Thor's Haven

by Richard S Young

  “His name is Daniel Lauridsen and he lives here now. Do you know him and where he stays?”

  The airport worker looked at the photograph and then handed it back to Markus.

  “I don’t know him but I know who he is. I haven’t seen him for a while but you should go and speak to his girlfriend. Her name is Sólrun Jakobsen and she works over at the AVIS car hire outside. Go and speak to her. I hope that helps.”

  Markus smiled broadly and shook the airport worker’s hand as he thanked him for his assistance. He turned to Henrique and Arabelle and mentioned that they should go and hire a car from this Sólrun Jakobsen and ask her all about Daniel Lauridsen.

  Markus and Henrique studied the cars in the parking lot while they left Arabelle with the task of engaging this Sólrun Jakobsen about hiring a vehicle and mentioning Daniel Lauridsen during conversation. Arabelle knocked on the door to the AVIS office before entering inside. A tall, dark haired woman in her late thirties stood up from her desk and smiled at Arabelle.

  “Góðan dag. Can I help you?” asked Sólrun.

  Arabelle smiled back and casually looked around the office. She glanced at photograph frame on the desk that pictured Sólrun standing with a man. She walked over to the frame and picked it up.

  “Hello. We wish to hire a car? Is that Daniel Lauridsen in this photograph with you? My colleague out there is a friend of his and was hoping that he might be here just now. We’ve just arrived for a few days on business.”

  Sólrun smiled at Arabelle.

  “Really? He’s not here at the moment but is due back in the Faroes anytime soon.” As soon as she said it, Sólrun remembered the written warning contained in the message from Rifat. Sólrun realised that she had said too much to this woman. She couldn’t rewind what she had said so quickly changed the topic of the conversation into the hiring of a vehicle and what would be the most suitable options. While Sólrun explained the terms and conditions of hire, she watched the woman wave at the two men in the parking lot, which caused one of them to enter into the office. Sólrun witnessed a brief discussion taking place in a fast paced foreign language that she couldn’t understand but assumed was French.

  “Perfecti. This woman appears to be close to this man that you seek and has his photograph on her desk. He’s presently not here in the Faroes, but she is expecting him to arrive very soon. I explained that you were a friend of his and that you wished to meet him. I also told her that you wished to hire a vehicle for a few days.”

  “Good. Could you ask Henrique to come and join me please?” As Arabelle left the office and wandered over to speak to Henrique, Markus smiled at Sólrun.

  “Good afternoon Mademoiselle. I would like to hire the black Kia Sportage 4x4 Crossover that my friends are standing beside please.” said Markus pointing out the window while passing over his French driving licence, French passport and a credit card. Sólrun took receipt of them from him then sat at her desk to begin the task of processing the paperwork to lease the vehicle. She raised the lid of a nearby photocopier to place the driving licence, passport and credit card onto its copying plate to scan the items into her computer system as a permanent record to the paperwork. Some previous documentation lay in the finishing tray which she removed and placed on her desk. The photocopier printed copies of Markus’s documentation as she handed the items back to him, then stapled the copies to the lease agreement forms.

  “Thank you.” and Markus pocketed his effects while Sólrun handed him the keys to the vehicle. Henrique entered into the office and Markus spoke very briefly to him in French and stood at the door.

  “My friend Arabelle tells me that you know Daniel Lauridsen. I hope to meet up with him while I am here. Do you know how I could get in contact with him?” smiled Markus.

  He watched Sólrun become uncomfortable with the questioning and that there were two men blocking her path if she wished to leave the office. Before she could speak, Markus was studying the photograph of her and Daniel on her desk and then looking through some of the paperwork that was lying on it.

  “He’s not here just now. He’s not been here for over a year and I don’t know when he is coming back. His line of business involves long contracts working away that he personally supervises until completion.” stated Sólrun who was now becoming anxious and tried to move closer to the door.

  Markus impeded her route by sitting on the edge of the desk and started to turn over more of the paperwork that was on it. He flicked over the documentation that she had lifted from the photocopier’s finishing tray to discover that it was a high definition reproduction of a digital image containing the white stone along with a hand written note. Markus read the contents of the note and nodded at Henrique.

