Crusader Gold

9

The man in the black cassock walked confidently towards the main entrance of the Apostolic Palace, his trappings as a Jesuit priest in keeping with the other applicants milling around the doorway. He had left the crowd in St. Peter’s behind him and had already passed the first security cordon at the bronze doors leading off from the square. Now he was approaching the very heart of the Vatican, the headquarters of the College of Cardinals, the hub from which the Holy See exerted its influence far beyond Rome to every corner of the globe.

Ahead of him two Swiss guards stood resplendent in their finery with halberds crossed in front of the door, an image that could have been straight from the Renaissance except for the Heckler amp; Koch submachine guns slung discreetly over their backs. An officer of the guard took the Jesuit’s ID and proceeded to scrutinise him, comparing the black beard and expressionless eyes with the photo on the card. Despite the heat of the early summer, the face was pale and pinched, but it was a scholarly visage all too common inside the closeted walls of the Vatican. The officer turned to a secretary beside him, and they checked the level of authorisation on a palm computer. The officer grunted in surprise and immediately handed the Jesuit back his card.

“You are free to enter.”

The guards raised their weapons and the Jesuit passed through, avoiding the usual body search and metal detector. He walked straight along a wide corridor on the ground floor, then turned left at the end and continued until he came to the ornate door of a private chapel, its entrance marked by trays of dedicatory candles on either side. He knocked once and pushed the door open. In the candlelit gloom he saw another man kneeling before the simple altar at the far end of the chapel. The man crossed himself and stood, then turned towards the door. He was tall and aquiline, with white hair, and he wore the full episcopal vestments of a cardinal, with a gold cross hanging in front of his scarlet cassock. He had the benign, ageless face of one who had spent many years in holy orders, but with a hard edge to his eyes. It was an expression appropriate for a man such as he, a man whose ambition had brought him to the very threshold of supreme power in the Catholic Church.

“Eminence.” The Jesuit bowed slightly, then closed the door behind him.

“Monsignor.”

The two men spoke in English, the Jesuit with a clipped drawl that could have been South African, the cardinal with a hint of north European in his accent.

“He is here?”

“The second one present at the opening of the chamber. We suspected, and he confessed. The Holy See has techniques of persuasion refined over the centuries.”

“And the other?”

“He is your next task.”

The Jesuit walked forward and knelt in front of the cardinal. The cardinal quickly drew off the holy ring from the middle finger of his right hand and replaced it with another, a heavier, flat-faced ring that glinted in the candlelight as he held it out. The Jesuit took his hand and kissed the ring, closing his eyes as his lips brushed the familiar shape, and with his other hand felt his own ring hanging round his neck under his cassock. He stood, made the sign of the cross and backed reverently towards the door, then stopped for a moment and held up his right hand towards the cardinal, whispering words in a language that sounded unearthly, words never before uttered in this holy place, and which seemed to blaspheme against all that it stood for.

“Hann til ragnaroks.”

The Jesuit closed the door of the chapel behind him and walked down the long corridor, his footsteps echoing off the walls of the palace. He emerged into an open courtyard, raising his hands in prayer as two officials passed, then made his way towards an unassuming entrance along the other side. The bells of St. Peter’s suddenly began to boom across the still air of the city, asserting the sovereignty of the Holy See as they had done since the dying days of the Roman Empire. Above him the walls of the courtyard framed the sky, two huge birds of prey circling far overhead, and he could hear the dull rumble of the city outside. He ducked through the entrance and looked quickly behind him, then gathered up his cassock and mounted the stairway to the first floor. The corridor ahead was lined with statues, bulletin boards and posters advertising exhibits, but was empty of people, today being a holiday for the museum staff. The Jesuit reached a door with a light on inside, just where he had been told it would be, and saw the word CONSERVATORI above the lintel.

He paused, not out of hesitation but to relish the moment. In the shadows he stood with his head bowed, his fists clenched. Sixty-five years earlier his forefathers had failed to breach these walls, had stopped short of taking the Vatican in their triumphal sweep through Rome. Now he would make amends, he would make his mark. He unclenched his left hand and raised it to his face, drawing his index finger down the ragged scar that pulsated beneath his beard, pressing it hard until he flinched in pain. He slipped his left hand back under his cassock and with his other hand knocked three times on the door.

