The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4)

by David Leadbeater

  The Norseman stared at Mai and Alicia. “I commend your efforts. Breaking in here alone would make you worthy of being part of my team. But this—” He indicated the dead and dying mercenaries by their feet. “Proves your worth tenfold. But alas, your heroism is pointless. You see, there are no heroes any more. Not in this world. Your desperate plan B has failed.”

  Alicia stayed poised, ready to move. “Actually, we’re plan A. He’s plan B.”

  And then there came an almighty crash like the destruction of a mountain, and Matt Drake smashed through the far wall behind the wheel of a speeding Land Rover, utter determination carved into his face like foundations in bedrock. Falling masonry, plaster and crushed timbers rained all around the speeding vehicle, along with the smoke of a dozen mini-explosives Belmonte had placed to weaken the wall.

  Everyone scattered. The Norseman hurled himself out of the way, pretty spry for an older guy. One of his men got clipped by exploding rock, the big block crushing his skull before he could even blink. Mai and Alicia hit the deck; the rest of Hayden’s team followed suit a split-second later. The revving of the mighty engine was the sound of a deadly behemoth in the room, and it was out for vengeance.

  As soon as the big vehicle lost its momentum, Drake dived out the door, scooped up a couple of discarded machine guns and started firing, a weapon in each hand. Spurts of fire burst from the barrels. Mercenaries folded and pirouetted where they stood, blood painting the floor and the walls around them.

  The Norseman crawled amidst the bodies, brick dust and blood clinging to him. His flight, his anonymity, was all that mattered to him now. He didn’t even try to find a firearm. Dahl continued where he’d left off, grabbing the two stunned mercenaries again and slamming their heads together. Then, with a grunt, he discarded their bodies. No more would they take pleasure in the pain of others.

  It was Hayden, soaked, bloody and limping, who reached down to grab the Norseman by the scruff of the neck. Roughly, she jerked his head upward until their eyes met.

  “You see? There are still heroes in this world.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Hayden hauled the Norseman to his feet by his hair. The old man struggled and cried out, but not a single sympathetic eye turned his way.

  “We should kill him,” Belmonte said, slipping from the back seat of the ruined Land Rover. “He instigated everything that’s happened. It all started with this evil bastard.”

  “He’s valuable,” Hayden said, reverting to her CIA perspective. “Imagine the secrets he knows.” She looked at Jonathan Gates. “Right? We might discover who we can really trust.”

  The Secretary of Defense nodded wearily and sat down heavily amidst the rubble. “We will. Just give me a minute.”

  Hayden threw the Norseman at Dahl and strode over to her boss, still limping. “Are you okay, sir?”

  “Just tired,” Gates said. “All this globetrotting seemed like a good idea at first. I fear I may have lost track of my mission objective. To form a chain of clean, reliable and trustworthy individuals all the way to the White House.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Hayden settled beside him with a smile. “Now we have the Norseman, that task will be much simpler.”

  “If we handle it right.”

  “Yes,” Hayden agreed. “If we handle it right.” As the adrenalin subsided, the pain in her side increased. She still had some painkillers in her pocket and popped a few.

  Ben dropped to her side. “You alright, Hayden?”

  His girlfriend looked over his shoulder toward the men in the room. “I will be when the drugs kick in.”

  Dahl pinned the Norseman against a wall and held him there. Alicia appeared at his shoulder, studying the leader of the Shadow Elite as if he were a bizarre relic.

  “Anything to say, you crispy old fuck?”

  “I demand to speak to my lawyer?”

  Alicia looked surprised, an unusual expression for her. “If you weren’t such an evil wanker, I’d actually respect you for that.”

  But then, Drake pushed his way past and leaned in, lightly head-butting the man. “Tell me.” He growled. “Was it you? Were you the bastard who saw me coming and ordered her death?”

  The Norseman stared at him for a minute and then said, “Wells, your unit Commander, suggested her death would. . .divert your attentions. So yes, as leader of the group, I take all responsibility for allowing that to happen.”

