by Rob Jones
“Sorry, could you say that again, Ryan,” Scarlet said, pretending to wake up and yawn. “I nodded off.”
“The point,” Ryan emphasized with a look in Scarlet’s direction, “is that while what I’m looking at here on this axe handle is vaguely redolent of both, it is also clearly neither.”
Hawke sighed. “What about Alex?”
“I emailed her pictures of the reunited axe handle a while ago so now she has everything we have and they’re working on it back on Elysium. So far we’ve come up with a partial translation of the first half of the inscription, which as far as I can tell is a simple reference to Midgard, or Middle Earth.”
Scarlet laughed. “So we’re hunting bloody Orcs now?”
“Of course not.”
“I wouldn’t say no to hunting Hobbits,” she said. “They’re really bloody annoying.”
“We’re not hunting Orcs or Hobbits,” Ryan said. “As I say, Midgard simply means Middle Earth in Swedish. It’s from the Old Norse Miðgarðr if you have to know.”
“I really don’t have to know.”
“Midgard is one of Norse mythology’s nine worlds, and just happens to be the only one that normal, mortal men can actually see because the other eight are all invisible.”
“Oh, great – we’re back to invisibility!”
“So while Thor’s temple is in Uppsala, which is not so far from here, it’s looking like his tomb is in Midgard.”
Hawke nodded, pleased that some progress was being made at last. “And how do we get to this place?”
“According to legend, Midgard is directly above the realm of Niflheim, which means the world of darkness.”
Scarlet sighed. “Sounds really cosy – do go on.”
“Niflheim is one of the two fundamental primordial realms in Norse legend, the other being Muspelheim, the realm of fire. Midgard itself is surrounded by a sea where Jörmungandr, the World Serpent is said to dwell.”
“And why, boy, are you regaling us with this?”
“Because Jörmungandr is the serpent that killed Thor, or will kill Thor to be exact but I don’t want to get into that because it might make your brain explode, Cairo. The fact is that after Jörmungandr emerges from the ocean and poisons the sky, he and Thor fight and Thor kills him, but not before the serpent injects its venom into Thor. Thor then takes nine paces and dies, and that is where he’s buried, of course. I’m all about the tombs, baby.”
“It’s all sounding like a nightmare,” Victoria said. “As a trained archaeologist I can hardly believe what I’m actually hearing.”
Hawke smiled. “We need a location, mate.”
Ryan looked at Hawke and pushed the glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “If it’s Midgard, then we’re talking somewhere in Lapland, without a doubt.”
Hawke nodded. “That’s vague, but better than nothing.”
“A bit like Ryan himself,” Scarlet said quietly.
Ryan lifted his head and looked at Scarlet but all he could see was her hand draped over the back of the leather sofa. “It’s not as easy as you looking for a shag, Cairo. This takes time and intelligence.”
“No one calls me Cairo any more.”
“I’m sure no one calls you anymore full-stop, but that’s another story.”
“Oh, the kitten has claws.”
“Do they always fight like this?” Victoria said.
“Pack it in you two,” Lea said.
“All right,” Hawke said. “Get Alex on Skype and let’s see if she has anything new.”
Ryan made the call while Scarlet swooped on the minibar and cracked open some more Swedish vodka. She took it neat and fast to the horror of Victoria Hamilton-Talbot who, after an admonishing glance at her Cartier wristwatch, had opted for a cup of tea instead.
Moments later they were looking at Alex on the screen.
“Any news?” Lea asked.
“Oh yeah,” the American said with confidence.
Hawke thought she looked distracted, and his mind immediately leaped to what she had said about her legs. He had seen one man die in the most horrible of ways after consuming the elixir, and now he had more concerns after seeing the remains of the dead man in the Pyrenees Mountains. To say he was worried about having given it to Alex to help her legs was an understatement. They had run tests on it in the lab, but its properties still eluded them. Yes, it had brought Lea back to life in Ethiopia, so Alex had been brave, and had taken a tiny, almost homeopathic quantity of the water. Days later she had begun to feel sensation in her legs again, but then she had started to complain of pain in them.
“Are you okay, Alex?” he asked.
On the tiny screen, she casually shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, why not?”
“Just asking. Go on.”
“I think I might have cracked the inscription.”
“This is amazing news!” Lea said.
“It wasn’t particularly hard, actually. As you probably know we already worked out the Midgard bit, but there’s much more. The symbols are hard to make out, but when we cleaned them up a tad it was much easier. I started with the symbol that resembles the Norse Rune for earth and then I got to thinking if the familiarity this symbol shares with the Rune for journey, it might indicate a tunnel.”
Ryan looked at everyone earnestly. “I was literally about to work that out myself as well.”
“Sure you were,” Lea said.
“I was!”
“If you say so,” Scarlet said. “Anything else, Alex?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. This symbol here is almost identical to the Runic script for lake. I was thinking we’re looking for an underground system near a lake somewhere, and that’s when I worked out the last two symbols – one was for a cauldron and the other for the crest of a hill.”
“Excellent,” Scarlet said. “I’ll tell the pilot to fly to a hill crest near a lake with a cauldron on the top of it, somewhere near Mordor.”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Let her have it, Alex, please.”
