Rain pattered the car's roof and windshield. Davila stared straight ahead, fingers resting lightly on the steering wheel, damp hair sticking to her forehead.

"Where to now?" said Peter from the passenger seat.

"We find someone in Cork who knew the Barshman brothers."

She had just inserted the key into the ignition when a shadow loomed outside her window. A hooded face pressed close, bare knuckles tapping gently against the fogged-up glass.

"That's not Eamon," Peter whispered.

Davila reached down and drew her pistol from its ankle holster. Cocking it, she took it in her left hand, and reaching across her body, pressed the muzzle to the inside of the door. With her right hand, she turned the ignition switch to the "on" position. Then she lowered her window an inch.

A pair of bright, sea green eyes peered in from under the hood of a rain parka: an elderly woman with ivory skin and long silver hair.

"Pardon me for intruding," she said in a soft Irish brogue. "But Eamon told me you two had questions about the Barshman brothers. I wanted to catch you before you left."

Peter leaned over, his hand finding its way to Davila's left elbow. "You knew them?"

"As well as anyone could, I suppose. Certainly better than Eamon."

Davila furtively laid the pistol between her feet.

"Will you come inside for tea?"

Her name was Kathleen Argent, and hers was the house they had parked in front of. Despite its outward appearance, the interior was austere, monastic even. They sat at a rustic kitchen table and sipped tea from second-hand china.

"Do you live here alone?" Peter inquired.

"Does it show?" Argent was maybe seventy, tall, thin, regal, her fine silver hair pulled into a loose bun that made her look younger.

"That's not what I meant."

She laughed gently. "I am a widow, and an old one at that. But no, I'm not alone. I have Eamon. He can be a grump at times—there's no two ways about it—but he's a wonderful handyman. He never stops moving, that man. Like a river he is. One day, he'll find his way to the sea and be happy at last. Like all of us. The blackbirds and the linnets are my friends too. And of course, I have my ghosts to keep me company."

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand."

"Oh, you must excuse me. It's been some time since I've had proper guests. I'm more wont to talking to myself than others, and when I do have company, it's likely to be reporters or lost tourists knocking at my door."

"Reporters?"

Her broad mouth cinched tight and then relaxed. "Before the Irish economy collapsed in 2009, I was, as Eamon fancies me, a wicked money changer."

"A banker?"

"Director of Ireland's second largest investment bank, if you can believe that. I certainly can't, not anymore, not from this beautiful vantage. 'Self-imposed exile,' they've called it, but I shan't return. Nor do I desire to. I've grown to love this place, and I can think of no happier penance than to die here." She brushed aside a loose strand of her silver hair and smiled. "So you're a Barshman, are you?"

"Yes. My ancestors immigrated to America in the eighteen hundreds."

"It would have pleased the brothers to meet you."

"Did you know them well?"

"They kept to themselves. At the time of the fire, David, the older brother, must have been sixty-five, quite far along I understand for someone with his condition, ALS it was. Sean, the younger one, spent most of his adult life caring for his brother. Neither of them married as far as I know. I do know they lived in Cork on a modest pension. The old stone house was where they were born and raised. They visited in the summers, but David's condition precluded them from remaining more than a few days. Most often they hired a room in Dingle."

"So they both died in the fire?"

"It was the devil's luck. They'd been here but a day."

"Do they have relatives in Cork?"

"Their parents died long ago, and they had no siblings that I know of, nor any other relations. Neither of them had a will, so their property reverted to state custody. Poor Eamon worried you'd come to make a claim. He's coveted that land since he was a lad."

Davila looked up. "Were they religious people?"

Argent frowned. "I don't know what you mean by that. They were Roman Catholics, of course. And we said mass for the dead in Cork, where their remains were buried, what little was left of them."

Peter followed Davila's lead. "Did they ever talk about Simon the Apostle?"

"Not that I recall."

