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"While you're forming your committee to investigate Cerberus's criminal destruction of the cruise ships, Al, Kelly and I are heading for Minnesota to look at old rune stones."
"What do you hope to find?"
"The answer to an enigma," Pitt said slowly. "A key that may well open more than one door."
39
Marlys Kaiser stepped from her kitchen onto the porch as she heard the thumping sound of a helicopter approaching her farm outside Monticello, Minnesota. Her house was typical of most midwestern farm structures: a wooden frame and siding, a chimney that rose from the living room through the upstairs bedroom and a peaked roof with two gables. Across a broad grassy lawn stood a red barn in pristine condition. The property had once been a working dairy farm, but now the barn was her office and the three hundred acres of wheat, corn and sunflowers were sharecropped and sold on the market. Behind the farm, the land dropped down a sloping bank to the shoreline of Bertram Lake. The blue-green waters were surrounded by trees, and the shallow water around the edges was filled with lily pads. Bertram was popular with fishermen, who drove up from Minneapolis because it was stocked regularly with bluegill, sun-fish, pike and bass. It also had a large school of bullhead that began biting after sunset.
Marlys shielded her eyes from the early-morning sun in the east as a turquoise helicopter with the black letters NUMA painted on the sides dipped over the roof of the barn and hovered for a few moments above the yard, before settling its landing wheels into the grass. The whine of the twin turbines died away, and the rotor blades slowly drifted to a stop. A door opened and a ladder was dropped whose lower rung ended just above the ground.
Marlys stepped forward as a young woman with light brown hair that glimmered under the sun stepped from inside, followed by a short, stocky man with curly black hair who looked distinctly Italian. Then came a tall man with dark wavy hair and a craggy face etched with a broad smile. He walked across the yard in a direct manner that reminded her of her departed husband. As he came nearer, she found herself looking into the greenest eyes she had ever seen.
"Mrs. Kaiser?" he said softly. "My name is Dirk Pitt. I talked to you last night about flying from Washington and meeting with you."
"I didn't expect you so soon."
"We flew by jet to a NUMA research station on Lake Superior in Duluth late last night. Then we borrowed their helicopter and flew on toward Monticello."
"I see you had no problem finding the place."
"Your directions were right on the money." Pitt turned and introduced Al and Kelly.
Marlys gave Kelly a motherly hug. "Elmore Egan's daughter. This is a thrill. I'm so happy to meet you. Your father and I were great friends."
"I know," said Kelly, smiling. "He often talked about you."
She looked from one face to the other. "Have you had breakfast?"
"We haven't eaten since leaving Washington," Pitt answered truthfully.
"I'll have eggs, bacon and pancakes ready in twenty minutes," Marlys said warmly. "Why don't you folks take a stroll and check out the fields and lake?"
"Do you work the farm alone?" asked Kelly.
"Oh, my dear, no. I sharecrop with a neighbor. He pays me a percentage after the crops are sold at current market prices, which is all too low nowadays."
"Judging from the gate to the pasture across the road, the access door into the lower level of the barn and the hayloft above, you used to run a dairy herd."
"You're very observant, Mr. Pitt. My husband was a dairy farmer most of his life. You must have had a little experience yourself."
"I spent a summer on my uncle's farm in Iowa. I got so I could squeeze my fingers in sequence to squirt the milk in a pail, but I never got the hang of actually pulling it out."
Marlys laughed. "I'll give a shout when the coffee's on."
Pitt, Giordino and Kelly walked along the fields and then down to a boat dock, where they borrowed one of the boats Marlys rented to fishermen, and with Pitt manning the oars they rowed out on the lake. They were just returning when Marlys shouted from the porch.
As they gathered around the table in the quaint country kitchen, Kelly said, "This is very kind of you, Mrs. Kaiser."
"Marlys. Please think of me as an old family friend."
They engaged in small talk during the meal, discussing everything from the weather to lake fishing to the tough economy facing farmers across the country. Only after the dishes were cleared, with Giordino's able assistance in loading the dishwasher, did the talk turn to rune stones.
"Father never explained his interest in rune stone inscriptions," said Kelly. "Mother and I went along on his excursions to find them, but we were more interested in the fun of camping and hiking than searching for old rocks with writing on them."
"Dr. Egan's library was filled with books on Vikings but didn't have any of his notes and reports," added Pitt.
"Norsemen, Mr. Pitt," Marlys corrected him. "Viking is a term for sea-roving raiders, who were fearless and fierce in battle. Centuries later, they probably would have been called pirates or buccaneers. The Viking age was launched when they raided the Lindisfarne
