"I did my time," Morgan said, the nearest to an answer he could give.
Nobby seized the collar of his t-shirt with a sudden vicious jerk that half lifted Morgan off his feet. "Like fuck you did!"
Adrenaline rushed and instinct kicked in. Morgan broke Nobby's grip by gouging his knuckle into the soft flesh between his thumb and forefinger, then drove the other man back with a blow to his solar plexus that left him doubled over and gasping.
Instantly the other four were on him, fists raised, necks corded with strain and anger.
"Jesus," Nobby gasped. "Jesus Christ. Leave him." And when the others continued advancing, "Just leave him, I said. The little bastard isn't worth it."
There was a frozen moment of time, then the men dropped their fists. Their eyes still bored into Morgan, despising him utterly.
When Morgan felt the hand land on his shoulder, his keyed-up nerve endings almost twitched a blow out of him before he realised it was Tomas.
Yeah, of course it was Tomas. Because that was exactly the scene he wanted his new partner to see.
"Come on, we're going to miss the plane," Tomas said.
Morgan only looked up at him when they'd put fifty feet between them and Morgan's former comrades. He knew if he saw even a hint of pity in Tomas's eyes, he was going to deck him.
But Tomas just looked grave. "It's the nature of the job," he said. "No one thanks you, and no one else will ever understand."
For some reason, Morgan found that this made him feel a little better.
Tomas settled into his seat on the plane, careful not to catch Morgan's eye. He knew the younger man was ashamed Tomas had seen the confrontation earlier.
Tomas wanted to tell him that he understood. That when he'd been alive, he'd taught himself not to care what other people thought of him. He'd spent his career deceiving people who believed he was their friend, not just telling lies but living them for months at a time. And now...
But he didn't know how to start that conversation, so he didn't say anything. Instead he looked out of the window and wondered what it meant, that they'd woken him after all this time to continue his search for the Ragnarok artefacts.
Out of Morgan's earshot, Giles had told him more, that there had been worrying portents, several over the last year and four more in the previous week alone. An algal bloom had turned the River Severn red as blood. In Stockholm, a child had been born with two heads and the terrified mother claimed that one of them had spoken to her before it died. Crops failed in perfect weather. All the signs Tomas had looked for, in his long and fruitless search, were finally appearing.
The plane was cruising high above the clouds, an endless white field that looked like snow, and Tomas thought about another journey through snow, twenty-five years ago, with another young man who was his newest partner.
He and Richard had crossed the endless barren wastes of Greenland on a sled. The rank smell of the huskies surrounded them and there was nothing to do but talk.
"How long have you been searching for these things, anyway?" Richard had asked. He was American, soft-spoken and sandy-haired.
"A long time," Tomas told him.
"And you're still no closer to finding them?"
Tomas found Richard's open astonishment refreshing. He laughed. "You know how they say life is what happens when you're making other plans? The Hermetic Division seems to be what happens while we're looking for the Ragnarok artefacts."
"But what are they? The briefing didn't say."
Tomas just looked at him.
"You don't know that either? Jesus - then what the hell is the point?"
Tomas had asked himself the same question more than once, and had reached only one conclusion. "It justifies our existence to Whitehall. The things we are finding - the real discoveries - they're astonishing. You know that. But how much of what we know is of any direct use, the kind of use governments want to put it to? The artefacts offer everything the bureaucrats want. They're a reason to keep the Division open, and that's all Nicholson cares about. For that, it's worth sending me on a wild goose chase every now and again."
Richard shook his head, unconvinced. "But these guys we're visiting - they know about the artefacts, right?"
Tomas shrugged. "We'll see, won't we?"
They reached the abbey on the third day, its spires poking up over the horizon like the masts of a ship before the whole huge edifice became visible. It was said the monks built it anew from the ice every year, that they'd been doing it for a thousand years, since the first Norse settlers arrived on the island.
