The Gods of Laki

by Chris Angus

  The place was certainly suitable for the wealthy guests who now inhabited it. He saw bedrooms with original artwork on the walls and sliding glass doors to decks constructed of imported teak. One large room completely enclosed by glass contained an indoor pool and sauna. Another held a small theater or lecture hall. There also appeared to be two wings that contained what looked like laboratory equipment.

  The place must be some sort of high-level research center. With the poshest accommodations imaginable. He eased himself out of the rocks and crossed an open section of lawn to reach a room where he could see men sitting around a conference table.

  He felt very cold. And exposed. Even though it was now late evening, visibility was still good. The men inside could probably see out the windows, though reflections on the glass from the lights would somewhat retard their vision.

  But as he crouched beside the building, it was evident the men were not concerned with the view. Indeed, there appeared to be a heated discussion going on, and Senator Graham was at the center of it. Whatever they were arguing about, the debate went on for some time. Finally, the dispute died down. Akbari stood up and motioned to Senator Graham to follow him.

  Budelmann watched them leave the room and pass down a long glass corridor that led to one of the research laboratories. He frog-walked along the foundation, lowered himself over a cement slab, and climbed back up to a lawn where there was a window that looked into one of the labs. There was less glass here, and he felt less exposed.

  He watched Graham and Akbari enter the room and proceed to a series of tables that seemed to hold what looked like . . . what the hell was that? He peered uncertainly at the objects that were partially obscured by the two men’s bodies.

  Then Akbari reached down and lifted some sort of tool. Budelmann squinted at it. It appeared to be an axe. Primitive looking, though, almost like a . . . a battleaxe. He stared in incomprehension. For half a moment, he thought the oil minister was going to split the senator’s skull. But the Iranian only laughed and handed the thing to Graham, who studied it briefly, then placed it back on the table.

  Akbari picked up a bone. Yes! That’s what was on the tables. Bodies. No. Not bodies. Bones. A collection of bones and skulls. The two men spent some time talking about the bone in Akbari’s hand. Then another man, dressed in a white frock, came in, and all three of them talked about the bone. The man who looked like a doctor was quite animated, gesticulating with his arms and waving one of the bones around. Then he directed them across the room to a series of large, rectangular vats. They all stared into the vats while the man in the white frock talked some more.

  Finally, Graham nodded and he and Akbari left the room. The man doing all the talking also left, leaving Budelmann crouched by the window, trying to make sense of what he’d seen.

  If only he could get into that lab for a few minutes. He tried all of the windows, but they were locked. Indeed, it looked like they were constructed not to open, period. He considered breaking the glass, but was afraid someone would hear the noise, and of course, there was probably an alarm system.

  What the hell was going on here? He’d imagined the meeting must have something to do with the international price of oil, maybe with some new discovery that would influence world markets. Instead, Graham and Akbari seemed to be arguing over a pile of old bones and a battleaxe.

  It made no sense.

  Suddenly, a shaft of light flashed across the lawn next to him. He shrank back against the wall. Someone had opened a door from the lab. He watched the doctor emerge, take out a long, slim cigar, light it, inhale with pleasure, and stroll toward the end of the headland a hundred yards away. A smoke break. Some doctor, if that’s what he was. Well, if the guy wants to kill himself, Budelmann thought, I’m not going to argue with him.

  As soon as the man was a good distance away, the reporter slipped down the slope and entered the lab through the open door. From the size of that cigar, he figured he had at least twenty minutes.

  He whistled softly at the display of sophisticated equipment that lined the work areas. He had no idea what any of it was for, though there were plenty of computers and electronics. He’d seen oil company research labs before. Computers were de rigueur for any business nowadays, but something about the entire work area struck him as having little to do with any sort of geological research.

  He reached the tables and examined the bones. They were clearly very old. Several had been neatly sawed in half, and the dismembered pieces were missing.

