The Gods of Laki

by Chris Angus

  He shrugged. “Precious little. It’s not been the focus of my interest directly. I’ve pretty much kept to examining the research being done on thermal and fuel cell technology in Reykjavik.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “This is a very interesting volcano, not only for its interior design, so to speak, but also for its history. There have been two major eruptions in recorded history and of course many more before that. This is a very active region geologically. Iceland has over two hundred active volcanoes, you know. I’ve recorded a surprising amount of seismic activity here in the last two years.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Which could mean a new eruption is imminent?”

  “Perhaps. The correlation is not always exact, but yes, it’s a possibility. I’ve written about that possibility, which hasn’t made me the most popular person in Iceland.”

  “I imagine it could frighten people.”

  “More than that, it pisses them off, especially those in the tourist industry. Guides, tour buses, hotels, restaurants, car rentals. It all ties together. Since I started writing about it, tourism has fallen off a cliff. No one wants to be around if this thing goes off.”

  “What happens if you’re here when it erupts?”

  She shrugged. “I’m a volcanologist. I have to be here to study. It goes with the territory. Anyway, I’m happier here than any other place I’ve ever been. It just seems right, somehow, to be here.”

  They listened silently for a moment. There was no sound from their pursuers.

  “Laki’s last major eruption was huge,” She went on. “It happened in 1783 and extended over a period of months into 1784. Thirty billion tons of lava poured out of a twenty-mile-long fissure. It was the largest recorded lava flow in history.”

  He whistled softly. “This entire region must be undermined by vents and lava tunnels.”

  “You have no idea. Some of the fissure is now actually beneath the Myrdalsjokull glacier. There are several lifetimes of study and research to be done here.” She leaned forward suddenly and stared at him with hungry eyes. “I intend to do my share.”

  “I believe you will,” he said.

  She relaxed a little, settled back again. “Anyway, ninety million tons of sulfuric acid was released. Nine thousand people died, twenty percent of Iceland’s population at the time. The eruption set off one of the coldest winters on record in Europe, North America, and Central Asia, as far away as Siberia. An estimated twenty-three thousand people in Britain alone died from inhaling sulfurous gases that descended in the form of deadly fogs in August and September.”

  “I had no clue,” Ryan said.

  “The effects on human history were significant. It’s even thought it may have been one cause of the French Revolution, because the destruction of crops and livestock brought famine and poverty leading to unrest in France before the revolution in 1789.

  “In North America, the winter of 1783-84 was one of the longest and coldest in history—the longest period of below-zero temperatures in New England, the largest accumulation of snow in New Jersey, the longest freezing over of Chesapeake Bay. A huge snowstorm hit the South and the Mississippi river at New Orleans froze over. There were ice flows in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “And you think an eruption of similar magnitude may be building now?”

  She stretched out her legs and leaned back against her pack. The effect was to make her seem taller. It also made him uncomfortably aware of her physical presence. There was something vital, almost intimidating about her. She exuded independence and self-confidence. Given the fact that men had just tried to kill her, she looked remarkably composed.

  “Many volcanoes erupt on a regular basis, though that regularity may only amount to every few hundred or even thousand years. There was another major eruption of Laki in AD 934, called the Eldgjá eruption. We know much less about this one, of course, since it occurred before recorded history in Iceland, even before the Norse Sagas, which were written from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, though they recorded stories that went back to the Saga Age, about 900–1050.”

  Ryan shook his head in wonder. “You must have been researching this place for a long time.”

  She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “The Eldgjá eruption, like the one in 1783, produced a cloud of sulfuric acid aerosols that traversed northern Europe, dimming and reddening the sun. King Henry of Saxony observed one of these heavy, dry fogs in AD 934. It was the same phenomenon that Ben Franklin described after the 1783 catastrophe.”

  “I know a little something about what the release of aerosol gas and dust into the atmosphere can do,” Ryan said. “Sulfuric gas changes rapidly into sulfuric acid aerosol in the atmosphere. It alters the radiative budget and leads to cooling of the earth’s surface as the aerosol reflects solar radiation back to space. It can be a major factor in climate change.”

  Samantha looked at him with grudging respect. “You’re right and furthermore . . .”

  A loud voice suddenly shouted from the top of the vent. In a moment, more voices could be heard all talking rapidly. They had found the entrance to their hiding place.

  “Son of a bitch!” said Ryan.

  Samantha grabbed her pack and jacket. “Follow me,” she said.

  As they moved, rifle fire resounded in the vent, deafening them. Ryan heard bullets whiz past, ricocheting off the walls.

  As they moved lower, Samantha took out a small flashlight to help guide them. They could hear the men entering the tunnel, grunting and sliding somewhere behind them.

  Ryan could definitely feel heat coming through the floor of the vent now.

  “There must be volcanic activity not far below us,” he said.

  “More than you know,” she replied. “It gets steeper from here.”

  “You mean you’ve been down here before?”

  “It’s very interesting structure, volcanically speaking.” She slowed as the ground beneath them began to slope steeply. “Be careful. It’s easy to lose your footing now. Put your hand on the floor.”

