Gray eyed his transportation doubtfully.
His transportation stared back at him, equally unsure, stamping a hoof for emphasis.
“The Fell Pony,” Dr. Wallace Boyle said as he worked among the assembled horseflesh. “You’ll not find a heartier pony on God’s green earth. Perfect for mountain trekking. Sure-footed and strong as an ox.”
“You call these guys ponies?” Kowalski asked.
Gray understood his partner’s consternation. The dusty-black stallion being saddled for Gray had to stand over fourteen hands, almost five feet tall at the withers. It chuffed into the cold air and scraped a hoof into the half-frozen mud.
“Ack, be still already, Pip,” a ranch hand said as he gave the saddle cinch another tug.
The group had left Hawkshead by car an hour ago. Wallace had guided them to this horse farm deep in the mountains. Apparently the only way to reach the excavation site from here was either on foot or by horseback. Wallace had called ahead and arranged for their four-legged transportation.
“The Fell Pony has a long tradition in the region,” he continued as their mounts were tacked. “The wild Picts used them against the Romans. Viking farmers used them as plow horses. And the Normans who came later made pack animals out of them to haul lead and coal.”
Wallace rubbed the neck of his brown gelding and climbed up into his saddle. His terrier, Rufus, trotted through the assembled horses and lifted his leg on a fence post. The dog’s initial distrust of Seichan seemed to have settled into a wary truce. He gave her a wide berth as she slipped a toe through a stirrup and leaped smoothly atop a sturdy-looking bay mare.
“‘Fraid you’re going to have to excuse ol’ Rufus,” Wallace had explained back at the pub. “Set in his ways, he is. And I’m embarrassed to say he’s a bit of a bigot. Took a bite out of a Pakistani grad student last spring.”
Rachel had looked aghast.
Seichan had not reacted at all. She merely stared at the dog until its tail sank, and it retreated into its master’s shadow. Afterward she joined them at the table.
Rachel, having been recognized, had come clean about their true intentions with Wallace, though she kept some details sketchy. She didn’t mention the mummified finger.
The professor had listened soberly, then shrugged. “No worries, lass. Your secret is safe with me. If I can help you catch the boggins who killed Marco and sent your uncle to the hospital, then all’s the better, I say.”
So they had set off.
But even now, they still had a long way to go.
Gray mounted his stallion, Pip, and after a bit of a shuffle, they left the farm and headed overland. Dr. Boyle led the way atop his gelding. They followed single file up a winding trail.
Gray had not been on horseback in ages. It took him a good mile to feel comfortable, to fall into an easy rhythm with his mount. Around him, the English fells climbed higher and gathered closer. Off in the distance, the snowy crown of England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike, shone in a last blaze of fire as the sun sank away.
As they trekked, a wintry silence blanketed the highlands. All that was heard was the crunch of snow under their ponies’ hooves. Gray had to admit that Wallace’s estimation of their mounts was not all bluster. Pip seemed to know where to place each hoof, even through the snow. Going downhill, the stallion never lost his footing and kept a steady balance.
Another two miles, and the way opened enough for Gray to sidle his mount next to Rachel and Seichan. The two had been whispering together.
As Gray joined them, Rachel struggled to free her plastic canteen. Seichan noted her difficulty and dropped her reins. Guiding her horse with her legs, she freed a thermos and unscrewed the top.
“Hot tea,” Seichan said and held a cup out to Rachel.
“Thank you.” Rachel took a sip, the steam bathing her face. “Ah, that’s good. It warms right through you.”
“It’s a special herbal blend of mine.”
Rachel nodded her thanks again as she finished her tea and passed back the cup.
Ahead, Kowalski slouched in his saddle, half-asleep, his head nodding, trusting his pony to follow behind Wallace’s.
They rode through a sparse forest of alder and oak, over ferny bracken in a landscape of snow-covered turf and icy trickles of streams. Gray was glad to be on horseback, not trekking on foot. Unlike Rufus, who didn’t seem to mind as he trotted alongside them, hopping from hillock to hillock through the damper areas. The air grew colder as the sun sank away.
