been there. But this is more sinister, as bad as it can get. I’m not certain who it is, but I have a pretty good idea. The félag has changed since I left it more than forty years ago. I know who some of them are. The war crimes judge who released Loki, for one.” O’Connor again gripped his chair in anger. “All I can say now is he’s shockingly powerful within the Vatican. He could squash me on a whim. I’ve got nothing to pin on him for certain but enough to put his activities in the spotlight when I go public about this. What I am sure about is that the hit on Alberto was not the mafia. You can probably guess who I think it was, and he won’t be stopping there.”

  “Is there anything you can do now?”

  “I believe I’m safe here for the time being. The holy isle still has some sanctity, even among the new félag. But this has become too big for us to deal with alone. Blood feuds must be a thing of the past. We’re talking murder here, plain and simple. And if they somehow get their hands on the menorah, if it still exists, then the odd murder will seem a trivial matter. The Middle East would ignite like it never has before if the greatest symbol of the Jewish faith was thrown into it. Nobody would come out unscathed—Jews, Arabs, the Catholic Church.”

  “Have you got any documentation?”

  “It’s al
l here.” O’Connor patted the briefcase by his chair. “Hard copy. I can’t trust it to a computer. Loki is the key. He works alone, with horrifying speed. His masters are the great and the good, judges, senior churchmen, politicians. The days when the félag could all don helmets and wield battle-axes are long gone, however much they fantasise about it. There are no others like Loki. If we can stop him, then we buy the time we need.”

  “Interpol?”

  O’Connor nodded. “I can pull strings. We have some friends in higher places. An international arrest warrant, a global security alert. But I need time, two days at least to assemble a dossier. It would backfire horribly if the application were rejected but the story of the search for the menorah still leaked out.”

  “That gives us a deadline,” Jack said pensively. “Two days or all hell breaks loose. It’s a pretty tall order.”

  “Something gives me faith in you.”

  “Let me help you, Patrick.” Maria leaned forward on her chair, looking at O’Connor and then at Jack. “I think I’ve done all I can for you on Seaquest II, Jack. I was thinking of staying here anyway and having another go at that runestone, to see if there’s anything we missed. But this is way more important.

  Father O’Connor needs all the help he can get.”

  “I could do with it,” O’Connor said. “We’ve worked well together in the past.”

  “You’re welcome to stay with us, Maria,” Jack said. “More than welcome. I should have made that clearer.”

  “Jeremy can take over as expedition expert,” Maria replied. “If there’s anything more to do with Vikings and the New World, he’s your man.”

  “Okay,” Jack said, a flicker of anxiety crossing his face. “Just make sure you look after yourself.”

  O’Connor had one last thing to show them. He ushered Jack and Maria through the cloister and out into the grassy precinct in front of the abbey, leaving Costas and Jeremy behind to reformat a new scan of the Hereford map that had just arrived. Through the early-evening mist that now shrouded the island, Jack glimpsed the rocky outcrops that rose beyond the precinct, an image unchanged since the days of the Vikings. O’Connor led them along the cobbled track of Sràid nam Marbh, the Street of the Dead, past Reilig Odhráin, the hallowed burial ground of kings. On the way Jack paused beside the great stone cross of St.

  Martin, its weathered form still standing where it had been erected more than a thousand years before. He put his hand on the stone and felt the writhing serpents that had been carved into the granite almost two centuries before the Battle of Stamford Bridge, when the sea raiders of the north were still no more than a distant rumour to the monks on the island. He felt a frisson of immediacy, the same excitement he had felt on seeing the longship in the ice. Harald Hardrada had passed this way, had seen this cross. Jack suddenly had an image of the stricken king being carried on a bier towards the abbey, his wounded followers straggling up from the longships beached in the channel below. He felt he had been shadowing Hardrada all along, in the Golden Horn, in the icefjord, but he had never seemed so close, so certain that the trail ahead was drawing them on to follow the great king into the unknown.

  The three colleagues walked in silence, lost in their own thoughts, digesting what had gone before. Half an hour later they reached the western side of the island, a wide bay fringed with golden beaches. O’Connor led them over a dune and found a place to sit, with Jack and Maria on either side. The mist had lifted to reveal a long vista off to the west, the deep orange rays of the setting sun searing their way towards the horizon. O’Connor lit a pipe, drawing on it a few times, then began to talk quietly.

  “This is Camus Cùl an t-Saimh, the Bay at the Back of the Ocean,” he said. “After days on the brink of death they brought Harald to this spot, fearful that word of his survival would leak out to the Normans. They brought his longships, the Eagle and the Wolf, and pulled them up on the beach. They filled them with provisions and placed Harald on his litter in the centre of the Wolf. Halfdan the Fearless, his oldest companion, lay grievously wounded at his feet, ready to die if his king began to wane.”

  “Wergild,” Maria murmured. “A man could forfeit his life to Odin to save the life of his master.”

  “The monks helped them haul the ships into the shallows. Those of Harald’s band who were still fit and able manned the thwarts, drawing the long oars through the tholes. The masts were set and the sails unfurled. From here Harald and his thole-companions sailed into history, watched by the monks of Iona and the small band of the faithful he had left behind to keep the fire burning.”