In the pictures Tomas had seen, the building had looked ethereal and beautiful, all long thin lines and graceful arches. But this year the monks seemed to have opted for a more gothic theme. The abbey was squat and powerful and the flying buttresses were carved into leering gargoyle faces, all the more sinister for their near transparency.
The abbot met them at the door. His blunt Inuit face broke into a sudden, unexpectedly broad smile as they approached. "Our travellers from England. Welcome."
He offered them food and rest but when they declined he nodded understandingly and led them through to his study, buried deep in the buildings. Like them he remained bundled in his furs, breath freezing into fog in front of his mouth. Everything in here, every wall and every door, was carved from the same blue-green ice. Even the high-backed chairs he gestured them to sit in were made from it.
"So you've come to ask me about the artefacts," he said.
Tomas couldn't hide his surprise and the abbot smiled. "I heard about your hunt and I knew you'd find me eventually. We're aware of the legends about this place. Our unusual set-up attracts them."
"Is it true you were founded by the Viking settlers?"
The abbot nodded. "Yes. Our records confirm it."
Tomas felt the first stirrings of hope. All the best sources of information about the artefacts were Scandinavian, dating back to the Elder Edda or before. Could this really be a genuine lead? "But the Norsemen left here nearly five hundred years ago," he said. "They were driven out by famine, weren't they?"
"The invaders fled, but they left their traditions behind. Some of my own people chose to continue them."
Richard looked impatient. He hadn't been at this long enough to understand the importance of validation, establishing provenance. When he'd chased as many dead-end leads as Tomas had, he'd learn.
"But what about the artefacts?" Richard said. "Are they here?"
"The artefacts have no place in God's house."
Richard leaned forward. "So you know what they are? And where they are?"
The abbot stood. He was a short man but his body was thick and Tomas suspected the furs hid layers of muscle as well as fat. Richard's mouth snapped closed as the abbot loomed over him.
"You could search the whole world and never find them," the abbot said.
Tomas recognised a non-answer when he heard one. "But do they exist?"
"They are real." The abbot leaned against the desk, round face abstracted as he seemed to ponder something. Tomas let him think. He sensed this wasn't a man who could be cajoled or bullied. Eventually the abbot sighed and reached behind him, pulling an ancient leather-bound volume from a shelf above his desk.
"Let me show you something." He flipped through the book, page after page of primitive, blocky woodcuts, until he settled on one near the end. It showed a man reading from a manuscript, while beside him another man plunged a dagger through a bleeding heart. They were dressed in the loose robes of medieval merchants and their faces, crudely drawn, seemed entirely devoid of emotion. It made what they were doing all the more unpleasant.
Richard frowned. "I can't see anything that looks like it might be the artefacts. The knife, maybe."
The abbot's gaze remained fixed on the page, his expression unreadable. "This claims to illustrate the ceremony in which they're used." He looked up suddenly, eyes spearing Tomas. "Knowing this, do you still want to find them?"
They
'd stayed the night, but while the monks had been charming and hospitable, it was clear they wouldn't reveal anything more, and the next morning they'd departed, Richard frustrated and Tomas troubled.
"You were right," Richard said, on the long sled ride back to civilization. "It's a shell game with nothing inside."
Had Richard been right, or had this Russian finally found the artefacts that had eluded them for so long? And what would come of it if he had? Tomas realised that, twenty-five years later, he still couldn't answer the abbot's question. All he could do was watch the clouds slide by underneath them, white and innocent, and wonder what they'd find when they landed.
Two and a half hours later they were in Budapest.
The air hit Tomas as soon as they stepped outside the airport, so humid it was like something solid, even near midnight.
"Shit - I thought I was coming somewhere colder," Morgan said, then gave a slight wince and shut his mouth, as if the words had sparked an unpleasant memory.
Tomas drew him towards the taxi queue and didn't reply. There were at least thirty people already waiting, sweating and bored, but it was better than hiring a car. Anything you put your name to left a trail.
