‘There were translations and pictures,’ said the Russian, ‘but no more.’
‘Why not?’ asked Nina.
‘They were destroyed with the research on the eitr on the orders of Khrushchev. Eisenhov might have been able to remember some of what was written on the stone, but he is dead, and no one else at Unit 201 is old enough to have seen it.’
‘Someone else saw it, though,’ said Eddie, with an urgency that immediately caught Nina’s attention. ‘Volkov. Natalia’s grandfather.’
‘Yes, but he is also dead,’ Kagan pointed out with a dismissive tone.
‘Yeah, I know — but before he died, he wrote a letter to his wife, telling her about what he’d found.’
Surprise filled Kagan’s face. ‘He wrote a letter? How do you know about this?’
‘Because Natalia told me about it — and she told me what it said on the runestone!’
That produced an electric response in the room. ‘You know what the runestone said? Why did you not tell us this earlier?’ Kagan demanded.
‘’Cause I only just remembered! Tova reminded me, when she said about the Viking names for lakes. Natalia told me that after the Vikings left Valhalla, they went to a lake.’
‘Which lake?’ Nina and Kagan said simultaneously.
‘Christ, calm down, I’m trying to think! It was eight years ago, and it wasn’t exactly the main thing I was bothered about at the time. Let’s see, they left Valhalla, and went across a rainbow bridge—’
‘Bifröst,’ cut in Tova. ‘It was also in the runes on the first stone as a landmark on the route to Valhalla.’
‘Must be on the right track, then. But after that, they went through, er…’ He frowned, trying to uproot the memories, before snapping his fingers. ‘Lightning! That was it. The lake of lightning.’
Nina looked back at Tova. ‘Does that mean anything to you? The lake of lightning?’
The historian’s eyes widened. ‘Yes, there was a place — let me check!’ She turned back to the laptop and began typing. Very soon, she had results. ‘Here, here! There is a lake called Blixtsjö — it means literally “lightning lake”, and it took its name from Old Norse. It is on a river that in Viking myth was sometimes called Leipt.’
The name sparked Nina’s memory. ‘That’s one of the primal rivers of the Norse creation mythology, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that is right. There were eleven rivers that flowed from the spring of Hvergelmir, and Leipt was one of them. It got its name because it was supposed to streak like lightning. I always thought it was just a myth, but after what we have seen…’
‘Where’s this lake, then?’ Eddie asked.
‘Let me look…’ More typing, then, after rapidly reading through the results, Tova returned her attention to the map. ‘It is… here!’
She pointed out a thin, sharply winding lake in the highlands of central Sweden. Eddie took a closer look. ‘It’s pretty much north of Fjarriheim.’
‘In the mountains,’ Nina added. ‘If one of them looks like a saddle…’ She commandeered the laptop, accessing the IHA database to bring up a satellite image of the lake and its surroundings. ‘I can’t really tell from this, though.’
‘All that money the IHA spent on this stuff, and you’d be better off using Google Earth,’ he joked.
‘I’ll bring it up at the next budget meeting. But look, the lake’s fed by a river at its north end, and it goes up into the mountains. Tova, what did the Valhalla Runestone say about following the route?’
Tova didn’t need notes to recite the relevant part of the ancient inscription. ‘Up the river you must travel, until great Bifröst is reached. Across, follow the stream to the falls. At their summit is Odin’s hall, now of the slain.’
Nina pursed her lips. ‘So if this is the right river, then somewhere up it is Bifröst — the rainbow bridge. But a bridge to where?’ She scrolled the satellite view, following the river northwards, but saw nothing except forests and mountains around it.
‘If Valhalla is there, we must find it,’ said Kagan. ‘Berkeley and Hoyt have the same information that we do. They might be on their way already.’
‘But how do we find it?’ asked Tova.
‘The old-fashioned way,’ said Nina. ‘We go there and look. I’ll contact the IHA to make arrangements with the Swedish government, and get us some suitable transport. Kagan, what’s the situation with your bosses at the Kremlin? Are they going to make trouble for us over what happened at the airbase?’
The Russian gave her a grim look. ‘The President is very angry — at you in particular, Chase,’ he went on, turning to Eddie. ‘You destroyed some very valuable military aircraft.’
Eddie grimaced. ‘Great, a world leader with nukes is personally pissed off at me…’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Nina reminded him, smiling ruefully.
‘But,’ Kagan continued, ‘he knows the importance of Unit 201 and its work. He is willing to accept your United Nations diplomatic immunity and not punish you for what you have done — as long as you help Unit 201 to find the other source of eitr.’
‘An offer we can’t refuse, eh?’ said Eddie.
‘Slavin did say something about gangsters,’ Nina remarked, to Kagan’s clear displeasure. ‘But under the circumstances, I’ll take it. Okay, if you go deal with your bosses, we can get moving. Tova, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to go back to Sweden anyway, but beyond that… it’s up to you if you want to come with us. After everything you’ve been through, I can entirely understand if you’ve had enough.’
Tova considered this for a moment. ‘No, I… I will come with you,’ she said. ‘If Valhalla really exists, if this river really is the way to it, then I want to see it for myself.’
‘Thank you. I really appreciate everything you’ve done to help us.’ Nina straightened, gazing down at the map. ‘Okay. Let’s go and find the hall of the slain.’
Eddie gave her a look of dark humour. ‘Just hope we don’t end up as residents.’
24
‘There’s the lake!’ said Tova excitedly, looking over the helicopter pilot’s shoulder.
Nina, in the front passenger seat, had a better view. Blixtsjö was a zigzagging ribbon running through the tree-covered hills. They were approaching from the south, looking along its length — and she saw at once why the Vikings, and later the Swedes, had given it its name. From the summit of one of the hills below the aircraft, it would indeed resemble the shape of a lightning bolt. One of the nearby mountains also matched the description in the runes, its bowed summit appearing somewhat like a saddle.
She looked beyond the lake. The landscape rose higher, snow-capped peaks and ridges standing out between forest-filled valleys as far as she could see. It was a beautiful sight, but her appreciation was now far more archaeological than aesthetic. Hidden somewhere amongst the endless trees was Valhalla.
If they were right. They were following a route that had been pieced together from the deliberately incomplete writings on one ancient runestone, a few barely remembered scraps of information from another, second-hand recollections of Viking inscriptions that had been melted to glass over half a century earlier — and her husband’s recollections of what Natalia Pöltl had told him, also second-hand, eight years before. The pieces did seem to make up a coherent picture, but there were no guarantees that it was the correct picture…
She put her doubts aside. It was all they had, whereas Berkeley and Hoyt possessed both runestones, and in theory everything they needed to lead them to Valhalla. The disgraced archaeologist had already proven that he could follow the clues left by the Vikings; she had to take the gamble that Tova was as good as or better than her former IHA colleague. It was the only chance they had of finding Valhalla first — and with it, the location of the second source of eitr.