The Twelfth Ring (Noah Larsson Book 1)

by Sam Clarke

  ‘Magnus Larsson, what an honour!’ said the voice.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked my father, betraying no fear.

  ‘My name is irrelevant—’

  ‘Irrelevant? I take it your mother didn’t like you.’

  ‘Very funny, Mr Larsson,’ said Irrelevant, without sounding particularly amused. ‘First things first, get the rest of your team to come out.’

  ‘It’s just the two of us.’

  ‘Drop the act. We’ve been watching you very carefully. Five of you entered this church, three are missing.’

  ‘You should have paid more attention, the others left early via the side door in Via Minerva.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Do you really think I’d be breaking and entering a cathedral with such an incompetent crew?’

  Irrelevant seemed to weigh his reply. He obviously didn’t hold us in high regard either. ‘Where’s the ring?’ he barked.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ replied my father.

  ‘Don’t play dumb. Your replacement led us here, but he wasn’t able to find the ring either. If you sneaked in after closing time, there must be a reason.’

  ‘Replacement?’

  ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet? You were the original target of the Licata break-in. My boss thinks very highly of you, Mr Larsson. He was sure you would be able to decode the letter and guide him to the ring’s location. In your absence, we had to do with Mr Santiago de Castillo who, I may add, proved just as worthy. Threatening to harm his daughter was the tipping point. Pavel, bring him out.’

  The door to the priest’s house squeaked open. Despite my mounting curiosity, I didn’t dare stick out a millimetre further. ‘I’m sorry I led them here,’ said Miguel’s voice. ‘They threatened to harm Isabelle. I didn’t know whether they had her or not, but I couldn’t risk calling their bluff.’

  ‘They played you,’ said my father. ‘She’s been with me all along. She was never in any danger.’

  The last sentence was definitely debatable. Upon hearing her father’s voice, Isabelle frantically scrambled in his direction. I wrapped my arms around her just in time. I had often pictured myself hugging a girl this tight, but in my version of the events she wasn’t trying to run away from me. Judging by her laboured breathing, a panic attack was imminent. I hoped my next close encounter with a girl would be less dramatic. I pulled her back and gently steered her towards Viggo who had worked his magic on the lock: the double-doors stood open. Irrelevant’s voice boomed across the church. ‘Where is the ring?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied my father. Ironically, he wasn’t lying.

  ‘You obviously need some leverage,’ hissed Irrelevant. ‘Have a look at your associate’s chest and let me ask you again: where is the ring?’

  This time I had to peek. A red dot was shining on Ariel’s chest. ‘He must be a bad shooter if he needs mechanical help at such close range,’ droned my tutor.

  ‘You won’t be so smug when you’re dead. If you don’t give me the ring, I’ll—’

  All hell broke loose: Ariel had reached for the Glock, but his swift movement hadn’t escaped his opponents who immediately opened fire. My father dived for cover behind a column, Ariel fell to the floor. Despite being hit he kept on shooting. He shouted to my father to get the hell out. I raced towards Viggo. He grabbed his backpack and pushed a lion-clutching Isabelle through the double doors. We closed them behind us, pushed a heavy desk against them to block access and sprinted along foreign corridors. The passage we were running along had doors at either side, we tried every single one – none of them budged. The episcopal offices were closed for the night, their secrets safely locked away. We came across a set of French doors overlooking a large, well-tended, internal garden. ‘Through here,’ said Viggo.

  The opening mechanism was the same as any standard window, no locks. I pulled Isabelle behind me. ‘We have to go back for my dad, we have to go back for my dad,’ she repeated on a loop.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I urged, ‘someone may hear us.’

  We crossed the internal garden and reached another set of French doors. Viggo smashed the glass with his elbow, inserted his hand in the opening and reached for the handle. ‘This is the seminary,’ he said. ‘According to the blueprints, we can go through here and come out in Via della Conciliazione. Then we’ll… we’ll make a plan.’

