Dante's Key

by G. L. Baron

  ‘Who are they?’ he managed to ask her.

  Julia did not answer, but from her gaze it was clear that she had no idea. Could it still be the Japanese?

  ‘Lie down on the floor and don’t move,’ she ordered.

  ‘And what are you going to do?’ he groaned, standing still.

  ‘I’ll try to save your li—’ she could not finish the sentence, because a hail of M4 bullets riddled the side of the camper with holes.

  She turned abruptly, hands outstretched and the small Glock tight in her hands. She would have fired, but she felt like David against Goliath. From the Eastern plains another car was coming, headlights pointing straight into her eyes, with three camouflaged men with assault rifles.

  ‘Drop your weapons and raise your hands,’ a voice from a megaphone thundered.

  Julia stood still for a moment, and then when the car stopped a few metres from her, she closed her eyes. She threw the semi-automatic in the snow and raised her arms.

  87

  Base camp, February 6th . Local time 06:30 a.m.

  All the expedition members were standing in the middle of the field. Around them were eight mercenaries holding them at gunpoint.

  ‘Sorry about this unexpected visit,’ said a man with a powerful physique, walking in the snow. He was a muscular giant, with a South American accent, who had collected them one by one from their campers and had gathered them under the marquee. ‘If you collaborate, no one will touch a hair on your heads.’

  The geologists and the engineers were standing next to each other, heads down, terror painted in their eyes. Ólína Einarsson, the guide, was whining softly, while her husband Rúnar held her hand. Beside them, Holmar Bjarnason, the elderly Jari Johansson and Kjell Lagerbäck trembled from the cold, as well as fear.

  Cassini and Julia were next to Joonas Eklöf, the only one who was not really scared. After his phone call to the Bull – when he had revealed the underground chamber detected by the ground-penetrating radar – he had expected consequences… although not like this.

  ‘We know that you are conducting an archaeological dig not far from here, in a natural amphitheatre,’ shouted the Bull, his words emphasized so everyone could hear him. ‘Today we will start digging, exactly as you had planned. Each one of you will do the job for which you are paid. If you follow my orders, no one will get hurt.’

  At the centre of the tent someone moved. Julia barely had time to notice her with one eye: Ólína Einarsson, in an awkward and irrational attempt to escape, began to run towards her camper, with her head down and tears in her eyes.

  She had gone only a few metres when one of the soldiers moved forward. He pointed the M4 he had on his shoulder and fired immediately. The woman, shot in the back, fell down and blood began to paint the snow red.

  They heard screams. Her husband cried trying to move to go and help her, but one of the technicians stopped him, saving his life.

  ‘I hope that woman wasn’t necessary for the excavation,’ hissed the Bull, staring at the limp body on the snow. ‘If we want to get along, this is not the best way to start.’

  The soldier who fired, meanwhile, approached Ólína. He nudged the woman’s body with his boot but there was no movement.

  There was a second of silence. Those present were both shocked and terrorized at the same time.

  The Bull, smiling, approached the hostages, brandishing a gun. He walked slowly, eyes fixed on each one of them, and stopped next to Cassini. ‘Professor… I hope our treasure is really where you think’, he whispered, his eyes sharp.

  The professor, paralysed by fear, did not answer and simply swallowed. Then he squeezed Julia’s hand tightly.

  ‘Gentlemen, in less than two hours it will be dawn,’ the Bull continued aloud, turning round. ‘Come on! Let’s get to work. We don’t want to keep that lovely amphitheatre waiting.’

  *

  Shortly after nine o’clock, when a pale aurora seemed to be overlooking the Hofsjökull glacier, the mercenaries’ cars and the four pick-ups moved out from the base camp.

  None of the military escorts noticed that two hundred metres away a Toyota Hilux was stationed, similar to those that had just left the camp, protected by a ridge of snow.

  88

  6 kms west of Base Camp, February 6th. 06:04 a.m.

  The headlights cut through the darkness like two sharp knives. The pick-up proceeded at high speed on a tongue of ice, bordered by coloured pegs.

