The Valhalla Prophecy

by Andy McDermott

  “Oh, so I’ve got a choice?”

  “Ha! You’re a married man, you have no choice in anything.”

  “Yeah, I learned that in my first marriage.” He huffed, then rolled out of bed. “Well, if the world needs saving again, suppose I’d better bloody do it.”

  “Hopefully it won’t need our services today,” Nina told him. Now it was her turn to smirk. “Because I’ve got plans for tonight.”

  Eddie grinned, then headed for the bathroom.

  “Can’t believe you’re still cold,” said Eddie as they entered Nina’s office.

  “What?” she complained, unzipping her coat. “It feels like the middle of winter!” She pointed at the cityscape beyond the windows. The view across her native Manhattan from the United Nations’ towering Secretariat Building was still dappled with snow from an unexpected flurry a few days earlier, and a chill wind had whipped around them as they crossed First Avenue and the plaza outside the UN complex.

  “You were the one who wanted to take the subway rather than getting a cab.” Eddie took off his battered leather jacket, looking entirely unfazed by the weather.

  “And you should have tried harder to convince me that was a bad idea!”

  “When have I ever managed to do that?” He hung up his jacket, then watched with amusement as his wife shrugged off layers of clothing. “So what’s in today’s diary, then?”

  “Jeez, at least let me get to my desk.” Finally shorn of wool, Nina sat and opened her laptop. “Okay, there’s the international relations meeting at nine thirty, the general accounting briefing at eleven—”

  “Count me in! Fucking thrilling.”

  “The IT upgrade group at two, and the interagency communications meeting at four.” She leaned back, shaking her head. “You know what’s missing from all of those? Anything to do with actual archaeology.”

  “See? This’d be a good time to take a long break. There’s nothing new actually going on.”

  “It’s tempting. Very tempting.” She started to check her emails, but was interrupted by the intercom. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Wilde?” said Melinda, Lola’s French replacement. “There is a Mr. Trulli asking to see you. He does not have an appointment, but—”

  “Matt?” said Nina. “That’s okay, let him in.”

  Eddie raised his eyebrows. “Matt’s here?”

  “Must have come back early from Down Under.” Before long, there was a knock at the door. “Come in!”

  Matt Trulli entered. “Morning, guys!” said the Australian cheerfully. The couple had not seen him for a few months, and in that time the Oceanic Survey Organization’s chief engineer had topped up his tan and also acquired a sun-bleached beard and several extra pounds around his already ample midsection. “Great to see you both.”

  “You too,” replied Nina, getting up to greet him.

  Eddie shook his hand. “Welcome back! How was your trip home?”

  “Bloody brilliant, mate. Just what I needed to relax after everything that happened down at Atlantis.” The previous year, Matt had almost died in a crippled submarine among the ruins of the lost city. “Spent the time designing a new sub—with a two-way release on the docking clamps this time!—and building a couple of ROVs.”

  “Your idea of relaxation ain’t the same as mine,” said the Englishman. “That’s not what I call a holiday.”

  “It wasn’t really a holiday, mate—it was technically a sabbatical. Working holiday, the best sort.”

  “My thinking exactly,” said Nina, embracing Matt. “Maybe I married the wrong man …”

  “Oi!” protested Eddie.

  Matt laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of splitting you two up, mate. For starters, I know you’d beat the crap out of me!”

  “So you’re back at the OSO?” Nina asked.

  He nodded. “Don’t start again until next week, officially, but I fancied coming in to clear the decks beforehand. I’ve been out of the office for months, so I hate to think what my inbox is going to look like! But I wanted to pop in and say hello to you guys first.”

  “Aw, thanks, Matt,” she said with a smile. “Glad you’re back.”

  “Nice to be back. Although the weather’s a bit crook! So what have you two been up to? Got anything exciting going on?”

  “Not at the moment,” said Nina. “Lots of meetings, bureaucracy, budgets …”

  “There’s no bloody pleasing her,” Eddie scoffed. “When things are going smoothly, she complains. When she’s being shot at or thrown out of blimps, she complains!”

