Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

"From one fixation to another," said Thomas. "After the Vikings, Elmore immersed himself in Jules Verne." He swept a hand across one entire bookcase. "He collected every book, every story Verne ever wrote."

Pitt pulled one of the books from the shelf and opened it. The covers were leather bound. Gold lettering on the spine and front cover read Mysterious Island. Many of the pages were heavily underlined. He returned it to the shelf and stepped back. "I see no bound papers or notebooks concerning Verne. Apparently, Dr. Egan read the books, but wrote no commentaries."

Thomas looked exhausted from the traumatic events of the day. He slowly lowered himself into a leather chair. "Elmore's dedication to Verne and the Vikings is something of a mystery. He was not the kind of man who drove himself to become an expert on a subject purely for pleasure. I never knew him to gain specific knowledge without a purpose."

Pitt looked at Kelly. "Did he ever tell you why he was so absorbed in the Vikings?"

"It wasn't so much the lore and history of the culture as the runic inscriptions."

Giordino took one of Egan's Viking notebooks from the shelf and opened it. His eyes squinted as he thumbed through the pages

, his face registering bafflement. He flipped through the pages of a second notebook, then a third. Then he looked up, utterly mystified, as he passed the notebooks to the others standing beside him. "It looks like Dr. Egan was more of an enigma than any of you knew."

They all studied the notebooks and then looked at each other in puzzled incomprehension.

All the pages in all the notebooks were blank.

"I don't understand," said Kelly, looking totally lost.

"Nor I," added Thomas.

Kelly opened two more notebooks and found them empty as well. "I vividly remember the family trips into the backwoods searching for rune stones. When he found one, he would highlight the rune fonts with talcum powder before photographing them. Then, while we camped nearby in the evening, he would translate the messages. I used to pester him, and he'd shoo me away as he scribbled in his notebooks. I saw him make notations with my own eyes."

"Not in these books," said Pitt. "None of the pages look as if they'd been removed and replaced with blank pages. Your father must have hidden the original notebooks elsewhere."

"No doubt gathering dust in the lost laboratory you talk about," said Giordino, whose respect for Elmore Egan had dropped a couple of notches.

Kelly's lovely face was flushed with bewilderment, and her sapphire blue eyes seemed to be trying to see something that was not there. "Why would Dad do such things? I always remember a man who was so straight and honest he didn't have a devious Hone in his body."

"He must have had a good reason," Thomas said, in an attempt to comfort her.

Pitt looked down at her compassionately. "It's getting late. We're not going to solve anything tonight. I suggest we sleep on it and maybe we'll come up with some answers in the light of day."

No one gave him an argument. They were all dead tired. All, except Pitt. He was the last one to leave the library. He pretended to lock the door before he handed the key to Thomas. Later, when everyone was asleep, he quietly returned to the library and entered through the unlocked door. Then he turned on the lights and began searching through Egan's research material on the rune stones. A trail and a story began to emerge.

By four in the morning, he had found what he was looking for. Many answers still eluded him. But the mud in the water had cleared just enough for him to get a glimpse of the bottom. Happily satisfied, he fell asleep in one of the comfortable leather chairs, inhaling the quaint smell of the old books.

36

Giordino surprised everyone by making breakfast. Afterward, Pitt, tired and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, dutifully called Sandecker and brought him up-to-date. The admiral had little to report on the investigation into Cerberus and mentioned in passing that Hiram Yaeger was mystified as to how Pitt had filled Egan's leather case with oil behind his back. Pitt was mystified, too, and couldn't fathom who was behind the trick.

Giordino joined Thomas, who had some work to do in the lab while Pitt and Kelly returned to the library. Kelly noticed the books and papers stacked on the rolltop desk. "Looks like a litde fairy was burning the midnight oil."

Pitt looked at her. "Believe you me, it was no fairy."

"Now I see why you look like the morning after," she said, smiling. She came over and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. "I thought you might have visited me last night instead of Dad's library."

Pitt started to say "business before pleasure," but thought better of it. "I'm not good at romancing women when my mind is a million miles away."

"Back a thousand years in time," she added, studying the open Viking books on the desk. "What were you after?"

"You said your Dad traveled around the country and translated thirty-five rune stones."

"Give or take a couple. I don't remember exactly."

"Do you recall the locations?"

She tilted her head back and forth trying to remember, her long maple-sugar brown hair curling down her shoulders. Finally, she held up her hands emptily. "About five or six come to mind, but they were so far off the beaten track I couldn't tell you how to get anywhere near them."