One of them he recognised, having met him very briefly several years earlier: Hal Sullivan, a former colonel in the New Zealand Special Air Service. In his early sixties, Sullivan nevertheless remained an imposing, dangerous figure. He was six feet tall with the solid build of someone who trained every day, and completely bald – which made his greying handlebar moustache all the more distinctive. His tanned skin had the colour and texture of a walnut. ‘Hugo, mate,’ he drawled. ‘Good to see you. Come on in.’ He shook Castille’s hand, then turned to his companion. ‘And you must be Eddie Chase.’
‘I must,’ Chase replied, extending his own hand. Sullivan’s grip was strong, and he could tell that it could easily have been crushing if he so chose.
‘Mac spoke very highly of you, which as far as I’m concerned is as good as a royal seal of approval. Glad to have you aboard.’ He released Chase’s hand, then indicated the other men. ‘These are the rest of the team. John Lomax,’ a close-cropped, bearded Caucasian man, ‘Fernando Rios,’ thick black eyebrows and swigging from a can of Coca-Cola, ‘and Carl Hoyt.’
Hoyt was the tallest man in the room, wiry rather than muscular and with bony, deeply sunken cheeks. A hand-rolled cigarette hung from his clenched lips. ‘Join the gang,’ he said, his accent American.
Chase and Castille greeted the group, then Sullivan waved for them to sit as he stood beside the last man. ‘This is our client: Ivor Lock. Mr Lock, if you’d like to explain the situation?’
Lock had a neat goatee beard and was wearing a tailored suit and shirt, his sole concession to the climate being an open top button. Chase guessed him to be around forty, and from his smooth skin and slicked-back brown hair took him to be a lawyer or business executive. Like Lomax and Hoyt, his accent revealed him as American. ‘Gentlemen, good afternoon,’ he began. ‘Some background first: there is a charitable organisation, Aide Sans Limites, that travels around Third World countries providing free medical care for the poor. One of their groups has been working in Vietnam. Two days ago,’ he leaned forward, expression becoming more intense, ‘the team was taken hostage by a group of bandits operating in the jungle near the Laotian border, fifty or so miles west of here. The local authorities have been . . . unhelpful. Which is why I approached Mr Sullivan to expedite their rescue.’
‘I know suggestin’ this is kind of against my own economic interests, since it’d mean we weren’t needed,’ said Lomax, ‘but couldn’t you go to the US embassy and get them to put pressure on the Vietnamese government?’
‘None of the group are Americans,’ Lock replied. ‘They’re mostly European, but different nationalities, so it would mean going through multiple embassies, multiple bureaucracies. And the Vietnamese will try to hush the whole affair up. Tourism’s becoming big business for them; the last thing they want is to scare people away with news stories about bandits and kidnappings.’
Rios, a Spaniard, spoke. ‘But the story will get out eventually.’
‘Not soon enough to help the people who’ve been kidnapped.’
‘What’s your connection to them?’ asked Chase.
Lock took a breath. ‘My daughter is one of the volunteers.’
‘Thought you said there weren’t any Americans?’
‘She’s a German national.’ Lock’s flinty eyes narrowed; he did not appreciate being questioned. ‘Natalia Pöltl, my daughter from my first marriage.’ He took out his wallet, opening it to reveal a small photograph of a young blonde woman. ‘Now you see why I’m involved, Mr Chase – and why I want this situation dealt with as quickly as possible. I want my daughter rescued from these . . . animals. Before anything happens to her.’
‘We’ve got information about the bandits’ area of operations,’ said Sullivan, ‘and narrowed their location down to a few square kilometres.’ He crossed to a large map taped to one wall, and pointed out a particular section. ‘It’s about eighty klicks west of Da Nang, so we’ll take Highway 49 to a point north of the target area, then head south. We’ll have to search, but it seems these jokers have been operating with free rein for some time. If they’re not worried about being tracked down, they shouldn’t be too hard to find.’
‘So what do we do when we find them?’ asked Castille.
Hoyt grinned coldly. ‘I’ve got a few things in mind.’