  Nigel Sforza sipped his coffee and then looked at the bag on the passenger’s seat.

  Despite the tiredness, he was overjoyed; inside that bag, he had a device that probably would have earned him another substantial nest egg. He had a good chance of finding both the Japanese and the other part of the device, the most valuable.

  From the passport found in the pocket of the bag, he discovered that the man who had met Tanaka at the Harpa was Ibrahim Al Husayn, son of Sheikh Mohamed bin Saif. He was Meredith Evans’ stepson and – unfortunately for him – was yet another victim of the affair.

  By now it was clear that the reason for all those murders was the Brain Control device. Sforza had failed to understand the reason, but from the note’s text it was clear that the special forces’ intervention had foiled the handing over of the device to Tanaka, his wanted man.

  After the blitz at the capital’s convention centre, Sforza had tried to rationalize the elements in his hands. He had moved away from the scene, with the excuse of having to report to Lyon, and had taken the ultrasound disc with him, and decided to recover the OCST alone.

  He found his first clue in the Toyota Hilux that the Prince had used to reach the auditorium; from the navigator, it seemed that the truck had been used on February 3rd to reach two locations in the centre of the island. The next day it had returned to Reykjavik. On the return trip there had been only one intermediate stop, Týr Bank, in the capital’s commercial district.

  The second clue – hard to reconcile with the first – he got from Geosync, the company whose logo was printed on the bag; with some insistence he had heard that the company’s geologists were engaged in excavation work in the north-east of the island, near the Gýgjarfoss waterfalls.

  He knew that the Prince was in possession of the OCST, and the most logical option was that he had deposited them at the Týr Bank. As opposed to what happened at Geosync, the employees of the bank were not, however, influenced by his Interpol badge.

  He decided to investigate the reason why the Prince had gone to Gýgjarfoss, before involving the Icelandic police for a search warrant. He had rented a car for the snowy route and had started driving.

  During the journey he stopped several times to consult the map and check the position on the navigator. He knew the exact co-ordinates of all the Prince’s stops during the trip and was now very close.

  He changed gear, facing a slight slope, with the headlights illuminating a series of dark rocks emerging from the ground like palm trees in the desert.

  But then something unexpected happened. The plain was dark and the only audible noise was the howling wind – the only sound, until over a half-frozen boulder, he heard a croak like an engine struggling to start. It was unmistakeable; a burst of gunfire.

  Looking up he saw two white Toyotas, heading at full speed towards some campers standing on the opposite side of the clearing.

  He stopped immediately and turned off the lights. He did not know what to think or what to do, so he just watched the scene from a distance with small infrared binoculars.

  He saw a dozen paramilitary shouldering assault machine guns, and many people forced to leave their campers.

  He looked at what was happening with great detachment, as if he were in a drive-in watching an action movie. Had he been a hero, he would perhaps have intervened – maybe when one of the soldiers fired on a defenceless woman. Unfortunately, he knew it was not so, and had remained inside the Toyota.

  Abruptly he jumped in his seat. The man who seemed the leader of those me
rcenaries had approached the hostages and had stopped in front of a young brown-haired man: Manuel Cassini, with Julia beside him.

  A trickle of sweat ran down his back. What was Cassini doing here?

  He decided he did not care. It was of no interest to him. It was not his problem, and yet, the more he watched the scene, the more he struggled to look away.

  ‘It’s not my problem,’ he repeated to himself, even when two hours later a convoy set off from the camp, heading east.

  There was only one mercenary near the campers. He could easily disarm him and check whether there was any sign of the OCST on the campsite. He was only there for that, not for Cassini and certainly not for her.

  But then he remembered the image of the professor at Ciampino Airport, paralysed in a wheelchair. From what he could see now, Cassini did not seem afraid of Julia. Far from it. Nevertheless, it was evident that he was in danger. That they were both in danger. And it was his fault; maybe if he had protected him in Rome instead of giving him to that woman, perhaps he would not be there now.

