The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2)

by Anna Richland

  “What I always say. If we ever want to beat the Germans, we need a striker.”

  Just like Big Frank and his friends.

  * * *

  So far, so good. Ten thirty-five, and the coat check ticket was tucked in Stig’s pocket. Christina was across the room reading the English-language tourist brochure, no different in her new raincoat than any other sightseer. Last night he’d worried that the storm would translate to no visitors, making their diversion harder, but this morning the rain had lessened enough that a good dozen other people had braved the elements to see Aachen’s religious treasures.

  Neither gold nor jewels distracted him. All he wanted was a big splash in the same room as Charlemagne’s arm reliquary, big enough to be reported in the media, hopefully exaggerated by eyewitnesses.

  Christina held the brochure in front of her face, reading while she wove a path between the cases, seemingly as oblivious as a person crossing a street while texting. Good. She bumped into a college-age man who was also reading a brochure and snapped at him loudly. He apologized.

  She wouldn’t have any of it. “Hey! You tried to grab my purse!” She vibrated with outrage, one hand holding her bag across her body and the other shaking the tourist pamphlet at his chest.

  A young family nearby edged away, and an older woman stared, lips in a tight line.

  “Please, I don’t understand—” the man began.

  Stig crouched and pulled three different length matches out of his sock while pretending to tie his shoe.

  “You think tourists are easy marks, don’t you?” Christina yelled in the poor bloke’s face, following as he backed away.

  None of the people in the room were watching him as Stig spaced three rolls of flash paper, each with a different length wooden matchstick wedged into a slot, along the baseboard. Using sandpaper taped to the sole of his shoe, he struck a fourth match. The cheery flame ignited each phosphorous tip.

  He dropped Luc’s small screwdriver out of his sleeve and, at the moment he started counting one, jammed the tool into the electric socket. The jolt shocked the air out of his lungs harder than a horse’s kick in his chest, but it did the trick. The lights flickered off at the same time Christina yelled, “Hey!”

  He skipped to three because he suspected he’d lost a second recovering from the zap to his heart. He stood.

  On four, the alarm sounded. People’s calm murmurs about the dark became elevated voices of concern.

  Five. He was already three paces from the socket.

  There was a single bright flash, nothing else, and Christina screamed fire.

  “Where? Where?” No one smelled smoke, of course. Flash paper was quite safe, despite its theatrics.

  “Over there! Fire!” The second flame popped as Christina pointed toward the vitrine nearest where he’d stood a moment ago. The effect had the instant dazzle of a magician’s trick, because that was all flash paper was. More people repeated her call of fire. They pointed in several directions but scurried in one: the exit.

  He headed deliberately across the room on a tangent that would intersect the arm reliquary case.

  The third flash started them running like a herd of loud, afraid bovines.

  He ran too, calling in French, “We have to get out! It’s a fire!”

  The giant golden arm faced him, the giant hand raised like a crossing guard signaling him to halt, but he disobeyed and ran straight into the case. The box was built to be immovable. It shuddered from the weight of an adult male but stayed upright. The contact alarms were on a separate power circuit, exactly as he’d hoped. Their shrieks added to the chaos.

  Goals achieved, he followed the guard’s orders and left the room behind Christina and the other visitors. With no smoke and no further signs of fire, the guards were trying to settle the crowd and announce the building’s closure. Most visitors queued in an orderly fashion at the coat room. Only the young man who Christina had yelled at stood off warily.

  Five people in front of Stig, Christina gathered her coat and umbrella. She cleared the door and left without being stopped or questioned.

  He exchanged his claim ticket for the shopping bag Locke had checked earlier, knowing that any watchers would have seen him enter the museum empty-handed and leave with a wrapped item sticking out of a canvas tote. On a rainy March day, people could have been forgiven for wondering why a man left a brolly in paper instead of using it. They would have wondered more if they’d known the cylindrical parcel was a beef femur, boiled at Luc’s, then dyed with tea and turmeric to give it an aged yellow-brown patina.

  Two red fire trucks pulled to a stop on Johannes-Paul-II Strasse as he emerged from the gothically pointed arch of the Cathedral Treasury.

  Christina and her pink-and-black polka-dotted brolly had crossed the street and hustled left toward Locke’s parked car.

  He turned right without crossing, planning to meet the others in the car on the far side of the historic Rathaus.

  A large black sedan drove slowly toward him. The speed would have been appropriate for looking at the firefighters in their black-and-yellow feuerwehr jackets, but not for a driver focused on the empty road. Stig felt the neck prickle that all good thieves know, the one that said time to go, even if no one was home and the alarm seemed to be off.

  He glanced over his shoulder as the car pulled even with Christina.

  The rear passenger door opened and a man in a suit stepped out.

  * * *

  Christina’s umbrella bumped someone or something, a hazard of being short and carrying the pole resting on her shoulder in a country filled with tall Teutonic types. “Sorry.” She raised the umbrella and looked behind to repeat the apology.

  A man stood far too close to her left shoulder. “Glad to meet you, Christina.”

  He knew her name.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but he placed one thick finger over her lips, pressing hard enough that her chin jammed into her throat and her breath bottled in her chest.