“How much farther, do you think?” Rachel asked. She kept her voice hushed. The cold silence of the place had that effect.
Gray shook his head. Wallace had refused to give any more detail than “far up in the wilds of the fell.” Still, Gray didn’t worry about finding their way back. Before he set off, he had activated a handheld GPS unit in his pocket. It monitored their trail, leaving little digital bread crumbs to follow.
Rachel huddled deeper into her heavy jacket. Her breath puffed into the cold air. “Maybe we should have waited until morning.”
Seichan spoke hollowly. “No. If there are any answers out here, the quicker we find them and move on, the better.”
Gray agreed, but right now a roaring fire sounded pretty damn good. Still, he noted a strained set to Seichan’s lips. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead of her.
Dropping back, Gray used the moment to truly observe the two women. They were studies in contrasts. Rachel rode easily, swaying in a relaxed but ready manner, adapting to her new environment. She spent much of the time looking around her, taking it all in. Whereas Seichan rode as if into battle. She was plainly a skilled rider, but he noted how she corrected even the slightest misstep by her pony. As if everything had to bend to her will. Like Rachel, she also took in her surroundings, but her gaze darted about, pinched with calculation.
Yet despite their differences, the two women bore some striking similarities. Each was strong-willed, confident, challenging. And at times, they could take his breath away with a single glance.
Gray forced his attention away as he realized there was one other trait both women shared. He had no future with either one of them. He had closed that chapter with Rachel long ago, and it was a book best never opened with Seichan.
Lost in private thoughts, the group continued silently through the mountains. Over the next hour, the trek became a blur of rocky escarpments, snowy cliffs, and patches of black forest. At last they crested a rise and a deep valley appeared ahead. The way down was staggeringly steep.
Wallace drew them to a halt. “Almost there,” he said.
Under a crisp starry sky, they’d had little difficulty riding in the dark, but below lay true night. A dark wood filled the valley.
But that wasn’t all.
Against that black canvas, a few ruddy glows dotted the forest, like tiny campfires. They would’ve been easy to miss during the day.
“What are those glows down there?” Gray asked.
“Peat fires,” Wallace said, blowing into his gloved palms to warm the ice from his beard. “A goodly part of the fells is covered in peat. Mostly blanket mires.”
“And that would be what in English?” Kowalski asked.
Wallace explained, but Gray was familiar enough with peat. It was an accumulation of decayed vegetable matter: trees, leaves, mosses, fungi. Piles of it formed in damp areas. Deposits were common in places where glaciers had retreated and carved out a mountainous landscape, like here in the Lake District.
Wallace pointed down into the valley. “Below is a forest growing out of one of the deepest peat bogs in the region. It stretches thousands of acres from here. Most of the peat deposits in the region only go down ten feet or so. The valley here has spots that are ten times as deep. It’s a very old bog.”
“And the fires?” Rachel asked.
“Aye, that’s one good thing about peat,” Wallace said. “It burns. Peat has been harvested as a fuel source for as long as man has been around. For cooking, for heating. I suspect such natural fires as those below are what gave ancient man the idea to start burning the bloody muck to begin with.”
“How long have these valley fires been burning?” Gray asked.
Wallace shrugged. “No saying. They were smoldering when I first came here three years ago. Creeping slowly underground, they’re all but impossible to smother. They just burn and burn, fed by a bottomless well of fuel. Some peat fires have been known to burn for centuries.”
“Are they dangerous?” Rachel asked.
“Aye, lassie. You have to be careful where you step. Ground may look solid, even covered in snow, but a few feet below could be a fiery hell. Flaming pockets of peat and rivers of fire.”
Wallace tapped his mount with his heels and began his descent into the valley. “But no worries. I know the safe paths. Don’t go straying off on your own. Stick to my heels.”