  He felt a strange sensation, like a bitter aftertaste following a pleasant drink; a jarring note that could stop him enjoying his nest egg.

  ‘It’s not my problem,’ he said again, stubbornly. But then he found himself looking at his gun and cartridge clip. He looked at the row of vehicles disappearing behind the hill and shook his head.

  ‘Fuck!’ he growled. He started the car and followed them at a safe distance.

  89

  White rose, February 6th. 1:45 p.m.

  The small Liebherr excavator’s bucket made a screeching noise as the steel scraped across the rock; it could barely sink its teeth into the frozen ground.

  The powerful diesel engine bellowed again like a tired ox and the mechanical arm moved a mass of lava rock.

  They were on the south side of the amphitheatre, at the lowest point. They were not far from a frozen stream that disappeared into a crack in the ground. The sun had faded on the horizon and the air was icy.

  ‘Keep going… keep going… keep going, slowly!’ ordered Joonas Eklöf, holding his hands over his eyes to protect them from the strong light.

  Holmar Bjarnason and the geologists of Geosync were beside him, motionless and numb. They had their backs to the great glacier that loomed silently over them, staring at the main excavation – a pit six metres long, two metres wide and now almost three metres deep.

  The other members of the expedition were gathered about twenty metres away, on the western side, near a large block of basalt covered with snow. Some guards held them at gunpoint with M4 rifles.

  While Eklöf gesticulated, facing the technician operating the mechanical arm, the head of the mercenaries approached him. ‘At what point are we?’

  ‘We should be almost there,’ Bjarnason said, stroking the arm of his glasses. ‘The survey indicated that the underground chamber was about three metres down.’

  ‘I think it’s time to continue digging manually,’ said Eklöf. ‘If we’re close to the ceiling of the chamber, we should be more careful.’

  The Bull nodded and then whispered something into the transmitter.

  The machine swivelled round and the bucket rested on the ground. The archaeologists, threatened at gun point, were called in a few minutes later. Equipped with protective goggles, brushes and trowels – small spades with rounded tips – they began to remove the surface stones.

  They were divided into three groups; each one was given one of the main squares of the excavation, bordered by stakes and yellow tape.

  Cassini and Julia, in the company of the historian, Jari Johansson, and a broken Rúnar Einarsson, watched the scene from above. The men – who up until the night before had joked and drunk – were now frightened and dirty, and seemed like many busy bees. They kept an eye on the barrel of the machine gun, while they crawled around removing lava rocks, ice and dirt. Only one of them never looked down or cursed: Eklöf, the expedition leader.

  Julia stared at him in silence. He spoke quietly with the mercenaries’ leader.

  After about an hour, it became cloudy and the snow started coming down like fine grains of salt. The Bull did not seem worried and indeed, spurred the archaeologists on to work faster. He had no idea how long it would require to finish the excavation, but he was not willing to spend another night there.

  ‘I found something,’ suddenly shouted one of the boys. ‘It looks like a slab of basalt.’

  Bjarnason moved closer, stroking his chin. ‘Could it be the roof of the chamber?’

  ‘It could be,’ assented Joonas Eklöf, more excited than he would have believed possible. ‘Proceed superficially. Let’s see how large the plate is,’ he ordered with a higher tone of voice.

  Other archaeologists came and began to clean the rough surface and to remove the residual soil.

  It took another good hour to find a slit, a few metres beyond the first plate.

  ‘It seems like an entrance,’ explained Eklöf to the Bull. ‘It’s covered by another boulder.’

  ‘Are we able to open it and see what’s underneath?’ asked the South American.

  ‘Moving the plate that covers it should be enough to see inside…’

  ‘Here we are!’ shouted one of the young boys. ‘If it’s okay, we’ll proceed.’

  Eklöf nodded, crossing his arms.

  Holmar Bjarnason, standing next to Julia and Cassini, imperceptibly shook his head. ‘It looks like a natural fissure to me.’