  “If you move or shout, I will shoot you. I don’t care about the mess.”

  Looking into the empty blue eyes, so devoid of laugh lines or character wrinkles that they could be a computer simulation, she believed his threat.

  “Get in the car.”

  Last week she would have stated that most people were basically good, but also that if she was in trouble, she was a fighter, not a quitter. Looking into this man’s eyes, feeling the unmistakable poke of a pistol in her side, she knew there wasn’t a shred of good in him and she’d be bleeding out on the pavement if she didn’t do as he said.

  This man made Skafe look like a rainbow unicorn.

  * * *

  Stig saw the man push aside Christina’s brolly, but he couldn’t see the man’s hands, so he ran toward her.

  Two firemen blocked the sidewalk. He dropped the bag and darted into the street, crossing diagonally, fists pumping.

  Then the man turned to the open door of the vehicle.

  Stig recognized him. Leif. Unferth’s craziest enforcer had Christina.

  * * *

  Europeans claimed the United States was gun-crazy, but Christina had never had a firearm pointed at her in California. She’d lost track of how many weapons she’d encountered over the last three days. Gun or no gun, she couldn’t get in that car. “Hel—”

  The man wrapped his palm around her chin, dug his thumb into one hinge of her jaw and his first finger into the other, and squeezed until the final p of her cry sounded like nothing more than blowing a bubble. Pain drilled through her face and she wondered if the pressure would pop her jaw off the rest of her head.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  The web of pain radiated out to cover her entire skull. She stumbled with the agony, and the leather car interior rushed up to meet her nose and fore
head. She used the momentum to keep going, straight across the seat to the silver door handle on the far side. Right there at nose level, she clutched it and yanked, and the door started to swing out while she kicked and writhed on her stomach to cross the interior.

  Stupid her, she’d zipped and buttoned her coat. The man had a fistful of the back, and she couldn’t pull free of the sleeves. He jerked so hard the fabric pulled her across the seat by her armpits and the zipper-tab gouged her larynx, but she didn’t stop flailing her arms because this was a fight she had to win.

  The car shot forward. Her captor’s grip slackened for a moment and she yanked free, turning to the door, but he had her leg and all she could do was try to be seen through the rear window, screaming, waving.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Stig saw the other Viking lay his meat-hooks on Christina’s face and shove her in the car, he had a new candidate for Ivar’s mortality treatment.

  He chased Leif’s taillights down the center of the street as the car followed the curve of the road away from the treasury. Brakes squealed behind him, but giving up this crazy run would be like giving up on Christina.

  He saw her. She was struggling with Leif and her head turned— No, she wasn’t fighting, Leif had forced her to stare out the back. Her mouth was open and his heart heard a scream even over the honks of cars around him, but they were pulling away from him.

  Paper flew out the driver’s window. Fluttered.

  He changed direction to get to that paper before it was torn under wheels. The white scrap went up, then down, in the turbulence of a passing tire, but he didn’t lose it.

  Another honk. He must have swerved into a car’s path, but the only thing that mattered was that note. Because he knew it was a note. Taking Christina was about him, after all, not about her. Unferth didn’t want an American wine merchant. He wanted Grendel’s arm.

  * * *

  “Stig!” His name burst from Christina’s lips. She wasn’t going to disappear without a trace.

  Her hope faltered as her captor yanked her back to the seat. “Enough.”

  He smiled, showing yellowed teeth and canines so pointed they might have been filed. “Did he see?”

  “Yeah.” The driver raised his window. “He’s chasing the paper.”

  She was bait. He’d allowed her to press her face the back window for the sole purpose of showing her to Stig.

  “Head for Antwerp.”

  * * *

  The paper was white and lined with a jagged left edge where it had been ripped from a notebook, but Stig didn’t care about the forensic analysis. Just the mobile number.

  Chest heaving, he looked up to find Locke’s sedan alongside, with Luc in the back.

  His entire life had changed in the space of six blocks, but the car offered a second chance. He jumped in the passenger side and slammed the door.

  “Go!” His hand shook as he pointed forward. “Black four-door. Maybe we can spot it on the ring road around Aachen.”

  “Saw it pass me.” Locke squealed into the red light at the intersection. “Right or left?”

  “Try right. Easier turn, easier getaway.” He wanted to bury his face in his arms and sob at his hubris for playing games with other Vikings. His old crewmates weren’t silly insurance detectives, but he’d convinced himself this was only another game, like his wine game or his confidence schemes.

  Please don’t let this mistake turn deadly.

  “And I thought retirement would be slow.” Locke guided the car through traffic fast enough to pass other cars while each of them scanned intersections for black sedans. “Where do you think they’re headed?”

  “Don’t know. But they want me. Or at least what they think I stole.” Stig clutched the scrap of paper. “I need to ring people.”

  Locke reached into his coat pocket and handed Stig a simple black phone. “Never used. I have four more.”

  From memory, he dialed the number Ivar had given him on a card at the pub.

  The Viking leader answered with a flat “Yes,” no other greeting.

  “I need help,” Stig said.

