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—”