  “And Coyote? The man who killed her. Who is that?”

  “You think it was a man. . .”

  “I’m sorry,” Mai interrupted. “I really am, Matt, but we have a more pressing need. The world is still at risk. Where are the eight pieces of Odin? Tell us now, and your future might have less of a sharp edge to it.”

  “I have survived this long,” the Norseman said, “by carefully weighing all my options and trusting my instinct. I will survive longer by telling you this—the Shadow Elite have their HQ in Vienna”—he gave a respectful nod to Drake—“as you almost discovered many years ago. I can give you the address. The eight pieces and the heads of all the other families will be there.”

  Now Dahl spoke up. “Why would the eight pieces be in Vienna? You need them to kick start the doomsday device, don’t you? And why did that twat Cayman originally take them from Iceland to Stuttgart?”

  “Do not think you are the only people who have a plan B. We too have contingencies. As the governing body of this planet, we have a new plan now, as anyone with an IQ over one hundred would anticipate.”

  “Which is?”

  “We will try the threat first, as we always have. It’s worked for thousands of years. It will work again. But. . .” He gazed without expression. “If we are forced, we will provide a demonstration. Vienna is close enough to Singen to be perfect for our ways and means. And…” He shrugged. “The base at Stuttgart was a similar way station. Just a more convenient resting place along the way.”

  “Your new plan sounds like a backward step to me,” Drake said.

  “It is the step that I originally advocated,” the Norseman told them. “But I was overruled by the council. Now, using the fiasco you set in motion, I have exerted my authority.”

  “Fiasco?” Hayden said numbly. “We stopped you from using that fucking device. Did you even stop to think that once you got your rocks off by triggering it, you might not be able to stop it?”

  The Norseman blinked, showing emotion for the first time.

  “Your arrogance,” Hayden said, “your superior, disgusting egotism astounds me. You think that because you are all-powerful, that you can second guess Odin?”

  “The gods were once real,” Dahl snapped at him. “Even now, you are too self-important to see that. Even now.”

  “Our families have governed this world for far longer than you can imagine,” the Norseman told them. “When the world was new and unexplored, we were already wealthy. The global, navigated map only strengthened our hold. Our ancient families belong to the six foremost families in history.”

  “You think you are gods?” Drake snapped. “Is that it?”

  “Gods of men.” The Norseman almost smiled. “Of that I am sure.”

  “We are wasting time that we don’t have,” Mai said urgently. “You’ll give us this address in Vienna and you will give us something more.”

  “And what is that?”

  “At least three different ingress points.”

  “Well, my map drawing days are long gone—”

  Drake gripped his neck. “Don’t worry, old man. You start making up right now for all your past sins. You’re coming with us.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Russell Cayman crouched like a big black spider in the corner of a shadowy tomb. He sang softly to himself, a spine-tingling litany that catalogued his life and all his woes. If any mercenary thought it a disturbing sight, none dared comment. But they did leave him there, eerie and troubled.

  The pitted and scarred tomb beside him belonged to Amatsu, the God of
Evil. Where Cayman did not believe in magic or fantasy or lingering spirits, he did believe that an old and terrible trauma might leave some kind of residue in the present. Stamped in time.

  As if it were sunlight, he basked in its warmth. He had recently received orders that he and his men were to remain at the tomb for the foreseeable future, guarding it from the inquisitive and the downright nosey. The Shadow Elite’s ghost network would take care of any curious authorities.

  Deadly force must be used at all times.

  Cayman and his men had no problem with that. It was what they were paid for. Now all they had to do was wait.

  Cayman was convinced. The eight pieces of Odin had always been destined to be returned to the third tomb of the gods. Was there even a weapon or a person powerful enough to stop it happening? Sooner or later, by pure hand or foul, through good deed or ill, they would return to their rightful resting place and fulfill their bright and terrible destiny.

