Thor's Haven

by Richard S Young

  But this year was different. The Earth’s rotation around the Sun meant that the first full moon after the vernal equinox was on 25th April, the latest possible date for the celebration of Easter in over 70 years.

  Markus called through to his secretary, Arabelle Auguste, a Credente, to join him.

  “Yes Perfecti. How can I help you? she asked.

  “I want you to contact all of the Sergites around the world and instruct them to be watchful for any strange occurrences in the next 17 days.”

  “It might not be convenient to contact them all at this time as they will be assisting other followers interpret the true date of the resurrection.”

  Markus shouted at her. “It’s not about being convenient, it’s about being faithful to a tradition and to history. Jesus Christ didn’t just die on the second or third Friday in the month of April, he died on the Friday after the first full moon following the spring equinox, when that date was also the Passover. It’s important!”

  10.23am – 8th April, present day.

  Mirpur - Pakistani administered Kashmir (Azad Kashmir)

  It might have been the stark appreciation that Rifat fully understood that he was only seconds away from probable death, but he skillfully executed a near-perfect emergency foot-brake stop manoeuvre of the landrover as instructed. He held his hands still on the steering wheel but watched every movement on Daniel’s face in anticipation of his next move. Daniel’s vice grip of the carotid artery was still in place but the pressure was being slowly released. Daniel had prepared himself for Rifat possibly attempting to attack him as the vehicle was brought to a halt, and accordingly, relaxed his body to ride the sudden stop of the landrover in expectation of a sudden assault being launched upon him by his driver. His torso bounced off the dashboard as it compensated for the forward momentum force of the vehicle suddenly stopping but his unflinching grip of Rifat’s carotid artery had remained in place. Daniel looked Rifat squarely in the eye.

  “Take the car keys from the ignition and throw them out the window” he barked as he used his neck grip to bang Rifat’s head off the head-rest to persuade him to remove the keys. The keys were flung out of the window and Daniel told Rifat to get out of the landrover. As Rifat opened the door and moved to exit the vehicle, Daniel released his grip and shoved the man hard in the back to help him on his way. Daniel swiftly followed Rifat out of the door and grabbed him off the ground by the scruff of the neck. He hurled him against the front off-side wheel arch, took a hold of his right arm and held it in a vice lock while placing his foot hard on the man’s throat, just under his chin.

  “You have two choices here mate. You tell me what I want to know or I simply push my foot harder against your throat while I pull your arm towards me. If you’re lucky, I’ll only dislocate your shoulder, but then again, I could probably just break your neck.”

  Rifat gulped for air as he grasped that his assailant was not joking about the latter. He waved his left hand in a feeble display of submission and gesticulated that he wanted to remove something from his breast pocket. “Can I show you my wallet?” he rasped.

  Daniel removed his foot from Rifat’s throat and released his arm. He stood slightly aback from the man as he allowed Rifat to remove a wallet from his breast pocket. “Throw it to your right” he snapped and the wallet landed on the ground beside Daniel. He picked it up and started to rummage through the contents, pulled out various cards from the folders within and paused when he recognised one of them. It was an identification card for the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, its main headquarters only 70 miles away in the city of Islamabad.

  Daniel tossed the identification card at Rifat and sarcastically remarked “Just another one of your business interests then?”

  Rifat picked the card up. “Let me explain myself. It’s not what you think. Believe me when I tell you that I’m on your side and here to help you.”

  Daniel just snorted at him. “From my experience, I find that really hard to believe. An under-cover operative of the top intelligence agency in the world is here to help me, a Danish national working as a private contractor on a facility right here in Pakistan?” as he pointed across the dried-up reservoir bed towards the dam complex away in the distance.

  “Precisely! The last thing that ISI, my government and I, as the local agent, want is for something to happen to you while you are here in Pakistan. Think about it for a minute and look at it from my side of the fence. You’re a white face that really sticks out in a country where they are seldom seen, you’re a former Danish special forces operative that is well known to both the ISI and Pakistan Military Intelligence, you are working in the disputed Kashmir region at the Mangla Dam and in an area rife with tension and hostility especially with the Indian border not too far away.

  There are always terrorist plots and atrocities going on around the region and we are close to the national borders of both China and Afghanistan and that you, with the history and skills that you possess, are a person of interest to large number of groups, organisations and countries. I’m the local ISI Internal Security operative and it’s my job to monitor all the political issues that are going on while co-ordinating the counter-intelligence stuff to stop there being any trouble in my area. There is absolutely no fucking way can I allow something to happen to you on my watch.”

  Daniel considered what Rifat said and it made a lot of sense. Rifat continued talking.

  “I’m born and bred here but moved away as a child to Britain, but I came back with my parents and have remained here ever since, so, as far as the locals are concerned, I’m one of them. They trust me because they know me and my family, and because they do, I’ve ended up being acutely aware of what’s going on with who and why, most of the time.