  He heard something and went to the door. The doctor was still fifty or sixty yards away, but he was coming back.

  Quickly, he grabbed one of the smaller, cut bones and a piece of jawbone with several teeth still attached. He glanced at the vats the men had been staring into. They were filled with some sort of bubbling, whitish liquid. It smelled pretty bad, and he had no idea what it could be. He found a small container and quickly scooped up some of the liquid. Then he slipped outside and into the dark shadows cast by the building. The man in the lab coat stopped by the door, took one final puff of his cigar, and dropped the stub. He ground it out with his foot and went inside, closing the door behind him.

  There was nothing left to do but begin the long walk home. Maybe he could hitch a ride if he was lucky. He pulled his collar up, shivering. Damn, but Iceland was appropriately named.

  Chapter Twelve

  Rashid stared at the men sitting around the conference table. They were a scruffy lot. Mercenaries and would-be terrorists he’d hired on the open market. It wasn’t easy finding men willing to go out on a limb for something of this nature, even if they were being well paid.

  It didn’t hurt, of course, that he was one of Iran’s wealthiest business owners. Or had been until the recent tumble in the price of oil. Petroleum was now flirting with thirty-five dollars a barrel, an unheard-of figure that was swiftly draining his resources.

  It was hard to believe it had only been a year since he’d uncovered Goering’s audacious plan to turn the war around in its final days by causing the volcano of Laki to erupt in Iceland. It had sounded like the ridiculous fantasy of a deranged lunatic, which Goering surely was by 1943, and he had dismissed it. But that was before he met Abdullah Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi who had also latched onto the information. Far from being dismissive, Abdullah recognized at once the possibility of affecting the worldwide price of oil.

  Rashid stared at Abdullah with a mixture of envy and distaste. Physically, the man was a disgrace. Hugely overweight with a girth only barely concealed by his robes, he had small black eyes and even smaller stubby fingers. His slothful demeanor belied a fierce passion for wealth and this was where the envy came in. Abdullah’s own capital was not directly tied to oil and thus subject to the vagaries of the market, as was Rashid’s.

  Abdullah was connected to the royal family. All the Saudi money had come initially from oil, but many decades of control of the world’s primary energy supply had given the family broad investments around the globe. Despite Abdullah’s independent means, Rashid had never come across anyone more money-hungry.

  It hadn’t taken long for Abdullah to infect Rashid’s own greed. In just a single meeting, he laid out his scheme in great detail, along with the history of Goering’s plot. By the end of the presentation, Rashid had to admit the plan might have merit. He knew nothing at all of the science of volcanology. No matter. Results were what counted, and Abdullah had already fielded a team of his own and begun to expand the Nazi tunnel system.

  What the fat Arab needed from the man at the head of the table was access to explosives and experts to use them. Both were tightly controlled in Iceland. Rashid’s connections through IranOil would make it possible for him to smuggle in the necessary expertise.

  Such an expert now sat across the table from both men. His name was Abu Qarawi, a Yemeni who’d been released from Guantanamo after being held in detention for more than a year. It hadn’t taken him long to find an employer. A frightening-looking figure with
the coldest eyes Rashid had ever seen, Qarawi had an ugly scar across one cheek and spoke in a raspy, low tone that sent chills down Rashid’s spine every time he heard it. Fortunately, the man rarely had much to say.

  From beneath the layers of fat that took the place of his chin, Abdullah said, “We’ve made considerable progress, but it was necessary to shut down operations while the police investigated the disappearance of your men.” It was a sore point.

  “We needed to keep to our timetable,” said Rashid, irritated. “OPEC is under tremendous pressure from the West to maintain production levels. If it does, the price of oil will fall even further, pushing Iran’s and my own resources toward bankruptcy. The Graham woman had taken to living on the volcano. We had no choice. We didn’t know who her father was. She was simply a scientist who was in the way.”

