The Last Odyssey: A Thriller Page 2

  Leonardo’s finger hovered over the title—كتاب في معرفة الحيل الهندسية‎—and read it aloud. “Kitab fi ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiya.”

  Francesco translated it in a hushed voice. “The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.”

  “It was written two centuries ago,” Leonardo said. “Can you imagine such a time, the golden age of Islam, when science and learning were held in the highest regard?”

  “I would love to travel to such places sometime.”

  “Ah, my dear Francesco, you are too late. Those lands have fallen into darkness, rife with wars, savage in their ignorance. You would not enjoy it.” His fingers came to rest atop the cover. “Thankfully, its ancient knowledge was preserved.”

  Leonardo opened the book, parting it at a random page. The black ink flowed in a river of Arabic around an illuminated drawing of a fountain, with water streaming from the beak of a peacock into a complicated contraption of gears and pulleys. Francesco knew the remainder of the book was full of such illustrations of other devices, many of them automatons like the French king wanted his master to design.

  “The author was Ismail al-Jazari,” Leonardo said. “A brilliant artist and the chief engineer for the Artuklu Palace. I suspect there is much I can learn from this book to help me design the French king’s golden lion.”

  A new voice rose behind them. “Perhaps there is another book that will also help you.”

  Leonardo and Francesco both turned to the library door that they had inadvertently left ajar. A short but robust figure stood at the entrance. His simple white cassock and skullcap shone in the wan light. With the alacrity of youth, Francesco dropped to one knee and bowed his head. Leonardo barely managed to crouch before the figure spoke again.

  “Enough of that. Stand, you two.”

  Francesco straightened but kept his head bowed. “Your Holiness.”

  Pope Leo X crossed toward them, abandoning a pair of guards at the door. He cradled a thick book in his arms. “I heard about your apprentice rooting through our libraries. And the purpose behind his search. It seems you intend to do your best to please our new guest to the north.”

  “I’ve heard King François can be quite demanding,” Leonardo admitted.

  “And militant,” the pope added pointedly. “A tendency I’d prefer he kept to the north. Which means not disappointing his royal highness lest he consider venturing farther south with his soldiers. To avoid that, I thought I’d lend the services of my own staff to your pursuit.”

  Pope Leo stepped to the table and placed the heavy volume down. “This was found within the Holy Scrinium.”

  Francesco stiffened in surprise. The Holy Scrinium was the private library of the popes, said to contain amazing volumes, both religious and otherwise, dating back to the founding of Christendom.

  “This was acquired during the First Crusade,” the pontiff explained as he set the book on the desk. “A Persian volume of mechanical devices from the ninth century of our Lord. I thought it might be of use, much like the volume your apprentice obtained.”

  Plainly curious, Leonardo opened the book’s nondescript cover, its outer title long worn away. Inside, he discovered the name of the author and turned sharply to the pontiff.

  “Banū Mūsā,” he said, reading the name aloud.

  His Holiness nodded, translating the same. “The Sons of Moses.”

  Francesco opened his mouth with a question, then closed it, too abashed to speak.

  Leonardo answered anyway, turning slightly toward Francesco. “The Sons of Moses were three Persian brothers who lived four centuries before Ismail al-Jazari. Al-Jazari acknowledges them by name in his book for their inspiration. I didn’t think any copies of this work still existed.”

  “I don’t understand,” Francesco whispered, drawing closer. “What is this volume?”

  Leonardo placed his hand upon the ancient text. “A true wonder. The Book of Ingenious Devices.”

  “But . . . ? ” Francesco looked at the neighboring book, the one he had painstakingly acquired.

  “Yes,” Leonardo acknowledged, “our esteemed Al-Jazari named his work after this older volume, changing the title only slightly. It’s said these three brothers—the Sons of Moses—spent decades collecting and preserving Greek and Roman texts following the fall of the Roman Empire. Over time these brothers built upon the knowledge found within those texts to craft their own book of inventions.”

