The Ragnarok Conspiracy (10 page)

Miller finished. “We're talking about some real pros here, Larry, and some really careful ones, at that.”

“So, what do they want?” asked Matt King in frustration. “This doesn't seem to be some 9/11 replay.”

“Exactly, and it's these differences we need to focus more on,” cut
in Savas. “In 2001, American targets, American symbols were attacked by mostly Saudi suicide bombers. This time, the cities may be the same, but it looks like foreign targets, and, as far as I can tell, primarily
Saudi
targets were hit. I don't know about you, but this seems to put a different spin on the whole thing.”

Kanter cast a harsh look toward Savas and responded quickly. “OK, we have, as usual, more questions than answers. Who are these people? How and where were they trained? What motivates them?”

Savas turned angrily to Kanter, his simmering frustrations from the day boiling over. “I'll tell you what is motivating them, Larry.
Hatred.
Feelings that cross beyond Islamophobic into Islamopathic. You're tap dancing around the real issue because of warnings from above, but we know about the mystery commando raids in Afghanistan.”

Kanter sat up stiffly. “How do you know?”

“Thanks for confirming it.” Savas was not done. He looked around at the eyes focused on him. “Isn't it obvious? We're sitting here acting like we have two cases—a string of assassinations of Islamic radicals, and now a major terrorist attack on Islamic targets. It's the
same
group, Larry! They're just upping the ante!”

“Hold on a minute!” shouted Kanter. “John, you're completely going wild here. These attacks are on
American
soil, terrorist attacks in New York, in the
capital
, for God's sake! Your vengeful furies wouldn't strike here, would they?”

“Why not? To them, the enemy is as much here as there.”

Kanter stared coldly at Savas. “To
them
, John? Or to
you
?”

Savas felt anger surge through him, but he held his temper.
They had to listen!

“Larry, I haven't done myself any favors for this argument by my actions over the last few years; I know that. But
think
! If you saw the Islamic nations as the enemy, as a threat, their presence here might be one of the
first
places to strike! Purge America of them. If they are homegrown, well, hitting here would be a hell of a lot easier than doing a job like this overseas, especially in Islamic nations where they would stick out like sore thumbs.”

“We haven't even established that there is a definite connection between the
assassinations
, John. It's
all
circumstantial. Now you want to throw this into the mix? How big a conspiracy?” Kanter waved his hands back and forth. “This isn't Dr. No. At least the murder conspiracy had a consistency in targets. These bombings aren't of Islamic radicals. They're the damn official
government
representatives.”

“To some, it might be hard to tell the difference.”

“
Jesus
, John.” Kanter threw up his hands in frustration.

“Damn it, Larry, I'm not justifying this. I'm saying it's a nasty but understandable motive.”

“Perhaps you understand this better than I do.”

Savas clenched his jaw. He was going to come off as some sort of crazed man no matter what he said. Kanter was right about one thing—they had absolutely no hard evidence to link any of this. His hypothesis was emotional, not fact based.

Frank Miller glanced at Savas as if in sympathy, swept his gaze around the room, and cleared his throat. “I'd like to speak freely on something.”

Kanter nearly laughed. “Frank, you aren't in the marines anymore. Shoot. Take a cue from John.”

“OK, as John notes, even if it's not connected to the murders he and I are investigating, evidence is pointing toward a homegrown terrorist group, one that might be targeting Islamic sites.”

“Yes?” said Kanter.

“I mean, we're mobilizing all the forces of the US government to help protect a bunch of nations that have been quietly, under the table, supporting the bastards who bombed us in the first place.” He looked around the room. “I've had friends die at my side in Afghan caves looking for that son of a bitch who was financed by Saudi money, and whose organization was run by Saudi personnel. I'm not sure my heart's in the right place on this one.”

A silence fell across the room. Savas looked over at Miller and saw the anger in his eyes. John Savas also felt that anger. It was what had brought him to the FBI in the first place. He felt it every time he looked at a picture of his son.

“Frank,” said Kanter thoughtfully but firmly, “these attacks are going to test all of us in some way. I think we need to try to focus on what we're about, and that's law and order. We shouldn't forget that Americans also died in these attacks. But I don't think any of us believe that all the Saudis and other workers in those buildings are necessarily hostile to us, or were involved in anything that had to do with supporting terrorist causes. Now, I'm not saying all of them are clean, but I've been around in this world long enough to know that good and evil are found in every corner. That's my belief, and if I didn't believe that, I don't think I'd care much for law or order. On top of all that, we've got an international incident here, and the repercussions are international. So, folks, this is some serious stuff.”

Kanter looked directly at Miller, but Savas knew he was speaking as much or more to him. “Frank, I hear where you're coming from, but around here, we work to enforce the laws of this nation. You understand that, I hope?”

Miller pursed his lips and looked down at his hands. “Yeah, Larry,” he said glancing back up, “I do. It's just that things are a bit mixed up inside, is all.”

Kanter shook his head. “Ain't that the truth of it.”

