by Rob Jones
Through the outer-perimeter now, she set off an unseen alarm and the whole place lit up like the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree. A shrill, ear-piercing klaxon blared out across the island and informed the world and his wife that Elysium had an intruder. She cursed herself for being so stupid but had no time to dwell on it.
A door in the western end of the complex slammed open and a man began to fire at her. She didn’t recognize him, but knew she had to get out of here at once. She sprinted across the wide lawn and dived into a bank of flowering Jamaican Firebirds. The man screamed after her and fired twice more before using his free hand to manually redirect the searchlight into the edge of the garden.
“I know you’re in there!” he shouted.
He sounded English, she thought. She wondered if maybe it was another old friend of Hawke’s from back in the day. On further reflection it was a distinct possibility, but now the man was moving closer, using the low garden wall as cover. She had no time for ponderous reflections about Hawke’s old Commando friends.
With her weapons bag dragging behind her, she crawled through the dirt on her elbows and knees until she reached the other side of the shrubs. Now she was looking at another wide lawn lit an eerie bluish white by the full moon almost directly overhead.
She heard the man fumbling around as he ran into the bushes right behind her. He certainly was fearless – she had to give him that. She considered returning fire, but there was no way she could get a clear shot at him in all this undergrowth so she scratched the idea and decided to make a break for it across the lawn. This way she would be a little closer to the main complex and her ultimate target – Sir Richard Eden himself.
“You can run but you can’t hide!” the man shouted. “This is a very small island!”
She pounded across the lawn just as the man broke through the first embankment of shrubs. He wasted no time in firing at her and she heard the shot as it flew past her and tore through the foliage of a mature Arabian jasmine.
“I’ll give Eden one thing…” she said to herself as she pushed her way through the bushes. “He certainly knows how to grow a garden.”
Another shot whistled past her head and this time she heard the man laughing behind her. “This is too easy! You’re not even going to fire back?”
You’ll know it when I do, she whispered to herself, and emerged from the final bank of jasmine and bougainvillea. She took half a second to get her bearings and realized she had been chased off course more than she thought and was now further back from the complex and somewhere to its southwest.
Keeping an eye on the man as she moved back around to the complex was hard. He was obviously well-trained and she could see why Eden had hired him. But she was better. For one thing, he had allowed her to occupy the higher ground, and that was a rookie mistake he would pay for with his life.
She moved stealthily through the heavy jungle on the southern perimeter of the compound. As she descended back down to sea level she gave up her advantage over the man, but she also got closer to her target – it was a simple trade off that she had no choice but to make.
Now, she was just a few yards from the southern wall of one of the outbuildings. A cursory glance at the architecture showed her that it was all but impossible to free-climb, but that was why she had brought her bag of tricks. Yes, it had slowed her down when she was being chased by the guard, but its contents were critical to the success of the mission. It was another one of those trade-offs.
Aware that she no longer knew the location of the guard, she unzipped the bag fast and silently. She pulled out a five meter length of kernmantle climbing rope which she had already connected to a small grappling hook. After a quick glance to her left and right she deftly threw the rope over the wall.
She tugged on the rope to ensure the hook was properly snagged under the ledge of the concrete coping, and then she began her ascent. She knew this was as exposed as she was going to get – halfway up a white-painted wall in the moonlight – and wanted this section of the mission over as fast as possible.
She heard a noise and flicked her eyes up to see what she had dreaded. It was the man and he was standing on the top of the wall with a gun in his hand.
“I heard the hook,” was all he said, and then he raised his gun.
She saw the amused grin on his face, lit ghostly white by the pale light of the moon, and knew she had only a second to react.
“The name’s Ben, by the way,” the man said. “I’d say pleased to meet you but there’s no point as now you have to die.”
Lexi Zhang thought differently. In a heartbeat she whipped her gun from her shoulder and fired at the man. It was devastatingly fast.
He looked down and ran his hands over his stomach, a look of disbelief growing on his lean, strong face.
“I’m Lexi, by the way,” she said coolly. “I’d say pleased to meet you but there’s no point as now you’re dead.”
The man slumped to his knees and fell back against an air-conditioning duct, but Lexi was already gone, sprinting along the rest of the wall before leaping over a small courtyard and landing like a cat on the ridge cap of a gable roof. She walked carefully down a steep roof valley until she was at the gutter and then she hung over the side and lowered herself gently past the fascia and into the inner courtyard of the compound.
One down, she thought… but how many more to go until she was face to face with Sir Richard Eden?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alex Reeve pushed her hair back behind her ears and rubbed her eyes. It had been a long day, and by the look of the faces on her friends in the Arctic Circle they were feeling the same thing. They had called her on Skype a few moments ago to give the sombre news that Ryan Bale had been snatched from Thor’s tomb along with the scroll they’d found in the sarcophagus. This was a massive blow and things felt like they were beginning to spin out of control.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Ben Ridgeley had dropped off the radar a while ago in response to an intruder alert on the island, and she had felt a strange weakness in her legs again which she was now certain had something to do with the way the elixir worked. She knew she could tell none of this to Hawke and the others. There was nothing they could do about any of it and it would only distract them from their mission in Scandinavia. They had to focus on rescuing Ryan and stopping Sala.