“Enter,” a muffled voice said in Italian.

The Jesuit pushed the door open and closed it behind him. The room was crammed with books and manuscripts, with a computer workstation at the far end. In the foreground was a fragmentary stone relief sculpture on a pedestal, and in front of it sat a middle-aged man in jeans and a casual shirt, hunched over a notebook.

“Monsignor.” The man finished what he was writing and looked up, his expression alert and intelligent. “I had not expected to be interrupted today. What can I do for you?”

“You are the chief conservator?” The Jesuit spoke in Italian.

“I am.”

“You were present at the discovery of the secret chamber in the Arch of Titus, along with Father O’Connor?”

The other man suddenly looked deflated, and tossed his notebook on the floor. “Now everyone seems to know. We kept it secret for the good of the Church. I wish we had never found it.”

“So do I.”

The silenced Beretta coughed twice and the conservator jerked back on his stool, an expression of horrified surprise on his face. He tottered over and fell heavily to the floor, coming to rest with his arm splayed awkwardly over his front, his eyes wide open and uncomprehending in death. The Jesuit pulled his left hand out of his cassock and slowly raised it to his face. He drew his finger down the scar on his cheek, again and again, as hard as he could, grimacing with pleasure as he watched the blood seep from the man’s chest and pool on the cold stone slabs beneath him.

There would be more.

“Activating ice probe now.”

Costas turned to Jack as he spoke through the intercom, and the two men gave each other the okay sign. For about the fifth time Jack cast a critical eye over Costas’ equipment. Once they shed the umbilical they would be absolutely reliant on their breathing systems and on each other, with no bail-out option, no emergency escape route to the surface. The IMU equipment was state of the art, with a rock-solid computer system which took the job of calculating their breathing mix and ascent rate entirely out of their hands. It had been tested in conditions of extreme heat six months before inside a submerged volcano, but this was the first time it had been deployed in water that was as cold as it could be without turning to ice.

“Take up your position.”

Jack swung in from where he had been hanging by one hand and gripped the metal bar beside Costas. They were like two climbers on a vast ice wall, dwarfed by the immensity of the berg. Below them the ice dropped off hundreds of metres into the abyss, where the slope of the threshold sheered off to unimaginable depths, to a place of freezing blackness no human had ever dared enter.

“There’s only one safety drill,” Costas said. “Any sign of movement in the ice and we switch to trimix. If this baby rolls off the threshold we’re going down. Remember, the trimix gives us breathable gas to one hundred and twenty metres. That should at least give us some margin.”

Jack gave another okay sign and checked the three hoses which fed into the ports in his helmet. In truth he and Costas both knew their safety drill was a forlorn hope. If the berg moved off the threshold, the vast bulk of it would slip underwater, its base plunging hundreds of feet. If the movement of the ice didn’t crush them, the pressure of a sudden descent into the abyss would kill them instantly.

Jack shut his mind to the possibility and focussed on the outlandish device in front of them. They had just opened up the protective cage that cradled the probe against the berg, and attached the radio buoy which they planned to release to the surface once they re-emerged. The probe was already wedged partway into the ice, having been put in position earlier by the pair of divers they had seen from the Aquapod. Directly abutting the ice was a metal ring two metres in diameter, the width of the tunnel the machine would bore. The tunnel would be just wide enough for the two of them to follow on side by side, with little room to spare. The superheated element in the tube was complemented by an array of microwave and laser cutters emanating from the main body of the device, a metre-wide cylindrical canister directly in front of them. A small but powerful water jet would funnel the newly melted water away and propel the device forward. On the rear face above the guide rail a waterproof LED screen glowed a vivid green.

“We’ll keep the power line attached to the DSRV as long as we can, as well as the fibre-optic cable,” Costas said. “Normally the DSRV pilot would be able to see everything we see on the screen, but before the DSRV moves off we’ll have to disengage the power line and run the probe from the internal battery.” He adjusted a large dial below the screen, then turned and peered at Jack through his mask, remembering the debilitating effect of the gunshot wound that had nearly ended his friend’s life on a very different dive, deep in the Black Sea six months before. “You okay?”

