“The Caribbean?” Costas whistled. “Incredible.”
“It’s just conjecture,” Jack said. “Wherever they got to, they would have needed to put ashore to replenish water and food within a week or ten days of leaving this place. Let’s say they encountered native peoples again where they put ashore, and were discouraged from trying to stay longer. Then another week or ten days and they were down opposite Georgia and Florida. The shoreline would have looked increasingly inhospitable, an unfamiliar terrain of tropical vegetation and dense scrub. But there would have been no easy turning back, against the currents and wind, with reliance on their sail and too few fit to man the oars for sustained rowing. With increasing desperation they may have continued south. It’s pure speculation, of course, but they could even have sailed through the Florida Keys and into the Caribbean. If that happened, the prevailing winds could have blown them south-west, even as far as Central America.”
“That’s a hell of a long way from Constantinople.”
Jack suddenly remembered his precious days with Katya six months before in Istanbul, the two of them absorbed in the labyrinthine past of the city, their discussion of how the back alleys of history could lead to the most extraordinary adventures of discovery. For a moment he felt a pang of regret, but then was overtaken by a surge of excitement. “A very long way indeed,” he said. “But look where we are now, how far we are already from their homeland. The Viking presence here at L’Anse aux Meadows is fully documented, corroborated by archaeology. Anything’s possible.”
“Half crazed with thirst and exhaustion, some of them still crippled by their wounds from Stamford Bridge,” Jeremy murmured. “It’s an incredible image. They would have been terrified but exhilarated, fearful any moment of dropping over the edge of the world yet every day getting closer to Ragnarok, to the showdown where they would join Odin and Thor battle-girded for the last time with their great war axes. To us the tropics seem benign, but to the Vikings they would have been a vision of hell, a gathering aura of crimson that would seem to be drawing them ever closer to their destiny.”
Costas stood and gazed towards the north-eastern horizon, through the strait towards the shore of Labrador and the open Atlantic. Clouds were building up, and a sea mist was beginning to shroud the coast. Suddenly he pointed to a white form that appeared in and out of the mist on the horizon. “It’s Seaquest II,” he said excitedly. “And the Lynx is on the way.”
Jack looked out to sea. He had gambled a little bit of his reputation on persuading Macleod to call a halt to the icefjord project and sail south to meet them, in the expectation that they would be going somewhere farther after L’Anse aux Meadows. Jack never normally exerted authority over his colleagues in the other IMU departments, and fortunately Macleod had developed a keen interest in the archaeology after having brought Jack to Ilulissat in the first place. The conditions for taking ice cores were rapidly becoming untenable as summer drew in, and there had been serious rumbles of discontent among the invited scientists. Jack pursed his lips and for the next few minutes watched as the dark speck of the helicopter became recognisable and the thud of its rotor filled the bay. It flew lazily overhead and then settled down on its pontoons in the shallows close to the Zodiac. After the turbine had powered down they watched the helmeted figures of Ben and Andy emerge and wade across to greet the two Canadian Coast Guards.
“Where do we go from here?” Costas asked. “Looks to me like the trail’s wide open.”
“We need something more,” Jack said, his brow knitted. “I’d hoped there’d be something extra, some small clue. But at least there’s nothing for anyone else to go on. It means I can get back to Father O’Connor and give him the go-ahead to break his story to the press and Interpol. He and Maria should have finished compiling the dossier on the felag by now, and we haven’t got enough here to justify delaying any longer. As long as the discovery of the menorah was likely, O’Connor’s overriding concern was that we get there first and prevent it falling in the wrong hands. Now we must focus everything on stopping that character Loki. O’Connor’s life may depend on it.”
“I don’t want to be there when you have to tell Macleod to turn right round and sail back to the icefjord.” Costas squatted down to adjust his boots and leaned back against the grassy verge below the slab of rock. Suddenly there was a tumbling sound and a stream of Greek expletives. Where Costas had once been all they could see were his boots emerging from a mound of turf.
“Are you all right?” Jack spun round and peered anxiously into the black hole that had formed beneath the rock. He and Jeremy began frantically heaving away the turf and stones that had trapped Costas’ legs.
“Just the usual shattered pride.” The voice was muffled, and was followed by a pause. “But I’ve found a new friend.”
As Costas’ upper body came into view, they were met by an astonishing sight. In the small cavity in front of his face was a crouched human skeleton, the skull tucked down beneath the knees and the feet buried in earth. Hanging off the bones were the tattered remains of animal-skin clothing, and the scalp still retained patches of long white hair.
Jeremy leaned forward for a closer look. “My palaeopathology’s a little rusty, but I’d say we’ve got a male, maybe late middle age.”
“Scraeling?” Costas said.
Jeremy shook his head. “The physiognomy’s European. And this guy’s tall, well over six feet. He could be one of the early English or French explorers, but I’d say these bones are older than that, really old. I’d say we’ve got ourselves a Norseman.”
Jack closed his eyes and swayed slightly. This could be it. He prayed that his luck would hold.
“Those are some pretty impressive scars on the bones,” Costas said.
“I’ve seen that before in Viking warrior burials in England,” Jeremy said. “Battle injuries caused by axes and swords. Not the kind you’d get from an encounter with Scraelings, who had no edged metal weapons. This guy was pretty severely hacked about. There are some odd scars that may be later injuries, particularly those ring marks around his wrists, as if he’d been shackled. But all the battle wounds I can see look well healed, a long time before he died.”
Jack looked pensively at the skeleton. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Remember there were other Norse out here,” Jeremy cautioned. “But it’s possible, just possible, that we’ve got another of Harald’s men, another one to add to Halfdan. The thing that baffles me is the age of the injuries. If he died on their voyage down from the icefjord, the slash marks from wounds at Stamford Bridge the autumn before would still be fresh on the bones. These ones had healed up years before, even decades.”
“And this isn’t a burial,” Jack said. “This guy crawled in here and holed himself in with those rocks. That’s why his bones haven’t been scavenged.”
“This might help.” Costas’ muffled voice came from under the rock, where he had squeezed his upper body into the space in front of the skeleton and was gingerly feeling in the darkness under the rib cage. He carefully prised out two objects and held the larger one out. Jack took it without thinking, his mind still on the puzzling enigma of the skeleton.
“Well, what is it?”
Costas re-emerged to see the other two staring agape at the object in Jack’s hand. It was a flat pendant, about the size of a small saucer, and was carved in a lustrous green stone, unmistakably jade. The curvilinear, undulating surface seemed abstract in design, but as they stared at it they could make out eyes, a beak, stylized wings.
“Holy shit,” Jeremy whispered. “It’s the Maya eagle god.”
Costas crawled out and brushed himself off. “Maya,” he said phlegmatically. “Mexico, the Yucatan. Temples in the jungle, human sacrifice. Am I right?”