  The pope joined them at the desk. “But it wasn’t just scientific knowledge that interested these brothers.” The pontiff flipped to the end of the book and pulled free a folio of loose pages. “What do you make of these?”

  Leonardo squinted at the yellowed pages and lines of cursive ink and shook his head. “It’s clearly Arabic. But I’m far from fluent. With time, maybe I could—”

  The pope’s hand waved dismissively. “I’ve Arab scholars in my employ. They were able to translate the pages. It appears to be the eleventh book of a larger poetic work. The opening lines state ‘When we had got down to the seashore, we drew our ship into the water and got her mast and sails into her.’”

  Francesco frowned. Why did that sound familiar?

  The pontiff continued, reciting the translation from memory. “‘We also put the sheep on board and took our places, weeping and in great distress of mind. Circe, that great and cunning goddess—’”

  Francesco gasped, cutting off the pope, such was his shock.

  The name Circe . . . that could only mean one thing.

  Leonardo shifted the pages closer and confirmed it. “Are you saying this is a translation of Homer’s Odyssey?”

  His Holiness nodded, appearing amused. “Into Arabic, some nine centuries ago.”

  If true, Francesco knew this could be the earliest written version of Homer’s poem. He found his voice again. “But why is this chapter here, tucked in an ancient book of Persian mechanical devices?”

  “Perhaps for this reason.”

  The pope exposed the last page of the folio. An intricate illustration had been hastily inked there. It appeared to be a mechanical map complicated by gears and threaded wires and marked with scrawled Arabic notes. The terrain looked to encompass the breadth of the Mediterranean and beyond. Still, the mechanical map looked incomplete, a work in progress.

  “What is it?” Francesco asked.

  The pope turned to Leonardo. “It is what I hope you can discover, my dear friend. The translators here could only discern a few hints.”

  “Like what?” Leonardo’s eyes shone brightly, the man clearly enraptured by this mystery.

  “The first clue.” The pope tapped the Arabic pages of Homer’s Odyssey. “This part of the epic poem tells of Odysseus’s voyage to the Underworld, to the lands of Hades and Persephone, to the Greek version of Hell.”

  Francesco frowned, not understanding.

  The pope pointed to the illustrated device and explained. “It seems the Sons of Moses were trying to craft a tool to lead them there.” He stared hard at Leonardo. “To the Underworld.”

  Leonardo made a scoffing noise. “Preposterous.”

  A chill swept through Francesco. “Why would these brothers seek such a place?”

  The pope shrugged. “No one knows, but it is worrisome.”

  “How so?” Leonardo asked.

  The pope faced them, letting him read the sincerity in his eyes, and pointed to the last line below the illustration.

  “Because it says here . . . the Sons of Moses found it. They found the entrance to Hell.”

  First

  The Storm Atlas

  The sea is a boundless expanse whereon great ships look like tiny specks; naught but the heavens above and the waters beneath; when calm, the sailor’s heart is broken; when tempestuous, his senses reel. Trust it little. Fear it much. Man at sea is but a worm on a bit of wood, now engulfed, now scared to death.

  —AMRU BIN AL-’AS, THE ARAB CONQUEROR OF EGYPT, 640 A.D.

 
1

  June 21, 9:28 A.M. WGST

  Sermilik Fjord, Greenland

  The sea fog hid the monster ahead.

  As the skiff vanished into the ghostly bank, the morning light dimmed to a grim twilight. Even the rumble of the skiff’s outboard motor was muffled by that heavy pall. Within seconds, the temperature dropped precipitously—from a few degrees below zero to a cold that felt like inhaling icy daggers.

  Dr. Elena Cargill coughed to keep her lungs from seizing in her chest. She tried to retreat deeper into her bright blue parka, which was zippered over a dry suit to protect her against the deadly cold waters around them. Every loose bit of her white-blond hair was tucked into a thick woolen cap, with a matching scarf around her neck.

  What am I doing here?

