by Rob Jones
Sala paced the cave for a moment and then spoke quietly. “This taipan was caught in the deserts of South Australia, Antonius. Its venom contains a presynaptic neurotoxin that will paralyse you. The next thing you will experience is a terrible difficulty in drawing breath.”
“You’re wasting your breath.”
“You will probably die of suffocation first, but there is a possibility that the hemotoxin in the venom – a powerful procoagulant which enters the blood and causes the activation of a clotting cascade – will lead to blood clots forming all over your body. Either way, the pitiful remnants of your life will be characterized by unimaginable agony. This will occur less than half an hour after the envenomation.”
“I mean it, Álvaro. If I told you anything we both know my punishment at the hands of the Athanatoi would have me begging for your snake.”
“I’m not so sure… Remember, just one bite from this creature will deliver a fatal dose of these neurotoxins, hemotoxins and myotoxins into your bloodstream.”
“I care not what your intentions are.”
“I tell you only as a courtesy, so you know what fate is waiting for you, lurking like a hideous, grasping shadow-creature at the foot of your bed. Your ancient life will now come to an end, here in this cave. Yes… you will now come face to face with your mortality, just as you never thought would happen, and more than that, you will die the way I want you to, because I hold that power in my hands, literally…”
Antonius looked once again at the snake.
Sala grinned. “A little like Loki.”
“Loki… you can teach me nothing about Loki, Álvaro. Believe me.”
Sala closed his eyes and spoke as if conjuring the memories from a dream. “After trying to hide from the goddess Skaði by turning himself into a salmon, Loki was finally caught! I thought my inviting you to a spot of salmon fishing in Béarn in order to lure you up here was a particularly amusing touch, don’t you think?”
“With every poisonous word that tumbles from your sour lips, you show why the Oracle was right to expel you.”
“Talking of poison, as you knew Loki so well you will know what happened next.”
“Of course I know what happened next! He was lashed to the rocks beneath a waterfall with the entrails of his own son, Nari, and then killed when Skaði secured a poisonous snake over him and allowed its venom to drip down and kill him. His loving wife, Sigyn remained at his side and caught the venom in a bowl she held at the serpent’s dripping fangs. I presume that is what this ludicrous charade is all about!”
“You forgot the best bit – the bit about how when she went to empty the bowl some of the venom would fall into Loki’s face and in response, his painful, agonized writhing was so horrendous that it caused earthquakes.” Sala stroked the taipan.
“Don’t forget that Loki escaped from his chains, fled Ragnarök – the Doom of the Gods – and helped the giant spirits destroy the cosmos.”
Sala glanced theatrically over his shoulder for a moment. “I see no sign of Sigyn, Antonius, so this time there will be no escape.”
“Will there not? I’m starting to think you’re bluffing, Álvaro. You always were all talk.”
“Was I now?” Sala gave a low chuckle and ordered Deprez to set up the apparatus. Moments later the Belgian killer was rigging up a bowl above Antonius’s head and connecting it to some twine. Then he placed a candle inside a metal lantern, threaded the twine above it and tightened Antonius’s chains so he couldn’t move an inch.
“You see here a simple device, Antonius,” Sala explained coolly. “When Deprez here lights the candle in the lantern, you will have around fifteen minutes to tell me the location of Valhalla, and if you fail to do so the heat of the flame will break the twine and the bowl of poison will pour in your wound, killing you in agony. This way there is much more torment than a simple snakebite would induce and I liked the irony of the bowl being used to kill rather than to save.”
“What wound?” Antonius asked, confused.
Sala smiled and snapped his fingers. Deprez padded over to the bound man and pulled out a long hunting knife. The blade flashed dully in the low light as he drew it slowly across Antonius’s chest. The soft flesh split open like a ripe fruit, and blood poured keenly from the fresh wound and stained his chest. He suppressed a scream and clenched his jaw hard.
Sala smirked. “That wound.”
Antonius stared in horror as Sala then gripped the snake’s head and forced an envenomation from its fangs into the stone bowl.
“I will never tell you where Valhalla is! If a creature like you ever got its hands on the power hidden behind its walls the world would be brought to a precipice.”
“Fifteen minutes, Antonius, and then you will share a similar fate as your hero, Loki – only no escape for you!”
Sala walked slowly from the cave, leaving Deprez to guard his old friend, but the days of friendship were a long time ago. Too long to imagine. Would Antonius talk? He doubted it, but no matter. Soon he would have the location of Valhalla from another source – his man Smets was seeing to that. He didn’t need Antonius to give it to him – he just wanted to force it out of him for sport. That fool in the cave would die whatever happened today and Valhalla would still be his.
If his long life had taught him anything, it was that there was always more than one way to catch a rabbit – even if it was a very fast Irish rabbit that knew how to get away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Martha poured more coffee and they moved into the front room by the fire. The summer was growing nearly as old as she was now, and she needed a fire at night and she didn’t care who knew it.
She slowly looked at their young faces and knew it was time to tell them what they wanted to hear. They had come nearly as far as they had to go, she considered, and if it meant helping them track down Billy’s killers and bringing them to justice, then so be it.