“Sure,” Alex said, laughing. “I searched references to cauldrons and hill-crests and it wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for – Kebnekaise.”
A look of recognition dawned on Victoria’s face, but Lea spoke next. “Which is?”
“The highest mountain in Sweden,” Alex replied. “It means cauldron crest in Sami, the language of the Sami people in Lapland. If you ask me – and you did – then I’m saying go to the lake at the base of Kebnekaise and start looking for a tunnel.”
“That’s great work, Alex,” Scarlet said, turning to face Ryan. “Now I know why you’re on the team.”
Ryan got up from his chair and cracked open a beer. “If I’m so useless,” he said, “how come I’m the only one who’s thought about Ragnarök.”
“Ragna-what?”
“The great battle at the end of the world that kills all the gods, including Thor.”
“I thought Thor was already dead?” Scarlet said.
“Well…”
“We’re going to his sodding tomb, aren’t we? He must be dead!”
Ryan sipped his beer. “Ragnarök was a way the Norse myths foretold the end of the world, and to them that meant submersion under water. I bring it up because I’m starting to hear Thor’s tomb and underwater tunnels in the same sentence.”
“Thanks for cheering us up,” Hawke said.
“He’s right though,” said Victoria. “Nate spoke to me about this as well. No one knows the significance of Ragnarök, but it’s where all the myths and legends come together. Loki finally breaks free from his chains, Thor will fight the World Serpent… everything.”
“I’m not digging the future tense here guys,” Lea said nervously. “I thought all this stuff happened millions of years in the past?”
“It did,” Ryan said. “And it didn’t.”
“Someone get me another Absolut,” Scarlet said. “Immediately.”
Victoria glanced at her watch again. “Goodness, you really d
o drink rather a lot, don’t you?”
Scarlet went to reply, but Hawke stopped her before the first word left her lips. “All right,” he said. “We can talk about Ragnarök later but right now we’ve got the advantage over Sala so let’s not waste it. We know what we’re looking for and where to start searching. Ryan, start looking into the most obvious places a tunnel could be hidden in the vicinity Alex has described.”
“Got it.”
“Lea, get on the phone to Eden. We need the jet fuelled and ready to fly to Lapland as soon as possible.”
“On it.”
“What about me?” Scarlet asked.
“Stop being a tit to Ryan.”
As Lea made the call, Hawke turned and gazed out of the window once more. His eyes fell on another tourist boat as it trundled from one side of the lake to the other, everyone on board totally oblivious to the threat looming over them. In his heart there was always hope, but Ryan’s talk of Ragnarök had begun to set his nerves on edge and with Vincent unconscious in hospital they were a man down.
He finished his beer and set the bottle on the table.
It was time to unearth Thor’s tomb.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Swedish Lapland
Kiruna was Sweden’s most northerly town, nestled on the eastern slopes of Haukavaara Hill between the Kalix and Torne rivers. This place was deep in Lapland, nearly a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, even further north than Reykjavik, and that meant short, breezy summers and winters that were a serious test of human endurance. From the end of May until mid-July, the sun never set up here, and this meant that from early mid-December until New Year’s Day it never rose either, plunging the entire population into a three week-long night.
The flight had been sombre. Hawke, like everyone else on board had thoughts crushing down on his mind. Vincent Reno was still unconscious, and now the mysterious spectre of Ragnarök was jostling for space alongside golden oldies like the men who had murdered his wife, Liz. With every sleepless night that passed, her death moved one day further away from his present-day life, but the pain never receded. The anguish he felt was kept alive by the thought of her killers getting away with their crimes and waking up to a new day every day to draw breath and live life while Liz was in her grave.
Their names were etched on his mind indelibly. James Matheson and Alfredo Lazaro. The former was no less than the British Foreign Secretary – mighty, distant and while easily found he was totally untouchable. The latter was a Cuban assassin known as the Spider. He moved in the world’s filthiest shadows and Hawke didn’t have the first idea how to track him down. One day, he swore, both men would pay the ultimate price for their crimes.
Glancing at Lea on the seat beside him, he saw she too was being tortured by something. Her brow was furrowed and she was staring with dry, unblinking eyes into the glass of whisky in her lap.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.
“It’s about my Dad,” Lea said. She sounded even more worried than she looked.
“I know how tough this must all be.”
“Why the hell was he writing in that weird script, Joe? What did he know that he never told me?”
Hawke knew he had to tread carefully. He knew no more about this than anyone else, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to say the wrong thing and upset her or worse still worry her unnecessarily. “I can’t answer that, Lea. All I can say is whatever the reason is, we’ll find out, but you need to ask yourself if you really want to know.”
She looked at him with anxious eyes. “What do you mean?”
He gave a shallow shrug. “I don’t know… it’s just that everything we’ve uncovered so far seems to drag us further down the rabbit hole, that’s all.”
“And I’m Alice, is that what you’re saying?”
Hawke smiled. “I think you might be, but you’re not alone.” He squeezed her hand in his and clenched his teeth. He hated seeing her like this, but he knew she wouldn’t stop until she knew the truth not only about her father’s death, but about his life, too.