“This new E-suit heating system is working wonders,” Jack replied simply.

“Without the coil the water in the tunnel would actually be below zero,” Costas said cheerfully. “It’s fresh water, from the glacier, so it freezes more quickly than salt water. We’d be ice before you could say scotch on the rocks.”

“Thanks for the thought.” Jack looked down with some scepticism at the coil, a wavering tendril of microfilaments hanging below them. It would be paid out from the device as they went in, and keep the newly melted water from freezing up again and entombing them inside the berg.

“It should work,” Costas added. “In theory.”

“Let me guess. I won’t even say it.”

Costas’ eyes glinted at Jack as he reached up to his shoulder and pressed the external channel on his communications console. “Ben, we’re on our way. Estimated time of arrival at the ten-metre disengagement depth, twenty minutes. Out.”

Jack watched beneath his fins as their entry hole into the berg receded far below, a shimmering patch of blue obscured by the swirl of heated microfilaments that trailed behind them. Twisting down the centre was the battery cable and the umbilical bringing in their nitrox and sucking out their exhaust, their lifeline to the world outside. Jack raised his head and watched in fascination as the borer carved a perfectly smooth tunnel through the ice, proceeding upwards at a 45-degree angle at a rate of more than two metres per minute. He had no sense of the water temperature in his E-suit, but the changing thermostat readout on his environmental regulator reflected the blast of warm water that was being ejected from the borer and driving the machine into the ice. Ahead of them their lamps lit up the wall of the tunnel, a dazzling spectacle of white, yet Jack knew that without artificial light they would be entering a world of total blackness, hemmed in on all sides by an unimaginable thickness of ice which had blocked out the last vestiges of the sun’s rays far above them.

“Okay,” Costas said. “We’ve reached ten metres external water depth. I’m going to level out and disengage.”

Costas adjusted the heat output controls on the panel in front of him, easing off on the lower elements so the borer would melt more ice above and gradually become horizontal. Jack watched their progress on the LED screen, a 3-D isometric image of the berg identical to the one Lanowski had shown them earlier that day. The image had been generated by the surface team using ultra-high-frequency sonar, created from thousands of data points where the sound waves had met differential resistance from frozen cracks and fissures in the berg. Lanowski had plotted a best-fit point of entry and route to minimise the chance of following a frozen meltwater fissure and rupturing the berg, and so far his plot had held true. The ice they had passed through had all been the cloudy white ice of the glacier, as hard as rock, formed a hundred thousand years ago in the depths of the Ice Age.

Costas reopened the external channel on his intercom receiver. “Ben, this is Costas. Do you receive me, over?”

“Costas, this is DSRV, we receive you loud and clear, over.”

“We’ve reached the disengagement point, over.”

“Roger that. We’ve got you on screen as long as you’re hooked up. Be advised, we have a meteorology warning from the captain of Seaquest II. There’s some thermal disturbance on the edge of the ice cap, a cold air mass moving in from the east. It may be nothing significant, but the captain’s pulling back another mile from the fjord as a safety precaution. You have the option to abort. Over.”

Costas and Jack looked at each other through their visors. “We’re carrying on,” Costas replied. “We’re only fifty metres from our target, and we’re not going to hang around. We’ll be out of here within the hour. But you must leave now. Over.”

“Roger that. Send up the radio buoy when you’re clear of the berg and we’ll pick you up. Standing by to receive umbilical. Over.”

Costas flipped a switch on the control panel in front of him and pulled out the power cord from the ice-borer. For an alarming moment the device went dead, and Jack could almost see the water around him beginning to freeze up. Then the LED screen and forward light array reactivated as the battery came on line, and the water began to shimmer again.

The two men turned towards each other in the narrow confines of the ice tunnel, their visors only inches apart. Costas talked them through the procedure they had practised repeatedly before leaving the DSRV, each man visually checking the other as they worked methodically through the steps.

“Engage rebreather.”

