“Excuse me,” he apologized. “Age shows no mercy.”
John Savas looked around the office. It was small, dusty, and filled nearly from side to side with stacks of papers, journals, and books. Behind the stacks were either more stacks, or, if one could make it that far, wall-to-wall bookshelves with yet more books. The professor's desk was old and chipped from years of use. It also was littered with books and papers, a magnifying glass, and a computer that was likely the dustiest thing in the room. Professor Styer was clearly a man of another age. Among the papers, Savas noticed quite a few that showed runes like those decoded from the mysterious communications.
The professor held his thick glasses in one hand and a cloth to wipe them clean in the other. This close, Savas saw how old the man was — clearly in his seventies, perhaps late seventies. His skin was sagging and marked with many age spots. His hands trembled as he wiped the lenses of his glasses. An ancient man to tell them about ancient runes. Savas hoped Styer would last long enough to help them with this case.
Glasses back on, the professor looked out at them, gravitated toward Cohen, smiled delightedly, and asked, “So, my Federal friends, how can I help you?”
Savas flashed a look of concern toward Cohen. Had he gone senile? “Professor Styer, we came here at your request to discuss some runes and symbols that were found in a criminal case, perhaps linked to a series of murders here and abroad.”
“I'm not that far gone, young man!” he barked. “I was merely opening conversation. I think society has forgotten how to be polite,” he said, smiling.
Savas chuckled. “Yes, Professor Styer. My apologies.” He pulled out a piece of paper and passed it to the professor. “This is a reproduction of the coded messages we obtained, and this,” he said, placing the necklace and pendant in front of him, “is what we found on one of the killers.”
Professor Styer glanced briefly at the paper and set it down. “Yes, yes. I've seen it. Agent Cohen sent me all this, you know.” He smiled impishly at Cohen. “I told your assistant here what I thought.” Cohen smiled.
Savas continued. “So, these symbols we have — you say they are pagan, about pagan gods?”
“Norse gods, to be precise.” He reached into his desk drawer and drew out a pouch of tobacco. He dumped the ash from his pipe and filled it while speaking. “The runes — they are very old, predating the Christianization of northern Europe, some of the earliest artifacts dating from a hundred years after the death of Christ. The writing systems are almost certainly older than that. They were used by the Germanic tribes before the Latin alphabet replaced them. This printout, identical, I think, to the one faxed to me, is written in the runic alphabet called the Elder Futhark. This is the oldest version of this alphabet, used for early forms of the Norse language and other dialects from the second to the eighth centuries. It can be found on jewelry, amulets, tools, weapons, rune stones, you name it.”
Styer placed his pipe between his teeth and lit it, puffing several times to ignite the tobacco. “Horrible habit, I know,” he apologized toward Cohen. “But, to paraphrase George Burns, no one under seventy is allowed to smoke in here.” He turned back toward Savas and continued.
“The pendant — one might say ‘amulet’ in ancient times — is probably the most widespread and best-known symbol of all Norse mythology. Curiously, it also appears in the writings you sent — see, here,” he noted, indicating a section of the page with several letters unintelligible to Savas. “It would be pronounced ‘mee-YOLL-neer’, spelled m-j-o-l-n-i-r. This is the Norse name for the thunder god Thor's hammer, the greatest weapon of all the gods in Asgaard. It was made for Thor by the dwarves underground — one of their greatest creations. Its name means ‘crusher,’ and Thor would use the hammer in all his battles against the enemies of the gods, the monsters and giants that sought to throw down the ordered reign of Thor's father, Odin, and return the world to chaos.”
Savas looked over at Cohen as if to say, OK, we've definitely come to the right place. The old man picked up the necklace Savas had handed him and pointed to the pendant with the bird face.
“Mjolnir, my friends. The hammer of Thor. It was often rendered by the Norse artisans in a shape like this, decorated with the face of a raven.”
“Are you able to decipher the rest of the writing, or the audio?” asked Cohen.
“I've made partial transcripts,” Styer said, passing them a sheet of paper, “but I don't know how much use it will be to you. The audio is Old Norse, a valiant attempt to speak it, I must say. One could quibble with the pronunciations and some of the grammar, but it is quite impressive. College level, you might say, which, it would seem to me, is strange coming from the sources you mention. There was much I could not make out, vocabulary that is modern in origin, I believe, adapted to Norse. There seems little doubt, however, that these are military instructions of some kind.”
The knowing look passed between the two FBI agents was not lost on the professor. “I see that I am not too far off the mark.”
Savas shifted the conversation. “So, what does this mean, Professor? We have some sort of cult of assassins like the Hashshashin?”
“The Arabic drug-fueled killers from the Middle Ages?”
Savas nodded in response.
“No, Agent Savas, I wouldn't suspect that. These are, if anything you told me is true, anti-Muslim assassins.”
Savas continued to press the point. “But perhaps still some modern cult based on Norse religion? Fueled by a fanatical devotion?”
The professor shook his head. “Most modern pagans — unlike ancient pagans, by the way — are fairly Gaian, Mother Earth, peace-loving aftershocks of the nineteen sixties. This group you are hypothesizing — well, they would be something else entirely. Something, in fact, perhaps much more loyal to the character of the Norse legends.”
“Could you explain that?” asked Savas.
The professor looked thoughtful. “The Northern peoples developed near the poles, Agent Savas, where for half the year, even light was scarce. The ground was often ice. Life was hard. Their mythology reflected that in many ways. This group you are hunting seems an efficient and terrible organization. I will suggest that these killers were attracted to the Norse culture for two reasons. First, and most obvious, is the contrast to the Middle Eastern monotheistic religion of Islam. Their targets are Muslims. What better contrast to Arabic monotheists than Germanic pagans? The second reason, and perhaps the more significant one, might be the character of the Northern myths themselves.”
The professor leaned back in his chair and chewed on his pipe. His eyes closed momentarily. He opened them, glancing toward the ceiling. “The Norse mythos shares many common aspects with the Indo-European mythologies. There are a pantheon of gods and goddesses, many representing similar themes — the sun and moon, of course, the underworld or death, beauty and fertility, strength, the sea, and so forth. They all share a common basis in the creation of order out of chaos, with the gods descending from more primitive elemental forces of nature, the monsters and giants, which seemed chaotic to societies bereft of the miracles of our modern scientific mythos.” He smiled mischievously. “The gods seize power and bring order to the world, vanquishing the Titans, or giants, or whatever embodies the forces of chaos in a given mythology. But, of course, as every fragile human being knows, the forces of chaos still strike; our world is swept by powerful events beyond us. In such mythologies, this is explained as a constant battle between the gods and the elemental, chaotic forces. For the Northern myths, all this reaches a climax at Ragnarök, the Armageddon of the Norse legends, a final battle between good and evil to settle the stewardship of the world.”