  “Where’s the stone?” he asked Sólrun in a calm manner. Sólrun just stared at him with a quizzical look.

  “What are you talking about? replied Sólrun.

  Markus just smiled at the response, showed her the printed paper, then nodded again to Henrique. Henrique took a few steps forwards and punched Sólrun very hard in the midriff region of her body. She gasped at the unexpected impact, doubled up in pain and fell to the floor. She panted desperately for breath as the unexpected blow had winded her, but before she could recover her senses, Henrique kicked her in the stomach with a ferocity that caused her to bounce off the side of the desk.

  “Come now. Just tell me what I want to know and all this unnecessary discomfort can finish for you. Henrique is very skilled in, how can I say, getting reluctant people to tell me what I want to know. We have a lot of time on our hands and it would be a shame to alter your pleasant looks to get that information.”

  Sólrun wheezed and heaved in her struggle to breathe properly. The two blows to her body began to affect her respiratory system, her rapid breaths became harder, shallower and faster, and combined with fear, she began to hyperventilate. Henrique grabbed her by the hair to drag her along the floor surface to the centre of the office. In short rasping breaths, she struggled to speak.

  “Kirk… Kirk… Kirkju… Kirkjubøur” she uttered breathlessly in abject desperation while hoping that her present ordeal would finish.

  Markus examined the large map of the Faroe Islands that was on an office wall and looked for this place called Kirkjubøur. He drew his forefinger along the roads on the map and ascertained the route between this place and the airport. He turned to speak to Henrique who had crouched down beside the crumpled shape of Sólrun. Henrique was maniacally smiling while stroking her frightened face. He blew kisses at her and then licked his lips lasciviously.

  “I will go and get the car and just put her in the back seat. God has shown me the path that we have to follow and she can be the light.

  4. 34pm – 16th April, present day

  Vágar International Airport, Faroe Islands.

  The light is always changing, so that even the most rugged of dramatic cliffs are transformed into some gentle fantasy land of ethereal beauty. This light comes from all directions, and so does the mist, when suddenly the top of a mountain rises from billows of thin wool, only to be swallowed up again as the mist devours all it covers and then re-forms it into surreal shapes.

  But when the mist eventually lifts again, it reveals a landscape that could have been painted by a particularly talented child. Implausible blue waters of shimmering fjords dominated with layer-cake mountains replete with thunderous cascades of waterfalls, and all of it set in a bizarre juxtaposition to sweepingly vibrant expanses of verdantly green valleys that seem to plummet over absurdly jagged and vertical cliffs into the Atlantic Ocean.

  The approach to the Faroe Islands is an experience one never forgets, but for Daniel, this journey had an urgency tainted with a fear of what he could encounter once he arrived. He stared through the plexiglass of the rounded aeroplane window, scouring the horizon, when from out of nowhere, after hundreds of miles of flying over the dark blue
waters of the northern Atlantic Ocean, the sudden appearance of the eighteen islands below was almost heart-stopping for him. All around were leviathans of ancient volcanic rock, dressed in the finery of their early spring coats of vibrant green grass as they appear to surf through a mixture of cloud, mist and fog. Somewhere, down there, Sólrun could be in some sort of danger because a well-intentioned action on his part has backfired.

  The aeroplane banked slightly to the left, then levelled, as it glided over a sheer waterfall, Bøsdalafossur, its clear waters falling some 40 metres from the S–shaped lake, Leitisvatn, above. The airport runway lies at the end of this lake, surrounded by high cliffs which prevent it from emptying fully into the ocean and create an optical illusion that the lake is a lot higher above sea level than it actually is.

  Upon landing and exiting the plane on the tarmac, Daniel felt a gentle breeze blow across the runway from the ocean. Its air was crisp and clear, free from the pollutants associated with city dwelling. The scenery was breathtaking with high cliff faces sweeping to the sea interspersed with inlets that mark access to the land beyond. But what lay beyond was the focus of Daniel’s return to the Faroe Islands.