Jack copied Costas and opened the outlet valve of the rebreather on his chest, then turned the knob under his helmet that activated the flow of gas into the silicon rubber skirt that sealed over his nose and mouth. The first lungful of oxygen sent a tingle down his arms and legs, an invigorating effect he relished every time they used rebreathers. He grasped the umbilical hose with his right hand and with his other hand closed the nitrox port on his helmet, his body wedged awkwardly on his elbows against the wall of the tunnel and pressed up against Costas.

“Disengage umbilical.”

Simultaneously the two men pulled the nitrox hoses from their helmets and dropped them to the floor of the tunnel, and Costas released the power cable he had been holding. As they sucked on their rebreathers they watched the coiled mass of the umbilical slither off behind them and disappear over the bend in the tunnel, dropping down their entry route towards the open sea. The microfilament tendrils keeping the tunnel liquid wavered and undulated as if they had been caught in a breeze, then gradually became more stable, spreading out over the entire width of the tunnel.

“Ben, we’re disengaged. We’ll be out of communication range once we hit that mass of meltwater ice. Looking forward to a hot brew when you return. Over.”

“Roger that. Good luck. Out.”

They were now completely cut off from the outside, dependent solely on each other and the array of equipment that festooned their bodies. As Jack watched the umbilical disappear he had felt a pang of unease, a warning sign of his secret vulnerability as a diver, the lurking claustrophobia he constantly fought to suppress. Years before he had nearly died in a submerged mine shaft, his life saved only by buddy-breathing with Costas, and the trauma had been reawakened in the labyrinth of Atlantis, when his wound had left him weakened and exposed. He knew Costas was aware of his battle, and the unspoken bond between the two men was a source of strength. Jack gripped the guide rail behind the probe and forced himself to concentrate on the excitement ahead.

“We’re dead on target,” Costas said. “Check out the screen.”

Directly in front of them the LED display showed an anomalous form, the image created by the sonar data points around the mass of meltwater in the heart of the berg that had mystified Cheney and the NASA team. Even the ultra-high-frequency sonar had failed to penetrate further, and from this angle there was no sense of the extraordinary shape which had been so clear from the vertical sonar images. In the centre of the dark mass was a red cross-hair where the ice-corer had picked up the timber sample, and slightly above it a green cross-hair which marked their objective.

“Remember, we’re taking pictures, grabbing anything we can, then leaving,” Costas said. “No time for science today.”

“For once I’m with you,” Jack said. “Now we’ve got the tree-ring date, all I need is to confirm what it is and prove its origin. A couple more wood samples and we’re out of there.”

“While you’re doing that I’ll use the probe to melt a pool above the target zone, just wide enough to turn this baby round and head for home. I can already taste that brew Ben’s got going for us.”

“Let’s do it.”

The two men hung side by side behind the rail as Costas reactivated the heating element, and seconds later it began to carve out the tunnel towards the target zone. The borer was now an autonomous vehicle, free of any tether to the outside world. It was drawing them along like a slow-motion underwater scooter, pressing farther and farther into the heart of the berg. Costas concentrated on keeping them above the ten-metre threshold for oxygen toxicity. As they progressed onwards Jack experienced a rush of elation, as if the oxygen and the adrenaline he had needed to overcome his anxiety had filled him with an overwhelming exhilaration. The tiny bubbles that gave the ice its milky opacity were fizzing in the meltwater, and he suddenly realised that the only life-sustaining properties around them had been released from the depths of the Ice Age. The air was the same as that breathed by their most distant human ancestors, hunter-gatherers who had roamed the edge of the ice sheets thousands of years before civilisation. Jack had known he would feel a frisson of excitement as their objective neared, but this was an unexpected sensation, the extraordinary feeling of swimming through a tunnel in time that would be impossible to experience anywhere else on earth.

“This is it.” Suddenly the white ice ahead of the borer gave way to a wall of ice as clear as glass, refracted deep blue as their headlamps shone into it. “Meltwater ice,” Costas said. “It’s the first we’ve encountered. This must be from one of those crevasses in the glacier Lanowski was on about.”