No one argued. Even Rufus moved closer to his master’s side. Gray pulled out his GPS unit, making sure it was still tracking their route. On the small screen was a topographical map. A line of small red dots traced their trail back out of the fells. Satisfied, Gray returned the device to his coat pocket.
He noted Seichan staring at him. She glanced away, a bit quickly, when caught.
Wallace led them down a switchbacking path into the valley. Loose scree and crumbling turf made for a treacherous descent, but Wallace proved true to his word. He got them safely to the valley floor.
“Keep to the trail from here,” Wallace warned and set off. “What trail?” Kowalski mumbled.
Gray understood his partner’s confusion. Ahead lay a flat stretch of snowy open ground. The only features were a few mounds of heather and a handful of lichen-covered boulders that looked like huddled stone giants. To the far left, a rosy glow shone from a patch of black turf outlined by green sphagnum moss. Smoke smudged upward against the snowy backdrop. The cold air smelled like a burned ham.
Wallace took a deep breath. “Reminds me of home,” he said gustily as he exhaled, his brogue thickening. “Nothing like the scent of burning peat to accompany a nice dram of Scotch whiskey.”
“Really?” Kowalski perked up, his nose in the air.
Wallace led them in a winding route among the tall boulders. Despite his warnings, he seemed little concerned. Most of the fires were at the edges of the valley. A few were even up in the higher hills. Gray knew that such hot spots were usually started by wildfires that burned down into the subsurface, then smoldered there for years. The edges of the peat deposits were the most vulnerable to such penetration.
Beyond the open stretch, the wall of dark forest opened. Snow-laden boughs reflected the starlight, but below the bower, the way was pitch-black. Wallace had prepared for that. Leaning down, he clicked on a lantern tied to his saddle. As in a cave, the single lamp had a long reach.
They headed into the forest, still keeping to single file. The air grew less smoky. The forest was a mix of myrtle, birch, and pine, along with massive oaks that looked centuries old. Their trunks were gnarled, their branches still encrusted with dry brown leaves. Acorns littered the snowy ground, which accounted for the number of squirrels that chattered and fled from their path.
Gray saw something larger scurry off, low to the ground.
Rufus made an aborted lunge toward it, but Wallace yelled, “Leave it be! That badger will skin your nose straight off your face.”
Kowalski eyed the dark forest with open suspicion. “What about bears? Do you have any in England?”
Kowalski stepped his pony closer to the man with the shotgun.
“We have plenty of bears in our zoos,” Wallace continued with a smile. “But none in the wild since the Middle Ages.”
Kowalski scowled at the man for scaring him, but he didn’t move away.
They continued through the old forest for another half hour. Traveling in the dark, Gray became thoroughly lost. The dense forest hid any landmarks.
Finally, the trees fell away and another field opened. Starlight bathed a wide shallow hollow almost an acre in size. Grasses and bracken poked from the fresh snow that covered the hollow, along with stumps of trees that had been felled to open the area.
It was otherwise unmarked—but it was not empty.
To one side stood two dark tent-cabins. Heavy fabric stretched on steel frames. Beside them, squares of excavated peat were piled into tiny pyramids, ready to burn as heat for the cabins. But no one was here. During the winter months the site was abandoned due to the threat of heavy snow.
Still, it wasn’t the dark campsite that drew everyone’s attention. Gray stared into the center of the hollow. The excavation site was marked off with yellow survey strings that crisscrossed the area in a large grid. As if trapped in this string web, giant stones rose from the ground in a crude ring. Each one towered twice Gray’s height. Atop one pair of stones lay a massive slab, forming a crude doorway into the circle.
Gray remembered Wallace’s description of the Neolithic sites that dotted the region. Apparently he had found a new one, one lost for ages in this bog forest.
“Looks like a little Stonehenge,” Kowalski said.
Wallace slid from his saddle and took his pony’s lead in hand. “Only this site is older than Stonehenge. Much older.”
They all dismounted. A rough sheltered paddock stood near the cabins, where they walked their ponies and set about unloading saddles and rubbing down their mounts. Kowalski fetched water from a nearby stream.