  *****

  Matthew Holgate strolled the sculpted gardens of Schonbrunn Palace, eyes blind to the great fountains, statues and seventeenth-century architecture that stood all around him. He meandered his way slowly toward the gloriette, each step a chore and a burden on his heart as he thought about what was to come.

  His ancestors had been flourishing in Vienna even when this spectacular palace was being built. No doubt they had known its owners, its designers, and all of its occupants since. Now Holgate was about to destroy the family heritage. The legacy of centuries turned to ashes and dust.

  He thought about the people his family had known. The kings. The princes. The presidents and prime ministers. And then, he thought about the utter scum he was being forced to contend with now. Men of no conscience, of no moral scruples whatsoever. Men who had been raised so hard and so ruthlessly that their hearts were made of black ice.

  Not to say the Shadow Elite might boast about their grand humanitarian principles, but at least every leader of the six families bore some fragment of humanity.

  Holgate was terrified in so many ways. He was terrified of walking this path alone—the first time he had ever had to do so—of not being able to go through with the deal, of the consequences of failure or disloyalty to his new benefactors. He didn’t have a buffer—a Russell Cayman—he was a one man bring-and-buy sale.

  And, most of all, he despaired of what would happen once the wrong man bought the right weapon.

  But time marched on, and the rest of the Shadow Elite were running out of it, though they did not know it yet. Holgate turned to stare at the enormous fountain and, beyond it, the spectacular gloriette, his normally pale face aglow in response to the biting cold, his haunted gaze caught and held by the blood-red haze in the sky, a telling and silent accusation.

  And then his phone rang. Unbuttoning his long black coat and reaching for an inside pocket, he took out the chirping mobile. “Yes?”

  “We have made the arrangements,” a heavily accented and clearly educated voice said. “The bazaar will be ready on time. Many, many. . .attendees, my friend. You had better get this right.”

  “It will be right,” Holgate said quickly. “Just send me the men you promised.”

  “They are already there.” The man reeled off a contact number. “Waiting for you. My part is done. Again, my friend, even one of these attendees would not hesitate to destroy a city to reach just one man, and you have invited more than two dozen to your bazaar—along with their bodyguards. For all our sakes, do not fuck up.”

  The connection was severed. Holgate started at the blank screen for a while and then at the bright-eyed faces of passing tourists.

  Do not fuck up.

  It wasn’t one man destroying a city that caused Holgate’s blood to run cold. It was that man having the capability to destroy the world.

  Then don’t do it, he thought. Walk away. Tell the Norseman. Christ, even alert the authorities.

  But the proud leader of one of the six families just couldn’t subject himself to such exposure. He was, after all, privileged. A god among men. He was allowed such quirks of character.

  Everything would soon start to go his way. It always did.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Drake stared unseeing at the wintry, sun-struck streets of Vienna as Karin followed the detached directions of the inbuilt sat-nav to the place where the Norseman promised the Shadow Elite had kept their headquarters for thousands of years.

  All those years ago, Wells had issued the order to kill Alyson. Time had enabled Drake to get past her death, but with the commencement of the Odin cycle it had cruelly thrust the details back into his face. That—and more.

  Drake hadn’t just lost Alyson in that crash. He had also lost his unborn child. Beyond strife, hunger, injustice and torture, there was one nightmarish absolute—a parent should never have to bury their own child, unborn or not. Now, Drake dwelled on what might have been and how his life might have been different, and had to physically shut down the pain that rose inside. A soldier’s hard wall of indifference and denial struggled to intervene and compartmentalize the suffering.

  Around him the streets of Vienna started to darken. Bright, colorful lights shone out warm and inviting against the night. Drake saw young children dressed in bobble hats and mittens, wrapped up with scarves, running between the shops, their parents struggling to keep up and keep an eye out for them. He saw the impressive architecture of a sprawling museum, its ancient facade artfully lit by a modern light show. He saw businessmen and secretaries, tourists and salespeople boiling up from the underground, many then darting across the wide roads whilst trying to avoid the metal bullets that flashed everywhere without thought—a cyclist rarely stops in Vienna.