"What about the Parable of the Mustard Seeds? Did they ever mention anything like that?"

"We never talked religion or theology. They seemed more preoccupied with earthly things: the weather, the economy, their house here in Smerwick. They took particular pride in that house."

"How so?"

"Barshmans have occupied it for centuries. They even claimed it was built on the ruins of a church from before the time of St. Patrick, if you can believe that. But if there was a church there, it was probably destroyed by the Vikings, like most of the old churches along this coast."

"The Vikings came here?" said Peter.

"Of course. In fact, Smerwick is a Viking name. It means 'butter bay,' probably after the rich pasture here."

Davila leaned over her tea, taking in its aroma. "We'd like to return to the ruins and have a closer look. Could we do that?"

Argent set aside her cup, pursed her lips again, then clapped her hands together. "Where are you two staying?"

They looked at each other. "We hadn't found a place yet," said Peter.

"Are you a couple?"

"We're friends from university," Davila added. "Just traveling together."

Argent smiled at something, a distant memory perhaps, her slender fingers searching for the handle of her teacup. "Well, to answer your question, you're more than welcome to look at what's left of the Barshman house. It's public property now. The investigators finished their work months ago." She raised the cup to her lips.

"Was it arson?" said Peter.

She quickly lowered it. "You're not the first to ask that. The investigators blamed it on David's wheelchair, the lithium batteries. But shortly after the fire, I received a phone call from an American desperately trying to contact David Barshman. He wouldn't say why, and when I gave him the bad news, he asked if it was arson, just like you. Then he rang off. I never heard from him again."

"Did you get his name?"

"Let me fetch my notes, and I'll tell you." She returned a minute later with a two-ring binder. "I keep a log of all telephone calls. It's an old habit." She flipped through the pages. "No . . . the fire was before July . . . but after Easter . . . Ah, here it is. The name was Avery, Jonathan Avery. Do you know him?"

When Peter shook his head, Argent added, "I did scribble something in the margin. Here it is. Numex Industries."

"Numex?"

"Yes. I remember it now. This Jonathan Avery told me he was a scientist working for Numex Industries. I remember because I made some comment about wishing I had bought Numex stock back in the nineties. A wicked money changer indeed."

Peter turned to Davila. "Numex is the company I told you about, the one working with highly purified ricin, the same poison Gryphus used—"

She silenced him with a curt shake of the head.

Argent raised an eyebrow. "I can see there's more than companionship and genealogy that brings you to Smerwick. And if I had to guess, I'd say you two were in some sort of trouble."

"You'd be right," said Davila, much to Peter's surprise. "But not the sort of trouble you might imagine."

"When you get to be a woman of my age, you can imagine all sorts of trouble. But for you two, I would imagine it's the trouble of circumstance rather than any evildoing on your parts. You seem like good people. I saw the way you tried to help Eamon up on the heath." She paused. "So, if you need a place to rest, or hide even, then stay here. It may look like a hermit's abode, but the guest rooms are comfortable enough."

"Thank you. We do need to keep a low profile," said Peter.

"Then I suggest you hide your car. Eamon will find a place for it."

At dusk, Peter and Davila returned to the ruins of the Barshman house. The sky had lifted, so they climbed the peninsula to a high cliff overlooking the open Atlantic Ocean. The high clouds blazed in strips of orange and crimson, the slate-blue sea calm and dark. Trembling, Davila turned away and led Peter back down the slope.

By twilight the charred ruins and blackened earth gave the weird impression of a crash site, the impact of a meteor. The dewy heath gave off a musty, autumnal scent. Davila stepped over the collapsed wall and knelt beside a pile of heavy stone blocks. She rolled one over. "These are limestone," she said.

Peter found a trapezoidal stone about two feet high and heaved it upright. It was the keystone from the photograph, carved in bas-relief with the image of a boat and a giant flower for a sail—the true symbols of Simon the Apostle. The boat was long and thin with high, symmetric prows, like something from a Greek vase. The flower's four petals pointed up, down, fore, and aft.