Wallace explained about the discovery, how clues found in the Domesday Book had led him here, to a place marked in Latin as “wasted.” “I found no trace of the town itself. It must have been razed to the ground. But while hunting, I came upon this stone circle. It was half-buried in peat. An untrained eye could easily have mistaken it for ordinary boulders, especially as they were covered in lichen and moss. But the rocks were a type of bluestone not native to the fells.”
His excitement grew as he talked. With the ponies settled, Wallace led them over to the stone ring. He carried his lantern. Gray also removed a flashlight from his saddlebag. As a group, they climbed over the survey strings and crunched through the ankle-deep snow. The stone ring sat in a square of excavated soil. Over the years, teams of archaeologists had been slowly digging the rocks free of the layers of peat.
“The stones were half-buried when I first stumbled here. Their monstrous weight sank them into the muck over the passing millennia.”
“Millennia?” Rachel asked. “How old is the place?”
“I’ve dated it to two thousand years older than Stonehenge. That corresponds to the time of the first settlers to occupy the British Isles. To give you some perspective, that’s a thousand years before the Great Pyramids were built.”
As they reached the dark ring, Gray flashed his light toward the nearest stone. Cleared of moss and lichen, there was no doubt it was man-made. Crude petroglyphs had been etched into the side facing Gray. The carvings covered the entire exposed surface—but it was all the same motif.
“Spirals,” Gray mumbled, drawing Rachel’s attention.
She joined him, as did Wallace.
“A very common pagan symbol,” the professor said. “Representing the soul’s journey. This example is almost an exact replica of stone markings found at Newgrange, a pre-Celtic tomb complex in Ireland. Newgrange was dated to around 3200 B.C., about the same age as this ring, suggesting they were likely built by the same tribe of people.”
“The Druids?” Kowalski asked.
Wallace scowled. “Och, where did you learn your history, young man? Druids were Celtic tribal priests. They didn’t come onto the stage for another three thousand years.” He waved an arm to encompass the Neolithic stone ring. “This is the handiwork of the earliest tribe to settle the British Isles, a people who were here long before the Celts and Druids.”
Kowalski merely shrugged, taking no offense at this slight to his knowledge.
Wallace sighed. “But I guess I understand how most people make that mistake. The Celts revered this lost people, believed them to be gods, even incorporated that culture into their own. They worshiped at these old sites, folded them into their mythology, believing the ancient stones to be the home of their gods. In fact, what’s considered to be high Celtic art today is based on these old pagan carvings. Ultimately, everything traces back to here.” Wallace pointed to the towering henge stones. “But the bigger question remains, who were these ancient ring-builders?”
Gray sensed Wallace’s excitement stoking higher. It looked like he had more to say, something that he was still holding back, ever the showman. But before he could continue, Rachel interrupted.
“You better see this.”
She had circled to the far side of the stone and stood within the ring. Her arm pointed to the surface of the stone on that side.
Gray and the others stepped over the survey strings to join her. He lifted his flashlight. There was only a single symbol carved into the rock on that side. Turning, he shone his light across to the other standing stones—twelve in total, he noted. Each was marked with the same symbol.
“The quartered circle,” Gray said.
Wallace nodded. “Now you know why I was so sure that the diary of that medieval scholar, Martin Borr, pointed straight here. The mark was drawn on his journal.”
Gray turned in a slow circle.
What did it all mean?
Facing the first stone again, Gray contemplated its significance. Spirals on one side, a pagan cross on the other. He realized it was the same pattern as the two symbols burned into the leather satchel: a spiral on one side, a cross on the other.
Gray faced Rachel. He read the same understanding in her eyes. He also knew what she was thinking. If they wanted answers, it was high time they came clean with Dr. Wallace Boyle.
8:42 P.M.
Wallace studied the artifact. He sat at a card table in one of the tent-cabins, the lantern at his elbow. Rachel sat next to him. She warmed her hands on a cup of tea. It was the last from Seichan’s thermos. She sipped it, appreciating the heat if not the slight bitterness. She would have preferred a dollop of cream with it, but the tea went a long way to chasing the last of the chill from her body.
