Nina gave Kagan a pointed look. ‘The IHA database could have told us all that.’
The Russian shook his head. ‘We cannot risk anyone else finding the source of the eitr.’ He glanced at a sturdy metal safe on one side of the lab. Inside was the steel cylinder containing the substance that Unit 201 hoped would neutralise the eitr: Thor’s Hammer. ‘Not until we have destroyed it.’
‘Just hope that stuff works,’ said Eddie. ‘I think the Canadians’ll be pretty pissed off about the alternative.’
‘What alternative?’ Berkeley asked.
‘It will not come to that,’ Kagan said firmly. ‘Academician Eisenhov worked for decades to create Thor’s Hammer, so it will work. It must work.’
‘We still need to know where to pour it,’ Eddie said. He went to a large map of Baffin Island taped to one wall. ‘So, where do we land?’
‘Near three mountains,’ said Nina. ‘But which three?’
‘We also have a terrain database,’ Kagan told her. ‘We could use that and look for features along the coast that match.’
‘Half the bloody coast’s got mountains, though,’ said Eddie, running a finger down the heavily contoured map.
Nina looked back at the laptop. ‘The runes say the Vikings would recognise the three mountains. From where?’
‘Maybe they resemble a mountain range in Sweden,’ Berkeley suggested.
‘I don’t know — the warriors fighting at Ragnarök were called from tribes all over Scandinavia. For the mountains to be ones they would all recognise, they’d have to be near Valhalla, as it’s the only place they would congregate. But I don’t remember any particularly distinctive mountains nearby.’
Eddie crossed back to the table and picked up the sun compass. ‘There’s nothing on this?’ he asked, angling it towards the overhead lights to pick out the lines etched into its surface.
‘Just the navigational markings,’ Berkeley told him.
‘The ones that brought us here.’
Nina cocked her head towards her husband. His words hadn’t been a flat statement of fact, but almost a question. ‘What is it?’
Eddie turned the compass over in his hands. ‘One side brought us here,’ he said, ‘and the other one, that would have directed the Vikings to the place the Russians nuked back in 1961, right?’ He tapped the flipside of the dark stone disc, which had its own set of inscribed lines.
‘Yes; what about it?’ said Berkeley.
‘Well, they wouldn’t have had both compasses with them, would they? They didn’t know which of the two sites was going to be where Ragnarök kicked off — that was the whole reason for them splitting into two forces. So each group,’ he dug his fingernails into the thin gap around the edge of the linked discs, ‘would only have had one compass.’
He strained — and the two pieces popped apart as he overcame the magnetic force clamping them together.
Nina took one of the discs and examined its newly revealed face. She realised she had never actually done so before; there had not been time when she’d separated the two halves at Valhalla, and since then they had remained locked together for ease of handling. There were markings upon it, but far less complex than on the other side. ‘Logan, look at this,’ she said, showing it to the other archaeologist. ‘These might be pictographs!’
Berkeley almost snatched it from her. ‘Let me see.’ He ran a fingertip lightly over the group of etched lines, then flipped the compass back over to compare its position to what was on the other side. ‘Wow, my God. If I’m reading it right, this might represent a landmark on the journey around Greenland.’ His gaze flicked back and forth between the disc and the text on the screen. ‘They had the compass to give them an indication of their latitude, but this is a way they could confirm they’d reached the right place.’
‘Kind of like “turn left at this mountain”?’ suggested Eddie.
‘Yes, exactly!’ He peered more closely at the back of the compass. ‘I think you’re right, Nina — these are pictograms. They’ve very crude, but they don’t need to show anything more than the most general features. These look like two islands, for example.’ He tapped one of the angular little illustrations.
‘So which one represents our three mountains?’ Nina asked. She took back the disc, Berkeley relinquishing it with reluctance. ‘If the islands are a landmark in Greenland, they should appear next in the sequence. So… these.’
She pointed at a pictogram. It was little more than a set of upward-pointing chevrons, two small and one large, but she could tell how they would relate to real features of Baffin Island’s landscape. The small markings were spaced apart with a curving line that could represent the coastline between them, while the larger was positioned above. ‘To me, this looks like two mountains on either side of a bay, with a bigger one behind them, farther inland. What do you think?’
‘Fits the bill,’ said Eddie, examining the markings. He gave Berkeley a mocking look. ‘You had these things all this time, and you didn’t think to flip ’em over and see what was on the other side?’
The American narrowed his eyes in annoyance. ‘I did check both compasses, as a matter of fact. But since I didn’t know the significance of the other markings, I can hardly be faulted for not picking up on them. There were usually more pressing matters to think about. Like trying to get out of a burning building!’
‘This does not matter,’ said Kagan, his impatience returning. ‘What does matter is that we now know what we are looking for.’ He went to one of the ship’s internal telephones and made a brief call in Russian, then turned back to the group. ‘If Dr Berkeley’s work is correct and the eitr pit is at sixty-eight degrees north, we should reach the area in eleven or twelve hours. I have told the captain to bring us closer to the coast so we can watch for the three mountains.’
Eddie looked at his watch. ‘It’ll be dark well before we get there. You’re not planning to head out across the Arctic in the middle of the night, are you?’
Kagan smiled. ‘I want to find the eitr pit before Lock and his people, but I am not that crazy. We will need to see where we are going — I do not want to fall into the pit! No, we will wait until daylight before we land.’
‘In that case,’ said Berkeley, standing, ‘I’m going to have dinner and go to bed. I want a proper night’s sleep before I go trekking across the wilds of Canada.’
‘That’s the first good idea you’ve had since this whole thing started,’ said Eddie. He ignored Berkeley’s glare, instead looking at Nina. ‘You want to get some rest?’
There was hesitancy behind the question. Berkeley didn’t notice, but Kagan picked up on it, giving the couple a quizzical twitch of his eyebrows. Nina knew full well what Eddie meant, though.
The time had come to answer the question they had both been avoiding.
‘Yeah,’ she said quietly. ‘Yeah, I think that’s… a good idea.’
‘In that case,’ said Kagan, ‘I will see you before first light tomorrow. If you want to eat, the captain has arranged for the mess to be open for you.’
‘Thanks,’ said Eddie. He headed for the door, Nina joining him. ‘So, bunk beds,’ he said. The cabin they had been assigned was far too small for a double bed, and was a tight squeeze even for bunks, making the average prison cell seem spacious. ‘Kind of limits what we can do — although I suppose there’s the potential to try something acrobatic.’