The queue crept forward, everyone seeming to move slowly in the sluggish air.
It gave Tomas time to look around, at the big, modern airport and the local people in their Western fashions and their Japanese cars. All these tourists - what would they have made of the Budapest he knew? But they wouldn't have been allowed into it.
Finally they were at the front of the line. The taxi driver - a dark-skinned, sour-faced man - didn't bother to get out, so Tomas popped the boot himself, then threw in his small suitcase beside Morgan's rucksack. Morgan kept the briefcase in his hand as they climbed in the back.
"Hotel Gellert," Morgan told the driver.
That beautiful art nouveau relic had been here the last time Tomas visited. The city they drove through was also reassuringly similar. Only the people looked different. They seemed both busier and more relaxed - free, he supposed.
He still couldn't fathom that the war he'd sacrificed so much to fight had been won while he was sleeping.
They were halfway into Pest, the grubbier, more commercial side of the city, before Tomas realised they were going the wrong way. He leaned forward to speak to the driver, and as soon as he saw the man's eyes slide shiftily away from his he knew that it wasn't a mistake.
Furious, he reached through the glass partition to grab the driver's neck. The man pushed himself against the left-hand window, swerving the car as he did. The wheels squealed against the tarmac and the car instantly stank of rubber. A second later, the driver had control again.
Tomas tried to twist himself sideways, but his elbow jammed in the narrow space between the glass panes.
"What the hell -" Morgan said.
"It's a trap," Tomas snapped, still groping uselessly for the driver. "This isn't the way to the hotel."
Morgan's eyes widened. He wrenched at the door handle, but of course the driver had locked it. And now they were in an area Tomas did know: derelict warehouses where anyone could do anything and no one would see.
Tomas pulled his arm back from the partition, then smashed his palm forward with all his strength.
The glass shattered and the driver ducked, spinning the car in an uncontrolled arc. But he'd already been braking. A few more feet and they were stationary.
Tomas drove his shoulder against the door beside him. Then again. There was a shriek of metal and the lock gave, spilling Tomas onto the cracked concrete of the pavement.
He rolled to his feet, while Morgan tumbled onto the ground behind him. The night was dark, only a sliver of stars showing between the walls of the buildings surrounding them. He thought he heard motion, but he couldn't see where it was coming from. Then the cab reversed, leaving another thin layer of rubber on the road, and as it swung away the beam of its headlights swept over Tomas.
Caught in the sudden gold brightness, four men stood facing them, faces hidden behind black rolls of cloth. All of them had guns.
CHAPTER THREE
Morgan froze, prone on the warm concrete, as the men stared silently at them. The blunt pieces of metal in their hands were the only statement they needed.
They knew they had Tomas and Morgan outnumbered and outgunned and they weren't expecting any resistance. When Tomas leapt straight towards them, there was a moment's hesitation before their fingers could tighten on their triggers.
Morgan opened his mouth to shout at Tomas to stop, for fuck's sake come back - but it was already too late. The bullet grazed Tomas's arm as he barrelled into the nearest man, tumbling him to the ground and carrying Tomas behind the other three. The sound of the shot echoed very loudly in the silent alley.
Something switched off in Morgan's mind, the rational analytical part of him that was no use in battle. And something more primal switched on. Their assailants had all spun to face Tomas, the immediate threat. They'd eliminated Morgan from their calculations, and he needed to make them regret it.
Keeping himself low and slow-moving, he belly-crawled over the concrete between him and the first of the men, ten yards in front of him. Further back, the one Tomas had knocked down rolled and rose again, fluid as a gymnast. Pros then, Morgan thought, and factored that into his equations.
Tomas was still moving, never still long enough for the bullets to touch him. Morgan saw him wrap both arms around the shoulders of another man and hook an ankle behind his knee. The two of them tumbled to the ground together, but Tomas was on top and at least twenty pounds heavier.
