Seven Shoes

by Mark Davis

  A series of ledges rolled down to Trolltunga like a shattered staircase. The formation itself would be called a tongue in any language on earth, an elongated rock slab about 70 feet in length that curled slightly upward and narrowed to a rounded tip. Beyond it, an ice-blue lake cut through a canyon with high, gray cliffs. The tops of the mountains below them were flat, covered with black moraine streaked with ice.

  “We’re two thousand, three hundred feet above the lake,” Nasrin said. “Ringesdalsvatnet, I think.”

  Elizabeth looked up at the dark blue sky and down at the fjordlands. It was a mistake. She wavered from vertigo and was forced to squat.

  “But no Freyja,” Nasrin said.

  Nasrin sat on a ledge of rock at the last of the staircase, at the base of the tongue. She set her small backpack by her feet and rested her gun in her lap. The wind was uncomfortably strong, giving Elizabeth the same feeling she had felt at Preikestolen, that the wind might catch her and sweep her into space.

  “Water?”

  Nasrin handed her canteen to Elizabeth. It felt light.

  “It’s almost dry.”

  “I’m fine, take the last of it.”

  Elizabeth did.

  “Where’s Karl?”

  “Good question,” Nasrin said. She pulled her sat phone from her backpack and hit auto dial and held it up to her ear. No answer.

  “I don’t like this,” she said.

  “Maybe Karl’s had second thoughts about being in your service,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe he’s halfway to the border.”

  “He wouldn’t do that, we’ve offered him too much,” Nasrin said. “And besides, if he were going to go solo, he wouldn’t do it on a bloody mountain that takes hours to get off and is surrounded by police.”

  “Okay.”

  Elizabeth scooted closer to Nasrin. It was silly, but it made her feel anchored against the wind.

  Ten minutes passed and Nasrin hit the autodial again. No answer.

  She waited a few more minutes and tried again. No answer.

  “I’ve got to go,” Nasrin said, rising, her gun out now, safety off.

  “Why don’t you just wait here like we’ve been told?”

  “Karl may be a nasty piece of work, but he’s my Joe now,” Nasrin said. “I have to see about him.”

  “Do you have an extra gun for me?”

  “No.”

  “Then I am coming with you.”

  “You are safer here.”

  “Not without a gun.”

  Elizabeth was afraid of the forest, but she was even more afraid of being thrown off the Troll’s Tongue.

  “Stay behind me,” Nasrin said. “And if you hear any shooting, I want you to fly away in a running crouch down the trail and not stop running until you see an armed ranger. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  They went around the wall of rock that separated the two trails, rounding the opposite side from where they had arrived. Soon they were again in the shade of the high forest.

  Nasrin stepped lightly, gun outstretched, head turning rhythmically, eyes scanning for a flash of color or movement. Perhaps the greatest danger, Elizabeth realized, is that Nasrin and Karl would shoot each other. She hoped they were each alert to the danger of friendly fire.

  Nasrin gingerly rolled around a large boulder and stepped over a deep puddle in the middle of the trail. Elizabeth followed.

  “Karl?” Nasrin had not shouted, but her voice was loud and firm. “Karl?”

  They descended for another minute and Elizabeth saw Karl, leaning causally against a tree, looking as if he had just had a pleasant smoke.

  It was a typically insolent Karl gesture. He was standing upright, arms relaxed at his side, looking straight ahead as if he had not a care in the world.

  Nasrin went into a crouch, pacing around to scan the forest in all directions, arms extended, the Glock now clutched in both hands.

  The realization did not come to Elizabeth all at once. It developed like a photo in a chemical tray as they closed in on him and Elizabeth saw that Karl’s eyes were wide and unblinking. A silver thread cut into his throat, holding his body upright.

  Karl’s expression showed no remnant of the agony of strangulation, just an intense stare, as if he were looking in the distance for help. Midges danced inside his half-opened mouth. His Glock rested on an exposed root at his feet.

  The silver thread ran around a small birch tree behind him, a bowstring of steel with a crossing knot and two rubber handles.

  Nasrin kept her posture, gun sweeping the forest, as she methodically wound her way around Karl and tree. The need to stay within Nasrin’s perimeter forced Elizabeth uncomfortably close to the body.

  “Reach into my backpack and pull the sat phone.”

  The fat antenna made it easy to find.

  “Call Lars.”

  Elizabeth went to “recent calls” and touched the number. Lars answered.

  While Elizabeth held the phone on speaker, Nasrin explained what had happened in clear, unemotional terms.

  “It will be a half an hour before we can be there,” Lars said. “At least.”

  “We’re going back to the ledge,” Nasrin said. “You’re right, it is the most defensible.”