  ‘He doesn’t even have a plan,’ said Isabelle, between loud sobs. Her wails wouldn’t have gone unnoticed in a busy square, let alone in a silent seminary in the middle of the night.

  Viggo grabbed my arm. ‘Forget anything I said before, this is an emergency, do what you’ve got to do.’

  I frowned, confused. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘You’ve got to calm her down and shut her up, dude! Kiss her or something.’

  His bizarre suggestion should have come earlier. The prospect of locking lips with me immediately silenced Isabelle. I was pretty relieved. Call me old fashioned, but kissing my fake girlfriend inside a seminary just to keep her quiet wasn’t my idea of romance. From what I knew of Viggo’s dating habits, he may have thought differently. The seminary’s lack of security provided a near-welcoming feeling. We took refuge in the first accessible room. ‘Before we leave, we should get back into normal clothes,’ said Viggo. ‘We’ll be less conspicuous.’ He stripped down to his boxers and rummaged through the backpack. ‘Damn it!’

  I really couldn’t take much more. ‘What now?’

  ‘This is Ariel’s backpack, Isabelle has a change of clothes, but we don’t.’

  ‘What happened to Ariel’s clothes?’ I asked bewildered.

  ‘Don’t know, they’re not here.’

  ‘They may be on the pulpit’s floor,’ said Isabelle sheepishly. ‘I didn’t want mine to get creased.’

  Viggo clasped his hands to his face. When he emerged he shone his torch around the room. We were in the seminary’s laundry, a bunch of freshly pressed cassocks hung neatly from a clothes rail.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said, taking the cassock he was handing me.

  ‘Dude, it’s the perfect disguise, they’re not looking for a pair of priests. C’mon Princess, get changed, we must get going.’

  ‘Turn around,’ she said haughtily, dumping the lion on an ironing board.

  We complied. For the first time, she was ready before us. Putting on a cassock is harder than it looks. Maybe they made it hard on purpose. Getting into that thing every morning must require the patience of a saint. It took me forever to do up the thirty-three buttons that ran down along the front. Judging by the variety of Swedish imprecations, Viggo wasn’t faring much better. ‘I’m done,’ he eventually announced.

  The sight of Viggo in a priest’s robe was too much for Isabelle. She had to lean against the wall for support. She didn’t give me, or my cassock, a second look. Or a first for that matter. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Viggo.

  I reached for the lion on the ironing board. ‘Wait!’

  ‘We must ditch it, dude. It would place us at a crime scene.’

  The screwdriver was still lodged where my father had inserted it. ‘The lion’s hollow,’ I said. ‘The screwdriver must be holding onto something.’

  Viggo stepped closer. I wrapped my hand around the screwdriver and jiggled it around. ‘Can you feel anything?’ asked Isabelle.

  ‘It’s weird,’ I replied, ‘like stirring… crystallised honey.’

  I removed the screwdriver – its tip was covered in sticky residue. Viggo rubbed it between his fingers. ‘Not honey. Wax.’

  Isabelle frowned. ‘Why would anyone fill a bronze cast with wax?’

  I scratched my head. ‘To make something stick?’

  And then it hit me – maybe Godefroi had used wax to secure the ring inside the lion’s head! I re-inserted the screwdriver and subjected the poor animal to a full lobotomy. Waxy curls rained down on my cassock. I kept going and eventually scraped against something har
d. Undiluted adrenaline surged through my veins. A few not-so-gentle digs later, an object rolled out and landed at my feet. I collected it with quivering hands: a large silver ring, tarnished after centuries of neglect. Its round emblem was engraved with a Templar cross. The curved inscription underneath it read “MCXIX.” The emblem rested on the hilts of two identical swords, their blades joined together to form the ring’s band. I ran my fingers over it, completely mesmerised.

  ‘Oh my God!’ squealed Isabelle. ‘The twelfth ring! You found it! Can I try it on?’

  Whether Cartier, medieval jewel or pure piece of junk, she couldn’t resist shiny trinkets. In a past life she must have been a magpie. Viggo clasped my shoulder. ‘That’s awesome, dude! Now we’d better make a move. I think I heard voices.’

