The Twelfth Ring (Noah Larsson Book 1)

by Sam Clarke

  ‘That’s easy, we never talk about you anyway.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Anything to do with you puts her in a foul mood.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Still.’

  He sighed. ‘I see. In any case, when you give your word, it must be done properly.’

  I found his obsession with ancient formalities bizarre, but I raised my right hand and solemnly promised that I would keep his secret. Satisfied with my performance, he reached for the cylindrical leather tube, unscrewed one end and emptied the contents onto the table. ‘This is what I got today,’ he said, putting on a pair of surgical gloves and unrolling a parchment across his desk. ‘I bought it through an intermediary. We had agreed to a price weeks ago and I had already wired the first half of the money, but there was suddenly talk of another buyer willing to pay more. The intermediary backtracked and refused to return my deposit. Nobody likes being double-crossed, so I grabbed the scroll and made a run for it. The rest you more or less know.’

  I put two and two together. ‘Is this the good lead on a sunken ship you mentioned when I first got here?’

  ‘Yes.’ He pulled his desk lamp closer. ‘This map allegedly shows the resting location of the Nuestra Señora de Begoña. Ever heard of it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It was part of Terra Firma fleet which left Cartagena, in current Colombia, in 1605. They were headed for Spain and hurricane season was theoretically over. As the fleet passed the Serranilla Bank, it was struck by a spectacular surprise storm. One ship returned to Cartagena, two kept going and eventually got to Jamaica, but four galleons, carrying a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds, didn’t make it. The remains of the galleons are scattered over a very wide area, but the wreck of the Nuestra Señora hasn’t been located yet. I was hoping to make a play for it…’

  I stretched my neck to get a better view. I was no expert, but the map certainly looked old. It was ragged at the sides and the ink had faded in various points. The parchment depicted an unnamed coastline. An area in the middle of the sea and two unspecified locations along the coast were marked by three separate crosses. A large section of the bottom right hand corner was missing, but the ship’s resting location was clearly marked, therefore I presumed it made little difference. At the very top of the page, in neat handwriting, were the words Nuestra Señora de Begoña.

  ‘Don’t you need a license to salvage sunken ships?’ I asked.

  ‘In a nutshell, yes, but the Serranilla Bank is in international waters. There may be some leeway.’

  The gunshots were still ringing in my ears. ‘Legal leeway?’

  He pushed the lamp away. ‘We’ll worry about technicalities later. First we need to scan the map and run some tests.’

  He returned the scroll to the tube and threw it in my direction. I wasn’t ready to catch it and it fell to the floor with a mighty thud. ‘Give it to Viggo,’ he said. ‘He’ll know what to do. And while you’re at it, apologise to him. When you didn’t return to Super Value, he drove all over town trying to find you.’

  ‘It’s alright. We’re cool.’

  We really were. Viggo had blamed my jitney-escapade on Isabelle’s bad influence and I hadn’t felt the need to tell him otherwise. The sound of the Imperial March suddenly filled the room. I glanced at my father’s phone, curious to find out who had been assigned such an ominous ringtone. I half-expected it to be mum, but wasn’t too surprised to see Knut’s name on the screen. ‘Who is he?’ I asked, while my father rejected the call.

  His jaw twitched. ‘He’s… a client.’

  ‘You don’t seem to like him very much. I hear the Imperial March quite often and you never pick up.’

  He fiddled with a mean-looking military knife that he kept in his pencil holder and avoided eye-contact. ‘Don’t keep Viggo waiting.’

  I picked up the tube and made for the door. As I closed it behind me, the Imperial March resonated in the background.

  #

  I found Viggo in the lab, slurping the leftovers of a graduated beaker with a suspicious look on his face. ‘Miguel’s mint tea tastes a hell of a lot like mojito. No wonder he and Magnus spent so much time in the lab last night!’ I handed him the tube. He ditched the beaker and lit up like a supernova. ‘The map?’

  I nodded. ‘My father says you’ll know what to do.’