  Some people know that I’m an ISI agent but they keep that information to themselves. But the vast majority of the locals are completely in the dark as to what I really am and leave me alone to run my ‘businesses’ as cover for my real job, and that’s the continued internal security of this part of Pakistan and its interests.

  I made a simple mistake and you caught me out. Your ISI file is quite extensive and records all of your known Danish military service operations. It also lists all the business matters you’ve had since you retired from the military and lists the off-the-books Frømandskorpset missions that you’ve helped in as a free-lancer. The most recent reports I’ve read were all about how you brought down that Swiss company with its neo-Nazis and your fantastic dive to the wreck of the SS Sauternes. An innocent slip of the tongue and you nearly killed me for it. I’d hate to see what you’d do if I crossed you. I’m getting far too old for this shit.” Rifat laughed at his own comments and even Daniel smiled about them.

  Daniel walked towards Rifat and handed him back his wallet. He then extended his hand towards him and helped him up off the ground. “Now that we have cleared the air, can we start all over again?” and held out his hand towards Rifat for a handshake. Rifat accepted the offer, after which Daniel retrieved the car keys from the ground and handed them to him.

  “Can we go and explore Mirpur now?” as he walked back round to the front passenger seat and got in. Rifat paused briefly before getting in the driver’s seat. There was more to this Daniel Lauridsen than was just simply written in the file that he possessed. This was a man who could assess situations very quickly and react to them in unexpected ways. Although still smarting from the rough treatment he had recently endured, Rifat now had a grudging respect for the man he was about to drive for.

  11.13am – 8th April, present day.

  Montaillou, Rue du Village, Montségur, Occitanie, France.

  Arabelle Auguste sat quietly at her desk in front of her computer and re-read the e-mail that she had just finished drafting. The contents were fairly innocuous should a third party ever read it. ‘As we approach the celebration of Easter, please monitor and report any unusual even
ts or situations that may be of interest to others.’

  She encrypted the e-mail with the pre-agreed protections, blind-copied the names of the 100 or so recipients and pressed send. The e-mail disappeared from her screen as it began its electronic journey all over the world through cyber-space. She closed over the lid of her laptop and looked out the window at the blossom on the trees outside. She was an attractive woman in her early thirties with a slim figure accentuated by her business skirt and jacket. She caught sight of her reflection in the glass of the window and flicked away a lock of dark hair that had fallen over her eyes. The pink of the flowering trees outside made her remember.

  It is often said that the eyes are the windows into a person’s soul, a phrase that aptly describes what can be concluded when one’s gaze plunges into that of another. From the depth of the retina and intensity of the pupil, flattered by the fine lines that lie at the corners of eyes, the beholder is allowed to glimpse at the soul of an individual. All aspects of their emotions, intuition and imagination are revealed and can be assessed while one also attempts to process the inner-most thoughts of the person. But for Arabelle Auguste, as she studied her own reflection in the glass, her eyes only revealed to her that she was tired, she was sad and she was angry.

  What blueness that had been before had been replaced with a dull greyness and the sparkle and intensity that had once danced joyfully along the surfaces had been extinguished long ago. Her eyes revealed that she had suffered a great personal loss and that her heart was broken and could never be repaired. She turned away from the glass and looked at the photo-frame on her desk and the picture of her, her husband Roger and their daughter, Émilie, taken 6 years ago. It was the final photograph of them taken together as a family. It had been taken on the final day that they had been a family.

  What had begun as a family adventure on a glorious summer’s day on a Saturday in late June had ended in tragedy and Arabelle had been painfully haunted by the distressing memories of it ever since. Her husband, Roger, had won a set of family tickets in a local radio show competition for the Toulouse Festival of Children’s Theatre, where children from all over the world came to the Théâtre Sorano to stage a series of plays celebrating the world of childhood. Émilie had been so excited about going to the festival that in the days leading up to this trip, Arabelle had been struggling to calm her daughter down.

  They had just watched one performance finish and had decided to stretch their legs and get a breath of fresh air before enjoying the next. Émilie had spotted a balloon vendor on the other side of the road at a traffic junction and she had asked her parents if she could get a pink balloon. Her parents agreed and while Roger escorted Émilie across the road, Arabelle bought some ice creams from a nearby shop. As she crossed the road at the traffic lights, she could see the backs of her family as Roger handed Émilie a pink balloon attached to a length of blue ribbon. Émilie had the ribbon tied around the palm of her hand and she was excitedly delighting in pulling the balloon down towards her.

