by Jess Lourey
Salem nodded. “You mentioned that.”
“No, I mean Scotland.”
Salem looked at him, surprised. “But your mom was from here?”
“Born and raised, until she moved south. Quite a woman, her. Name was Elizabeth.”
“She’s not alive?”
Charlies eyes dropped. “She passed when I was eight.”
Salem softened toward him. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was lucky to know her at all.” His smile took on a boyish quality. “You would have loved her. Everyone did. She was a bit of a rebel spirit. Raised on a horse farm, left for England to join the British Army when World War II began. She was in London for the bombings, you know. They’d blitz every night, but my mother refused to leave because she was a nurse and she was needed.”
“She sounds like a brave woman.”
“You don’t know the half of it. One night her hospital was bombed. The army forced the evacuation, but she stayed behind to pull bodies from the rubble. She was a wee woman, could reach places the soldiers could not.”
“She survived the war?”
“She did. After, she found a scrap of land in southern England and began raising her own horses. She met my father then. They never married. She had me much, much later in life. I expect I was an accident, though she never made me feel it. I had the best tutors and free rein of the countryside.”
Salem sighed as she stared into her now-empty chip bag, the silver foil reflecting muddy shadows back at her. “Sounds like a wonderful childhood.”
The smile dropped off his face. “It was up until her death.”
“I’m so sorry.” He’d revealed that his father was also dead, which made him an orphan. “You said your mother was in the Underground?”
“Yes. They’d meet in our parlor. This was before the Internet, of course. I thought it was a bunch of country women meeting for tea, but sometimes I’d eavesdrop. They’d talk of codes and plans to buy land and free their sisters across the world. I was quite taken with it. Likely explains why I joined British intelligence straight out of college.”
Salem grew quiet. Since it seemed she couldn’t escape the reach of the Underground, maybe the answer was to not fight it, but to coexist with it as Charlie appeared to.
“Can I talk to you about something?”
She smiled. “If it’s whether we should buy more crisps, the answer is yes.”
The lopsided smile returned. “I can get us more. But no, I wanted to ask you about Agent Stone.”
Salem stiffened.
“I’m sorry to bring it up,” he said, “but I’m afraid I hurt your feelings earlier when I spoke about Agent Stone and Nina. It was unprofessional, and I apologize.”
“You didn’t—” Salem stopped herself. She wasn’t going to lie to Charlie. “I had a little crush on Agent Stone, but there’s nothing between us.”
“You aren’t dating?”
“Nope.” Salem planted her smile back on her lips. “I’m as single as a dollar.”
Charlie’s eyes cut away. “I’ll get us the crisps. You watch for the guide?”
“Sure. What’s he look like?”
Charlie stared at the sleeping man on the other side of the terminal and then out at the lonely tarmac. “Awake.”
32
The Standing Stones of Stenness
Orkney Islands, Scotland
The northwest Orkney Islands had the same melancholy, make-do smell of a doused campfire as Ireland, but the air was brinier, leaving salt kisses on Salem’s lips as she walked from the terminal to the guide’s car. The cola Charlie had bought her had sharpened her senses but also made her jittery.
Their guide, a mop-haired Patagonia type named Bode, was unbothered by the late—or early, depending which way you were coming in—hour. He was an American who reminded Salem sweetly, sadly, of Mercy’s brother, Ernest.
“I’ve been here eight months,” he said as he pulled out of the airport parking lot. “I’m on a grant to study the Orkney’s geography as part of my master’s degree, so I won’t be able to help too much with the history of the Stones. I’m the best you can get at this hour, I guess.” His laugh was good-natured, relaxed, but his fingers twitched with excitement. “What’s the FBI after at Stenness, anyhow?”
“Nothing too exciting, I’m afraid,” Charlie offered from the backseat. “You’ve heard of the Climate Change Summit coming to London this weekend?”
“Dude, the whole world has.”
Charlie laughed. “I suppose. Well, some eco-terrorism groups think it’s not going far enough. They’ve threatened to vandalize UK monuments this weekend unless the accord is rewritten to offer more environmental protections. We’ve been assigned the thankless job of checking out Stenness to make sure they haven’t disturbed it and aren’t planning to.”
Salem was surprised at how smoothly the lie rolled off his tongue. She supposed she shouldn’t be. If she stayed FBI, she’d grow skilled at lying too.
Bode scratched his beard. “There’s worse gigs. Have you visited Stenness before?”
“No,” Salem said.
“I hope you’re not expecting Stonehenge. You’ll be let down.”
“We were just there,” Charlie said. “First stop.”
“How long of a drive is it?” Salem was considering checking in with Gaea to see if she’d uncovered any new information.
“Twenty minutes.”
Not long enough.
“What can you tell us about the area?” Charlie asked.
Salem appreciated the question, considering the necessary skills Charlie was bringing to this investigation. He’d mentioned having years of experience as a field agent, which meant he knew how to conduct an investigation. Where Salem went directly to her computer for research, Charlie talked to people.