  He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he leaned over and put one palm on the vent floor. It was warm to the touch. Before he could say anything, Samantha sat down and began to slide.

  “Try not to get going too fast,” she said. “There’s a fork in the tunnel below us. We’ll slide to the left, entering the smaller tunnel. Those following will more likely choose the larger opening. It’ll be the last decision they ever make.”

  He wanted to ask what she meant, but there was no time. He sat and began to slide, barely able to control his increasing speed with his hands and feet. The branch in the tunnels came upon them suddenly, and he followed Samantha’s lead into the left opening by dragging one hand as if it were a rudder. The rock was much warmer now.

  Their sliding gradually slowed as the angle of the vent decreased until they stopped altogether. Samantha turned off her flashlight.

  “Keep quiet,” she whispered.

  They could hear the men, who had decided to come after them. Ryan saw the flicker of a flashlight. Then one of the men cried out and they saw a rifle go sliding past into the other tunnel. A moment later the men followed it, their speed completely unarrested now.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Like mountain climbers tied together being pulled off a sheer face one after the other, the men disappeared down the venthole. There was no further sound.

  Sam turned the light on and played it on Ryan’s face.

  “They’re gone,” she said.

  “Gone? Gone where?” Ryan asked.

  “I haven’t seen it, but that other vent passage must empty into a caldera of lava. They would have all died instantly.” She stood up and considered their path back upward. The death of four men did not appear to have upset her in the least.

  “I hope they left their car keys behind,” he said.

  She gave him a puzzled look.

  “They destroyed all the tires on our cars. That made it pretty clear what their intentions were. You said it wasn�
��t the first time.”

  “I’ve been followed for weeks now. There have been two near accidents, one in which the brakes on my car failed without warning. Then the gas heater in Bjorg’s house malfunctioned and everyone inside was nearly asphyxiated from the fumes. I was afraid I’d get someone killed, so I started spending most of my time up here, living in my tent.”

  He stared at her in dismay. “People were trying to kill you, so you decided to go out into total wilderness where no one else was around? Were you trying to make it easy for them? You have a death wish?”

  She smiled grudgingly. He noted the crinkle around her nose. She looked almost pixyish, except for the steel in her eyes.

  “Probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “But now that you’re here to protect me, everything should be okay.”

  While they talked they’d been moving higher. At the confluence with the other vent opening, Samantha stopped and turned off the light. Ryan could see an orange glow shimmering far in the distance. A wave of heat emanated from the tunnel that he hadn’t had time to note as they hurtled into the adjacent opening. His stomach did a turn, as he thought how close they’d come to the same fate as the men following them.

  “They might have arrested themselves if they’d had any idea what lay ahead,” Sam said. “By the time they realized, if they did, it was too late.”

  She smiled secretly. “Come on. I want to show you something very special.”

  He followed her back to the entrance to the venthole. Then she led the way over the rim and down the outside another hundred yards to where yet another opening beckoned.

  “This place is a bloody honeycomb.”

  “Ten thousand years of lava and gas vents. At least. Fact is, I never took much notice of this one before, but when I returned at the beginning of the season this year, it appeared to have been widened. I thought that was curious, so I took a look inside. Come on.” She slipped the pack off and left it, then wriggled through the opening.

  Ryan found it a bit tighter for his frame but made it through to a low space, where Sam waited for him, flashlight pointing to the floor.

  “I should prepare you,” she said. “Because when I saw it the first time, it nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “What?”

  She played the light on the floor and he saw several clay vessels and some reed mats, very primitive looking.

  “What on earth . . . ?” He stared at the items incomprehensibly.

  She slowly played the light higher until he could see human bones lying against the walls. They were obviously many hundreds of years old.

  “Who are they?” he whispered.

  “Vikings,” she said without hesitation.

  “What? I can’t believe that. I thought they buried their dead at sea or something.”

  “When it was convenient, they did. Or sometimes in or under a boat. But if they were in a hurry, they probably would have found these ready-made ventholes a real time-saver. Look.”

  She played the light around them and he realized that the venthole had been widened into a room. Stones had been stood on end to form a nearly rectangular living space. There was even a slab-like hearth at one end. Beside it were a number of implements. He moved closer and identified several primitive blades and what looked for all the world like a battleaxe. Resting on a hearthstone were several carvings or pieces of jewelry that appeared to be heavily soot-covered.

  She nodded at his look. “That’s jet, a locally mined black coal mineral from northern England that was used to make jewelry. The Vikings traded for it from York in England. It was often left with the dead along with other belongings, sometimes including horses or dogs.”

  “So this is a burial?”

  “That was my first thought. But I’ve begun to wonder. See the way the stones are situated, and the hearth. I think this was actually someone’s home.”

  “They lived inside a volcano?” He whistled softly. “I guess they trusted those Norse gods a whole lot.”

  “Well, think about it. It’s pretty comfortable in here right now. I bet they relied on the heat of the Earth to keep them warm. It must have been an incredible find for them. Central heating. An endless source of warmth for the cold months.” She stared about at the contents of the room. “What’s surprising is that this survived the eruption of 1783. It’s located on the downside of the rim, away from the direction the lava flows took. But it’s still incredible that it survived at all.”