Lea glanced out of the window before replying. “I just wish I knew what was going on, Joe. I’ve been racking my mind, worrying about so much… I could just about get my head around the fact Dad was researching something to do with Norse mythology. The fact he worked as a doctor and devoted his life to helping people made it easier to understand why he’d been looking into ideas surrounding Mengloth – she was the goddess of healing, you know?”
Hawke nodded. “I do, but only thanks to your ex-husband.”
Lea gave a polite smile. “And what was the other one – Eir – the goddess of medicine or something. And there’s Frigg as well – now I know she was Odin’s wife and the mother of Thor, but it doesn’t make any of this more cogent up here, you know?” She tapped her temple with her index finger.
“I know.”
“I was freaked out enough that Dad was involved in this all before, but at least it all made some kind of sense. Maybe he’d discovered something to do with those goddesses that would help people – I don’t know, but now… there’s no reason why Dad should be able to write in that script, Joe. I thought he’d found it, or copied it – not that he’d written in it! Gunnar called it the script of the gods!”
Hawke put his arm around her shoulders and gave a comforting squeeze. He had no idea why Dr. Henry Donovan was able to write in that strange, ancient script and even less how he knew about the raiding parties and their mysterious, ancient loot. Maybe it was simply that he had somehow taught himself how to do it to facilitate his research, or perhaps the real reason was something neither of them wanted to contemplate.
He yawned and snatched a glance out of the window. The flight had been a tense one, but a breath-taking display of the northern lights illuminated the sky and reminded them what they were fighting for. Now the tops of some high-drifting cirrus were a bright green color. It was calm up here, he thought, but the kind of calm that came before a storm.
*
Lea looked with a vague interest from the window as the private jet descended through a bank of heavy stratocumulus. The engines were reduced to idle now, and the flaps fully extended. They would be on the ground in minutes.
But what they would find there worried her more than ever. She knew Hawke was trying to help, but he couldn’t begin to understand what she was really feeling. She had been on so many missions like this she had lost count of them all, but this one was different. Like her last journey to Ireland, this one felt personal. It was personal, she supposed – instead of simply hunting down ancient relics and seeking a long-obscured truth about the world, she was now faced with the unsettling prospect that her father was somehow involved.
Now, as she gazed down at the bleak landscape of Swedish Lapland – the zone where taiga slowly turned to tundra, her mind turned inwards to face the terrible fact that maybe her father really was part of this after all. How else could he have known how to write in the ancient pre-Runic script?
Her thoughts grew darker still. If he had been involved with the mysterious Athanatoi, what was the nature of the relationship? Did it involve her? Why had he never told anyone about the truth? It felt like her mind was on fire, and when she finally alighted on the subject of his death, it all got too much. Had he really been killed by the Athanatoi? Who was the man in black?
Her thoughts were disrupted by the squeal of the tires on the tarmac of Kiruna Airport and the roar of the reverse thrusters. Seconds later they were walking through the modest airport and stepping out into a chilly Lapland evening.
“Is this supposed to be summer?” Scarlet said with a sneer.
They climbed into a hired truck – another Hilux as specified by Hawke – and wasted no time in driving west along the 870 toward Kebnekaise. The drive was peaceful and offered a rare moment of relaxation to the team. They had been on the go since landing in the Florida Keys but despite their fatigue they knew the stakes were too high to risk taking their foot
off the pedal now.
Outside, the Swedish taiga drifted past in a gentle blur of olive greens and sepia brown, and above them a pure blue Arctic sky poured the day’s last sunshine into the hired car and added to the soporific feeling induced by the long, straight road. Pure lakes coasted past them as they pushed on along pine-flanked roads in pursuit of the truth, whatever it may be.
Far on the southern horizon Scarlet saw a lone property, surrounded by a jumble of outbuildings and what looked like a barn.
“Can’t believe anyone would live out here,” she said dismissively. “You’d have to be bloody certifiable.” As she spoke she slapped at a mosquito that had somehow slipped into the car.
“I don’t know about that,” Hawke said. “It kind of appeals to me in a strange way. I thought the same thing back in Iceland.”
“But then you’re certifiable,” Scarlet said. “So that sort of proves my point.”
Hawke turned briefly to Lea, keeping his eyes on the road. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You like it up here?”
“Are you kidding? I’d go bloody crazy in a place like this.”
“Ah,” Hawke said, and pressed on.
*
They reached the base of Kebnekaise in late evening, although the position of the sun made it feel much earlier. In the tranquil, fading sunlight they unpacked their weapons, climbing rope and flashlights from the trunk of the Hilux and for a few moments took in the landscape.
So this was the legendary Midgard – the Middle Earth where Thor had fought the World Serpent and died after killing him. Today, it was a ragged range of dark mountains rising from a plain of stubby brown and yellow grass and pitted marshland, but there was still something genuinely awesome about the place. Running along the horizon to the southeast was a line of birch and poplar trees, and scattered around in patches running away to the west were wild strawberries and cloudberries. They would grow thicker in the boreal forest a few hundred meters to their right, but these were some strays.