He drove the probe forward another two metres until the clear ice was all round them, and then came to a halt. As the swirl from the water jet subsided, Jack realised they were over a dark mass just beneath the ice, and he could see it curving off to either side through the blue haze. He sank down to the floor of the tunnel for a closer look, his headlamp pressed directly against the ice.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What is it?” Costas released his hold on the probe and dropped down beside him, their bodies up against each other in the narrow space.

“Timbers,” Jack said excitedly. “A huge mass of them. It’s the side of a boat, a wooden ship. I can see rivets, rows of rusted iron rivets along planks. And the planks are overlapping, clinker-built. That does it. We’ve got ourselves a Viking longship.”

“Awesome,” Costas said, his eyes glinting through his mask at Jack. “And they’re black, carbonized, just like the sample they analysed from the ice core. There’s charring across this whole section of timber. This boat burned.”

“A burning ship on the ice,” Jack murmured. “Remember Kangia, his story of the ancient Inuit legend?”

“It explains the clear ice that cocoons this thing, the image they got with the sonar,” Costas said. “It’s not just meltwater from a crevasse that filled up and froze. I think this boat was burning when it sank into the ice. The ice and snow falling on the timbers must have put the fire out pretty quickly, but not before the heat melted this cavity in the glacier.”

“Before we pull out I want to get some sense of the dimensions,” Jack said.

“The target point’s eight metres ahead. That should give you what you need. Once there I’m turning straight back.”

Moments later Costas came to a halt again. The edge of a huge blackened timber had appeared on the left side of the tunnel, and he adjusted the course of the probe to avoid colliding with it. As they passed alongside they could see that it curved upwards, and was superbly carved with writhing animal forms and abstract interlinked shapes in a wide strip along the edge.

“Urnes style,” Jack said excitedly. “Thank God Maria gave me a refresher course on Viking art last night. I’m certain this is Norwegian, a new style developed around the mid-eleventh century.” He rolled over and looked up through the ice where the timber extended above them. “It’s the stem post. Take a look at that.”

Costas aimed his headlamp through the ice at the top of the timber. He let out a low whistle through his regulator as he saw the carving at the top, a dark shape frozen in the ice at the limit of their visibility, a snarling head with flattened ears that protruded at least a metre in front of the curved prow of the ship.

“It must be Fenrir, the wolf-god,” Jack said in hushed tones, remembering Maria again. “He seems to be the guardian of this place.”

As they flipped back over and progressed slowly forward, a fabulous image unfolded beneath them, as if they were floating over a full-scale diorama of a shipwreck in a museum exhibit. The image was stunningly clear, and on either side they could see for at least five metres until the ice became too blue. Some sections of timber were remarkably intact, others charred and crushed by the ice that must have fallen on the hull before the meltwater froze up and protected it. Jack took photographs continuously with the digital camera integrated into his helmet, murmuring the technical descriptions into the audiotape as each new element of ship structure came into view.

“It’s classic west Scandinavian construction, completely consistent with the eleventh century,” he said after a few minutes. “More a deep-hulled, broad-beamed sailing vessel than the Hollywood image of a longship, but then you wouldn’t have wanted an oared warship out here. They were fine for skimming the waves at high speed and landing raiding parties, but they had a low sheerline and swamped easily in heavy seas. You wanted a ship that could transport people and supplies across the north Atlantic, sometimes spending weeks at sea.”

“It’s been repaired,” Costas said, staring through the ice. “There’s a section near the bow where planks have been replaced, where the carpentry looks different. Maybe they hit an iceberg. And look, there’s an oar.”

“It’s a steering oar, a side rudder,” Jack said, looking down at the perfectly preserved oar on the warped deck planking beneath them. “The Vikings didn’t have fixed rudders, so a broad oar was attached to the stern of the ship. It looks like this one was stowed inboard deliberately, near the bow, not the stern. This ship wasn’t at sea when it went down. And there’s more. Take a look at that. It’s incredible.”

As they passed beyond the bow area they began to see shapes that were not timbers, but items which seemed to have been arranged in a pile leading up to a dark structure in the centre of the hull where the mast-step should have been. There were amorphous masses clearly identifiable as skins and furs, with wooden platters and utensils placed alongside. Costas quickly adjusted the setting as the ice-borer narrowly missed the top of a large pottery jar that lay shattered over the middle of the furs.

