MEG: Nightstalkers (26 page)

Dozens of prefabricated steel buildings lined the deserted wharf, their rusted exteriors sharing the same burnt-orange look. Close by, a herd of sea elephants sunned themselves on the shoreline. King penguins stood watch on grass-covered knolls, while unseen fur seals barked out calls to one another.

The XO beached the craft, not trusting the century-old dock. “Are you sure your friend is here?”

Jonas pointed to a small white A-framed chapel, one of the few buildings that seemed habitable. A fit man in his forties was making his way down a path leading to the water, his brown hair long and pulled into a ponytail. He wore a ski parka and jeans, and a five o’clock shadow. An army-green duffle bag was slung across his back, a large object the size of a kitchen trashcan hugged to his chest with both arms. It must have been heavy because it forced him to stop every twenty paces.

Dr. Zachary Wallace set down the item encased in thick plastic, handed his duffle bag to the woman in the raft and embraced Jonas. “J.T, thank God. My chopper dropped me off yesterday; one day in this ghost town is enough. Terry, whit a nice surprise; I wasn’t expecting tae see ye here.”

She offered her cheek for a kiss. “No, apparently you were expecting your fellow Scot.”

Zach seemed surprised. “Mac’s not here?”

“He’s back at the institute with his family.” Jonas saw the perplexed look. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? No, I … of course not.” He picked up the heavy object and carefully passed it to the female officer in the raft. “Please be careful with this, lass. If ye could have yer crew bring it tae my quarters I’d be grateful. If ye could return for us in an hour, that would be most appreciated as I need tae show the Taylors something before we leave the island.”

The XO handed Jonas a two-way radio. “Call me when you’re ready.”

Jonas waited until the Zodiac pulled away. “So what’s so important that you had to meet me on this Club-Med for penguins, and what does it have to do with David?”

“I’m going tae show ye, only I can’t explain everything right now. Ye have tae trust me on this … for David’s sake. Agreed?”

“For now. Only I don’t like mind games.”

“This isn’t a mind game, J.T., it’s more like one of those sliding block puzzles where ye can’t lift the pieces off the board; you have tae manipulate them around a track until everything aligns tae form an image.”

“Sounds like a mind game to me.”

Zach led them up a dirt path cutting through the heart of the station. “Grytviken isn’t as much a piece of the puzzle as it is a clue. A hundred years ago this camp was a slaughterhouse. Boats like those two steam-powered whalers decimated the entire whale population around these islands. The carcasses would be inflated with compressed air and towed back tae Grytviken, where winches would haul the catch ontae work areas. Crews worked day and night using knives on poles tae strip large sheets of blubber, which were then stuffed intae pressure cookers.” He pointed to a series of silo-shaped rusted objects. “Each one of those pressure cookers could process twenty-four tons of blubber. The oil was then pumped intae a plant for purification. Meat and bones were dealt with separately.”

They passed a blacksmith shop, a barracks for workers, a hospital, library, laundry, bakery, and a building Zach theorized had been a movie theater. A five-minute walk brought them to the outskirts of the station and two white-washed pink-roofed stucco buildings.

“This is the tourist section of town. Believe it or not, Grytviken gets about eight thousand visitors a year.”

“To see what?”

“I dunno. Ernest Shackleton is buried in the church cemetery.” He pointed at the two stucco buildings. “The caretakers live in that house during summer months when the cruise ships visit. The other building is our first destination—the whaling museum.”

They followed the dirt path to the two-story dwelling. On the front lawn was an immense three-thousand-pound steel appendage. “That was one of the claws used tae drag whales, tail first, up the stern ramps of whaling ships.”

They entered the museum. Framed black and white photos shared the walls with gruesome saws and cutting tools used by the whalers. Walking behind a glass case, Zach forced open a door swollen within its frame. Locating a battery-powered lantern he had stowed behind the counter, he led them down a set of rickety wood steps into the cellar.

Crates were stacked three and four high along the damp stone walls. An open sea chest had been emptied, its contents organized into piles of leather-bound books.

“These are the original logs of the whalers’ captains—at least the more recent ones. Everything prior to 1930 was either donated tae museums or sold tae private collectors. No matter; whit I was looking fer were any unusual events occurring at sea during the years 1940 through 1943.”