  Following the DGSE raid in Montségur, the discovery of the computer message on Arabelle Auguste’s laptop had made Daniel suddenly realise he had inadvertently endangered Sólrun by getting Rifat to post the stone to her from Pakistan. Daniel couldn’t have envisaged what he feared had happened to Sólrun. His intention had always been for her to keep the stone for him while he made his way back to the Faroes, then face head-on, whoever it was that so desperately wanted it for themselves. He had always expected to get there ahead of these pursuers but the events of the past eight days or so had got in the way of the best-laid plans.

  He had tried calling Sólrun repeatedly since leaving Montségur to head for Barcelona, but got frustrated by either the lack of signal in southern France and northern Spain to make a call, or when he did manage to finally get a connection, her telephone just rang out and went to its call-answer facility. His anxiety increased when there was no response to the many text messages that he had sent to Sólrun’s phone and he hoped that she was just ignoring him or she had mislaid her phone somewhere.

  Hélène had asked why it was so important for him to get to the Faroes as quickly as possible. Daniel explained his concerns in depth. Markus Bruscante appeared to be heading to the Faroe Islands in search of the stone, but Daniel didn’t know if this man, or The Path of Belibasta, knew of the location of the stone and that it was in the possession of Sólrun. He now feared for Sólrun’s safety. If the very recent events in Srinagar were anything to go by, the extreme measures that The Path of Belibasta were prepared to implement to get their way, she was in grave danger. In desperation, he had called Vágar Airport and politely asked a Turið Andersen in the Administration department if she could contact Sólrun at the AVIS car-hire point for him. Turið had returned his call about 30 minutes later to say that no-one was there and couldn’t find Sólrun, but would make sure that Sólrun was informed that he was looking for her.

  Daniel knew that Sólrun was a well known face at the airport and also in the Faroes, and by the power of word of mouth alone, she would eventually receive a message from someone to tell her that he was trying to make contact. Sólrun wouldn’t normally ignore her telephone calls or text messages from him, but with no trace of her at the airport, he was becoming concerned for her well-being.

  With Daniel having no luggage to collect, he quickly negotiated Customs and Passport Control, exited the terminal building, turned left towards the car park and the AVIS car-hire station. When he got there, not a soul was to be seen. On opening the door of the portacabin office and stepping inside, he found a handbag, and its contents, strewn over a desk. A mobile telephone was lying on the floor. Daniel deduced that these were items that belonged to Sólrun. It was patently obvious there had been a struggle of some sort and that she may have been abducted, but there were no other visible clues. He gathered everything up into the handbag, lifted up the mobile phone and sat down at the desk hoping to find some inspiration. He picked up a photograph frame, and as he stood it back upright on the desk, he ran a finger down the front of the frame. It was picture of himself and Sólrun at a wedding a couple of years before.

  Daniel became distracted as some packaging bearing a Pakistani flag stamp had caught the corner of his eye. The green and white colours of the flag stood out against the navy blue backdrop of a pocket of a jacket hanging on a coat stand by the door. He investigated what was sticking out. Whatever had happened in the office had occurred quickly and Sólrun’s jacket been left behind. It hadn’t been searched by her abductors. The packaging had Sólrun’s address on it, so he opened it up so see what was inside. After reading the letter from Rifat, Daniel sat back down and began to think about whether Sólrun had hidden the stone before she had disappeared and where she would have hidden it, where would her abductors take her and how could he find them and Sólrun.

  Scrolling through the contact numbers on Sólrun’s telephone, he looked for her friend and work colleague, Kolbrún Helgesen, who lived in the town of Miðvágur beside the airport. Depending on shift patterns, Sólrun often stayed with Kolbrún to save her driving back to Tórshavn after a long day or when the weather was foul. The gesture was reciprocated with Kolbrún often being a frequent guest with Sólrun when she was ever visiting Tórshavn and needed a place to stay overnight. Her Christian name was Eirika but she had been known by her by-name, or middle name, Kolbrún, meaning ‘black eyebrows’ since birth. In Old Norse, the use of by-names was quite common as an additional nickname put before or after the given name, and for Kolbrún, this had been the case. When she had been born, she had a shock of black hair upon her head, and rare for newborn babies, dark eyebrows. It is uncommon for children in the Faroe Islands to be black haired at birth and her parent’s pet name for their daughter stuck. She didn’t mind, and as she would tell you herself, everyone on the islands knew who she was.