  Yesterday she had been sweating on a dig in northern Egypt, where she and her team had been meticulously unearthing a coastal village that had been half-swallowed by the Mediterranean four millennia ago. It had been a rare honor to lead the joint U.S.-Egyptian team, especially for someone whose thirtieth birthday was still two months off—not that she hadn’t earned her place. She had dual PhDs in paleoanthropology and archaeology and had since distinguished herself in the field. In fact, in order to work on the dig, she had declined a teaching position at her alma mater, Columbia University.

  Still, she suspected being chosen as team leader was not all due to her academic accomplishments and fieldwork. Her father was Senator Kent Cargill, representing the great state of Massachusetts. Though her father had insisted he had not pulled any strings, he was also a career politician, serving his fourth term, which meant lying came second nature to him. Plus, he was the current chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. Whether he said anything or not, his seat on the Senate likely influenced the decision-making process.

  How could it not?

  Then came this sudden summons to fly to the frozen wilds of Greenland. At least this request had not come from her father but from a colleague, a friend who made a personal plea for her to come inspect a discovery made there. Curiosity more than friendship drew her away from the dig in Egypt, especially the last words from her colleague: You’ll want to see this. You may get to rewrite history.

  So yesterday she had flown from Egypt to Iceland, then took a turboprop plane from Reykjavik to the small village of Tasiilaq, on the southeast coast of Greenland. There she had overnighted at one of the town’s two hotels. Over a dinner of seafood stew, she had tried to inquire about the discovery made here, but she got only blank stares or silent shakes of a head.

  It seemed only a few locals knew about the new discovery—and none of them were talking. Even this morning, she remained none the wiser.

  She now sat on a boat with three strangers, all men, sailing across a dead-calmed fjord into a fog as dense as cold paste. Her friend had left a text this morning, promising to join her in Tasiilaq this afternoon in order to get Elena’s assessment on whatever had been discovered here.

  Which meant, for now, she was on her own, and clearly out of her depth.

  She jumped as a loud roar carried over the water, shivering the flat seas around the skiff. It was as if the monster ahead had sensed their approach. She had heard similar rumblings throughout the night, making it hard to sleep, heightening the tension.

  Seated ahead of her, an auburn-bearded mountain of a man twisted back to face her. His cheeks and nose were ice-burned a ruddy red. His yellow parka was unzippered, as if he were oblivious to the cold. He had been introduced as a Canadian climatologist, but she couldn’t remember his name. Something Scottish sounding. In her head, she thought of him as McViking. From his cold-toughened face, she had a hard time judging his age. Anywhere from the mid-twenties to early forties.

  He waved an arm ahead of him. “Glacialquake,” he explained as the rumbling faded away. “Nothing to worry about. Just ice calving and shattering off the face of Helheim Glacier. That mass of ice ahead of us is one of the world’s fastest-moving glaciers, flowing some thirty meters a day into the ocean. Last year, a huge chunk of it broke away. Some four miles wide, a mile across, and half a mile thick.”

  Elena tried to picture an iceberg roughly the size of lower Manhattan floating past their little boat.

  The climatologist stared off into the fog. “The quake from that single break lasted a full day and was registered by seismometers around the world.”

  “And that’s supposed to reassure me?” she asked with a shiver.

  “Sorry.” His face cracked into a huge smile, his green eyes twinkling even in the foggy pall, which immediately made him look far younger. She guessed now he was only a couple of years older than her. She also suddenly remembered his name: Douglas MacNab.

  “It’s all that activity that drew me up here two years ago,” he admitted. “Figured I’d better study it while I still can.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been working with NASA’s Operation IceBridge, which uses radar, laser altimeters, and high-resolution cameras to monitor Greenland’s glaciers. Specifically Helheim, which has retreated nearly three miles over the past two decades and shrunk three hundred feet in thickness. Helheim acts as a bellwether for all of Greenland. The entire place is melting six times faster than three decades ago.”

  “And if all of the ice here vanished?”

  He shrugged. “The meltwater from Greenland alone would lift sea levels by over twenty feet.”

  That’s over two stories. She pictured her dig site in Egypt and the ancient ruins, half-drowned by the Mediterranean. Would that be the fate soon of many coastal cities?