“Why those years?” Terry asked.

“Good question; I’ll answer that right after I read tae ye this passage.” He held up the top book on the pile. “This is the log of Captain Klarius Mikkleson, who hunted whales in these waters from 1935 through 1947. The text is written in Bokmål, and my translation of the Norwegian language is a bit rough, but I think ye’ll get the basic idea. In most of these entries the captain simply recorded the days’ catches. The first in a series of unusual entries begins on January 4, 1940.”

He turned to a bookmarked page and translated aloud.

“4 January: After ten days with no sightings, we arrived in the Weddell Sea. Late afternoon yielded two adult fin whales, a male (18 meters); and a female (12.5 meters). The calf was spared but remained in the area while the carcasses were inflated. At eight bells, first mate reported a whale breach less than one kilometer off the starboard bow. Harpooner estimated the creature at 22 meters and in excess of one hundred tons. Eyewitnesses claim the beast devoured the fin calf in one bite. First mate and harpooner remain divided over the identity of the species. Jaws and black coloring with white belly support the first mate’s claim of a giant species of killer whale. Harpooner disagrees; stating the telltale rectangular head clearly identified the creature to be a bull sperm whale. After two hours and no further sightings we continue southeast to the Antarctic coast.”

“5 January, 3 a.m.: Second mate reports creature has returned and is following our ship, feeding upon the two fin carcasses from below. This is behavior never before observed in a sperm whale.”

“5 January, 7:30 a.m.: Daybreak has chased our visitor away. Having seen its head and spout trail as well as its lower jaw, which enabled it to take great bites out of the fin carcasses, I believe it to be an undiscovered species of sperm whale, perhaps native to Antarctica. Sperm whale oil taken from immense chambers in the beast’s head is of the first quality and fetches a much higher price, and the size of this bull could render a yield equal to a month’s voyage. Therefore we shall use the day to dismantle the harpoon gun and move it from the bow to the stern in hope the whale returns tonight to finish its meal.”

“6 January, 6:30 a.m.: No sightings. Female fin whale had to be cut adrift as its bite wounds attracted sharks.”

“7 January, 3:00 p.m.: Longboats killed three minke whales, all under nine meters. No sperm whale sighting.”

“8 January, 1:30 a.m.: First mate informed me the sperm whale has returned.”

“8 January, 11:00 a.m.: A long night. The sperm whale was harpooned and dragged the ship aft-first for seven kilometers, nearly to the ice sheet. Longboats finished the beast by daybreak, but at a cost. Three crewmen were lost, along with a longboat which was smashed by the beast’s fluke. With our haul we return to Grytviken.”

Jonas and Terry looked at one another, sharing the same thought.

“Ye’re wondering why I read this tae you.”

“Or what a sperm whale harpooned more than seven decades ago has to do with our son.”

“Not a sperm whale, J.T., but an ancestor of our modern-day sperm whale—a creature possessing an orca’s jaw and fifteen inch teeth … a predator that dated back tae the Miocene Period and competed with
Carcharodon megalodon
for food.”

Zach removed a folded manila envelope from his jacket pocket, handing Jonas photocopies of an article published in
National Geographic.
“Paleontologists first found the creature’s fossils in a dried lake bed in Peru back in 2008. They named the extinct sea monster
Livyatan melvillei
, combining the Hebrew spelling for the biblical Leviathan with the surname of Herman Melville, the author of
Moby Dick
. It’s a fitting title for a predator that not only owned one of the most vicious bites in history but the largest teeth.”

“As my husband said, what does this have to do with our son?”

“It doesn’t … yet. But I suspect it may. I ken, I know, I’m babbling like an idiot, but pieces of a moving puzzle are sliding intae place very fast now. David’s part of it, so is the
Liopleurodon
. I thought by having your engineers install air bags in the Manta subs it would be enough. Now I’m not sure … not after whit jist happened.”

“What just happened?”

He took out his iPhone. Scrolling through a series of photos, he held one up for them to see. “These pictures were taken along the Antarctic Peninsula four days ago. Here’s a better shot, you can see the creature’s lower jaw as it bites down on the humpback’s fluke. That’s definitely not a sperm whale … agreed?”