“You all wait there, you hear me?”
The young people nodded, and she was satisfied they’d do as she told them. She left the room and walked to the other side of the house where she opened her wardrobe and began pushing her dresses out of the way. This one she hadn’t worn since the eighties, and that one for much longer. She smiled at the sight of them all lined up and she guessed the wrinkles on her face proved Mark Twain was right after all. She’d certainly had a good life full of fun, and not all of it wholly approvable.
At the bottom of the wardrobe, beneath a pile of old shoes were some boxes of photographs – a black and white life in two dimensions would be all that was left of her soon, she contemplated without emotion. She opened the box and found what she was looking for – a small engagement ring box, handmade from green velvet with a white silk interior.
She pulled it from the box of photographs and creaked back up to her full height, cursing as she went. Before she rejoined the young, foreign, treasure hunters in the other room, she held her breath and gently opened the tiny box.
She gasped when she saw it again. When was the last time she had seen it – maybe twenty years ago, maybe longer… she had no idea. Yesterdays slipped away like grains of sand when you were her age, she considered, and she had no idea how many had fallen through her fingers since she’d last opened the box.
And yet… it seemed like it had been literally yesterday. There it was again, as beautiful and enigmatic as ever. Anyone else would have thought the box contained an antique emerald ring – her mother’s – but she knew better than that. She knew that the little ring box also kept another treasure safe from the world.
She smiled and closed the box before joining the others and setting the precious cargo on the tea table in front of the crackling fire. She sipped her coffee and looked at their young faces one by one. She wondered if they would catch up with Billy’s killers or not, but she knew whoever those men were, they’d regret if the older Englishman ever got hold of them. It was just something in his eyes.
She opened the box and handed it around,
watching the look of surprise on their faces as they witnessed its compelling power for the first time.
“This is incredible,” Lea said. “At first it looks like a simple glass bead you can see through but then you realize you can see through whatever’s behind it as well.” She studied it closely and saw one side was convex and smooth and there was a tiny hook on the flat underside at the back.
“Not everything that’s behind it,” Martha corrected her. “It don’t see through walls or nothing like that. It can only make things right up close to it disappear.”
She handed it to the Englishman and he held it to the light and then drew it closer to his eyes for a more detailed look. “Bloody hell! Talk about weird.”
Ryan held it next, holding it so Victoria was able to see it as well. “This is outstanding – it seems to be bending light somehow – a technology we’ve only just started working on!”
Martha nodded. “It was Billy’s father who gave them to him. He had a few of them knocking around the place from his father and so on up the line. You know the way it goes. And before you ask, no one knows where they came from. Billy gave me that one right there in place of the ring, just like I told you, and the others found their way into the museum. He stashed them up there because he felt they might have had something to do with the old Mi’kmaq legends. He was part Mi’kmaq, was old Billy and very proud of it.”
“What old legends?” Lea asked.
“The Invisible One,” Martha said gently. “It’s not unique to Mi’kmaq culture – the story comes up many times in traditional tribal folklore all over North America. Sometimes they called him the Hidden One or the Invisible Warrior, but it all amounts to the same thing. Billy told me all about it.”
Ryan set his cup down. “It’s a fascinating part of the culture, because…”
“Young man, do you want to tell this story or are you going to let me do it?”
Ryan blushed. “Sorry…”
Scarlet gave him a thinly veiled smirk as Martha continued.
“Billy talked to me a bit about it when we were together. These legends vary in their details depending on the culture, but they all add up to the same thing.” She paused and cast her watery eyes outside on the dying day. When she spoke next it was as if she were talking to a ghost. “The Cherokee talk about the Nennehi, a race of immortal spirit folk…”
She noticed the others share a subtle glance when she mentioned the word immortal to them, but continued without letting on she had seen anything. “The name Nunnehi really means ‘those who live anywhere’, but…”
“But it’s sometimes transliterated as ‘those who live eternally’,” Ryan said.
Martha gave Ryan another of her stares and that seemed to do the trick.
“I was going to say that there are different interpretations of Nunnehi, but yes, Billy told me immortal is sometimes one of them. Immortal means something different when you’re twenty than when you’re my age, believe me… Either way, the word means something that cannot be translated exactly into English, if you get my meaning. It means immortal, but not exactly, it means ghosts or spirits, but not exactly, it means gods, but not exactly. You understand?”
They all nodded. It looked like they understood.
“Like any legends in the world, no one knows why these things become such a big part of the culture, but they’re important enough to travel down through the generations over centuries, so we can take something from that, I guess.”
With the slightest of pauses, Martha turned to Victoria. “It was your partner who died with Billy, right?”
With a short glance at the others, Victoria nodded and finally broke her silence. “Yes, how did you know?”
“I’m nearly ninety, dear. I know just from the lookin’. What was his name?”
“Dr Nate Derby. For some reason he was up here visiting the museum but I really don’t know why. In the days before his murder he started talking to me about some strange things.”
Martha gave her an oblique look. “Strange things like what?”
“About Norse mythology – about Thor and Thor’s Hammer.”
Martha nodded and gave a sad smile. “There were rumors, sure.”