  He unrolled the scroll, placed it on the glass plate of a nearby high-tech scanner and altered some parameters. The machine produced a concert of angry beeps. ‘I’m changing the settings to get the best possible picture without damaging the scroll,’ he explained. ‘With the right equipment, you can scan pretty much anything these days: vellum, paper, papyrus, even your own face. The plate gets quite hot so it’s kind of uncomfortable, but the result is great. Like a prehistoric selfie.’ He elbowed me. ‘You should try it.’

  I chuckled. ‘Yeah, right. And then you’ll plaster my prehistoric selfie all over the web.’

  ‘C’mon, I’d never do that. I’ll send the image directly to your inbox. If you don’t want it to see the light of day, hit the delete button.’ He removed the map from the plate and gave me a mischievous grin. ‘How about we do it together? It could be a dude-bonding exercise. I trust you with my stupidity and you trust me with yours.’

  I don’t know why, but I wholeheartedly embraced his idiotic proposal. The next few minutes were a blur of blinding lights, throbbing cheeks and hysterical laughter. I had never had so much fun with a scanner. When our faces could no longer take it, we returned the scroll to the plate and sent the image to a nearby computer. Viggo opened a program called MappaMundi. ‘This software will compare our map to existing ones, new and old,’ he said. ‘It should help us identify the area of the modern world the scroll refers to.’

  ‘Should?’

  ‘It doesn’t always work, in particular with maps like these.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing, but it’s too basic to have been done by a cartographer. There are no obvious markers. Mappamundi will struggle.’

  He returned the map to the tube, walked to a messy counter covered in ampoules and beakers and placed his finger in a dirty petri dish. I thought he would sample more of Miguel’s concoctions, but the glass colour changed to light blue and a sensor read his fingerprint. A secret door at knee height clicked open. Viggo bent down, inserted the tube in the secret compartment and gently shut it. His phone vibrated against the counter – Hope had sent him a barrage of emojis. ‘It looks important,’ he said with a straight face. ‘Catch you later?’

  I could tell when I wasn’t wanted, but I was too excited to be offended. Secret compartments? Mysterious maps? 007 petri dishes? All in all, this had been the coolest day of my life.

  CHAPTER 7

  I was completely deflated. Viggo’s predictions had come true – MappaMundi had hit a dead-end. I glanced at the full moon outside my porthole and sighed. The internet connection had become slower than a creep of tortoises and I was wasting my youth uploading pictures on my Instagram page. Pixel by pixel. I yawned and considered calling it a night. It was so hot, I hadn’t bothered to shut the door. Suddenly, Viggo darted across the corridor. And back again. A wet toothbrush was sticking out of his back pocket and a strange phone, much chunkier than a standard smartphone, was pressed to his ear. ‘Hey, what’s up?’ I called.

  ‘Noah, where’s your father?’ he asked urgently, wiping some barely dry toothpaste from the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Last I saw him he was off to the lab to have “tea” with Miguel. But it was a while ago.’

  He pointed to the phone and whispered, ‘Knut.’

  Isabelle emerged from her cabin. I had been giving her the cold shoulder since she had back-stabbed me in the car, but she was still half-way through her magazine and I wasn’t sure she had noticed. She offered to check the lab and rushed downstairs.

  This Knut was really beginning to get on my nerves. I couldn’t understand how someone could generate so m
uch panic with a single phone call. I heard his voice bark something through the receiver. Viggo clapped a hand to his forehead and mouthed a curse. ‘Yes, sir, that’s what I said,’ he replied. ‘Noah is… um… he’s here too.’

  I frowned. How on earth did Knut know my name? Flip-flops echoed across the floor. Isabelle had returned with my father. He was rushed, but not panicked. Viggo handed him the fat phone. ‘He knows about Noah,’ he whispered.

  My father’s expression darkened. ‘How?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ replied Viggo, visibly upset, ‘I let it slip.’

  They exchanged apprehensive glances. My father slapped him on the back a couple of times, as if to cheer him up, and vanished into the nearest cabin. I resented their silent conversations, in particular when they were about me, but most of all I resented the deep bond that they seemed to share. We retreated to the lounge with the enthusiasm of a defeated army. I still didn’t know why we were so upset. Viggo plonked himself on the corner sofa. ‘I’m such an idiot!’ he said. ‘Knut wasn’t supposed to know about Noah yet.’