“It’s an archeologist’s dream,” Bode answered. “Everything here is built of stone, so it lasts. It’s not bad for geographers, at least with my specialty. I’m part of a geophysical survey team studying all the drowned paleo-landscapes in the Orkneys, with a specific focus on the Loch of Stenness, which is just west of the Stones. We only have a basic idea of what’s been covered by rising water.”
He pointed out the windshield, where the landscape was still bathed in the unsettling violet of the simmer dim. “See what looks like lakes out there? In the Neolithic period, most of this was swampland. Our project is developing methods for studying the submerged shores of the UK.”
“Do you think there are more standing stones underwater?” Salem asked.
“Possibly, but it’s unlikely they’d still be standing against the ocean currents.” He slowed down for a turn. “Don’t quote me on this, but I heard one of the archeologists say the Neolithic people got the idea for the Stenness circle when they started to move rocks so they could farm the land. That’s how all the stone fences dividing property began, and building a stone circle, sorta an outdoor community church, grew from there. People made pilgrimages to the Stenness Stones twice a year, just like at Stonehenge, bringing offerings and food for a festival.”
Salem was looking at a patchwork quilt of white stone fences bisecting the green earth as he spoke. “Where do you go to college?”
“University of Colorado, Boulder. I was lucky to land this cherry gig.” He reached behind him to grab something stuffed in the rear pocket of Salem’s seat. “I brought rain slickers for you both. The weather changes on a dime out here.”
“Thanks,” Salem said, unbuckling to pull hers on. Charlie did the same.
Bode looked at her appraisingly. “Do you have a hair tie too? The Orkney wind can give you dreadlocks in under a minute, I swear.”
Salem held up her hand, and the slicker fell away, revealing elastic at her wrist. “Always. You learn early with curly hair.”
He smiled and pointed at t
he bun on top of his head. “With long hair too.”
Charlie’s head appeared between them, his hand pointing beyond the center of the windshield. “Is that it?”
Salem looked where he was indicating. Across the green flats, atop a small rise, stood a row of fence posts. As they neared, some of the posts separated from the rest, growing, and then morphing into the sparse rocks of Stenness.
“Yeah,” Bode said. “I warned you. The good news is that it’s open twenty-four hours a day, not that I suppose that matters to FBI agents. Hey,” he said, directing a question at Charlie, “if you work for the FBI, why do you have an accent?”
“I’m a transplant,” Charlie said, a grin lighting up his face.
“All right, man.” Bode offered his hand, palm up, so Charlie could slap it. He pulled into the empty lot and turned off the car. “The parking lot is a bit of a hike from the monument, so prepare yourselves.”
Salem pushed on her door. At first, she thought it was stuck, but then she realized the wind was holding it closed. She shoved harder, and it whipped open as the direction of the gust changed. The briny squall tried to rip her hair out of its tie, but she’d bound it tightly. She squinched her watering eyes, trying to make sense of a dark patch of water near the stones. She didn’t remember a lagoon that close to the structure. Two blinks brought the area into focus. It was a field of flowers bent against the ground. The violet light kept her from identifying their color, but their existence recalled Mrs. Molony’s words.
Look for the help that’s out there, and remember the water, the flowers, and the power of women.
With a silent apology to Mrs. Molony, Salem acknowledged that that advice was a load of bunk. She was a mathematician and a cryptanalyst, a scientist to her core, not a woo-woo palm reader. She would search for questions and answers she could see and hold, codes she could solve. That was the only way to save Mercy.
“Is everything okay?” Bode asked, raising his voice to be heard above the wind.
Salem jumped. She hadn’t realized she was that tense or he that close. “Yeah. Thanks. Just getting my bearings.”
“I know what you mean. Scotland feels like a door into a different world, especially up here in the Orkneys. It took me weeks to acclimate.”
Salem nodded. Charlie appeared at her side, the hood of his wind slicker tied tight around the oval of his bright white face. He reminded Salem of a little boy his mother had let outside to play in a storm. “Onward!”
Bode handed them each a flashlight. “The light of the simmer dim is deceiving too. You’ll think you see more than you can and miss what’s right in front of your face. Trust me.”
Salem found that she did.
They trudged toward the stones, leaning into the gale. When Salem raised her eyes to check their progress, the wind wicked away their moisture and she’d have to glance down and blink rapidly. It wasn’t until Bode yelled that they’d made it that she realized she was standing right next to one of the stones.
It was twice her height at least, but slim, shaped more like an ancient tabletop on its end than a timeless stone monolith. It couldn’t be more than a foot thick, sharply angled at the top. She stretched out her hand to touch it and then paused. That had gotten her into trouble at Stonehenge.
“It’s okay,” Bode said. “They’ve suffered worse.”
He pointed toward the middle, where a flat slab of stone lay on the ground next to two thick standing stones. All three appeared to be twice the weight and half the height of the four perimeter stones. “See those? They used to be set up like a table with the flat stone you see on the ground over the top of the others. It was called the Altar Stone, though it wasn’t erected the same time as the rest of the circle. Some drunks toppled it September 1972. We’re probably close to the anniversary of that event.”
“I’ll check those out, and you take the perimeter stones,” Charlie called over the wind. He didn’t wait for Salem’s response, striding toward the center stones.