  CHAPTER 38

  We sneaked out of the seminary and reached a nearby piazza. Police sirens blaring in the distance forced me to deal with the enormity of our situation. We may have got the ring, but at what cost? My stomach was tied into a quadruple knot and I was physically sick by the side of a magnificent fountain. Viggo patted me on the back. ‘It’s OK, dude. It’s a lot to take in. At least we have the ring.’

  I splashed water over my face and looked up. ‘Who cares? Ariel’s been shot! I saw him fall to the floor, I saw blood on the floor!’

  Images of my father scrambling for safety flashed through my brain. I sniffed, my eyes were teary from being sick and my throat was on fire. ‘Do you think my dad’s OK?’ I asked. ‘He must have made it out, right?’

  Viggo sat on the edge of the fountain, his back to the water, and dived into his hands. His body language didn’t exactly fill me with hope. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know,’ came the muffled reply.

  ‘You’re useless!’ screamed Isabelle, her face a waterfall of tears. She wiped her nose on her forearm. ‘You don’t know anything! You don’t even have a plan! We’re doomed, we’re so doomed!’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, shut the hell up!’ he yelled. ‘I do have a plan, but you won’t like it one bit!’

  ‘What did you just say?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to shout.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she replied, with a stupid smile on her face. In spite of the circumstances, she had just hit the stratosphere. He had called her “woman” for the very first time. I was much more worried about the rest of his sentence.

  He had placed Ariel’s backpack on his lap and was busy rummaging through it. ‘Car keys, Glock, some cash, hotel keys… ah, here’s the phone.’

  ‘What’s this plan we won’t like one bit?’ I asked him.

  He rubbed his eyebrow, as if he wanted to obliterate it from his face. ‘My instructions are to keep you safe, and I cannot do it effectively on my own.’ He grimaced. ‘Dude, I really wish there was another way, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  He sighed. ‘I need to phone Knut. He’ll know what to do.’

  I gulped. ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘I have to. Yuri’s gang will stop at nothing to get the ring. If they pick up our scent, we’re dead meat.’

  My chest tightened. Kostas’s worst fears had come true. My father’s plan had blown up in his face. ‘If you get Knut involved, I’ll never see my father again, whether he made it out of the cathedral or not. Knut never wanted me around in the first place, he’ll use this whole mess as an excuse to ship me back to London. Why are we even wasting time talking about this? We should be looking for my father.’

  ‘We’re not going back, it’s too dangerous,’ he said firmly.

  ‘There must be something we can do.’

  He shook his head. ‘My hands are tied. I know this won’t make any sense to you, but there are rules I must obey, protocols I need to follow. Magnus wants you safe, dude, he’s the one who said to escalate to Knut if things got out of control. I’m sorry.’

  I stepped away from the fountain to reassess my situation. I had no intention of surrendering to Knut without knowing what had happened to my father first. It didn’t feel right. Jörmungand aside, we had only just connected and I wasn’t going to give up on him so easily. With a determination I didn’t know I had, I rotated on the balls of my feet, homed in on Viggo on the edge of the fountain and charged like a bull down the streets of Pamplona. I launched myself through the air and pushed him into the fountain. It was like watching a scene in slow motion – his mouth fell open in surprise and his eyes searched mine for an explanation that never came. We hit the shallow water and I buried him under a deluge of Krav Maga hits that he easily deflected. I kept going, rather than a Krav Maga fighter, I looked like a professional water splasher.

  ‘What was that for?’ he asked bewildered, pinning both arms to my sides in spite of his injured bicep. I didn’t answer and tried to unpin my arms instead. He caught me glancing at the backpack perched on the side of the fountain and saw through my plan. He let go of me and began scouting the shallow water. The sat-phone was squashed under my foot, where it had been for the last few minutes. No Iridium, no Knut.

  ‘Princess, is the phone there?’ he asked, mildly panicked.

  ‘No, it was in your hand when Noah… attacked you?’

  ‘Is everything OK, Father?’