The team had spent two hours out in the cold, taking pictures and measurements, recording everything here. But to what end?
Rachel stared across the table at Gray. As they had worked, Gray had grown more introspective. She knew him well enough to recognize when he was troubled, when he sensed he was missing something. She could read the calculations going on in his head, knew the primary question plaguing him.
What was so important about this site?
Seichan sat next to Gray. She had contributed little to the day’s work, as if she were leaving it up to them to solve this puzzle. Now they all waited for the professor’s assessment. A pair of bunkbeds filled the back half of the space. Kowalski lay sprawled on one of the bunks with an arm over his eyes, shielding them against the lamplight. Since his snores weren’t rattling the tent fabric, he must still be awake.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Wallace finally said with a shake of his head. He held the leather satchel. He’d already examined the mummified finger. “I don’t know where Marco found this, nor why anyone would kill for it.”
“Then let’s go back to the beginning,” Gray said. “Why Father Giovanni first came here. What he hoped to gain from visiting this site.”
“It was the bodies,” Wallace mumbled, still fingering the satchel.
Rachel sat straighter. “Bodies? What bodies?”
Wallace finally placed the satchel down and leaned back in his chair. “What you have to understand is that for ages, peat bogs were revered by the ancient Celts and their Druids. They would bury or sink objects of worship into the bogs. Such places have proved to be archaeological treasure troves. Swords, crowns, jewels, pottery, even entire chariots. But human remains were also found here.”
The professor let that sink in as he stood and stepped over to a small camp stove, where he warmed his hands over a burning briquette of peat. He nodded down at the stove. “Peat was the source of life, so it had to be honored. And that honoring often came in the form of human sacrifice. The Celts would kill their victims and toss their bodies into the peat bogs to appease the gods.” He turned to face the table again. “And what goes into the peat ends up being preserved for the ages.”
“I don’t understand,” Rachel said.
Gray explained. “The acidic nature and lack of oxygen in the peat keep things from rotting.”
“Aye. Pots of butter have been found in bogs, a hundred years old. And the butter is still fresh and edible.”
Kowalski groaned in disgust and rolled to his side. “Remind me not to have toast at your house.”
Wallace ignored him. “In the same way, those sacrificed bodies were preserved. They’re known as ‘bog mummies.’ The most famous being Tollund Man, found in Denmark. He’s so well preserved that he looks as if he fell into the bog yesterday. Intact skin, organs, hair, eyelashes. Even his fingerprints can still be discerned. Examination revealed that he’d been ritually garroted. The knotted rope was still around his neck. And we know it was the Druids who killed him, as the man’s stomach was filled with mistletoe, a plant sacred to the Celtic priests.”
“And you found a bog mummy here?” Gray asked.
“Two, actually. A woman and a child. We discovered them as we were excavating the stone ring. They were found in the center, curled together in death.”
Seichan asked her first question. Her eyes flickered to Rachel, then away again. “Were they sacrificed?”
Wallace perked up at her question. “That’s exactly what we wondered. It’s now well accepted that stone rings were solar calendars, but they also served as burial sites. And this site here must have been especially holy. A stone ring within a sacred bog. We had to know if this was a natural burial or a murder.”
This last was said with a twinge of guilt.
“We were under instructions to leave the bodies intact, to send them to the university whole, but we had to know. There was no rope around the necks of the bodies, but there was another way to discover if this was a ritual sacrifice.”
Rachel understood. “Mistletoe in the stomach.”
Wallace nodded. “We performed a small examination. Well documented, I might add.” He moved to his pack, undid the ties, and removed a file. He shrugged as he returned to the table. “I wasn’t supposed to keep a hard copy.”
He sifted through the file and pulled out a set of photos. One showed the woman and child curled in black soil. The woman cradled the child in her arms. They were tucked together as if asleep. The bodies were gaunt and emaciated, but the woman’s black hair still draped her face. The next photo showed the woman naked on the table. A hand was in view, holding a dissecting scalpel.