Sullivan raised a warning finger. ‘We use lethal force only as a last resort, understood? Our number one priority is to recover the prisoners safely. Considering Vietnam’s past, they really don’t like having groups of Westerners marching through the jungle shooting people, even if they are bandits. If they decide to crack down, they could make it hell for us to get out of the country. Trust me, I did it the hard way back in ’73, and it was not fun.’
Chase took a closer look at the map. The area Sullivan had indicated was hilly, judging from the contour lines, and there were few signs of civilisation nearby. ‘Is it just jungle out there?’
Sullivan nodded. ‘There are some small villages along the main river valleys, but past them it’s pretty much solid all the way to the border, and beyond. We’re not far south of the old DMZ, so this whole part of the country got ripped apart during the war. It’s been left to recover ever since.’
‘A good place to hide,’ said Castille dolefully.
‘We’ll find them,’ Sullivan assured him. ‘So, here’s the drill. A local friend of mine, Thuc, will take us in and out. From the drop point, we start a search. Once we find the hostages, we rescue them – minimum force unless absolutely necessary, remember – and take them to an extraction point on this river,’ he pointed at a thin blue line on the map, ‘where Thuc will be waiting with a boat. That should be the quickest way to get them back to the highway. From there, we return to Da Nang. Job done.’
‘What about gear?’ asked Lomax.
‘I’ve got a good man with access to weapons and equipment. He’s on his way over right now. In the meantime,’ he handed out larger-scale maps of the target area, already marked with the drop and extraction points, ‘familiarise yourself with the terrain. Mr Lock, you don’t need to stay around if you don’t want to.’
‘Thanks,’ said Lock, ‘but I’d like to see. My daughter’s out there, remember.’
Sullivan nodded, then began a more detailed briefing. Chase paid close attention; having served in Vietnam during the war as a young NZSAS officer, the Antipodean’s first-hand knowledge of the jungle would be invaluable. Hoyt, meanwhile, was more occupied with rolling a new cigarette.
After twenty minutes, they were interrupted by a knock on the door. Sullivan opened it. To Chase’s surprise, the man who entered was another familiar face. ‘Jesus, if it isn’t Eddie Chase!’ he said after greeting Sullivan. ‘And Hugo Castille too. Christ, we’re only a couple short of a full Afghanistan reunion.’
‘Bluey!’ cried Chase. ‘Fucking hell, you were the last person I expected to see. What’re you doing here, you farty old bastard?’
‘Supplying this sheep-shagger and the rest of you drongos with guns and gear,’ said Bob ‘Bluey’ Jackson, giving Sullivan a cheery nod. ‘So, Sully, you roped Eddie and Hugo into this? Well, they’ll get the job done, even if they are a right pair of wankers.’
‘As Edward would say, “Fuck off, you wombat-shagging twat,”’ Castille grinningly told him in a very poor imitation of Chase’s Yorkshire accent. The Australian waggled his bushy eyebrows in amusement. ‘Are you coming with us?’
Bluey shook his head. ‘Fuck no, mate. I’ve been living here for a bit now; last thing I want to do is get into trouble with the local wallopers. And the girlfriend’d kill me!’
‘Amazed anyone’d have you,’ said Chase.
‘Me too, sometimes! She’s a lovely girl – well, a bit loud, but she keeps me in check. We’re planning to move back to Oz together. Immigration paperwork might be a pain, but she’s got some tricks.’ A knowing smile, then he saw Sullivan’s growing impatience. ‘Anyway, Sully, I brought your gear. The guns’re all forty-sevens; a bit scruffy, bu
t I checked ’em and they’re in decent nick.’
Sullivan nodded. ‘What about radios?’
‘Got you a set of Motorola walkie-talkies and headsets. On the old side, but they work fine. New batteries in all of ’em.’
‘Good. Thanks for this, Bluey. Where is everything?’
‘In my van,’ said the Australian. ‘It’s all boxed up, so you won’t get any stickybeaks freaking out when you unload it. When’re you setting off?’
‘As soon as Thuc arrives with his minibus.’ Sullivan turned to the others. ‘Is everyone ready to move?’
‘Just let me take a piss first and I’m good to go,’ Chase replied.
Sullivan gave him a weary look. ‘Mac warned me that you were like this . . . Everyone else set?’