In the preternatural violet light, he reminded Salem of a supplicant approaching the altar. She closed her eyes, hearing the lapping of water against rock from the nearby ness, the shout of the wind across rolling plains, and nothing else. She had no idea the sound of a medieval night, but it surely must have been similar.
She opened her eyes. Charlie was almost to the fallen altar stones. Had he always been so slender? She wouldn’t be surprised if the wind whipped him away like a dandelion seed. When he knelt in front of the stones, Salem felt a lurch like her soul had shifted. The disorientation was complete, the same unsettling sense she’d been overtaken by inside of Stonehenge. She felt like she was slipping back in time, falling outside of herself.
Charlie’s triumphant shout snapped her attention back to the here and now. “Here! I found something.”
She jogged toward Charlie, the earth spongy underfoot. The wind fought her, pushing back like a magnetic field. She latched onto the circle of his flashlight, the wind rustling in her ears.
She was short of breath when she reached him. She bent toward him. “What is it?”
Charlie shook his head, his expression sheepish. “Sorry, I thought it was some sort of inscription, but it’s just some grass lying against this stone. I’ll keep looking.” He ducked his head between the standing stones.
Salem swallowed her disappointment. She walked once around the altar stones and spotted nothing to help him with. Bode had remained standing patiently next to the first stone she’d touched, arms crossed over his chest. She ran back to him, licking her lips and tasting salt.
She clicked on her flashlight, appreciating his quiet as she began a grid pattern across the face of the stone, slowing for every inch, peering at anything that might be an imperfection hiding something more. She did the same to the narrow sides, and the back. She was not tall enough to view the top, even when she backed up and shone the flashlight toward it.
“You folks are real thorough in looking for any vandalism,” Bode said.
Salem thought she heard suspicion in his voice underneath a layer of genuine curiosity. “That’s not exactly why we’re here,” she said.
“I figured.” He grinned at her. “Anything I can help with?
Salem considered his question. She could be ladylike, or she could do everything in her power to help Mercy. Put that way, the choice was clear. “This is weird, but do you think you could hoist me on your shoulders? I want to get a better look at the top of the stone.”
He shrugged. “Sure. I used to give my little sister shoulder rides all the time.”
“I probably weigh more than your little sister,” Salem said.
He tucked his mouth up to the side. “You look strong. Like you’d be good at snowboarding.”
He knelt next to the rock, bracing himself with it. Salem climbed onto his shoulders, tempted to use the stone to take some of her mass. She did not think the Neolithic builders or the current archeologists would approve. She trusted Bode with her full weight.
“Can you see the top?” he hollered up at her.
She ran the flashlight over the nubby, shadowed surface. “Somewhat. Can you back up a touch?”
He did. The top of the stone appeared as unbroken as every other side of it, at least from this angle. She wouldn’t be able to investigate any closer without a ladder.
“Good work, both of you!” Charlie yelled from the center of the monument.
Salem flashed him the thumbs up. “Nothing to see up here,” she called down to Bode.
He returned her to the ground as smoothly as possible. She hopped off. “Thank you. Are you okay doing that with the other stones?”
He was. The remaining three perimeter rocks received the same treatment. They were pitted, covered in lichen, grown rough with age and the elements, but they contained no hidden messages or drawers that Salem could detect. Her gut grew heavy. It
had been a long shot to think that they would find something at the Standing Stones of Stenness.
She stared at the landscape. What the hell was she doing in Scotland? Mercy was in London, she knew it, and here she was cobbling together the thinnest of possible leads, building an imaginary world where she could control her fear by solving puzzles.
Charlie joined her and Bode, looked as dejected as she felt. “You didn’t find anything, either?”
She couldn’t respond. Her brain had retreated into the darkness, the place where she was a failure, where she didn’t get anything right, where her stupidity had gotten Mercy kidnapped, where even her own mother saw her as an inconvenience. Once the dark got a hold of her, it dug its sharp claws into her gray matter, sending her images of Mercy being tortured, crying for Salem, for her brother, for anyone to save her.
A warm hand gripped her shoulder. “Don’t cry.”
It was Bode, his brow furrowed in worry. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for,” he continued, “but just because you didn’t find it here doesn’t mean you won’t find it somewhere else. The trick is not giving up. Lemme show you.” He took off toward the sea of flowers.
Now that the sun had shifted below the horizon, offering a more honest light, Salem could see that they were a field of red poppies. Bode plucked one and ran back, offering it out when he reached her.
“These flowers aren’t native and shouldn’t even survive, as saline as the soil is. And look at them!” The wind tore at the petals, but they held firm to their center.
Salem took the poppy. It would do nothing to help her, nothing to save Mercy. Her tears broke loose of their growing mass and slid down her cheeks, the greedy wind lapping at them.
Bode was undaunted. His hands free, he spread them large. “These flowers grow all over the place around here. There are so many of them, they gave the archeologists the nickname for the Flower Stone over at the Ness of Brodgar.”
Salem inhaled audibly. Flowers, water, the power of women. Computers and science had failed her. She had nothing to lose. “The Flower Stone? Is it near?”