  Somewhere nondescript and unknown, they pulled over to the side of the road and accepted three men into the car. The men were hard-looking and rugged and carried big black holdalls. Sam, their leader, gave Drake a nod.

  “Sam,” the ex-SAS man greeted his old friend and his team, “thanks for joining us.”

  “Nowhere else to be, matey.”

  Beyond that, the throng thinned, but the old buildings with their eye-catching construction continued. A meandering park opened out to the right where, Belmonte told them, a superb restaurant sat right in the middle. A place frequented by and saved for the locals, cheap and delicious, not touted to the rich tourists. Still more streets and more sets of traffic lights and apartment complexes, and then they were in a tree-lined neighborhood. Even farther and the gateways became less frequent until. . .

  The Norseman said, “Slow down. That is the place.”

  Drake observed a narrow gateway, lined on all sides with the requisite high trees. A razor-wire topped fence would no doubt stand behind the tee-line. He pressed a button to lower the electric window.

  “Aye up. Well, you’d better not be lying to us, big man. The penalty for lies around here is slow and painful, and not something you usually come back from.”

  Mai raised an eyebrow at that one. “A date with Alicia?”

  Even the Englishwoman grinned. “You’re closer to the truth than you think.”

  Drake expected Belmonte to chirp up next, but the English thief was not himself these days. He said nothing, just stared out the front window, tapping the wheel. Drake turned in his seat. The second car had pulled up behind them. The rest of the Shadow Elite and the eight Pieces of Odin awaited them.

  *****

  With care, stealth and help from the Norseman, the team walked right through the front gates and melted quickly into the darkened grounds. No one challenged them at the gate, but then the Norseman had input the combination with his face just a few inches from the camera. The possibility existed that he had, in fact, entered an “intruder” alarm code, a set of numbers used to allow entry, but at the same time triggering a silent alert. Mai, Alicia and half the team slipped to the left, Drake and the others to the right.

  And then they moved quickly, always alert, eyes peeled for guards and traps or any signs of
movement ahead. They crept carefully for some time through the trees and ornamental gardens. The Shadow Elite’s mansion was cloaked in a shroud of deep privacy. Then, after Drake began to wonder if there actually was any building ahead and that maybe the Norseman had sacrificed himself for his brethren, he saw the main road make a sweeping right curve up ahead.

  And right on the cusp of that bend, standing as tall and wide and impressive as any house in Vienna, the secret headquarters of the group who ruled the world sat in silence.

  Lights blazed from almost every window.

  Dahl muttered, “Not exactly green warriors, are they?”

  Drake dropped to one knee and dragged the Norseman up alongside him. Wetness soaked up from the grass through his trousers. His weapon clunked as it rapped the old man on the head. “Is that normal?” He hissed.

  “No.” The Norseman looked shocked. “It certainly isn’t.”

  “And the front door?” Mai asked. “Does it normally hang off its hinges like that?”

  Drake looked closer, marvelling at the Japanese agent’s eagle eye. The front door was small, overhung by a big arch and hidden partially behind a pillar, but the angles of the framework looked all wrong.

  “Good spot.”

  “Something. . .” the Norseman began.

  A gunshot echoed from inside the house. The Norseman drew in a sharp breath. “No. Oh no. . .”

  Drake signaled and the group exploded from the trees like a well-primed and organized unit. Mai and Alicia flanked him with Dahl covering the rear and dragging the Norseman along. On the other side, Hayden and Kinimaka took point, with Komodo and the SAS team following and fanning out. Immediately behind them and staying impressively low came Karin and Ben, Gates and Belmonte.

  Drake reached the house and took a quick gander through the nearest window before flattening himself against the wall. He shook his head. Nothing. Mai checked the next, and Alicia the next. Both women shook their heads.