Luckily, Lea had photographed the scroll on her iPhone before Sala and Smets had taken it, and she’d emailed it to Alex back on Elysium. Since retrieving it, she had made it her priority and had been studying it closely.
“We don’t have a lot of time, Alex.” Hawke said, glancing down at his watch. “Sala and his Foreign Legion mercs are going to make use of Ryan and force him to decode the scroll. He could be in a lot of trouble if we don’t catch up with him soon.”
“You think they’ll torture him for his knowledge?”
“They’re not going to massage it out of him,” Scarlet said matter-of-factly.
Hawke nodded grimly. “In a way it’s a good thing. If they need to use him to unlock the rest of this riddle, they’ll keep him alive. If not…” he paused for a moment, but continued before anyone else could speak. “What have you got so far?”
“A lot, I think. The scroll contained a poem and it isn’t hard to translate using Gunnar’s research. It’s definitely an ode to Thor’s death – there are lots of references to the World Serpent biting and envenomating him and others to the nine steps he took before crashing to the ground and dying. This is pretty much in line with the legend, but there’s also a reference in here to how he would surely go to Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain.”
“But you’d expect that, right?” Lea said.
Alex nodded. “Yes. According to Norse mythology all brave warriors who died in combat would be taken there by the valkyries – these were women who selected from the dead and brought the chosen ones into Valhalla.”
“So far so good,” Hawke said, with another glance at his watch. “What else?”
“One line is particularly interesting – it says that At Midgard, the Strength of the Immortals is Inside Thor’s Hammer.”
“Odd use of the word inside,” Lea said.
“I don’t think that’s a problem” Victoria asked. “They just mean that power is within the hammer.”
“But that’s just it,” Lea said, frowning. “First, it’s starting to look like this isn’t about the hammer, and second, they don’t say within, but inside.”
“I don’t get the distinction,” Hawke said.
Victoria spoke next. “I get it – within sort of implies that the power resides in the hammer in some metaphysical way, but inside is saying that it is literally inside the weapon – right, Alex?”
“Right and wrong. We don’t say that courage is inside you, but that you have courage within you, but Lea’s right – this isn’t about a simple hammer.”
Hawke didn’t look convinced. “If you say so, Alex.”
“I think I’m right on this, Joe.”
“So you’re not saying that some kind of power source is literally inside the hammer?” Victoria asked.
“I’m just trying to make the point that we had this all wrong. Sala’s not searching for Thor’s Hammer or some bloody Tesla Coil at all.”
Hawke frowned. “All right – let’s say that’s the case – then what is he searching for?”
Alex smiled. “Here’s where it gets very interesting indeed – the poem says that after his death, Thor will travel to Mjölnir.”
Scarlet sighed. “Come on, Alex, don’t do a Ryan on us, please. It’s bad enough I have to rescue the little toerag and use up valuable gold-finding time.”
Victoria looked confused. “Mjölnir – isn’t that Thor’s Hammer?”
“It surely is,” Alex said with a smile.
“Sorry,” Lea said, “but am I missing something? We know we’re searching for Thor’s Hammer and it’s back there in the sarcophagus. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal,” Alex said, her grin widening, “is that the reference specifically says that Thor will travel to Mjölnir.”
Hawke frowned. “Travel to his hammer?”
Lea looked from Hawke to Alex. “I don’t understand – the poem’s saying he lost his hammer and after death he’ll find it?”
Alex shook her head. “No, I don’t think so – there’s more. It also says his soul will break into Mjölnir.”
“Is it just me?” Scarlet said. “Or is this getting less clear by the second?”
“It’s not just you,” Hawke said. “Alex, dumb it down please, and fast. Ryan’s life is on the line.”
“Sorry – it’s simple. They specifically use the Old Norse verb fala, which means to travel, and the verb brjóta which means to break into something. What it’s saying is that after his death Thor’s soul will travel to the Mjölnir and break into it, but here’s where it gets really interesting.”
“It hasn’t even got slightly interesting yet,” Scarlet said under her breath.
“The word Mjölnir has become so famous in the Thor legend as the word which describes his hammer that people have been overlooking something so incredibly obvious.”
“Make it obvious to us, will you, darling?” Scarlet said.
“Mjölnir can mean hammer in Old Norse, but it can have other meanings like cliff, or stone. I’m totally sure that Mjölnir wasn’t Thor’s hammer, but a reference to a cliff face on the coast that is the entrance to Valhalla itself.”
Lea looked stunned. “So we’re not looking for Thor’s Hammer – we’re looking for Valhalla after all?”
“Yes. The only reason Sala wanted Thor’s tomb was because it contained the location of Valhalla. The weapons there would make a Tesla Coil look like a water pistol.”
“Oh my goodness!” Victoria said.
“Are you sure?” Hawke asked.
Alex nodded. “Obviously the two things are interlinked but I would say that this poem is referring to Valhalla now, not to the hammer.”