The remaining mercenaries confirmed their readiness. ‘Let’s get started,’ said Hoyt.
‘Good luck,’ Lock said to Sullivan. ‘I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Bring my daughter back safely.’
‘We’ll find her,’ the New Zealander replied. He glanced past Lock at the French windows, peering out at the sky over the ocean. ‘Oh, a heads-up,’ he said, turning back to his team. ‘The weather forecast says there’s a tropical storm due to make landfall this evening, with a chance it might become a typhoon by then. Even though we’ll be farther inland, we’re still going to get wet. Hopefully Bluey remembered to pack some rain gear.’
‘Sod this, then,’ Chase said. ‘I’m off back to England!’
That produced muted chuckles in the group, which were cut short when the phone rang. Sullivan answered it. ‘That’s our ride,’ he told them as he hung up.
The men filed out of the room, back into the stifling heat of the Vietnamese day. ‘Here we go, then,’ Chase said to the Belgian. ‘Back into action.’
‘Are you ready for it?’ Castille asked quietly.
‘Yeah,’ Chase replied.
He hoped he was telling the truth.
5
Sweden
Nina stared at her laptop, even after multiple viewings not quite able to believe what she was witnessing.
Seretse had shown her a still image in New York; this was the full version, footage from a security camera. Because it had been watching a neighbouring building rather than the museum itself, the robbers were almost incidental, tucked away in one corner. Had their van been parked ten feet to the right, it was unlikely that any of their faces would even have been captured in frame.
But one had. And she knew it well.
‘Logan Berkeley,’ she said to herself, shaking her head. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Eddie, reclining beside her in the airliner’s business-class cabin, raised his head to glare at the screen. ‘Never did like that tosser, even before what he did in Egypt. You should have punched him harder. And whatever Seretse said, he’s not part of the IHA any more. He got fired when he was arrested.’
‘When he was convicted,’ Nina corrected, even as she said it wondering why she was giving her former colleague – and rival – any benefit of the doubt. Dr Logan Berkeley had been in charge of an excavation in Cairo, opening up the long-lost Hall of Records hidden beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza. After Nina beat him to it, on live television to boot, the enraged and humiliated Berkeley had ended up taking a payoff from a cult to locate an even greater prize, the legendary Pyramid of Osiris. It wasn’t until the pyramid was plundered and the cult leader murdered by his own psychotic brother that Berkeley realised he had thrown in his lot with the wrong people, but by then it was too late to repent; according to Seretse, he had only been released from an Egyptian prison a few months earlier.
‘Whatever. He’s still a complete cockwipe. And now he’s involved in robbery and murder.’
‘So it seems,’ said Nina, with a small sigh. ‘I just don’t understand why.’
Eddie smiled sardonically. ‘A year in an Egyptian nick’s probably enough to turn anyone into a nutter.’
‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean, why steal the runestone at all?’ She tabbed to another application, the photograph of the monolith filling her screen. ‘All the text on it’s already been translated by experts, so there’s nothing new that anyone could get from it in person. And except for the inset,’ she indicated the circle of darker stone set into the face of the monolith, ‘there’s nothing unusual about the runestone physically. It’s just a block of granite.’
‘So there could be something special about that thing.’ Eddie also pointed at the inset. ‘There are some markings on it – maybe it’s a map.’
‘Well, hopefully we’ll find out more from Dr Skilfinger.’
‘Ha! We’re meeting a Bond villain?’
‘I’m sure she’s one of the good guys. At least, I hope so!’ They both grinned. ‘She’s the person who found the runestone in the first place, and has been researching it ever since. If anyone knows what it is, she will.’
Eddie leaned over to peer out of the porthole. A snowy, tree-covered landscape slid past below. ‘So, this is Sweden, eh? Never actually been here before.’
‘I’m kind of surprised,’ said Nina. ‘I thought you’d been everywhere.’
‘Norway, Finland and Denmark, yeah, but I somehow missed this one. Still, I think I know everything I need to about it. IKEA, Volvo, high-quality porn, Abba, girls with dragon tattoos.’ Another, more lecherous grin. ‘All I have to do is drink loads of coffee, eat lots of open-faced sandwiches and be blandly heroic, and I’ll get to have no-strings-attached sex with every woman I meet.’