  ‘Here, it’s open,’ a voice exclaimed triumphantly, coming from the bottom of the excavation.

  ‘It’s wide enough to get a man inside,’ observed the Bull looking at the fissure. Then he turned to look at Cassini. ‘Professor. Have you ever experienced being a speleologist before? You have the honour to enter first.’

  A second later his radio crackled.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he growled into the microphone. Immediately afterwards, his face darkened. He looked up and stared at Cassini – who was descending into the hole with a terrified face – and sighed.

  *

  A few minutes before, at 3:45, Nigel Sforza was crouched under a lava rock, protected by a pile of fresh snow gathered by the wind.

  He had left the car five hundred metres from the point indicated by the navigator and – to avoid being seen – had decided to walk. Before leaving the pick-up he had taken his gun, the small z-Nav, binoculars, handcuffs and other objects he thought could be useful. Then, after a quick reflection, he closed the Geosync bag and hid it between the seats. Finally, he sunk his boots in the frozen snow and hid a safe distance away.

  The mercenaries had stopped at the foot of a depression in the ground. They had dug in the ice with their machines and a small caterpillar with a mechanical shovel for nearly three hours.

  However much he tried to make up his mind, Sforza had not yet decided how to act. The surprise effect was certainly on his side but everything else, starting with the number of opponents, was playing against him.

  Initially he thought about getting closer, discreetly, to the excavation area. He could get rid of the aggressors, one by one, like a trained sniper. That idea, however, lasted only a few seconds; he knew he was not a good marksman. Maybe he could hit some of the mercenaries, but to hope to eliminate them all was pure madness.

  And here he was, still lying in the frozen snow, staring at two people he barely knew and whose lives were in danger. He pointed his binoculars towards Cassini and Julia again; they were on his right, about twenty metres from the excavation. ‘Here, it’s open!’ he thought he heard in the silence, from his position.

  But he could not hear the rest because a frozen object was pressed against the back of his head.

  ‘Don’t move a muscle or I’ll blow your brains out.’

  The voice was hoarse. He was sure he had never heard it before.

  Sforza carried out the order, remaining still. The man pulled him up by his arm, forcing him to turn around to see his face.
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br />   As he stared at his aggressor, the inspector raised his hands, cursing mentally; he had not heard him coming and had never seen him. Judging by the camouflage clothing, however, it had to be one of the mercenaries patrolling the perimeter around the amphitheatre.

  ‘Boss. We have an unexpected visitor,’ the mercenary said over the transceiver.

  The radio crackled. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘There’s a man. He’s armed. I immobilized him.’

  After a few seconds, the Bull’s order reached Sforza’s ears, too. And his blood froze.

  ‘Kill him!’

  90

  Flying over the Langjökull glacier, February 6th. 3:45 p.m.

  The engine screamed as the AW119 helicopter sped toward the southeast.

  ‘It’s over there, we’re almost there,’ the pilot announced, adjusting the microphone of his headset to his mouth. After a second, he swung the stick and the aircraft – an eight-seater Agusta Westland – veered, leaning a few degrees to the right.

  Hidetoshi Tanaka stroked the golden butt of his Walther and contemplated the expanse of ice beneath him. Amber reflections glowed from that height over the snow-covered surface.

  ‘How strong is the GPS signal?’ inquired the Japanese, turning towards one of his men.

  ‘Stable. The car has been stationary for more than three hours,’ the young man replied, fumbling with a laptop placed on the table in the front seat. Besides himself, there were another three men, armed to the teeth, staring at the Japanese.

  Tanaka nodded.

  ‘Time is running short,’ Edward had said a few days before, in a hardly friendly tone. ‘The company that hired me to get that device, which pays my bills and therefore yours, expect results.’

  Results.

  It was just what he wanted to achieve. At this point, recovering the device was not only a professional issue; it was a matter of principle. This business had turned into a grotesque soap opera and it was time to write the word “end”. Especially since, with the death of the Sheikh, the agreement signed by Prince Ibrahim had become final.