  Matt looked surprised. “You were thrown out of a blimp?”

  “No,” Nina assured him. “Although it’s about the only thing we haven’t been thrown out of.”

  “Yet,” added her husband.

  She jabbed a finger at him. “What did I tell you about jinxing things?”

  “Glad to see you two are the same as ever,” said Matt, smiling. “Anyway, we’ll have to have a proper catch-up soon. If you’re free one evening this week, maybe we could grab a bite somewhere.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Eddie said. “Lola yesterday, now you, and we were just talking about going to see Grant Thorn in LA—it’s like we’re getting the gang back together.”

  “If we see Grant, we’ll probably see Macy too—they’re an item now,” added Nina. “Huh, wonder if we’ll catch up with anyone else?”

  “Probably Peter bloody Alderley, knowing my luck.”

  She smiled and was about to reply when the intercom sounded again. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Wilde, Mr. Seretse is here,” Melinda announced. Nina and Eddie exchanged glances; the UN liaison was not one of their scheduled meetings for the day. “He says it’s a very important matter.”

  “Thanks, Melinda. Send him in,” said Nina. “Wonder what he wants?”

  “Whatever it is, I doubt it’s any of my business,” Matt said. “I’d better get going.”

  “See you later,” said Eddie, clapping him on the shoulder.

  “No worries, mate. Catch you again soon, Nina.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Bye, Matt.” He smiled and departed, the door barely having time to swing shut before it was opened again by the morning’s second unexpected arrival.

  Oswald Seretse was a tall and handsome black man in his late forties, straight-backed and aristocratic in bearing. He carried a slim, expensive briefcase. “Ah, good morning, Dr. Wilde, Mr. Chase,” he said, his Gambian accent largely masked beneath the patrician tones he had acquired while studying at Cambridge.

  “Please,” said Nina as she shook his proffered hand, “call me Nina.” Seretse’s attitude was considerably more formal than his predecessor’s. “We don’t really stand on ceremony at the IHA.”

  “Very well. Nina.” He did not sound entirely comfortable with doing so. “Eddie.”

  “Oswald,” said Eddie as he shook the official’s hand and grinned cheekily. “Or can I call you Ozzy?”

  Seretse gave him a heavy-eyed stare. “I would really prefer that you didn’t.”

  “What can we do for you?” Nina asked, gesturing for him to take a seat on the couches in one corner. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until the end of the week.”

  “Something has come up.” Seretse sat, carefully straightening the trouser creases of his immaculate blue suit before setting his briefcase on the low coffee table and unlocking it. “A matter that I think you will agree concerns the IHA.”

  Eddie took the place on the adjoining couch beside Nina. “Security business?”

  “That is the IHA’s purview, so yes.” He took out a manila folder. “Now, Doct— Nina. How much do you know about Norse mythology?”

  “The basics,” she answered, curious. “I read Beowulf in high school, and Viking history was part of my coursework for a semester as an undergraduate. And there was a degree of crossover when I was doing my research into the various legends of Atlantis, because the Vikings were linked to some of them—although just about every ancient civilizati
on was linked to Atlantis at one time or another, so the connections were tenuous at best, and as we’ve since discovered they had no basis in fact. But I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means.”

  Seretse nodded. “I see. But you have heard of Viking runestones?”

  “Of course. In fact, I know a specialist in them, David Colway. He’s not a full-time member of the IHA, but he’s worked with us before. If you want, I can call him.”

  The diplomat firmly shook his head. “As I said, this is a security matter. It must remain classified for now.” He opened the folder and handed her a photograph. “This is what has become known as the Valhalla Runestone.”

  Nina recognized it immediately. “Found last year in Sweden. David actually went over to Stockholm to study it for a few days. Are you sure you don’t want me to bring him in on this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Eddie took a closer look at the photograph. The runestone was a long, rugged slab of moss-covered granite, lying on a cloth-draped bench to allow for detailed examination. A ruler beside it provided scale: It was around seven feet in length, some two feet wide at the base and tapering to half that at the top. The rock was about a foot thick. Line upon line of thin, angular characters had been chiseled into its face, along with patterns and symbols surrounding a circular piece of much darker stone set into a recess some two-thirds of the way up it. “So what’s so important about it? It doesn’t actually tell you how to find Valhalla, does it?”

  He had said it jokingly, but Nina’s reply was serious. “Actually … kind of, yes.”

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  “No. If I remember, it supposedly described the route the Vikings would have taken to find it. There was a lot of excitement about it at the time; people were wondering if Valhalla was more than just a legend, like Atlantis. That’s why I asked David to check it out for us.”

  “What did he find?”

  “Nothing concrete—what was written in the runes was too vague. The Swedes are still working on it, but everyone else has pretty much lost interest.”

  “Not everyone,” said Seretse. “Someone is very interested in the runestone. Interested enough to steal it—and kill for it.”

  Nina gasped. “What?”

  Seretse took out another photograph. This was a wider angle, showing the bench from the previous image in its surroundings, a laboratory.

  It was empty.

  “Last night, thieves broke into the Swedish National Museum of Antiquities in Stockholm and took the runestone,” the official told them sonorously. “They also shot and killed a security guard.”

  “They stole it?” Eddie said, looking back at the first photo. “Christ, if that thing’s seven feet of solid granite, it must weigh a ton!”

  “Very nearly. Nought-point-nine metric tons, in fact.”

  “They’d need a lot of people to move it.”

  “They had them. They hacked into the security cameras and shut them off before breaking in, but a camera on another building nearby caught them. There were at least eight people involved, probably more.”

  “Why would they steal it?” Nina wondered. “Every inch of it’s been photographed, and all the runes have been translated. Why go to the risk of taking the actual stone when you could just look it up on Google?”

  “That is what the UN would like you to find out,” said Seretse, straightening. “A flight to Stockholm has been arranged for this evening, so you will arrive there tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” she said, taken aback.

  “Guess we’ll have to tell Matt to take a rain check,” Eddie muttered.

  “Wait, I don’t understand,” Nina went on. “This is a job for the Stockholm police, not the IHA. What’s it got to do with us?”

  Seretse took out a final photo and placed it in front of them. The scene was dark and grainy, a CCTV still taken at night. Several figures wearing black clothing were clustered around a van, features obscured by hoods and caps.

  Except one. This particular frame had been singled out because one of the robbers had inadvertently revealed his face, if only for a fraction of a second. His hood had slipped back as he climbed into the van, exposing his features to the wash of a nearby streetlight.

  Both Nina and Eddie knew him at once.

  “That is what it has to do with the IHA,” said Seretse, seeing their recognition. “The thieves were led by one of your people.”

  4

  Vietnam

  Eight Years Earlier

  Chase stared up at the slowly turning ceiling fan. “Saigon. Shit.”

  “What?” Castille gave him a bewildered look from his nearby chair. “We are not in Saigon. This is Da Nang.”

  “I know, but I always wanted to say that.” On his friend’s uncomprehending blink, he went on: “Come on, Hugo! Apocalypse Now?”

  “Is it?”

  Chase snorted and shook his head. “You need to watch more movies.”

  “Or you need to watch fewer.”

  They both looked around as the hotel room’s telephone rang. Castille, closer, picked it up. “Hello? Yes, we are here … Okay.” He replaced the receiver. “That was Hal. He is with the client in room 503. They are ready to meet us.”

  “About time.” Chase grunted as he stood, flexing and stretching. The flight from London to Ho Chi Minh City had taken over twelve hours, and then the pair had taken a shuttle flight to the coastal city of Da Nang, more than five hundred miles to the north. Although he’d taken every possible opportunity to sleep during the journey, he was still tired.

  The fan did not exactly provide an ice-cold blast, but it made enough of a breeze to take the edge off the tropical heat—which returned in full force as Chase and Castille left the room. It was not the first time that Chase had experienced such conditions, but the cloying, humid atmosphere was still far from pleasant. The Belgian also made a disapproving face, dabbing at his neck with a handkerchief. “I do not mind a little heat,” he complained, “but this? Ugh!”