“Before we sent the body on to the university, we wanted to see if there was any mistletoe pollen in her stomach. It was a minor violation.”
“Did you find any?” Rachel asked, suddenly not feeling so well.
“No. But we found something else rather disturbing. If you have a weak stomach, you might want to turn away.”
Rachel forced herself to keep looking.
The next photo showed a Y-shaped incision across the abdomen. The belly was peeled open, revealing the mass of internal organs. But something was clearly wrong. Wallace flipped to another photo, showing a close-up of a yellow liver. Growths protruded from its surface, covering it like a grisly field.
Wallace explained. “We found them growing throughout her abdominal cavity.”
Rachel covered her mouth. “Is that what I think it is?”
Wallace nodded. “They’re mushrooms.”
Shocked and disgusted, Gray sat back. He struggled to understand what was going on, what had been discovered here. He needed someplace to ground his inquiry, so he returned to where he first started.
“Back to Father Giovanni,” Gray said. “You said the bodies drew him here.”
“Aye.” Wallace returned to his seat and straddled his chair. “Marco heard about our discovery. In a place where Christianity and the pagan ways were still in conflict.”
“Still, that conflict didn’t truly draw him,” Gray said and stared down at the first photo of the woman with the child. There was no mistaking that tableau. Like a Madonna and child. And not just any Madonna. The tannins from the peat had dyed the woman’s skin a deep brownish-black.
“I sent him a photo of the mummies. He came the next day. He was interested in any manifestation or reference to his Black Madonna. To find such a set of bodies in a sacred pagan burial site, in a land where Christianity and ancient ways still mixed, he had to discover for himself if there was any connection to the mythology of his dark goddess.”
“And was there?” Rachel asked.
“That’s what Marco spent the past years investigating. It had him shuffling all over the British Isles. In the last month, though, I could tell that something had him especially agitated. He would never say what it was.”
“And what’s your take on the mummies?” Gray asked.
“Like I said, we didn’t find any mistletoe. I think the bodies were dead when they were buried in the bog. But who buried them and why? And why did Martin Borr mark his book with this pagan symbol? That’s what I wanted to know.”
“And?” Gray pressed the man. He was annoyingly oblique with his answers, teasing them out for greater effect.
“I have my own hypothesis,” Wallace admitted. “It goes back to where I started my investigation. The Domesday Book. Something laid waste to the nearby village or town. Something horrible enough to raze the place to the ground, to wipe all records off the maps. All records, that is, except for the cryptic reference in the great book and the mention in Martin Borr’s diary. So what happened to warrant such a reaction? I would wager it was some sort of plague or disease. Not wanting it to spread, to keep it secret, the place was destroyed.”
“But what about the bodies here?” Rachel nodded down to the photos.
“Just close your eyes and put yourself back in that town. A place isolated and under siege by some great illness. A town mixed between devout Christians and those who practiced the ancient ways in secret, who certainly must have known about this stone ring near their town, who perhaps still worshiped here. Once doom fell upon this valley, each side most likely beseeched their gods for salvation. And some probably hedged their bets, mixing the two faiths. They took a mother and a baby boy, representative of the Madonna and her child, and buried them in this ancient pagan site. I believe these two are the only bodies that escaped the fiery purge, the only two left from that old plague.”
Wallace touched the dissection photo with a finger. “Whatever struck that village was strange indeed. I don’t know of anything like this that has ever been reported in the annals of medicine or forensics. The bodies are still under investigation, and that’s being kept a guarded secret. They won’t even tell me what they found.”
“But shouldn’t you be kept informed?” Gray asked. “Aren’t you a tenured professor at the University of Edinburgh?”
Wallace’s brow crinkled in confusion, then relaxed. “Oh, no, you misunderstood me. When I said the university took the bodies, I didn’t mean Edinburgh. My grant came from abroad. It’s not an uncommon practice. For field studies, you take funds wherever you can find them.”