  A white Citroën C5 Tourer estate car shot through the traffic light junction and ploughed through the many pedestrians gathered around the balloon vendor and his stall. The car came to stop when it crashed into the wall of an adjacent shop. Bodies had been disbursed sideways by the path of the car, in much the same way as skittles are bowled over by a bowling ball, but for Roger and Émilie, and the balloon vendor, they had taken the full impact of the car and had been crushed hard up against the wall of the nearby building. The three of them had had their backs to the approaching vehicle and were unaware of its course and had no opportunity to react to its path. Arabelle dropped the ice creams on the ground and ran as fast as she could towards the scene of carnage that was now in front of her. Through the midst of panic and confusion, she could see that her daughter was pinned against the building wall by the car. Powerlessly, she watched in slow motion as the blue ribbon of the still-floating pink balloon unravelled in her daughter’s hand and fell free. The balloon gently soared skywards, its blue ribbon drifting below it as Arabelle realised her precious daughter, Émilie, had breathed her last breath. Screams of distress and anguish accompanied her futile efforts to pull the estate car free from the bodies of her daughter and husband. Roger was mangled beneath the bodywork of the vehicle and had died instantly on impact with the wall.

  The horror and torment of her family’s final moments had been forever ingrained into her memory. There had been four fatalities that afternoon – her husband and daughter, Lucien Folquet, the 27 year old balloon vendor and 63 year old Alexandre Rousel, the driver of the motor vehicle. The whole incident had been classified as an unfortunate and tragic accident following the findings of subsequent police and medical coroner investigations that ascertained Alexandre Rousel had died at the wheel of his car from a heart attack in the moments before the fatal collision. In his death throes, his foot had jammed on the accelerator pedal causing the car to follow its final and deadly path.

  But that knowledge had offered no consolation whatever to Arabelle as she struggled to comprehend with the fact that her family had been cruelly taken away from her and in the most harrowing of ways. She would be forever remembered of it, painfully thereafter, as her mind replayed the final seconds of her family’s lives. Her physical and mental health had deteriorated in the months following the accident and she had ended up having to be admitted as a psychiatric patient within a sanatorium on the outskirts of the town of Perpignan. Although she had eventually recovered physically, the loss of her family had made her psychologically and emotionally bereft. No matter what counselling was offered to her or whatever medication was applied, the pain of the grief and loss inside Arabelle was never going to go away. She started to question her own existence as to why she had escaped death on that fateful day but her family hadn’t. A sanatorium psychiatrist felt that she was maybe beyond his professional help, and when Arabelle revealed during a routine counselling session that she had begun to harbour dark and disturbing thoughts of suicide, he had decided that maybe the use of spiritual guidance may be a better form of assistance to his patient.

  The sanatorium’s padre, a Fr. Absolon, ran a series of group workshops for a number of patients that were suffering from the ordeal of a significant trauma, such as bereavement, and he provided spiritual guidance to assist those prepared to embark on a personal journey through grief while coming to terms with loss, through God and the beginning of new life after experiencing the unexpected death of a loved one. But although Arabelle had diligently attended these sessions run by Fr. Absolon, her inner pain still remained.

  The sanatorium also operated a supervised patient rehabilitation programme, whereby, long-term patients could slowly be re-introduced back into society, with the requisite care and support provided, through work-related placements in the outside world. Therapists, having encouraged the patients to talk about their feelings and thoughts and how they affect their personal behaviour and wellbeing, would be monitoring how they, the patients, interacted and performed with others when placed in a non-medical environment such as the differing atmospheres of the work-place.

  When it was discovered that Arabelle possessed various secretarial skills and had some previous office-based experience, a pro-rata administrational assistant placement was secured for her at a family-run patisserie and bistro. Over a period of seven months, Arabelle had gone from initially working there for two days a week to an almost full-time role of working five days a week. Her therapist supervisor had reported that her underlying mental health issues seemed to be improving and that the passage of time, as well as the general distraction of everyday employment occupying her mind, appeared to have been great healing agents for Arabelle as she learned how to cope with the various emotions of shock and numbness, then guilt followed by despair that she had experienced since the incident itself.

  But the clearly evident changes happening to Arabelle Auguste had been caused by something else and all a
s a direct result of a chance meeting one day with a Markus Bruscante at the bistro. Markus had heard local stories of a sad young woman who had lost both her husband and daughter in a terrible accident and, as part of her grief counselling and recuperation, was working in the local bistro. On a number of occasions, he had visited the bistro and quietly observed Arabelle Auguste while he sat at a table outside reading a paper and drinking a glass of iced water.

  He eventually engaged Arabelle in an innocent conversation one day, and in doing so, over the course of the following months, he had begun to strike up a rapport with her as he made more and more visits to the bistro on a regular basis. Arabelle had enjoyed these initial conversations, and as they developed into a more regular frequency, she arranged her breaks to coincide with these visits. She now looked forward to her daily conversation with this man who seemed to understand her pain and was doing more to help her with herself and her issues than any of the doctors, therapists or priests had been able to over the last 15 months.

  Markus had once remarked that her eyes were the windows to her soul and asked her if she had faith. When she replied that she had lost hers, Markus took a hold of her hands and told her that Jesus Christ spoke about this when He taught on how our eyes reflect either the spiritual light or the great spiritual darkness that exists within our souls. He quoted to her from the Holy Bible, lines from the Gospel of Matthew 6:22&23: