by Rob Jones
Now his mind drifted to Lea and the others. They had flown to Florida to help Victoria Hamilton-Talbot, but for some reason they were now somewhere in the Arctic Circle – at least that is where he had to presume they were because that was their location when they had last contacted Elysium. He knew they were more than capable of looking after themselves, and he tried to relax, but the burdens of his work weighed heavily on his mind.
In particular, he never stopped worrying about Lea. To him, she was almost like a daughter, and to make matters worse, he had recently received a call from the rest of the ECHO team who were currently in Mexico. Alfie had called to say they were still in Acapulco but their target Morton Wade had started for the jungle ahead of the anticipated schedule.
Wade was as depraved as they came, and Eden knew he couldn’t let him out of his sight. That meant sending someone in after him, but most of the team were in the Arctic and neither Alfie nor Sasha were trained for the work. To say they each had a valuable skillset was the understatement of the century, but neither was ex-military and sending them into the jungle after Wade would be a death sentence. The nearest man capable of doing the job was Ben Ridgeley and he knew he’d have to send him into the jungle soon, but now the young former Para was enjoying a cold beer with Alex, Maria and their newest member Lexi.
Let him have his beer, Eden considered. He can fly into the jungle tomorrow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lea watched Sala creep slowly toward them in the same way she might keep an eye on a lizard as it crawled across her patio. There was something about this man that set off all her alarm bells – something about him that was different to any of the others. As he drew closer, Smets and a handful of other men joined him from the shadows.
Instinctively she drew closer to Hawke, who stood up to his full height and squared up to the Andorran. “So pleased you could join us, Sala.”
“Ah, Mr Hawke and the rest of the A-Team – you’re here at last.”
“Yes, we got delayed because someone tried to blow up our helicopter,” Scarlet said, arching an eyebrow. “Fortunately, I’m a better shot than they were so now they’re all flakes of fish food.”
Sala gave no reaction other than to move over to the statue of the woman and run his hands over its smooth, cold thigh. “This is Iðunn,” he said, glancing at the statue of the goddess with appreciation, almost as if it had once been alive. “She was the Norse goddess of youth and apples and in both the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda she was described as the keeper of apples. You may know that these apples conferred eternal youthfulness on those who ate of their flesh.”
“Now I can see why they’re part of our Five a Day,” Scarlet said.
Sala ignored her. “The box you see at the base of her statue is called an eski – an ancient container carved of ash wood in which she kept her apples. These apples were consumed by the gods when infirmity crept over them like a shadow in their old age. After eating the apples, their power and youth were restored.” Sala turned to face them. “Do you know what the oldest question in the world is?”
Scarlet glanced at his long, black hair. “Are you wearing a rug?”
Sala looked at her, his eyes narrowing in confusion. “The oldest question is simple – what good is immortality without power?”
“Like you Cairo, I’m starting to wonder if megalomania is infectious,” Hawke said.
Sala dismissed the Englishman with a casual wave of his hand and glanced with unadulterated avarice over the hoard of treasure, swords and other magical weapons stretching over the vast space. “The answer is that it is no good at all. Can you imagine a life of eternal poverty, or eternal impotence?”
“No, but I bet you can,” Scarlet said, glancing at his groin.
“Silence! I will not be mocked! You think this is just some kind of joke, but this only tells me you know nothing about what you’re tangling with. You’re like stupid little children who have discovered a loaded gun in the forest and are playing with the safety catch. Eternity is a serious business, and immortality without power is worse than death.”
“So that’s what you’re here for?” Hawke asked, his voice echoing in the hall. “You killed all those people to get to a source of the elixir here in Valhalla?”
Sala laughed. “Hardly. There is no elixir here in Valhalla – at least not the sort you found in the Ethiopian mountains.”
The ECHO team shared a worried glance. “You know about that?”
Another cackle. “Of course,” he said, his face turning sour. “When you broke into the tomb you cost me more than you could ever imagine.”
“Imagine my sorrow,” Hawke said.
As he spoke, Smets and a team of men were moving the gods’ weapons from the Hall to his submarine. They seemed to be concentrating on the impressive collection of swords which had been thrust into the ground in a large circle around the Odin statue.
“I always loved the swords…” Sala said, his eyes following their progress to the sub. “And now they are all mine.”
He watched with glee as the men moved on to another part of the hall.
“You’re amassing quite the collection of doomsday weapons, Sala,” Hawke said. “Planning something we can all enjoy?”
Sala looked at Hawke with dead eyes. “That one is Ichaival, Odin’s bow, this here is the sword of Freyr… all of them mine now – all of them my weapons, with which I will defeat the real enemy of this world.”
Lea nudged Hawke in the ribs.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Look – the Tarnkappe.”
“Eh?”
“It’s the rest of Sigurd’s magical cloak,” Ryan said from his other side.
They watched the surreal sight of Leon Smets carrying the rest of the cloak of invisibility from the hall and handing it to a sailor.
“Tell me,” Hawke said, “Are all you megalomaniac nutcases part of some kind of club? Do you have a union or something?”