“So who took the bodies?”
“They were sent to the University of Oslo for initial examination.”
Gray felt kicked in the gut. It took him an extra moment to respond. Oslo. Here was the first solid connection between events here and what Painter Crowe was investigating in Norway.
While Gray grappled with the implications, Wallace continued. “I guess ultimately it all goes back to extremophiles.”
The oddity of the non sequitur snapped Gray’s focus back. “What are you talking about?”
“My funding,” Wallace said in a tone that made it sound as if it should be obvious. “Like I said. In this business, you get money where you can.”
“And how do extremophiles fit in with all that?”
Gray was well aware of the term. Extremophiles were organisms that lived under extreme conditions, ones that were considered too harsh to support life. They were mostly bacteria, found living in toxic environments like boiling deep-sea rifts or volcanic craters. Such unique organisms offered potential new compounds to the world.
And the world’s industries had certainly taken note, generating a new business called bioprospecting. But instead of prospecting for gold, they were after something just as valuable: new patents. And it turned out to be a booming business. Already extremophiles were being used to patent new industrial-strength detergents, cleansers, medicines, even an enzyme used widely by crime labs for DNA fingerprinting.
But what did all that have to do with bog mummies in England?
Wallace tried to explain. “It goes back to my initial hypothesis, one I pitched to my potential sponsors. A hypothesis about the Doomsday Book.”
Gray noted that he called it Doomsday, rather than Domesday, this time. He imagined that the professor, with his usual flair for the dramatic, had sought funding using the book’s more colorful name.
“As I mentioned, those few places in the book marked in Latin as ‘wasted,’ seemed to have been wiped off the map—literally and figuratively. What would make those old census takers do that unless something dangerous had struck these towns?”
“Like a disease or plague,” Gray said.
Wallace nodded. “And potentially it was something never seen before. These were isolated places. Who knew what might have risen out of the bogs? Peat bogs are soups of strange organisms. Bacteria, fungi, slime molds.”
“So they hired you as both an archaeologist and a bioprospector.”
Wallace shrugged. “I’m not the only one. Major industries are turning to field archaeologists. We’re delving into ancient places, sites long closed up. Just this past year, a major U.S. chemical company discovered an extremophile in a newly opened Egyptian tomb. It’s all the rage, you see.”
“And for this dig, the University of Oslo funded you.”
“No. Oslo is just as strapped as any university. Nowadays most grants are generated from corporate sponsors.”
“And which corporation hired you?”
“A biotech company, one working with genetically modified organisms. Crops and whatnot.”
Gray gripped the table’s edge. Of course. Biotechnology companies were major players in the hunt for extremophiles. Bioprospecting was their life’s blood. They cast feelers out in all directions, across all fields of study. Including, it seemed, archaeology.
Gray had no doubt who sponsored Wallace’s research.
He spoke that name aloud. “Viatus.”
Wallace’s eyes grew larger. “How did you know?”
11:44 P.M.
Seichan stood outside her cabin. She held a cigarette in her hand, unlit and forgotten. The stars were as crisp as cut glass in the night sky. Streams of icy fog crept through the trees. She inhaled a deep breath, smelling the peat smoke, both from their camp stoves and from the smoldering fires underground.
The ring of stones, rimed in ice, looked like chunks of silver.
She pictured the two bodies buried in the center. For some reason, she thought back to the curator she had slain in Venice—or rather, to his wife and child. She pictured the two of them buried here instead. Knowing it was born out of guilt, she shook her head against such foolish sentimentality. She had a mission to complete.
But tonight her guilt had sharpened to an uncomfortable edge.
She stared down at her other hand. She held a steel thermos. It had kept her tea warm. The warmth also kept her biotoxin incubated. The group had talked at length about extremophiles after the revelation about the source of Dr. Boyle’s funding. The source of the toxin supplied to her was a bacteria discovered in a volcanic vent in Chile. Frost sensitive, it had to be kept warm.
No one noticed that only Rachel drank the tea.
Seichan only pretended to sip at it.