  The question came from a fat, uniformed policeman. He was standing on the edge of the fountain, arms resting over his large belly.

  ‘Um… yes, thank you,’ replied Viggo nervously.

  ‘Mind telling me what’s going on?’ asked the policemen.

  ‘I… was showing my student an ancient baptismal rite.’

  ‘This a public fountain, Father, not the river Jordan.’

  ‘Of course, how inconsiderate of me.’

  The policeman sighed. ‘Bathing in public fountains is forbidden. I should fine you, but if my mother finds out that I issued a fine to a priest, I might as well go straight to hell. Get out of the fountain, will you?’

  Viggo climbed out.

  ‘Father,’ continued the policeman, ‘if I let you off, you wouldn’t mind saying a few prayers for me, would you? I’ve been playing the lottery a while now…’

  ‘Sure,’ mumbled Viggo, wringing water out of his cassock.

  ‘Everyone calls me Beppe, but I was christened Giuseppe. Better stick to the official name in your conversations with God, right?’

  ‘Giuseppe it is. Now get the hell out of… I mean… go forth and multiply.’

  ‘But I’m not married, Father.’

  ‘Then multiply when you do.’ He brazenly blessed the policeman and sent him on his way. With Giuseppe gone, Viggo strode to the edge of the fountain and demanded the Iridium. I didn’t put up a fight, the phone’s circuits were completely fried. ‘Dead,’ I said, with the same sympathy my mother displayed when she addressed relatives of deceased patients.

  ‘Dude, how could you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, you left me no choice.’ He gave me a frosty stare. I got out of the fountain. ‘My father is a resourceful guy, you know he is, for all we know he may have followed the Russians and managed to free Miguel. Why don’t we give him twenty-four hours to make contact before rushing into something we may regret? What if he shows up two hours from now and you’ve already dragged Knut into the equation?’

  ‘Do you really think he may have freed my father?’ asked Isabelle hopefully.

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied.

  ‘He’s leading you on, Princess. This is about him, not us.’

  Unexpectedly, she sided with me. ‘But he has a point, Magnus is very resourceful. Maybe we could wait a bit…’

  I could have hugged her, but my priority was to fix things with Viggo. ‘We’ll keep a super-low profile and check the news in the morning. If my father is… dead or if he doesn’t make contact by this time tomorrow, I’ll walk into a police station and contact Knut myself. That’s a promise.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ he said, still giving me the arctic treatment, ‘but you will do as I say, when I say i
t. And there is one more non-negotiable condition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Magnus had a plan B in case I couldn’t get hold of Knut. We’re going to execute it.’

  CHAPTER 39

  The hotel was likely to be watched. With no credit cards and no documents, our chances of finding a secure place for the night were grim. We stepped into a deserted internet café. Absolving the owner from a number of sins in exchange for free computer time wasn’t one of our best moments, but beggars can’t be choosers and the mysterious Plan B we had agreed to couldn’t be kick-started without Google Maps. Viggo sat in front of a monitor and looked up the distance between Syracuse and Palermo, another Sicilian city. ‘The main objective of Plan B—’

  ‘Viggo? I can’t believe it!’

  I couldn’t believe it either, of all people Ursula had walked in from the street. What the hell was she doing in Ortigia? She was a bit unsteady on her towering heels and I suspected she had visited a variety of local bars before spotting us from the window. Viggo stood up, unsure how to justify his untimely departure from her bedroom. If Ursula’s eyes got any wider, they would have picked up a satellite signal. ‘Oh – my – God! Are you a priest? I knew there had to be a reason for your sudden disappearance in Licata! Wait ‘til I tell Helga, she left for Hamburg yesterday.’

  Viggo’s outstanding improvisation abilities came to his aid. In my opinion, he should abandon university altogether and join a theatre company. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said to Ursula, with the best puppy eyes I had ever seen. ‘I never meant to lie to you. When our paths crossed, I was in the midst of a mystical crisis. I’ve only just taken my vows and meeting you made me question my choices even more…’