  He shook his head. “There’s the makings of a pretty good marketing campaign here for geothermal energy. I can see the ads now: Keep warm the Viking way!”

  “Assuming people don’t take that to mean by raging around looting, raping and pillaging in order to keep warm—a sort of exercise program for the socially misfit.” She smiled that crinkly-nosed smile. “Anyway, it’ll have to be exhaustively excavated and studied.” She gave him a hard look. “I wouldn’t want it part of any ad campaign, drawing all sorts of yahoos up here, disturbing the site.”

  “Point taken.” He stared at one of the skulls. It had a blackened jet necklace lying on what remained of the neck. He reached out a hand and touched it. Then he placed his hand on the skull. Instantly, a woman’s face appeared in his mind. He could see her as clearly as he saw Samantha. It was so real he lurched backward, his heart beating like a sledgehammer. The image went away as soon as his hand left the skull.

  Sam was staring at him.

  “I . . . I saw something. Someone.”

  “Good,” she said. “At least I’m not totally crazy.”

  “It happened to you too?”

  “Only once. The first time I touched it. Like you.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I don’t know, a sort of vision. There’s something down here that plays tricks on the mind. It’s probably the volcanic gas.” She shook herself, as though dismissing the idea.

  “You don’t suppose this could have anything to do with those men? That they could have wanted the discovery to themselves?”

  She stared at him. “You’re suggesting they were rogue archaeologists willing to kill for the site? I think that’s a stretch. But maybe . . .”

  “What?”

  “Maybe it’s the opposite. They don’t want this to get out because it would mean lots of people up here.”

  “What earthly difference could it make to anyone whether or not there are lots of people on Laki?”

  “Well, it matters to the authorities for one. My articles have completely stifled tourism. Virtually no one has visited the area in the past year. I’m not terribly popular in government circles.”

  “I imagine that’s putting it lightly.”

  “The point is, all of a sudden, someone seems to be very interested in this place.”

  “Or in you,” he said. He started to put his hand back on the skull, then thought better of it. The image of the woman was still vivid in his head. It had seemed so real.

  ***

  The distinguished-looking man wore a sharply cut dark suit, black tie, and even darker demeanor. He spoke precise English as he handed Ryan’s passport back to him. His name was Johann Dagursson, and he was national police commissioner. Ryan and Samantha had been shunted to the man’s office in Reykjavik after reporting what they believed had happened to the men who attacked them. That was two days ago. Now, they’d been called back on the carpet.

  The commissioner sat behind his desk, tapping his pen thoughtfully. He had striking Nordic features, thick silver-blonde hair, and eyes that bore into his two guests. His hands were huge, the knuckles misshapen. Despite his fastidious taste in clothes, Ryan suspected the man might at one time have been a professional fighter. It was impossible to guess his age.

  “We’ve investigated your story,” he said, looking at them. “And not the first one we’ve heard from you, Miss Graham.”

  “You know each other?” Ryan asked.

  “I told you I was being followed,” said Sam. “I�
��m not a complete idiot. I reported it.”

  “We’ve identified the owner of the vehicle you drove back from Laki after your own cars were disabled,” Dagursson said. “It’s registered with IranOil, an energy firm that has offices on the waterfront. One of the larger foreign interests in our country at the moment, actually.”

  “And did you ask them why their people were trying to kill us?” said Ryan.

  “They avow no knowledge of the men,” said the commissioner. “Claim the car was stolen.”

  “When?”

  “Last week.”

  “Convenient.”

  Dagursson stared at Ryan beneath block-shaped eyebrows. “It is also convenient that there are no bodies. My men are searching the area in question but so far have found nothing.”

  “I already told you what you would find,” said Sam. “The temperature of lava runs to two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. They would have been incinerated instantly.”

  “Yes. Unfortunate for their next of kin,” said Dagursson.

  “Look. Put them down as lost at sea, for all I care,” said Ryan. “A sea of lava. I have no qualms about what happened to them. They were trying to kill us. We’d like to know why.”

  Dagursson looked at some papers in front of him. “You’re the owner of a business here in Reykjavik, Mr. Baldwin. You are also a former member of the United States Secret Service. As such, you’ve been issued a permit to carry a gun while in my country, an extraordinary privilege. It would seem that both of you are well connected.” He looked at Sam. “I spoke with your father this morning.”

  She sighed. There was no getting away from her powerful family.

  “He was quite worried about you. Even suggested I revoke your visa and send you home.”

  She leaned forward. “You can’t do that. I’m involved in very important research. My seismic readings strongly suggest another Laki eruption could be building. Lives may be at stake. Your countrymen’s lives.”

  “Yes, the government is well aware of that. The publicity you’ve garnered surrounding your reports that an eruption might be imminent has effectively shut down tourism at Laki and much of the southern coastline, I might add. Given our current economic difficulties, you couldn’t have picked a worse time.”