Sala ignored him. “Now, sadly it is time for you all to have an unfortunate accident.” He turned to Smets. “Are the charges set?”
Smets nodded confirmation.
“Charges?” Ryan said.
“Yes, when we arrived my men planted several kilos of plastic explosives in the most vulnerable areas of this hall. When they explode the ceiling will collapse and the whole cursed place will be crushed under thousands of tons of sea water.”
“What are you talking about? You can’t blow this place up!”
“Why not?” Sala asked with a scowl. “It’s been done before.”
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t possibly understand. You didn’t honestly think this place got here because of natural coastal erosion?”
“But it’s Valhalla!” Ryan said.
“And?”
“Shouldn’t it be National Trust or something?” Scarlet said.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Come on – you can’t destroy the greatest archaeological find in history.”
“The greatest archaeological find in history to you maybe,” Sala said sourly. “To me this place means nothing, and today I shall do what the others failed to do all those millions of years ago and erase it from the face of the earth.”
“Others?” Lea asked. “What others?”
Sala looked at her, the grin on his face turning bitter. “You have so much to learn about this world, Lea Donovan… it’s a shame you have only minutes to live.”
“All of this for these weapons?” Hawke said. “What next – you want to destroy the armies of the world?”
Sala laughed. “Destroying the armies of the world is easy, Englishman. Making war with a mortal is like wrestling with a puppy. No… these weapons are for a much more ancient and bloody conflict. Smets! Don’t forget those axes!”
“When you’re dead, Sala,” Hawke said with calm determination, “I’m going to file you under Just Another Nutcase.”
Sala gave a cold laugh and nodded his head. “More humor �
� I respect that so let me give you a little of what you seek.”
Scarlet lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the cold air. “That’s very magnanimous of you, Álvaro.”
Sala cut her a cold glance. “You will be dead soon enough so I see no harm in putting you out of your misery. Yes, my name is Álvaro Sala, but during the Spanish Civil War I was Francisco Rivera.” He grinned as he watched their faces in reaction to his words. “When I lived in Ancient Rome they called me Atilius. Now, you get closer to the truth after so many struggles.”
He leaned closer to the statue of Iðunn and caressed her smooth stone shoulder. He pulled an apple from the eski and Lea was shocked to see it glowing bright gold as if it were electric. He bit into it and chewed slowly, a warped grin spreading on his gaunt face. Seconds later his pallid complexion began to take on a rosy glow. “How would you find the taste of the truth if you really knew it – sordid horror or fantastic beauty?”
“You’re crazy, Sala!” Lea yelled.
“So you have said, but I think not. Now I will bring the Doom of the Gods to this place as it should have been done so long ago.”
“You mean Ragnarök?” Hawke asked.
Sala smiled with condescension. “That is a term whose meaning you could never hope to understand.”
The silence following his words was met by the sounds of Victoria returning from the Folkvang. “It’s amazing down there! I found the Brisingamen – the necklace jewellery of fire that Loki stole… Loki! And it’s right here in my…”
Her words startled Sala, who spun around to see the English archaeologist standing right behind him with the strange, shimmering necklace in her hands.
“Ah – Dr Hamilton-Talbot, the erstwhile archaeological academic turned grubby treasure hunter. I see you got here in the end.” As he spoke, one of his men collected the eski and marched away to the Migaloo with it.
“Oh my…” she said in her sparkling crystal Oxford accent.
Sala smirked and waved the barrel of the gun casually toward the others. “Get over there, and give me that necklace on the way.”
Victoria moved slowly toward Sala. She gently extended her hand and held out the glistening jewellery.
He bit into the apple, keeping it in clenched in his mouth as he brought his hand up to take it from her. He studied it for a moment and then turned to Lea. “You never found the gods, Lea Donovan… but you will surely die among them.”
“Go to hell!”
He turned to Smets. “Kill them all now, starting with Hawke.”
Smets raised his gun and aimed it at Hawke’s head. He pulled back the hammer and slowed his breathing.
Time seemed to stand still.
Then he swivelled and aimed the gun at Sala, firing several shots into the Andorran recluse’s heart.
Sala’s eyes widened in terror as he registered the betrayal and everyone jumped with shock as the shot echoed loudly in the cavernous space. Sala gasped and doubled over, clutching at his chest where the bullets had torn inside him.
Lea screamed and took a step back as Sala fell to his knees, blood bubbling up his digestive tract and pouring from his mouth. She thought he had a vaguely vampiric quality as the blood trickled over his teeth and ran down his chin, but then he fell forward and landed with a dry thud in the dust.
“That’s you over and done with, old man,” Smets said.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Hawke said, staring at Sala’s dying body with widening eyes.
Just as they had seen in the Ethiopian Highlands when Maxim Vetrov had met his maker, something very unnatural was now happening to Álvaro Sala. His corpse began to jolt as if being flooded with electricity, and his skin was turning the color of putty and beginning to fall off in strange, dry peels. He strained his head upward in search of the apple, and spying it on the floor ahead of him started to crawl toward it, but as he moved, parts of his skin began to peel away and fall off onto the floor.