  Rashid’s remark was irrelevant as far as Abdullah was concerned. The point was that no one had bothered to consult him about the plan to go after Samantha Graham. Even without knowing about the woman’s father, such a move was bound to bring the scrutiny of the police. It had made him question the wisdom of working with Rashid in the first place.

  Even Rashid had to admit it had been a major screw-up. Four men dead, or at least missing, and the police investigating. Irrationally, he blamed Akbari. The oil minister clearly had his own agenda, one Rashid would dearly love to uncover. He resented being cut out of the meetings of something called the Laki Working Group. His spies had uncovered the existence of the group but had been unable to determine its purpose. One thing they had learned was that Senator Graham, the American majority leader, was involved. And that meant the Laki Working Group must have global significance.

  By the time he learned of the connection between the senator and the scientist, it was too late. And the fact that the senator’s daughter had very nearly been killed could have thrown a real monkey wrench into whatever Akbari was up to. Serve the minister right, Rashid thought, for freezing him out. And there was no question the blasted woman had been a pain in the neck. Aside from her presence on Laki, which made everything difficult, she continued to draw attention to IranOil’s inexplicable actions in Iceland through her articles in the New York Times.

  “When will you begin operations again?” Rashid asked.

  Abdullah shrugged. “We’ve been monitoring official activity in Reykjavik. Police vans and men have been leaving the city headed toward Laki all week. When they’re on site at the volcano, we can’t get close enough to see what’s going on. However, one of my men told me this morning he believes the police action is winding down. He made a trip to the volcano yesterday, pretending to be a lost tourist, and saw no evidence of anyone around. What is more, there was a notice in the morning papers saying the police had detained Samantha Graham for questioning regarding the disappearance of four men on Laki.”

  Rashid leaned forward. “That’s perfect!” he said. “You must make good use of the time.”

  Abdullah nodded at Abu Qarawi. “Your explosives man will accompany our people tomorrow to examine the preparations. It’s a tricky business. The principle of focusing the blasts will be critical.”

  Rashid leaned back. “Tell me again what will happen.”

  The fat Arab smiled, for there was nothing he enjoyed contemplating more. “If we succeed in setting off the sort of cataclysmic eruption we intend, much of the world . . . at least all of Europe, a good deal of Asia, and perhaps even North America . . . will become mired in below-normal temperatures. You’ve heard of the Little Ice Age that began in the thirteen hundreds and lasted for several hundred years? Well, we hope to achieve something similar.

  “Perhaps . . .” his eyes took on a faraway look, “the cold will even cause a deviation of the Gulf Stream and other ocean currents, resulting in a permanent lowering of the earth’s temperatures.”

  “Making oil the most sought-after commodity in the world to deal with the extreme cold,” said Rashid.

  “I conservatively estimate,” Abdullah replied, “that oil will quickly spike to three hundred dollars a barrel. And that will only be the beginning.”

  Concern washed over Rashid’s face. “No one must ever learn who was behind such a catastrophe. I don’t fancy another Nuremberg Trial. We all recognize there will be a certain number of deaths as a result of the toxic gases that will be released. Do you have any estimates on how many?”

  The detail was of little interest to Abdullah. “There’s no way to tell. Some tens of thousands, perhaps. Maybe more. It all depends on whether we manage to cause a reaction throughout the entire Laki volcanic chain. That’s our goal, and it’s essential to the success of the mission. The bigger the eruption, the more sulfuric gases released, the greater the effects upon world climate.”

  “What are the chances that the cause of the eruption will be detected?”

  “Virtually none. If we trigger the massive release of lava that we expect, all signs of our work will be buried beneath solid rock.”

  Rashid smiled. It all seemed so simple.

  ***

  Ryan’s back started to ache as soon as he saw Sam’s enormous pack. “I thought you said we needed to travel light?”

  “This is light . . . for a woman.” She leaned over and picked up his small daypack. “I’ll carry yours if you carry mine,” she said brightly and headed out the door that Bjorg was holding for them.