  “Where did the ships go?” Maria asked.

  O’Connor paused, took out his pipe and jabbed it towards the western horizon, then recited quietly from memory.

  But now farewell. I am going a long way

  With these thou seëst—if indeed I go—

  (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)

  To the island-valley of Avilion;

  Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

  Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies

  Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns

  And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea

  Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.

  So said he, and the barge with oar and sail

  Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan

  That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,

  Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood

  With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere

  Revolving many memories, till the hull

  Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,

  And on the mere the wailing died away.

  “Tennyson, Morte d’Arthur,” Jack exclaimed, shaking his head in wonder. “A pretty Victorian view of it, but if what you say is true, the romantic version of the Arthur legend goes right back to this spot.”

  “Substitute Vinland for Avalon and you’ve got the promised land, the earthly paradise,” O’Connor said. “The story of Leif Eiriksson’s discovery of the New World would have trickled back to Harald’s court well before his decision to invade England, and it would have intrigued such a well-travelled man. He’d been pretty sedentary for years, apart from the occasional war parties to Denmark and Sweden, and he must have had wanderlust. Maybe he’d been planning an expedition across the western ocean even before Stamford Bridge.

  He wanted one last adventure, one last great voyage of discovery, something to take him back to the glory days of his youth with the Varangian Guard. With his defeat at Stamford Bridge the voyage became an imperative. The reports would have suggested a land of great abundance, of lush meadows for pasturage and endless forests for shipbuilding, the two things the Vikings coveted above all else. And there was nothing to go back to Norway for. His prestige would have been shattered if he’d returned alive, whereas death assured his place amongst the heroes. The Heimskringla even records that his remaining army in Norway swore eternal allegiance to him after news of the defeat had reached them, even after they thought he was dead.”

  “And he had his treasure,” Jack said.

  “Chests of it,” O’Connor said. “They certainly weren’t going to the New World in search of gold. They already had so much they didn’t need any extra ballast.

  Silver coins, tens of thousands of them, Arab dirhams, English pennies of Cnut and Aethelred, coins from Harald’s empire and beyond. Gold and silver neck-torques, arm-rings, precious heirlooms of his ancestors. And all of Harald’s booty from his days with the Varangians in the Mediterranean, some of it melted down, some still intact. Priceless religious reliquaries and ancient jewellery. And to cap it all, the greatest treasure of Harald’s reign, the treasure which had been ennobled by his exploit in escaping Constantinople, which had come to mean far more than its weight in gold.”

  “The menorah,” Jack murmured.

  “If Vinland is the site of L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, then it’s pretty well due we
st from here, over more than two thousand miles of open ocean,”

  Maria said. “So what’s our longship doing way up in Baffin Bay at Ilulissat?”

  “It’s in the sagas,” Jack replied. “Leif Eiriksson found Vinland by sailing first up the west coast of Greenland, then across to Helluland and Markland. These places correspond to Baffin Island and Labrador, and the staging point in Greenland must have been Disko Bay, at the narrowest point of the Davis Strait.

  Harald was following the best available navigational advice.”

  “That’s what Künzl must have worked out in the 1930s,” O’Connor said.

  “So they overwintered at Ilulissat?” Maria asked.

  “They were probably forced to stay by the pack-ice clogging up the sea,” Jack replied. “It would have been autumn when they arrived. The light gets poor, and ships get iced up by spray. Macleod said the slush ice begins to form in October, and when it hardens it can cut timbers like a saw. Overwintering would have been tough, but these were tough men used to hardship. They probably had some of the local Greenlander Vikings with them from the southern settlements, as guides and hunters. I wouldn’t be surprised if they camped in the same bay beside the icefjord where we saw Kangia, among the ancient tent circles.”

  “It would have been especially tough on the wounded,” Maria said.

  “Many must have perished on the voyage, and in the camp,” O’Connor replied.

  “By the time Halfdan died my guess is the number was so depleted they were easily able to spare one of the ships for the burial, the Wolf, the ship you saw in the ice. There weren’t enough hands left to man two ships.”

  “So how did word get back?” Maria asked. “Two centuries later Richard of Holdingham knew they had reached Vinland, was confident enough to sketch it on his map. The archaeology indicates that the settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was pretty short-lived, abandoned well before 1066, so it’s not as if there were regular supply trips that could pass on reports.”

  “Jack was right about the Greenlanders,” O’Connor replied. “They were sympathetic to Harald, a fellow Norwegian, especially when they saw he had no intention of subjugating them and staying there. He swore them to secrecy, and the silver he gave them kept their trade with the Old World prosperous for generations to come. We know this because the félag sent out an expedition in search of Harald several generations later. Eirik Gnupsson, Bishop of Greenland and one of the félag, convinced his flock that he was a loyal follower of Harald, and learned what I have just recounted. He was told that Harald promised to leave a way-marker in Vinland if he and his companions decided to sail farther south. Richard must have been told this in the greatest secrecy, but nothing more. Eirik Gnupsson sailed for Vinland but was never heard of again. There was never another expedition, and the location of Vinland was lost to history. Even to the Greenlanders it became a kind of Avalon, a mythical promised land, ruled by the once and future king.”