  Her telephone rang.

  “Hi Kolbrún. It’s Daniel here. Daniel Lauridsen. I’ve just arrived back in the Faroes but I can’t find Sólrun. Do you know where she is?”

  “Hi Daniel. She’s working today and she should be at the airport. Is she not in the office?”

  “No. I’m in the office just now and her jacket, handbag and mobile phone are here but I can’t find her. No-one in the airport has seen her since lunchtime.”

  “I’ll be with you in 10 minutes.” and hung up.

  Kolbrún arrived a few minutes later and began to count the cars in the AVIS parking lot before walking over to the portacabin. She hugged Daniel tightly and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Sólrun will be so glad you’re here.”

  “We will need to find her first.” was Daniel’s reply. Kolbrún just smiled and walked past him into the portacabin and switched on a computer and typed in her passwords. She stood up to look out the window at the parked cars outside and then returned back to the computer. A flurry of activity on the keyboard brought up information on the screen which she then printed out and passed to Daniel.

  “We have a fleet of 25 vehicles here at Sorvagur and another 30 vehicles based at Tórshavn. By a process of elimination, I have been able to work out that there are currently 13 vehicles out on lease, then there’s my car and Sólrun’s car. Her car is parked outside. The last lease that Sólrun made was at 14:13 today when she processed the hire of a Kia Sportage 4x4 Crossover to a Markus Bruscante, a French man that had just flown in from Norway. There’s a credit card transaction for the lease. If you can find him, he might be able to tell you about Sólrun and where she might be. He’s the last person to see her from what I can gather.”

  Daniel’s heart sank when he heard the name Markus Bruscante and he now feared the worst. Kolbrún was still clicking away at the keyboard, and then, in a very matter of fact manner, turned the screen aroun
d and pointed at a satellite map of the Faroe Islands. Various coloured pins dotted about on the map denoted where the 15 active lease-vehicles were currently located on the Faroe Islands. Some of the coloured pins were moving and the rest were stationary.

  “One of the benefits of living here Daniel is that you cannot hide. We will always find you. The vehicles all have a tracker fitted to them that shows AVIS where they are. We probably have to do about a dozen trace and rescue missions every year because a tourist has got lost in the mist, broken down or had an accident, or all three. The majority of these accidents are usually the result of tourists getting caught out by a sudden fall of mist while driving, becoming disorientated and then colliding with a poor sheep crossing over the highway. By having the tracker on the vehicles, we can locate their whereabouts and then give them assistance. The tracking system also provides a detailed route-map of where a particular vehicle has been. Great for the tourist board because they can use the information to work out where the tourists are driving to and what is becoming a popular destination to visit. Not so good for us AVIS employees though, as management can track all our movements in the company car that we get to use as a perk of the job. So, if you are going to have an affair, don’t use the company car to rendezvous with your lover.” Kolbrún laughed at her last sentence and Daniel joined in. He had forgotten Kolbrún had a mischievous sense of humour along with an infectious laugh that made all around laugh with her as well.

  But while he laughed, Daniel remembered that the Faroe Islands have a highly developed communication network that provides blanket coverage to all of the 18 islands and for a distance of about 200 kilometres off-shore in any direction. This simple provision of a fast, reliable and effective broadband internet connection had massively boosted the commercial competitiveness of local businesses as well as socially benefiting all of the local communities, educational institutions and 16,000 individual households. Although technically and geo-politically, the Faroe Islands are regarded internationally as an isolated island community with some very extreme geography to overcome, the islands have managed to push themselves to the very forefront of delivering ever-changing modern communications technology, and by doing so, numerous Faroese companies have become world experts in the provision of digital communication solutions to remote and sparsely populated areas. The success of their developed systems are clearly evident if you attempted to use a computer or mobile telephone device while in the middle of one of the sub-sea road tunnels between two islands, 120 metres below the sea-level of the North Atlantic Ocean - you would have full internet access and a very strong mobile telephone signal, and as Daniel had recently experienced, that was clearly not a level of network service provision available to fellow users in southern France and northern Spain.