Jonas widened the screen. “Kind of hard to tell. What did you call it?”

“
Livyatan melvillei
.”

“I don’t understand,” Terry said. “Where did this extinct creature come from?”

“A subglacial lake. There are hundreds of them concealed beneath the Antarctic ice cap. These are saltwater lakes that have remained liquefied because of the immense pressure generated by the ice sheet. Many of them are heated by geothermal vents, which reside above the continent’s crustal plates. The ice age that froze Antarctica fifteen million years ago happened very quickly, trapping its inhabitants. Chemosynthesis replaced photosynthesis and new food chains replaced the old.
Livyatan melvillei
was one of the predators that survived.”

Terry nodded. “The years 1940 through 1943—I’m guessing these were unusually warm years?”

“Yes. Global temperatures spiked. Antarctica shed massive tabular bergs, many as large as Texas. There are three major subglacial lakes located along the Weddell Sea coastline, buried beneath a mile and a half of ice. Subglacial rivers connect these lakes tae the Weddell Sea. One of the passages must have opened back in the austral summer of 1940, releasing the whale that Captain Mikkleson wrote about in his log book. Thanks tae global warming, these last five summers have been among the hottest on record. Last summer, a major section of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf collapsed intae the Weddell Sea. This summer a passage leading from one of the subglacial lakes may have opened up, allowing at least one of the trapped Miocene whales tae escape.”

“And what are we supposed to do about that?” Jonas asked.

“Capture it. Or help me hunt it down and kill it, I don’t really care which. As long as we maintain secrecy in regards tae where the whale came from.”

“Why?” Both Taylors asked the question at the same time.

“Because a discovery like this will bring scientists and money to Antarctica in droves; everyone vying tae explore these subglacial lakes. Before long, they’ll be constructing submersibles that can burn through the subglacial rivers, upsetting the delicate balance of nature that is already being threatened by climate change. We can’t allow that tae happen.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Jonas said, tossing the article back at the marine biologist. “You may have come here looking for evidence to support your subglacial lake theory, but you already knew these melvillei things were here.”

Terry stared at Zach’s face. “Jonas is right. You had an ulterior motive in bringing us here. Who are you protecting?”

“He’s protecting himself,” Jonas said. “You managed to access one of these subglacial lakes, didn’t you?”

Zachary looked away. “Jonas, this isn’t about me.”

“Answer the question, or you’ll be spending another night on this godforsaken island.”

He hesitated. “Yes. I was in one of the lakes. Yes, I crossed paths with a pod of these whales, jist as you crossed paths with
Carcharodon megalodon
all those years ago in the Mariana Trench. And jist like yer naval dives, my mission was also top-secret, so don’t ask me why I was there or whit we found. All I can tell ye is that it’s very important we keep this hundred-ton genie in its bottle, or the repercussions down the road will be catastrophic.”

Terry cut off her husband’s reply. “You mentioned placing air bags in the Mantas. What does that have to do with any of this?”

“Nothing. It was jist a precaution; inspired by a recurring nightmare.”

“Did this nightmare have something to do with David?”

“David was piloting one of the Mantas. In the dream, he crashed intae the side of a ship and broke his neck. I phoned Jonas and asked him tae put the air bags in, jist for my own peace of mind. Again, it was jist a dream.”

“Which subglacial lake did you access?” Jonas asked.

“I’d rather not say.”

“You want us to capture or kill this prehistoric whale of yours, but you won’t tell us which lake it came from?”

Removing a laptop from his backpack, Zachary opened a file, then pulled up an image and showed it to Jonas and Terry.

“These images of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf were taken by an Earth Remote Sensing satellite using synthetic-aperture radar. The image on the left reveals rifts forming beneath the ice shelf, caused by melt water originating from ice streams and possibly Lake Ellsworth. The post-collapse image on the right shows jist how close Lake Ellsworth and the Ellsworth Trench are tae the Weddell Sea. Again, this was taken last summer. The appearance of that Miocene whale indicates a connecting passage may have opened.”

Jonas studied the images. “I’ve never heard of the Ellsworth Trench.”