  A new voice intruded from the starboard side of the skiff. “Mac, quit being such an alarmist.” The thin, dark-haired man seated across from her sighed heavily. If there was a single word to describe him, it would be angular. He looked to be all sharp edges, from elbows and knees to the jut of his chin and high cheekbones.

  “Even with current warming trends,” the man continued, “what you just described won’t happen for centuries, if ever. I’ve seen your data, and NASA’s, and run my own correlations and extrapolations. When it comes to climate and the cyclic nature of planetary temperature, the number of variables in play are too many to make firm—”

  “C’mon, Nelson. I wouldn’t exactly consider your assessment to be unbiased. Allied Global Mining signs your paychecks.”

  Elena studied the geologist anew. When she had been introduced to Conrad Nelson, he had made no mention of being employed by a mining company.

  “And who funds your grant, Mac?” Nelson countered. “A consortium of environmental groups. That surely has no impact on your evaluation.”

  “Data is data.”

  “Really? Data can’t be skewed? It can’t be manipulated to support a biased position?”

  “Of course, it can.”

  Nelson sat straighter, clearly believing he’d made his point, but his opponent wasn’t done.

  “I’ve seen AGM do it all the time,” MacNab finished.

  Nelson raised a middle finger. “Then evaluate this.”

  “Hmm, looks to me like you’re admitting I’m number one.”

  Nelson scoffed and lowered his arm. “Like I warned you, data can be misinterpreted.”

  The fog bank suddenly brightened around them and shredded to either side, revealing what lay ahead.

  Nelson made his final point. “Look over there. Tell me we’re running out of glacier anytime soon.”

  A hundred yards away the world ended in a wall of ice. The front of the glacier stretched as far as the eye could see. Its shattered face looked like the fortifications of a frozen castle, with hoar-frost encrusted parapets and crumbling towers. The morning sunlight fractured against its surface, revealing a spectrum running from the palest blue to a menacing blackness. Even the air scintillated with tiny ice particles, glittering and flashing as they approached.

  “It’s massive,” Elena said, though the word failed to capture the breadth of the monster.

/>   Mac’s smile widened. “Aye. Helheim stretches four miles wide and runs over a hundred miles inland. In places, the ice is over a mile deep. It’s one of the largest glaciers draining into the North Atlantic.”

  “Yet, here it still stands,” Nelson said. “As it will for centuries.”

  “Not when Greenland is losing three hundred gigatons of ice every year.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything. Greenland’s ice sheet has ebbed and flowed. From one ice age to another.”

  Elena tuned out the rest of their argument, especially as it grew more technical. Despite the ongoing debate, she sensed these two men were not enemies. Clearly the two enjoyed their sparring. It took a rare soul to survive this harsh place, which likely forged a commonality of spirit and ruggedness that bonded everyone, including these two scientists on opposite sides of the divide on climate change.

  Instead, she turned her attention to her surroundings. She studied the silent bergs filling the channel. The skiff’s pilot—an Inuit elder with a leathery round face and unreadable black eyes—expertly navigated them through the maze, while puffing on an ivory pipe, giving each berg a wide berth. She soon discovered why. As one seemingly tiny iceberg capsized, flipping fully over, swinging up a massive shelf of ice, revealing how much of its true mass lurked beneath the blue-black surface. If they’d been near the berg at the time, it would have taken out their boat.

  It was a reminder of the hidden dangers here.

  Even the glacier’s name hinted at the threat.

  “Helheim . . .” she mumbled. “The realm of Hel.”

  Mac heard her. “Exactly. The glacier was named after the Viking’s World of the Dead.”

  “Who gave it that name?”

  Nelson blew out a heavy breath. “Who knows? Probably some Nordic researcher with a sardonic sense of humor and a love of Norse mythology.”

  “I think the source goes back much further,” Mac said. “The Inuit believe some glaciers are malignant. Passing warnings from one generation to another. Helheim is one such place. They believe this glacier is home to the Tuurngaq, which means ‘killing spirit.’ Their version of demons.”