  “Media reports say you managed already. Without damage.”

  “Easy, but the oarman from the second bench took the brunette.” He wouldn’t use names on an unsecure line, not even a virgin one, because Ivar must be bugged.

  Ivar wasted time for one profanity. “I’m too far away right now, but my brother can be anywhere you want in twelve hours. Maybe less.”

  “They left me a number to call.”

  “Give it to me. We’ll track it and call you back. This line?”

  Stig weighed the risk of using a phone twice. “I’ll keep it open for one hour.”

  “Too short.”

  After he read Ivar the mobile number and the license tag, Stig felt the acid of accusation boil in his throat. “You know what this means?” If he could make Ivar feel one-tenth the guilt and pain he felt, then he knew the other Viking would work his arse off to save Christina. “Your faucets are leaking.”

  “They could have been waiting at the target.”

  “Maybe, but we worked separately and they knew to grab her even though I didn’t spot them inside. They were on her before I left the building.”

  “Skīta. We’ve been trying to fix our plumbing.”

  “If you want what I have, try harder. Or I’ll make my own trade.” He’d bargain with anything or anyone to get Christina back, and if that meant setting an ultimatum for Ivar, maybe one that the kidnappers were simultaneously overhearing, so be it. “One hour.”

  He disconnected, his heart racing over the realization that yes, there were many things his chief didn’t know or control. He might be in this alone.

  “Correct me if I’m mistaken—” Locke’s dry comment interrupted Stig’s racing mind, “—but I believe we still don’t have the item you’re using to bargain.”

  “No, we don’t. Before this gets any deeper and there’s no going back...” Stig twisted to look at Luc. The old man was tiny against the leather, barely larger than the dog on his lap. “These people won’t let us walk away.”

  “Berthilde’s gone twenty-one years, my son for nine.” From the way Luc worked his jaw in a circular motion, Stig suspected he would have spat if they weren’t inside such a nice auto. “My only family is a daughter-in-law who wants me to die so she can sell and move to Brussels and a grandson who thinks I should quit eating meat and start voting communist.” He hacked into a red handkerchief. “This week has been the most excitement I’ve had since the ‘86 Cup when we beat the Soviet hat trick and came in fourth.” His chest expanded. “Today’s as good as tomorrow to die. I’m in.”

  “Christina reminds me of...” Locke’s voice trailed off as he merged across lanes, even though the maneuver didn’t require that level of concentration.

  “Who?” Stig, like the others, was continuously scanning for the sedan, but they marked nothing except normal Germans.

  “My stepdaughter.”

  “There won’t be any police. No 1-1-2 or 9-9-9 rescue calls. These people—” he crumpled the paper with the phone number, “—are likely to be hiding somewhere impossible to get in to or out of, and you’ll both die. Knowing Leif, painfully and unburied.”

  Please back out. If he’d been thinking more clearly, he wouldn’t have jumped in Locke’s car. He would have tackled this alone. Some other part of him knew he’d created such a gargantuan cock-up that one man might not be able to solve it.

  “You always talked too much. Can’t believe the Nazis never heard us coming.”

  Locke snorted in the driver’s seat. “You have yourself a team. Three men and a dog. I know what I’m getting into.” He glanced sideways at Stig. “I recognized the man in the back seat when they passed my parking spot. Used to work for hi
m. Until he murdered my wife.”

  “That’s...” Unexpected was an inadequate word, but the man who always had plenty to say felt emptied, like a suddenly erased message board.

  “Enough of this shit.” Luc slapped his palm on the leather seat, making a loud smack. “Call the number they gave you.”

  The paper shook in Stig’s hand as he touched keys on another disposable mobile. He was almost afraid to speak, afraid that anything he said would corrupt his chances of saving Christina.

  Leif, however, had no qualms or fears. “I want the item you have.”

  He’d dropped the fake bone in the middle of the street. “I’ll negotiate with Unferth.”

  “No. You won’t.” Leif’s chuckle filled Stig’s head. “I’m in charge.”

  That was news Ivar either hadn’t shared or didn’t know, and it left Stig wondering what the fuck had happened to Unferth. “Congratulations on the promotion. No one deserves it more.”

  “Thank you.” Fifteen centuries, and Leif still didn’t completely understand sarcasm. “The girl for Grendel’s arm. Easy trade.”

  “That’s the thing.” Fresh sweat ran down his spine, despite the air blowing through the car vents. “I don’t have the arm.” He needed as much time as he could get, and he knew Leif liked to feel that he was smarter than everyone.

  Silence, then Leif’s voice in a tone between a question and an accusation. “You haven’t given it to Ivar.”

  “Because I haven’t retrieved it.”

  This pause was longer, as if Leif was considering. Slowly. “Then what did you do this morning?”

  “Performance art. The real arm relic hasn’t been in Aachen for a century. I liberated it before the First World War.”

  The laughter on the other end of the call pounded at Stig. “Of course, you couldn’t have left it alone, could you? You’re too much of a show-off for that.”

  Show-off. Even idiots occasionally made brilliant insights, and this one shredded Stig like those damn Panzer shells. “I need three days.”