John Savas closed his notebook as he walked down the hallway from the Operations Room. He and Kanter had stayed for another hour after dismissing the others. Savas was tired and at the stage of fatigue when he knew his thoughts were slow, his logic weak, and his emotions unstable. These last few weeks had drained him—and it was much more than just the work and long hours. Terror attacks on American soil were too raw,
too personal
.

Cohen was waiting for him outside his office. She was sitting at a desk next to a phone, looking like she had just caught something very interesting after casting her line out to the deep sea. He saw how tired she looked as well. Her long hair was disheveled, and she leaned back in the chair. A fire burned in her eyes.

Still so attractive.
Savas thrust such thoughts from his mind as he
often had over the last few years. He was damaged goods and too confused to think in those directions. Tonight he was especially not ready to face anything so complicated as feelings.

“John, about damn time,” she said.

“Glad to see you, too, Rebecca,” he responded, noting her briefest of smiles, mainly in the eyes.

“I've been waiting to tell you this for over an hour. While you were undoubtedly figuring all this out with Larry, we got a call in about those symbols.”

“Runes,” corrected Savas.

“Runes. Yes, exactly. That's
exactly
right.”

He raised his eyebrows at her tone. “What call?”

“A professor from the English Department at Columbia.”

“You cast a wide net.”

“Yes. I'm thorough, remember? The poor old man was very excited, and I had a heck of a time calming him down enough to understand what he was talking about.”

“OK, so what
was
he talking about?” asked Savas.

“Well, he says he knows what the symbols, the runes mean. Get ready for this, OK? He says they're Norse.”

“
Norse?
As in Valhalla and pretentious Wagnerian opera?”

“Precisely. Better still, I sent him everything that we had, including images of the pendant you are so interested in. That's when we hit the jackpot, John.” She smiled and tilted her head at a slight angle, triumphant.

“Go on.”

“It's also from Norse mythology, an artifact central to much of those beliefs: the hammer of the Norse god of thunder, Thor. The symbol and the runes
match
, John. You've been right all along—there
is
a connection! Not only between the killings but also to the Afghan strikes.”

John Savas blinked. “Thor's hammer?”

“Yes. The professor sounds really anxious to talk with you.” Cohen smiled at his disbelief, her tongue touching the bottom edge of her front teeth. “I think I want to come along.”

 

Fernando Martinez, just twelve years old, weaved and dodged his way through traffic on his small bicycle. The front and back of the bike were weighed down with large wire-caged baskets, loaded with foods from the restaurant that were wrapped carefully in bags for protection. The boy was well tanned from countless journeys through the streets of Caracas; the Venezuelan sun was strong enough even in the winter months to deeply brown anyone spending their hours under its rays. The skies were partly cloudy, the streets full of water and mud splashing against Fernando's legs from recent rainstorms. He could hear the chatter of street vendors and haggling customers as he rode past. He smiled. It was hard work, but it was good to be out, away from a troubled home, feeling the wind on his face and glimpsing the sun through the clouds.

His mother would not approve, but he rode against traffic to cut his trip time, dodging cars and trucks with pitch-changing horns blaring behind him. Señor Moreno would not pay him if he was late. He might not even pay him if he was on time, Fernando reminded himself. His family needed the money; since his father had died, Fernando was the man of the house. So he pedaled fast and did not think about dangers.

He climbed a hill, panting, sweat glistening on his face, arms, and legs. The road leveled off as he crossed through a nice strip of Caracas. Fancier shops, cars, and people lined the sides of the street. Taller buildings, skyscrapers of glass and metal rose around him. This was a place of importance and power. A place of money and oil. Fernando did not know much about the world, but he knew his country was powerful. It had oil, and the sheikh princes from across the seas visited often. His
country could talk back to the United States like an equal. He was proud of this, proud of his country's strength to look the bully in the eye.

Ahead were the embassies and banks of the foreign nations that did business with Venezuela and its oil. Fernando liked riding by their protected gates, seeing their guards and security cameras. It was like an American movie. There were embassies and banks from Europe and Asia and the Middle East. He had ridden past them countless times. China and India, and up ahead, the other oil countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Fernando screamed. The explosions were enormous.

A blast of heated air picked him up together with his bike and sent them sprawling on the sidewalk next to an upscale clothing store. The store's glass-front window was shattered inward. Screams and wailing car alarms filled the air around him. The boy lay for several moments on the sidewalk, stunned, his left arm and leg badly skinned and bleeding from being dragged across the asphalt. He felt a small trickle of blood from his scalp. He shook his head, trying to focus and clear the blood from his eyes. Slowly, he raised himself to his feet. Swiping again at the blood, he stared down the road. Smoke and dust billowed toward him. Fires burned in several places. Ahead, he thought he could make out the remains of two buildings, now wreckages on either side of the road.

Sirens grew louder from several directions.
Police.
Frightened, he found his bike several feet from him. It was damaged—the handlebars bent awkwardly, the baskets with the food wrecked. He did not care. He was going home. Señor Moreno could keep his money today. As he turned and rode down the street toward the growing sounds of police and fire sirens, he heard voices behind him. Screams and cries for help.