  My frustration got the best of me. ‘Why not? What’s it to him whether I’m on Valhalla or not? And who the hell is this Knut anyway?’

  Two pairs of astonished eyeballs focused on me, as if I had arrived from Saturn in a Fiat Cinquecento. Viggo produced an incredulous half-smile, Isabelle blatantly laughed in my face. I went as sour as a lemon. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re having such a good time at my expense. Ha, ha so funny. So, who is he?’

  If Isabelle laughed any harder, she would be recorded on the Richter scale. Viggo chuckled softly. ‘Dude, unless you bumped your head in the last twelve hours, you need a serious memory upgrade. Last I checked, he was your grandfather.’

  I stared back blankly. Viggo waited for me to laugh along, but I just swallowed a mixture of saliva and humiliation. My mother had always refused to disclose my grandfather’s name in fear that I might track him down. I honestly wasn’t planning to, in particular considering the amount of effort that he had put into missing my entire existence, but my assurances hadn’t swayed her. I felt a surge of anger towards my father. He had had a golden opportunity to tell me who Knut really was and had fed me the client-story instead. Isabelle’s teasing brought me back to the room. ‘Your pallor is finally explained, you spent the last fifteen years living under a rock! Have you truly never heard of Knut Larsson?’

  I shrugged. The name meant nothing to me.

  She cocked her head in surprise. ‘You haven’t? Really? How about Alvastra Corporation?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of Alvastra,’ I said. ‘It’s a huge business conglomerate famous for its business ethics. What’s your point?’

  She and Viggo exchanged puzzled glances. ‘Oh – my – God!’ she shrieked, simultaneously shocked and excited. ‘You seriously don’t know who your grandfather is?’

  I looked away in embarrassment. ‘We’ve never met.’

  Her curiosity was unleashed – my utter mortification wouldn’t stand in her way. ‘Why not?’

  I bit my lip. ‘It was his choice. When my parents divorced, he cut me out of his life.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, more angrily than I had intended. ‘Not everyone’s got a perfect family.’

  This time she stopped laughing and Viggo suddenly found something of interest at the bottom of his glass of water. ‘Dude, I had no idea things were that bad,’ he said, when he found the nerve to look up. ‘All Magnus said was to keep you secret from Knut for the time being. He never offered an explanation and, well… I never asked.’

  An awkward silence followed. Their baffled stares unsettled me. Even Isabelle seemed to feel genuinely sorry for me, which said it all. This was too much, I was an outcast within my own family and I didn’t even know why! It was hard enough to accept it when it was just me and mum, but having to admit it in front of other people was downright humiliating. I made for the door. Isabelle tried to grab my arm, but I shook her off.

  ‘Let him go,’ said Viggo from behind. ‘He needs to blow off some steam.’

  To add insult to injury, I was on a ship, I had nowhere to run. I came across the Krav Maga training area. I kicked and hit the punch bag so hard that my knuckles bled. I’m not sure how long I was there for, but a furtive noise got my attention. I rotated on the balls of my feet. It was pitch black, apart from… the glare of a tablet, opened on a Wikipedia page.

  Knut Eskil Larsson (Stockholm, 1952) is a Swedish business magnate and philanthropist. The Larssons are a prominent family noted for a variety of accomplishments in the financial world. Despite being the head of one of Sweden’s oldest families and enjoying global recognition, Knut Larsson is notably an extremely private individual.

  Knut Larsson has been the Chairman and CEO of Alvastra Corporation for over twenty-seven years. Privately owned Alvastra consists of more than 350 subsidiaries and prides itself on its ethical investments.