“What sort of rumors?”
“Listen carefully. Billy only told me this once, and I thought he was crazy. He told me that the Invisible One could have been part of something the Vikings used to talk about. I told him he’d been drinking and he never mentioned it again. He could be crazy like that.”
“I don’t think he was crazy at all,” Victoria said quietly. “I think this is all connected somehow.”
“Well, don’t look at me,” Martha said flatly. “I know squat about the damned Vikings. What about you?” She looked at Ryan.
“A bit, but not too much, sorry.”
“Anything will do, Ry,” Lea said.
Ryan frowned. “In the context of what we’re talking about the main thing would be that invisibility was an important part of the Norse mythological canon so there’s an immediate link with the tribal cultures of ancient America. They had many beings who they considered had the power of invisibility, and most of these, of course, were the Aesir gods and goddesses who were key divine figures. These deities such as Thor, Loki, Frigg and Idun all had the power of invisibility. It’s possible the Vikings brought the power of invisibility to North America somehow and that’s what started the legends.”
Lea looked at Ryan sharply, her face suddenly a study of anxiety. “Say those names again, Ry.”
“Which ones – Thor and so on?”
“Sure.”
“Thor, Loki, and Idun – there were many more, and of course, Idun was the keeper of the sacred apples which imparted eternal youth…”
“I’m hearing that expression an awful lot these days,” Scarlet said, sighing.
“None of those Ry,” Lea said. “You said another name.”
“Was it Frigg, maybe?”
“Frigg… that’s the one.”
Martha saw a terrible mix of uncertainty and fear color Lea’s slim face.
“What is it, dear?”
“What’s the matter, Lea?” Hawke asked, gently placing his hand on her shoulder.
“Frigg – that was one of the names in my father’s research files.”
A short silence fell upon the room, the only sound now was the meditative crackling of the apple-wood fire. Hawke squeezed Lea’s shoulder. “I guess we now know for sure that all this is connected with the attack on you in Ireland, in that case.”
“I agree,” Scarlet said. “This is way too much of a coincidence otherwise.”
“And I don’t believe in coincidences,” Hawke said, frowning.
Lea looked confused and scared. “But what does it all mean?”
Ryan sighed. “That’s exactly what we have to find out, but somehow the attack on you in Ireland, the murder of Bill Smith and Nate Derby here in Newfoundland and the attack on us down in Florida are all connected for sure, and the common denominator seems to be invisibility.”
“And Thor,” Victoria reminded him. “Don’t forget Nate talking about Thor’s Hammer just before he died and how it could be some kind of Tesla coil.”
Martha watched the young man in the Batman t-shirt flinch at the mention of the word Tesla.
“So this is all pointing to Vikings, in other words,” Hawke said.
“And if it is,” Martha said with a gentle authority, “what you need is one of them experts on Norse mythology. You can take the bead. I won’t be needing it for much longer.”
All eyes turned to Ryan, but for once his usual confidence had gone. “I think this is going to need someone who knows more than me.”
Lea looked at them for a moment, and then pulled out her phone. “I’m pretty sure Rich knows someone – an old friend from university years ago. He studied archaeology before moving into Norse legends. He lives in Iceland. Let me give Rich a call and see if he can get us an address.”
“And I�
�ll call the newspapers,” Scarlet said. “The world needs to know Ryan Bale doesn’t know everything after all.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Iceland
Their private jet touched down on Runway 13 of Keflavik International Airport and taxied through the drizzly half-light to a gate on the north side. After a short conversation en route between Lea and Sir Richard Eden they had made the decision that Hawke, Lea and Victoria would drive into Reykjavík and meet with his old friend, a Dr Gunnar Jónsson, while Ryan and Scarlet stayed with the plane and refuelled ready for whatever came next.
On the flight, Eden had briefed them that Vincent Reno had identified the images of the man taken by Ryan back in the Florida Keys. He confirmed his name was indeed Leon Smets, a former French Foreign Legion Warrant Officer thrown out of the service for brutality against junior ranks, including Vincent when he was a raw recruit. The other men were assorted corporals all of whom were now out of the Legion and working as mercenaries alongside Smets.
Vincent, who was making amends with his wife in Marseille, was unable to help them with the shaven-headed woman, but Alex had worked her magic on that score and identified her as one Dasha Vetrov, the younger sister of Maxim Vetrov, the man ECHO had dispatched in the Tomb of Eternity. It looked like she had joined with Smets and whoever was pulling his strings to get her revenge on Hawke and the others. Eden was certain they would both be working for someone else, but for now that person was unidentified. He also thought it significant that she hadn’t killed them all when she had the chance in the Florida Keys.
Now, Lea was thinking Reykjavík looked a lot like St John’s in Newfoundland – both cities were around the same size and the brightly colored clapboard houses added to the feeling of similarity as their taxi cruised the short distance into Miðbær, the downtown district. This was as far north as civilization got – a first-world state with an advanced economy of fish-processing and metals exports, all tucked away in a country whose north coast skirted the Arctic Circle. As they got closer to the center, she watched the sun skim the horizon out on the Westfjords.