  “And I thought London was sweaty,” Chase agreed as they reached the elevator. A wait for the elderly device to grumble up to their level, then they entered and ascended to the fifth floor. They headed down another sweltering hallway. From the distance between doors, Chase guessed that guests on this floor had suites rather than mere rooms. They stopped at the third door, Castille knocking. A voice from inside told them to enter.

  The cool air that greeted Chase as he stepped through was a huge relief. He had been right about it being a suite, and with the extra space also came the luxury of air-conditioning. He automatically surveyed the room as he entered: two other exits, plus French windows to a balcony overlooking the port. Five men waiting for them. No visible weapons, but he could tell immediately from the equally calculating looks he was getting in return that four of them had been in the military.

  One of them he recognized, having met him very briefly several years earlier: Hal Sullivan, a former colonel in the New Zealand Special Air Service. In his early sixties, Sullivan nevertheless remained an imposing, dangerous figure. He was six feet tall with the solid build of someone who trained every day, and completely bald—which made his graying handlebar mustache all the more distinctive. His tanned skin had the color and texture of a walnut. “Hugo, mate,” he drawled. “Good to see you. Come on in.” He shook Castille’s hand, then turned to his companion. “And you must be Eddie Chase.”

  “I must,” Chase replied, extending his own hand. Sullivan’s grip was strong, and could easily have been crushing if he so chose.

  “Mac spoke very highly of you, which as far as I’m concerned is as good as a royal seal of approval. Glad to have you aboard.” He released Chase’s hand, then indicated the other men. “These are the rest of the team. John Lomax,” a close-cropped, bearded Caucasian man, “Fernando Rios,” thick black eyebrows and swigging from a can of Coca-Cola, “and Carl Hoyt.”

  Hoyt was the tallest man in the room, wiry rather than muscular and with bony,
deeply sunken cheeks. A hand-rolled cigarette hung from his clenched lips. “Join the gang,” he said, his accent American.

  Chase and Castille greeted the group, then Sullivan waved for them to sit as he stood beside the last man. “This is our client: Ivor Lock. Mr. Lock, if you’d like to explain the situation?”

  Lock had a neat goatee beard and was wearing a tailored suit and shirt, his sole concession to the climate being an open top button. Chase guessed him to be around forty, and from his smooth skin and slicked-back brown hair took him to be a lawyer or business executive. Like Lomax and Hoyt, his accent revealed him as American. “Gentlemen, good afternoon,” he began. “Some background first: There is a charitable organization, Aide Sans Limites, that travels around Third World countries providing free medical care for the poor. One of their groups has been working in Vietnam. Two days ago”—he leaned forward, expression becoming more intense—“the team was taken hostage by a group of bandits operating in the jungle near the Laotian border, fifty or so miles west of here. The local authorities have been … unhelpful. Which is why I approached Mr. Sullivan to expedite their rescue.”

  “I know suggestin’ this is kind of against my own economic interests, since it’d mean we weren’t needed,” said Lomax, “but couldn’t you go to the US embassy and get them to put pressure on the Vietnamese government?”

  “No one in the group is American,” Lock replied. “They’re mostly European, but different nationalities, so it would mean going through multiple embassies, multiple bureaucracies. And the Vietnamese will try to hush the whole affair up. Tourism’s becoming big business for them; the last thing they want is to scare people away with news stories about bandits and kidnappings.”

  Rios, a Spaniard, spoke. “But the story will get out eventually.”

  “Not soon enough to help the people who’ve been kidnapped.”

  “What’s your connection to them?” asked Chase.

  Lock took a breath. “My daughter is one of the volunteers.”

  “Thought you said there weren’t any Americans?”

  “She’s a German national.” Lock’s flinty eyes narrowed; he did not appreciate being questioned. “Natalia Pöltl, my daughter from my first marriage.” He took out his wallet, opening it to reveal a small photograph of a young blond woman. “Now you see why I’m involved, Mr. Chase—and why I want this situation dealt with as quickly as possible. I want my daughter rescued from these … animals. Before anything happens to her.”