  I read Knut’s estimated net worth and nearly fell off my chair. I scrolled through his academic history, outstanding achievements and list of awards he had received so far. It was certainly remarkable, but also quite boring. I examined the black-and-white photo of my grandfather in a smart suit, sitting at a shiny desk. He could have been anyone. I felt absolutely nothing for him. I shut the tablet and surrendered to self-pity. Having to use the internet to find out about one’s family is pretty sad. It wasn’t the first time either. I had googled my father in the past, but his relatively common name (at least by Swedish standards) had made it impossible to narrow down which entries were actually about him. I had come across his website purely by luck and recognised his picture. All I knew about him could fit on a single-sided sheet of paper: he had enjoyed a trouble-free childhood in his native Stockholm. At thirteen, shortly after the death of his mother, he had been sent to a British boarding school to complete his secondary education. After accepting a coveted place at Cambridge University, he had spent the subsequent five years accumulating two degrees, archaeology and marine biology. He had continued his studies at Harvard where, aged twenty-three, he and my mother had crossed paths. Cupid must have been shooting arrows with his eyes closed because, somehow, they fell in love and were married less than a year later. Unfortunately, other than myself, their union only produced grief. What hurt the most was that he had never opposed her request for full custody and had pretty much cut all ties with me. And, even though I couldn’t fathom why, so had the rest of his family. At least, unlike Knut, he was trying to make amends. The more I thought about Knut, the tighter the knot at the pit of my stomach. Why was he so dead set against me? Could he somehow have forced my father to keep away from me all this time? Whatever my grandfather’s problem, I had to know what it was. And there was only one person who could tell me. Before hesitation had a chance to kick in, I grabbed the I-pad and strode towards the stern, climbing the steps to the quarterdeck two at a time. The light in my father’s cabin was on. I stormed in without knocking, but my grand entrance was ill-timed: dad was nowhere in sight. Viggo – the only person on Valhalla allowed in his cabin unsupervised – was rummaging through his desk and cursing away in Swedish. He looked up and sighed. ‘He lost his driving license. Again. Third time this week.’

  ‘I’ll help you find it,’ I said, taking a step closer. On top of a pile of sheets, partially covered by a book on mythological sea serpents, was the picture of an ancient ring. Could it be the twelfth ring that my father and Miguel had referred to when I had accidentally spied on them? Before I could take a better look, Viggo dumped another book on top of the image and put his arm up, as if I was en evil spirit he was trying to ward off. ‘Sorry dude, I can’t let you near his desk.’

  Something stirred within me: jealousy. I hated feeling resentful towards Viggo because he was such a nice guy, but I couldn’t help it. I should be the one with full-access to my father’s life. Not him. I buried my hands in my pockets and pretended not to care. ‘Where is he anyway?’ I
asked.

  ‘Downtown.’

  ‘Without driving license?’

  ‘The girl he’s having drinks with must be worth the fine,’ he said, with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. ‘She’s only in town for one night. A hostess. Fiona or something.’

  Great, I desperately needed to make sense of my life and he had gone on a casual date with a hostess he barely knew. His priorities spoke volumes. ‘Did he say when he’ll be back?’

  The grin got wider. ‘I wouldn’t wait up. Is there anything I can help you with?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, handing him his I-pad. ‘But thanks for leaving Knut’s bio, it was a nice gesture.’

  He pointed to the small butterfly sticker on the tablet’s protective cover. ‘It wasn’t me, dude. That’s Isabelle’s.’ He paused. ‘It’s unusual for her to be so nice.’

  I studied the butterfly. ‘Should I be flattered?’

  He chuckled. ‘You should be scared.’

  CHAPTER 8

  I kept my eyes shut, shifted position, got rid of the sheets and put them back on – sleep avoided me like a good-looking girl. The sun rose out of the waves, but the amazing sight did nothing to cheer me up. A heavy knock on the door startled me. I checked the clock, 5:25am. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone, let alone that early and in my old Scooby Doo pyjamas. ‘Police, open up,’ commanded a voice from outside.

  I kicked my legs over the side of the bed and twisted the door knob with my now sweaty palms. A golden badge of the Nassau County Police Department was shoved in my face. I barely registered the insignia, too busy picturing the rough interior of the Bahamian prison where I would spend the rest of my holiday for fleeing a crime scene. The policeman, a scrawny young man with nicotine stained teeth, promptly identified himself. ‘Detective Thompson, NCPD. Step outside please, sir.’ I did as I was told. He scanned the inside of my cabin. ‘Anyone else in here?’