 

It was a long ride to Philosophy Hall at the corner of 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Traffic was snarled along the West Side Highway from a seven-car pileup, and the driver was forced to cut through Midtown. John Savas glanced outside his tinted windows at the shoppers crowding and crossing the streets at Fifty-Seventh and Madison. The crowds were definitely thinner than normal this time of year, ruining summer tourism and sending more than one business under—one of many repercussions of an urban bombing.

The car lurched forward and shook him out of his reverie. It was challenging to keep his eyes focused outside the car, thanks to the mid-thigh-length skirt Rebecca Cohen was wearing. He knew that if he let himself look for even a moment, he would certainly linger too long to pass anything off as a casual glance.

Her hair was pulled up and fastened Japanese style with two things that actually looked like chopsticks.
Do women use chopsticks in their hair?
he wondered to himself. She wore a white shirt that looked to be standard 1950s FBI, and, sure enough, as if to prevent him from getting any useful thinking done during the ride, she had left the first two buttons open.
Well, it's a hot day.
One hundred and two degrees. She was writing in her characteristically broad script, large, flowing letters that would have taken him hours to form and that she spat out like a typewriter. Savas preferred typing.

He turned his mind back to the case. Rideout and King had compiled information on the professor at Columbia. Fred Styer, PhD in Philology from Harvard, expert in proto-Germanic languages and Germanic literature, Alfred L. Hutchinson Chair of Anglo-Saxon
Studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University—the titles ran on. A prolific scholar in the 1970s with more than two hundred journal articles and ten books, he was now “mostly” retired, serving as professor emeritus and haunting the hallways of Philosophy Hall at Columbia. He was once considered the greatest scholar on the East Coast in the ancient languages and literature of the Germanic family. Savas just hoped he had a key to unlock this mystery.

After what seemed like an eternity slogging through traffic, the driver finally pulled them up to the building at Columbia University. The entrance to Philosophy Hall was shaded by a plaza built directly over Amsterdam Avenue. Above was a small green park; below, it seemed that the street plunged into a short, dim tunnel right after 116th Street, to emerge in light again half a block later at 117th, right in front of the university's Casa Italiana. Instead of pulling up to the entrance of the building, they followed the old professor's instructions to avoid the construction at the main door and turned the corner in front of the Kent building. They were not sure how they would recognize the old man (photos they had on file were certainly outdated), but it became clear that both he and they were easy marks.

The professor did indeed resemble the photo they had in their files, only older and slightly wider in the waist. He still possessed an enormous beard that spilled over his chest, now much whiter than in the photograph, and, if Savas could bring himself to believe it, perhaps even longer. His bald head and thick glasses were also the same, but today he sported a pipe that gave him the air of an awkward Oxford don. To prove the point, when they stepped out of the car, he waved to them like he was trying to flag down a 737 at Kennedy Airport. Savas waved back, and Cohen stifled a laugh, looking radiant in her amusement. At that point, Savas realized that they looked as ridiculous as the professor did. In the middle of this casual and unconstrained academic campus, their appearance had
FEDS
written all over it.

“Hello, hello, Agent Savas. Welcome, welcome!” Styer repeated, almost gleefully, shaking Savas's hand in a hyper fashion. The old man
looked over to Cohen, and his eyes grew large. He smiled and motioned toward her with his head. “Please, and you must be that lovely young woman I spoke with on the phone yesterday…Agent Cohen?”

Cohen seemed positively taken. “Rebecca, please, Professor Styer.” Savas suppressed an initial desire to not like the man.

“Please, both of you, we'll go to my office. Not straightaway, mind you. They're tearing up the Hall these days, and it's easier to come in through this other building. Follow me.”

He led them into Kent, through that building and into a charming green garden abutting Kent and Philosophy Hall. Using a back entrance to the Hall, he took them up a flight of stairs and down a corridor to his office in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. By the time they had all sat down, the old professor was winded and coughing.

“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.”

Savas nodded. “But where does that lead us with this group?”

“Where? Honestly, Agent Savas, I couldn't tell you that. But it might be telling you something about who these people are.”

“How?”

“Ragnarök, my friends, is the end of the world, as I told you. But it has a special
Norse
quality that makes it contrast sharply with your typical end-of-the-world religious event. In short, all the Norse gods, including Thor and his allies, the heroes waiting in Valhalla for the final battle, what you might call the “good guys” in our Western lexicon—they
lose
. They all die. They are annihilated.” He took his pipe out of his mouth and leaned forward for emphasis. “In the Norse mythos, the gods lose, civilization is destroyed, and chaos reigns supreme. From the broth of chaos, it is prophesized that a new creation will arise. But to be enjoyed by others! This organization, whatever they are planning, has chosen a most curious mythology as a symbol. If they take the mythology seriously, and everything you've shown me convinces me that they do, they don't believe their side is necessarily going to triumph and be welcomed into Heaven. No virgins, no pearly gates and harps. Nothing.”