Pocketing her cigarette, she crossed to a windblown bank of snow and set about filling the thermos with handfuls of snow. The cold would sterilize the thermos, killing any remaining bacteria. Once it was packed full, she screwed the top back on. Her fingers trembled. She wanted to blame it on the cold. She threaded the top on wrong, and it jammed. She fought it for a breath as anger flared hotly through her. Frustrated, she yanked her arm back and hurled the thermos into the forest.
For half a minute, she breathed heavily, steaming the air.
She didn’t cry—and for some reason that helped center her.
A door cracked open in the other cabin. She shared her cabin with Rachel; the men shared the other. She stepped into the open to see who else was still up.
The large frame and lumbering gait identified the man readily enough. Kowalski spotted her and lifted an arm. He pointed a thumb toward the paddock.
“Going to see a man about a horse,” he said and disappeared around the corner.
It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t actually meeting someone by the ponies. She was that out of sorts. She heard him whistling back there as he relieved himself.
She checked her watch. It was a few minutes before midnight. The timetable was set. There was no going back. They’d had sufficient time to examine the site. The Guild would only allow so much latitude for Gray’s team to track Father Giovanni’s path, to discover the key before anyone else. She had argued for more time but had been slapped down. So be it. They would have to keep moving.
She glanced toward the other cabin. Kowalski had better not be too long. He wasn’t. After a minute, he came lumbering back, still whistling under his breath.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked as he joined her.
She fingered her cigarette out and lifted it as explanation enough.
“Those things’ll kill you.” He reached into a pocket, pulled out a stub of a cigar, and matched her gesture. “So you might as well get it over with quickly.”
He clenched the chewed end between his molars, pulled out an old-fashioned box of wooden matchsticks, and deftly scratched two sticks across the fabric of the tent. Twin flames lit up. He passed one to her. He’d plainly done this before.
He spoke around the end of his cigar. “Gray just hit the sack. Spent like two hours trying to get more out of that old professor. I had to get the hell out of there, get some fresh air. That dog kept stinking up the place. And no wonder. Did you see what he feeds that damn mutt? Sausages and onions. What sort of dog chow is that?”
Seichan lit her cigarette. She let the guy ramble, grateful for the mindless chatter. Unfortunately, his chatter was apparently leading up to something—and not all that smoothly.
“So,” he said, “what’s up with you and Gray?”
Seichan choked as she inhaled.
“I mean, he’s always eyeballing you. And you just stare right through him as if he were a ghost. Like two schoolkids with the hots for each other.”
Seichan balked at the innuendo, ready to deny, uncomfortable with how close the man was to the truth. Luckily she was saved from responding.
As midnight struck, the valley exploded.
Throughout the forest, geysers of flame shot skyward, one after the other. They were accompanied by soft concussions, easy to miss unless you were listening for them. The incendiary charges, coupled with a rubidium thermal catalyst that turned water into an accelerant, had been planted deep into wet peat, timed to blow at midnight. The entire valley was meant to burn.
Closer at hand, three more explosions erupted from the center of the ring of stones. Fiery spirals twisted high into the sky.
Even across the distance, the heat burned her face.
People came running out of the cabins behind them. Kowalski cursed hotly next to her.
She didn’t turn, hypnotized by the flames. Her heart pounded. The conflagration began to spread outward—quickly, too quickly—both here and out in the forest. The ignited charges were only supposed to chase Gray’s team off—to light a fire under them literally and figuratively—while destroying all evidence in their wake.
Someone had miscalculated, underestimated the combustibility of the peat. For a moment, an oily flicker of distrust flashed. Had she been betrayed? Were they meant to die here?
Going coldly logical, she mentally snuffed out those doubts. There was no gain in their deaths. At least not at this time. It had to be an error of execution. The old fires, smoldering for years, must have weakened the stability of the peat beds, turning the entire valley into tinder for the right torch.
Still, the end result was the same.
As she stared, the fires closed in a circle around them.
They would never get out of here alive.