  They’d told the housekeeper they were going to visit friends outside the city and would be gone for a few days.

  “A warming of my heart it is, to see my boarders getting along so well,” Bjorg said, smiling sweetly. She clearly thought they were more than getting along. But in Iceland, sexual freedom was rampant and not a big deal.

  Ryan had arranged for them to be picked up a few blocks away by one of Dagursson’s men. They couldn’t leave a car at Laki, signaling their presence, and he thought it was probably wise not to be picked up at Bjorg’s. The fewer people who knew anything at all about their plans, the better.

  Sam’s pack was filled with food and water, enough for a week at least. They would requisition sleeping bags and some other gear from her tent before closing it up in permanent fashion.

  Then it would be a matter of not being bored to death, sitting in a hole in the ground waiting for something to happen.

  A few hours later, they were dropped off by their driver, who gave Ryan a radiophone to be used to stay in touch with the police.

  “The range can be iffy,” the man said. “You need to get elevation for the best reception, and of course it won’t work at all if you’re underground.”

  “Might as well use smoke signals,” Ryan grunted, but he took the thing and stuffed it in his bag.

  There were no cars in the small parking lot and no signs of anyone at all on the volcano. They hiked quickly to Sam’s tent, where she removed sleeping bags, a lantern, and a few other odds and ends. Then she closed the tent up, placing heavy rocks along the zippered fly, plain evidence to anyone interested that no one was home.

  They observed the care with which Dagursson’s men had replaced the rocks around the exposed ventholes. There was almost no sign that they’d been tampered with.

  The Viking home would serve as their headquarters. After setting out their belongings, Ryan suggested they reconnoiter the area.

  “Probably best to look around now,” he said. “Get our bearings. If my hunch is correct, we won’t be alone for long.”

  It was already nine in the evening, but Iceland’s pale skies showed barely a hint of darkness. They trekked down the far side of the mountain until they reached the entrance to the Nazi tunnel system. Sam took out her flashlight, and they moved into the opening.

  “It’s bloody amazing,” Ryan said, as they moved through the passageways. “This place is extensive. It must have taken extraordinary effort and resources to create, but Hitler didn’t have a lot of resources at his disposal toward the end of the war.”

  “He wasn’t all that sane at the end, either,” said
Sam, shining her light into a darkened recess. “If this was some sort of pet project, I bet he redirected whatever resources he had. Still, it’s not like they dug out all these passageways. These tunnels are natural volcanic vents, which they must have simply connected.”

  They reached the area of the current excavation that Dagursson had pointed out. The evidence of recent blasting was obvious. Someone had cut through rock in order to connect with still more natural passages. One of the newly connected tunnels took a steep downward tilt, as Sam slipped and slid along it.

  He eyed what she was doing uneasily. “You don’t suppose this could end in a caldera, do you? I’m not anxious to become a crispy critter like our Arab friends.”

  “Not likely. We’d be able to feel the heat if there were any danger.”

  She played the light along the floor. The passage had grown damp, probably from a recent rainfall. “I don’t see any evidence that Dagursson or his men went down this far,” she said. “Look, you can see our footprints in all this wetness.”

  The passage began to widen. They could see many newly carved recesses in the walls here. Places to put explosives to focus the blast? Ryan wondered.

  Suddenly, they heard voices. Sam immediately turned off her light, and they stood, shoulder to shoulder, listening tensely in the darkness.

  The voices echoed through the passageways in a manner that made it difficult to gauge precisely where they were coming from.

  “Who do you think it is?” she whispered.

  “Doesn’t sound like English to me, though the way the sound echoes and carries down here, it’s hard to be sure. I think we should keep moving ahead of them. Can you feel your way without the light?”

  She squeezed his arm and held on as they began to move slowly away. It was tough going without the light, as black as walking down a sewer.

  “Maybe it’s Dagursson or his men,” Sam said, still keeping her voice low.