“An amphora.” Jack picked up a rim shard which had come out in the meltwater and stowed it in his E-suit. “An east Mediterranean wine amphora, of the Byzantine period. In Greenland. It’s bizarre.”

“I guess they had to keep warm in those cold Arctic nights,” Costas said. “Anyway, I thought the Vikings were beer-drinkers.”

“Some of them were pretty widely travelled, remember, and must have picked up foreign habits.” Jack’s mind was racing, and he was beginning to think the unthinkable. “I may be wrong, but I’m wondering…” At that moment another object appeared inside the tunnel meltwater beneath them, a long wooden shaft with its head still embedded in the ice. Costas stopped the water jet to give the element time to melt more ice around the object, and Jack carefully drew it out and held it in the narrow space between them.

“Holy shit,” Costas said.

It was a huge, single-bitted battle-axe, hafted to a thick handle at least a metre and a half long. The head shone with gold and was embellished with ornate engravings on both sides.

“It’s gilded,” Jack murmured, his voice hoarse with excitement. “That’s what preserved the iron from corrosion. Standard technique for making a weapon look like gold, but keeping it functional with the harder metal underneath.”

“I’ve got symbols on my side of the blade,” Costas said.

“So have I.” Jack turned his side flat so Costas could see. The surface was engraved with a large pendant shape that respected the lines of the axe head, a wide stem dropping to symmetrical extensions that filled the width of the metal above the blade. The outline form was simple but it was elaborately decorated inside, with swirling curvilinear designs and garish animal forms, most prominently the snarling head of a wolf at the apex of the shape. Jack pointed to a line of symbols just above the axe blade.

“Mjollnir.”

“What?”

“The letters are Greek, but the name’s Norse. The most potent symbol of the Vikings, the invincible weapon of their greatest god, their one hope of defeating evil at the Battle of Ragnarok. Mjollnir, Thor’s Hammer.”

“What’s the bird above it?”

Jack peered closer. “I can’t believe I’m seeing this. It’s the double-headed eagle. One head signifies the old Rome, the other the new Rome, Constantinople. It’s the imperial symbol of the Byzantine emperor.” He paused, then looked through his visor at Costas, his eyes alight in wonder. “We’ve just found one of the most famous weapons in history, a battle-axe of the Varangian Guard.”

“That makes sense. Look at these.” Costas twisted the axe round so Jack could see the other side.

“Runes!” Jack’s heart was racing, and he was sucking the oxygen hard from the rebreather. “And not just any old runes. I’m not an expert, but I know these like the back of my hand. They’re identical to the ones in the Church of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople. It’s the signature of Halfdan, the Viking who inscribed his pagan symbols into the holiest cathedral of eastern Christendom some time in the eleventh century.”

“So we’ve found Halfdan’s war axe,” Costas’ voice was deadpan, but his expression was incredulous. “In an iceberg off Greenland. This guy sure got around.”

“There’s one final thing I need to check,” Jack said. “There should be a simple mast-step and crossbeam in the centre of the hull, but instead it’s some kind of rectangular structure. I’ve now got a pretty good idea what it is, but I need to see it with my own eyes. Then we’re out of here.”

“Roger that.” Costas reactivated the water jet and they began to move up and over the dark structure a few metres ahead of them. Jack held on to the axe for a moment, scarcely believing what they had found, and then fed it over his shoulder under the straps of his trimix cylinders, carefully pushing the shaft back until the gilded axe head was wedged safely away from his regulator manifold. He turned back and clasped both hands on the guide rail, watching closely as the edge of the rectangular structure appeared beneath them, and they began to see what lay inside, a shadowy, sepulchral form that seemed completely different from everything they had discovered so far. At the foot of the structure Jack suddenly saw another fantastic pile of artefacts, a gilded conical helmet on top of a coat of gilded chain mail, and below them a folded scarlet cloth with gold embroidery, evidently a cloak. Just as they were about to pass over the middle of the structure, Costas flipped the control handle and the probe came to a halt.

“I’m getting a warning reading on the seismograph,” he said. “Probably just a wobble in the machine, but I need to stop to make sure.”