Davila's phone flashed as she took pictures from multiple angles.

"Do you think this stone could have come from a church?" asked Peter.

Davila angled for another shot. "It does seem overlarge for a house this small."

Her phone flashed again, the image of the flower lingering in Peter's eyes, like a photonegative. "He was here."

She looked up from her phone. "Who was here?"

"My dad. Eamon thought he met me and my dad a long time ago, but that doesn't make any sense. I've never been to Ireland before. But what if he was mistaking me for my dad, and my dad for my grandfather?"

"Eamon did say his memory was failing."

"Right." Peter took out the note his father left for him in the Grieg album. Squatting, he unfolded it and held it up to the stone. "And look at the flowers. They're identical. My dad must have copied his flower from this stone, which means he was here. And it must have been a long time ago, before my grandpa died, before my parents even met."

Davila stepped around the stone, kneeling stiffly. "Look here."

The light of her phone illuminated a line of deeply carved letters on the backside of the keystone.

"Those are Viking runes," said Peter.

She snapped more pictures. "I think you're right."

"I know I'm right. My dad taught me to read them when I was little."

She stopped. "Really? Can you translate them?"

He touched the cold stone, and the words unfolded in his mouth. "Ek . . . Olafr . . . runr . . . skore. I think that means I, Olav, carved these runes."

"That sounds like graffiti. The Vikings left graffiti in churches and buildings all across Europe."

"It's more than graffiti," said Peter. Quickly, he explained his father's longstanding fascination with Norway's first Christian king, Olav Tryggvason. "He even made me remember a poem about him when I was little:

The Irish fled at Olav's name,

Fled from a young king seeking fame.

In Bretland, and in Cumberland,

People against him could not stand:

Thick on the fields their corpses lay,

To ravens and howling wolves a prey."

"That's a strange poem to teach a child," said Davila.

"But it's part of who I am. My mom used to say I owed my existence to Vikings and their runes. I always thought she was kidding, but now it makes sense. This inscription is what inspired my dad to study Olav Tryggvason. That's why he did his doctoral dissertation in Norway. And that's where he met my mom."

Davila said nothing. Instead, she traced the deeply shadowed runes with her index finger. "If this was a church, why would a Christian king deface it like this?"

"Because Olav wasn't a Christian when he carved these runes, or a king for that matter. He was still a pagan chieftain, pillaging up and down the Irish coastline. He didn't convert until—" The thought took his breath away.

"Until what?"

"Until he came here." Peter caressed the stone's weathered crown. "The sagas say that Olav was converted by a holy man during one of his raiding voyages in the British Isles. What if he was converted here in Smerwick? What if he found Christianity right here at the church my ancestors built?"

"It's possible, but this inscription is hardly proof."

He shook his head. "No. This is what my dad wanted me to see all along, the remnants of the church where Olav was converted, where he found his faith, semina sinapis, the Mustard Seeds."

"Perhaps." She extinguished the light on her phone and stood abruptly, her sleek form silhouetted against the dim heath and glowing sky above.

Peter struggled to his feet. "Why can't you see? It makes sense."

"And yet it doesn't. Your father believed the Mustard Seeds were something more than just a symbol of faith. You said so yourself."

"Well, maybe he was wrong about that."

"Or maybe he was right." She put away her phone. "Where in Norway did he complete his doctoral thesis?"

"In Trondheim, at the cathedral."

"We need to go there. Your father believed what he believed for a reason. And it's possible, likely even, that he discovered that reason through his work in Trondheim."

"OK," said Peter, conceding her point. "But even if you're right, how do you propose we get there?"

Her silhouette seemed to tense up. "Cargo."

___________________

Image: Kilmalkedar Church, County Kerry, Ireland. http://www.megalithicireland.com/Kilmalkedar.htm