Hawke nodded in understanding. “Which makes sense because the hammer was back inside the sarcophagus and Sala couldn’t have been less interested in it. Anything else?”
“One more thing – the poem talks about how Mjölnir faces Aegir.”
“The God of the Sea?” Victoria asked.
“No, not in this context. Aegir in Old Norse meant not only the god of the sea, who was, of course, the Norse equivalent of Poseidon…”
Scarlet groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Please, no more of him…”
“But it also meant simply the sea. The line Mjölnir strikes Aegir in the north doesn’t mean the hammer will hit the god, but it’s a cliff face that strikes the sea, and the norðanverðr reference simply means northern, so that must point to the north coast, which…”
“Which must mean Norway,” Lea said. “Sweden doesn’t have a coast in the far north.”
“Great work, Alex – but there are a lot of cliffs in Norway,” Hawke said, frustration rising in his voice. “Norway has one of the longest coastlines in the world.”
Alex looked down at the text and ran her finger to a particular word. “The clue is in this word Hornungr. I did some research on this and it looks like it’s an old abandoned word for Mount Storefjell, which just means Big Mountain. This mountain is near the most northerly town in Norway, a place called Honningsvåg. If you ask me – and I guess you did – I would tell you that Valhalla was built or carved into the cliffs in the vicinity of Honningsvåg.”
“Which is why we did ask you,” Hawke said, smiling.
“But there’s a problem.”
She saw their faces drop.
“When isn’t there?” Scarlet said.
Hawke frowned. “Let us have it.”
“The cliffs in the area have suffered from a lot of erosion since the time of Valhalla, which according to most legends stands tall on the cliff tops. After significant erosion – and we’re talking millions of years here – you need to start looking under the water on the coast.”
“Fantastic,” Scarlet said.
“But it makes perfect sense,” Victoria said.
“All right,” Hawke said flatly. “This means we’re going to need extra gear – a submersible, plus some wetsuits and so on.”
“Already organized it and it’s on the way to you right now, and…” Alex stopped, her sentence cut short. She looked up from the faces of her friends on the screen to see another intruder alarm had gone off, much closer to the compound. Given the earlier intruder alert on the outer perimeter this looked like it could be trouble and she knew she had to deal with it right now.
“Guys, I think we might have a problem here, so I have to go.”
“What sort of problem?” Hawke asked.
“Um… all right, I’ve gotta go. Talk to you later.”
Alex cut the call and the screen went black. Then she turned to her other monitor and watched the flashing alert. Whoever it was must have taken Ben out and was now only minutes away from her.
*
Hawke and the others looked at each for a moment in the chilly Arctic silence and wondered what had happened back on the island.
“Well, that was weird.”
“Maybe Maria discovered Ryan’s extensive porn collection,” Scarlet said.
“Not the time, Cairo,” Hawke said flatly. “Ryan could be dead already.”
“Or maybe,” Lea said, smile fading. “Something more serious is going on?”
Hawke thought there was a good chance Lea might be right, but he knew Alex was more than capable of looking after herself – and it wasn’t like she was on her own or in a dangerous location.
She was with Sir Richard Eden, a former officer in the Paras and Maria Kurikova, a Russian agent who had recently defected to the ECHO team. Not only could both of these people put up a serious defense if they were under attack, but he’d heard rumors of another Para by the name of Ridgeley who was also connected to Eden in some w
ay and might be on Elysium right now.
Sure, he was only a Para, Hawke considered mildly, but they were still a serious élite force to be reckoned with. If this Ridgeley were there too he was sure Alex Reeve was in no danger, at least not from any external force. What worried Hawke was how the American was obviously hiding the fact something was going wrong with her legs again – something connected to the elixir he had given her in Egypt.
He knew that would need looking at, but now was hardly the time. Now, as ever, he was up to his neck in trouble and grief and he knew there was a lot more to come as well. He had to focus and look after the people in his charge who needed him right now. Then there was the fact that Ryan Bale had been snatched from right in front of his eyes. For that, Álvaro Sala would pay a heavy price.
“So where are we?” Lea asked.
“In the middle of nowhere,” Scarlet said, and lit a cigarette. “As bloody usual.”
Hawke looked at the sky – the sun was already climbing slowly toward its zenith. “Thanks to Alex’s translation work we’ve got it confirmed that we’re not looking for anything to do with Thor’s Hammer anymore, at least not in the way we were thinking of it. The Hammer is a cliff, not a weapon, and obviously the location of Valhalla itself which Sala wants because of the weaponry that is supposed to be there.”
A silence fell over the team as the implications of his words faded into the strange dawn light.
“I can’t believe it – Valhalla!” Victoria said. “I know Nate must have been looking for this for a long time but I still can’t get my head around it all. I’m an archaeologist, not a treasure hunter or adventurer. To me this all sounds impossible.”
“We deal in the impossible every day,” Lea said with a warm smile.
“Time to go,” Hawke said, pointing at the horizon. “Looks like our ride’s on its way.” A large military helicopter was approaching them at full speed and swooping down into the valley toward them. “Let’s go and get Ryan.”