Two more shots ploughed into the pavement inches from where Tomas had just been. In the strobe light of the muzzle flashes, Morgan saw Tomas's hands grasp the neck of the man pinned underneath him. A wrench left and a snap back right and it was broken. The man slumped bonelessly and Tomas released him and rolled away, narrowly avoiding three more bullets.
And as the dead man's comrades watched in shock and disbelief, their attention entirely focused on Tomas, Morgan finally reached them. He grasped the ankles of the nearest and jerked backwards. The man went down too fast to break his fall. His head smashed straight into the pavement and stayed there, a halo of blood spreading around it.
The others heard the muffled gasp and the crack of impact as their companion fell. Instinctively, their heads snapped round to face the new enemy. But they were expecting a standing target. The first sweep of their eyes passed over Morgan's head.
He needed a weapon, anything. A gun. The fallen man's gun, trapped underneath his body. As Morgan strained to roll him over, fingers fumbling beneath his chest, he saw the eyes of one of the others, black behind their mask, slide down to him.
Morgan's hand brushed against the cold metal of the gun just as the other man's weapon swung towards him. Morgan's line of sight led straight up the barrel and he knew the shot would take him right between the eyes. He shut them, not wanting to see it coming.
A second of silence later he flicked them open again, and there was Tomas, arms around the assassin's chest. Morgan saw the fabric of the man's black mask shift as his mouth opened beneath it in a scream that was soundless because Tomas was squeezing all the air out of him.
Tomas's face was pale and impassive, no flush of anger or exertion.
Morgan's fingers finally closed around the gun and he raised it to finish off the man Tomas held imprisoned. His line was true, straight to the assassin's head - until the man beneath him gave one final, unexpected shudder. As Morgan's finger tightened on the trigger, his arm jerked sideways and the bullet he'd meant for his enemy found Tomas's heart instead.
Horrified, Morgan waited for Tomas's body to crumple and fall, for the spurt of blood that was always darker than you imagined. But there was only the smallest stain around the bullet hole in Tomas's t-shirt, black in the moonlight. And Tomas was still standing, his arms squeezing tighter and tighter.
The man he held let out a horrible, gurglin
g gasp as the gore rose up in his throat to spill red and brown through the material of his mask. The hands that had been clawing uselessly at Tomas's arms splayed in a spasm of pain and then slackened for good. And still Tomas kept on squeezing, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he himself was mortally wounded.
"Let him go, man," Morgan gasped. "It's over."
It was. Tomas must have taken down their final attacker while Morgan was grappling with his. Morgan could see the man's body tossed ten feet away, one arm half torn from the socket of his shoulder, and his neck twisted so far round it looked like his head had been put on back to front.
Tomas nodded and let the body in his arms drop. It slumped to the ground and Morgan suddenly smelt the acid of piss. The man must have lost control of his bladder when he knew he was dying.
Then Tomas turned to one side, and Morgan glimpsed the exit wound in his back, as large as a fist. Inside he could see meaty muscle and the white of bone beneath it.
Tomas noticed Morgan staring. His hands drifted up, probing around the lethal hole in his chest.
Except it wasn't lethal, was it? Because Tomas was still standing.
"We need a hospital. I think you're in shock," Morgan said.
Tomas's lashes flicked downwards a moment, as if he was about to pass out, but then he looked back at Morgan and Morgan realised he'd simply been deciding what to say. "I'm absolutely fine."
Morgan laughed in a way that he knew was near hysterical. "You're a long fucking way from being fine."
Tomas glanced down at the man he'd just killed, and Morgan saw a look pass across his face that he couldn't read but didn't like. "You're right," he whispered. When he looked back at Morgan his expression was suddenly savage. "Turn around," he snarled.
Morgan shook his head. "We need to search the bodies. Quick, and then get out of here. Anyone could have heard those shots."
"In a minute." Tomas raised his hands and Morgan saw that they were shaking. "Turn around. Now. And don't look back until I tell you."
Cold Warriors Page 4