Smets took a step forward and kicked the apple out of his reach.
Victoria Hamilton-Talbot staggered back in disgust, yet unable to take her eyes away from the terrible scene unfolding before her. “What the hell is this?” she asked her voice barely more than a whisper. “What the hell is going on?”
“We don’t know,” Hawke said, still eyeing the gun in Smets’s hand. “We saw something similar in Ethiopia. It’s got something to do with their lifespan.”
“Their lifespan?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
Then, with what little he had of his strength, Sala pulled a black box from his pocket. It was a small remote control device with an inch-long aerial on the top and one modest silver button.
“Bloody hell!” Hawke shouted. “He’s going to blow the place up!”
“I think not,” Smets said calmly. “At least not yet.”
The Andorran tried to take his revenge and used what was left of his exposed thumb bone to push down the small button but the Belgian hit man darted forward and kicked the device from his rapidly decomposing hand. A terrifying, hollow howl croaked from his deteriorating body as he watched Smets pick up the device, but then he died, and what was left of his face collapsed in the dirt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“He’s dead!” Ryan said.
“Yes,” Scarlet said coolly. “How very inconsiderate of the old bastard.”
“Did he activate it?” Lea asked.
Hawke shook his head. “No – it didn’t send a signal and it would be on a timer anyway. There’s no other way for them to clear the place out and then blow it without getting to safety first – am I right, Leon?”
“Shut it, Anglais.”
Ryan sighed. “I’ll take that as a yes – that was a close one then!”
Hawke gave him a condescending glance. “Yes, except for the simple fact that... ”
Scarlet finished his sentence. “That now we know the place is rigged with explosives and we don’t know how many there are, or where they are, or when Monsieur Smets here intends on detonating them.”
“Exactly,” Hawke said.
The veins in Sala’s neck were now tearing out through his rotting skin, but there was no more blood. Now, nothing but a strange black dust poured from them as the deterioration of his dead body accelerated. Even Smets was now stunned into silence by the spectacle.
“It’s like some kind of macabre time-lapse,” Ryan said in amazement.
“He’s right,” Hawke said. “We’re seeing death, but speeded up.”
Now, Sala’s intestines were spilling out from his skeleton and tumbling onto the floor, all dry and turning to a kind of powder.
“Whatever the hell it is,” Scarlet said, “it should have a bloody 18 Certificate on it. I’ll never be able to eat Pad Thai again.”
Ryan pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and moved cautiously forward. “We’re watching some kind of organic decomposition, but on super fast-forward.”
Lea raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh God, is that his heart?”
A desiccated heart dropped from the safety of Sala’s ribcage and hit the dust with a little thump, and seconds later the remains of his skeleton crumbled to powder and began to blow away in a breeze blowing from the depths of the cavern.
“It’s like what we saw with Vetrov but with one critical difference,” Ryan muttered. “Vetrov died when he took the elixir, but when Sala got shot he tried to reach the apple – to take more elixir to stop himself from dying. What’s the difference?”
“Search me,” Hawke said flatly. “But we’ve got to find out.”
“What the hell did I just see?” Victoria asked.
“You saw what happens to an immortal when he dies,” Hawke said flatly.
“He needed the apples,” Smets said. “Without them he couldn’t have lived to wage his war.” He turned to Victoria and threw her one of his pistols. “Here, ma chérie… take this.”
Victoria deftly caught the gun in one hand and pointed it at Hawke, ai
ming the muzzle squarely at his chest.
“Bloody hell, I didn’t see that one coming!” Hawke said.
Smets walked slowly toward Victoria, a malevolent smirk on his face. They held each other and kissed much to the disgust of the ECHO team.
Then Victoria Hamilton-Talbot spoke. “All of you – stay where you are and raise your hands!”
“Victoria?” Lea asked.
“Drop your weapons – now!”
Lea took her Glock from the holster and lowered it gently to the floor. Across the hall she watched Hawke and Scarlet follow suit. Ryan, who was unarmed, simply raised his arms into the air.
“Fuck me!” Ryan said. “So all that stuff back in Florida about searching for a Tesla Coil was all just blarney?”
Victoria winked at him. “Got it in one, babe.” She waved the gun menacingly at them. “The prize was always Valhalla and its gold and weapons. Nothing less.”
“What about Nate?” he asked.
“Nate and I had been searching for Valhalla together for years but I needed more knowledge than he could give me. I knew the only way Dickie would ever send the famous ECHO team to assist me was if something terribly serious had befallen me, so Leon and I cooked up the plan to shoot him in Canada. It worked a dream.”
“But you had the flash drive!” Lea said.
“Yes but we knew we would need an insurance policy if we were unable to decode it – and what better insurance policy than having the ECHO team do our work for us.”
“But what about the answer-phone message – the death threat?”
“Leon, of course…”
Leon Smets gave a proud nod of his head and a theatrical bow full of mockery. “All theater, mes amis.”