‘You will not,’ Nina told him firmly, then they both laughed. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s more to the country than that, though.’
‘Well, obviously. There’s also meatballs, the Swedish Chef . . .’
‘Okay,’ she said with a smile as the pilot announced that the plane was making its final approach to Stockholm Arlanda airport, ‘if any Swede asks what you think of their country, it’d probably be a good idea if you just said, “It’s very nice.” Otherwise they might rethink their neutrality policy.’
Ninety minutes later, their United Nations diplomatic visas having seen them whisked through customs, Nina and Eddie arrived at the Swedish National Museum of Antiquities in Stockholm, after a brief detour to a hotel to drop off their luggage. Despite the snow blanketing the countryside, the capital’s streets were impressively clear, traffic moving at a brisk pace. ‘We should hire these guys to plough the streets in Manhattan,’ said Nina.
‘We should get ’em to do the whole of bloody England,’ Eddie countered as he climbed out of the taxi. ‘One flake of snow and the entire country falls apart.’
Nina paid the driver and joined him. The museum was a large, pale beige block abutting a triangular plaza on a broad tree-lined boulevard, banners advertising its current exhibits adorning its facade. Vikings featured prominently upon them. She regarded the bearded warriors. ‘I guess they know what sells . . .’
They trotted across the chilly plaza to the main entrance, finding a member of staff and asking for Dr Skilfinger. They were expected; the rapid clacking of high heels barely a minute later heralded the arrival of their hostess. ‘Dr Wilde, hello!’ said the tall, slender blonde, her flustered air suggesting that she had hurried from the far side of the museum to meet them. ‘I’m Tova, Tova Skilfinger. It’s a great honour and pleasure to meet you.’ Though she had a strong accent, her English was perfect.
‘It‘s good to meet you too, Dr Skilfinger,’ Nina replied as they shook hands.
‘Please, Dr Wilde, call me Tova.’
‘Then call me Nina.’
‘Agreed.’ Tova beamed at her. Nina guessed she was in her late forties or early fifties, but age had not diminished the Swedish historian’s striking looks. Her hair was held up in a loose bun, all her snugly fitting clothing black. ‘I have been following your work for several years – you could say I am something of a fan.’ She blushed faintly.
Nina did the same. ‘Thank you. This is my husband, Eddie Chase.’
‘Good to meet you,’ said Eddie.
Tova shook his hand. ‘And you. Have you come straight from the airport?’
‘More or less,’ Nina told her. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the runestone as soon as we arrived.’
‘We can do that in my office – I have all my notes ready for you. Please, this way.’ They started down the hall. ‘The reason I said I am a fan of yours is that your work allowed me to rethink my own, and look at it from a new perspective.’
‘How so?’ asked Nina.
‘Well, although I am primarily a historian, I also have a great interest in Old Norse mythology – though there are few people in Sweden who have not!’ She smiled. ‘Your discovery of Atlantis in particular, but also other finds such as King Arthur’s tomb and El Dorado, caused a resurgence of euhemeristic theory.’
‘Yoo-hoo who?’ said Eddie.
‘Euhemerus was an ancient Greek scholar,’ Nina told him. ‘He had the idea that myths and legends were derived from actual historical events, which were exaggerated and distorted over time. Early Christians used it as a way to explain away and discredit what they saw as pagan gods.’
‘It is an important part of the Prose Edda,’ added Tova. Seeing the Englishman’s questioning look, she continued: ‘One of the most important texts about Norse mythology. It was written in the thirteenth century by an Icelandic poet and historian called Snorri Sturluson. He was a Christian, so used the Edda to promote his belief that the ancient Norse deities – like Odin and Thor – were once kings, who aroused such devotion in life that cults formed to honour them after death. Over time, their stories turned them into gods.’
‘Clever,’ said Nina. ‘It meant that he got to preserve the pre-Christian mythology of his people, while debunking it at the same time.’
‘But people like that were actually right, weren’t they?’ Eddie said. ‘After all, we discovered Atlantis, and a lot of what the myths said turned out to be true. And we know Hercules was a real bloke and not a god, ’cause we found his tomb.’
The Valhalla Prophecy_A Novel Page 6