Jack looked with sudden unease at the red light flashing at the bottom of the screen. He could sense nothing unusual, but the microfilaments trailing behind them seemed to flutter longer than usual after the water jet had shut off.

“There’s definitely something going on,” Costas said.

Just then there was a horrifying creaking noise, followed by a series of wrenching vibrations that set Jack’s teeth on edge and sent an uncontrollable tremor through his body. The water began to vibrate, until all he could see of Costas and the ice probe was a shapeless blur.

“Holy Mother of God. We’re-”

Costas’ words were drowned out by a terrible shrieking noise, as if they were being assailed on all sides by demented banshees. Splinters of ice began to shear off the tunnel walls, rocketing through the water like shrapnel. One piece wedged itself in Jack’s left thigh, slicing through the Kevlar exoskeleton like butter. All he felt was numbness, and he watched in shock as the water filled with swirling tendrils of red. Then there was a grating lurch and the ice probe went dead, its entire fore end crushed beyond recognition by a seismic shift in the ice.

Everything went silent. Costas frantically tried to reactivate the probe, but to no avail. The space had become narrower, their bodies pressed against each other with hardly any room to move. Jack’s torso was twisted against the bottom of the tunnel, his face mask pressed hard against the ice above the mysterious rectangular structure embedded below them.

As the probe was now dead, the only light came from their headlamps. With superhuman effort Jack managed to turn his head to peer back down the tunnel. What he saw confirmed his worst fear. The tunnel was completely cut off, sealed shut by some tectonic shift in the ice. The space they were in was only about a metre longer than their bodies, and was shrinking fast. Jack watched in horror as the water froze up around his feet. The icy brash that seemed to appear out of nowhere refracted his view into a kaleidoscope, with Costas fragmented into a thousand shapes and colours. Jack tried to move his hand towards his friend but there was already too much resistance. A terrible wave of certainty passed through him: they would be frozen into the ice before they were dead, a living nightmare of the worst kind.

“We’re rolling!” Costas shouted. “Switch to trimix!”

Jack had barely registered the movement, but it suddenly became huge, bigger than anything that had gone before, a gigantic lurching that shoved him into the brash against the tunnel wall. With all his strength he heaved his arm up through the solidifying slurry and reached for the valve under his helmet, feeling Costas’ hand trying to do the same. With agonising slowness he twisted it open while Costas shut off his rebreather, then Costas withdrew his hand and reached for his own valve. Seconds later the first bubbles of exhaust crackled through the brash, some pooling mid-water, trapped under the forming ice, and the rest erupting upwards to form a pocket of air against the tunnel ceiling. The pocket quickly enlarged as Costas began to breathe out, and Jack slowly rose into it as the berg rolled. The instant he broke surface the sheen of liquid on his mask froze, a mix of water and blood that gave his view a surreal tint. He was now almost completely immobile, unable to move his limbs, and with each breath the compression of ice against his chest made it harder to inhale. He knew he had only moments left. He strained to the right, but there was no way he could see Costas. The intercom indicator inside his helmet was dead, and all he could hear was the suck of his own breathing and a terrible tearing and grinding far away, the noise of titanic forces within the berg that had entombed them.

As Jack began to black out, he glimpsed something on the ceiling of the air pocket, then realised it was a reflection of his own form on the ice. His breathing became shallower, quick and rasping, and he became light-headed, flitting in and out of consciousness as his body starved of oxygen. The form above him began to take on a wavering, unnerving shape, as if it were something more than just a reflection. Through the blood-streaked sheen of his mask he saw a flowing red robe where there should have been an E-suit, and instead of a diving helmet there was a bearded face framed by long golden hair. The eyes were dark shadows, sunk beneath the grey pallor of the face, but they seemed to be boring into him. In his delirium Jack saw one arm extended, a blackened hand shining with gold, beckoning him closer. Jack had found what he had been searching for, the ancient warrior who had passed out of time inside this ship, a wraith of Valhalla come to take him in his embrace. Jack shut his eyes on the image as a mighty crack rent the ice, throwing him far beyond the present into merciful oblivion.