  “The trail back will highlight you as a target,” Lars said.

  “I know,” Nasrin replied. “We will shadow it in the forest.”

  “Is Elizabeth with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please take care of her. And yourself.”

  “Deal.” Nasrin ended the call and handed the phone back to Elizabeth. “Keep a finger on auto dial. Stay behind me. I will need to continue to circle around you to see.”

  “I know who it is.”

  Nasrin continued to scan the forest. It took her a moment to process what Elizabeth was saying.

  “You mean Freyja?”

  Elizabeth told her.

  Nasrin bit her lip in concentration as she continued to look around.

  “Shit, that is bad news. I have to admit, it makes sense. Whoever Freyja is, she or he had better keep some distance. I’m ready to send that tosser to Valhalla.”

  “Fólkvangr.”

  “Can we agree on hell?”

  Elizabeth looked down at the sat phone.

  “How do I get an open line?”

  Nasrin told her.

  Elizabeth punched in the country code for the United States and directory assistance.

  “Keep looking out, I need a few minutes on the phone before we start back.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  The return trip took twice as long. They followed the trail from a good twenty feet to the side, stepping over branches and rocks and fallen trees. Nasrin was not able to orbit Elizabeth as she had planned, so every minute or so she would stop to perform a slow pivot to scan the forest.

  Elizabeth tripped over a root and landed on her side. Nasrin stood over her protectively, continuing to scan.

  After a good twenty minutes of climbing they returned to the back wall. There was a short distance now to the top, the trail leading between the rock face and a large boulder. It would be easy for someone to hide on either side, waiting to ambush them.

  They crept to the trail and moved upward as quietly as they could. Elizabeth clutched the sat phone in her left hand and Karl’s Glock in her right.

  She looked down at the gun and thumbed the safety. She had shot a pistol once before, at a shooting range with her father and brother.

  Could that have been a quarter-century ago?

  They were now close to the walkway between the rocks that opened to Trolltunga. Nasrin moved quickly now along the side of the trail, gun out, checking around the sides of the rock while Elizabeth swept the forest with her right hand, not confident at all in her ability to spot and shoot someone, feeling like an actor with a toy gun in a police drama.

  “Clear,” Nasrin said.

  They cro
ssed between the rocks and out into the late afternoon sunlight of Trolltunga.

  Not a soul.

  “We’ll take a position at the base of the rock. Lars and company will be here soon. Everything is open, no one would dare to step out into our line of fire, not even a god.”

  They walked backwards carefully over the irregular face of the rock toward the stone ledge, guns still out. Elizabeth stepped over the last ledge and sat down, cross legged, at the base of Trolltunga. Nasrin joined her.

  They relaxed and rested their guns on the edge of their laps, barrels pointing outward. There was nothing behind them but rock and infinite space. No one could come close to them now.

  “Hand me that.” Elizabeth passed the sat phone to Nasrin, who hit a button to make a report to Lars. His voice was strained from the exertion of quick movement uphill.

  “It is taking us longer than expected,” Lars said. “It will take us another twenty minutes.”

  “That is not a problem,” Nasrin replied. “We are safe now.”

  Nasrin handed the phone back to Elizabeth, who held it in one hand. It was in truth the only weapon she knew how to use.

  Elizabeth redialed the phone and connected again to the same number in the United States.

  “Please stand by, we may need you soon.”

  She pushed the off button.

  “Well, love, it’s been quite a ride now, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “But frankly, from the moment I knew Max was okay, nothing has seemed quite as frightening.”

  “Of course. I want to meet this little man of yours. Would I like him?”

  “Let’s just say he’s a unique individual.”

  “Are you looking forward to getting back home?”

  “Yes. I’ve had quite enough of this, whatever this is. And you?”

  “I live such a peripatetic life, I’ve forgotten what home feels like. London is more like a refueling station for me, though I do miss my mum.”

  The wind was strong, but Elizabeth felt safe sitting so low on the ground.

  “Horrible thing done to Karl,” Elizabeth said. “Although I can’t feel sorry that he is gone.”

  “I will give you that, the world is safer place. What about Lars? You will be seeing him again, soon.”

  “Lars and I are done. He didn’t even come by to see me in the hospital.”

  “He is part asshole,” Nasrin said.

  “You’re part asshole.”

  Nasrin laughed.

  “I guess it’s an occupational hazard. When Lars gets up here, we’ll reveal our theory about Freyja and they can put out an APW.”

  “A what?”

  “An All Ports Warning. Before I got into this life, as a young policewoman in Manchester I went into service determined to—”

  Nasrin puffed out as if someone had slapped her on the back and knocked all the air out of her lungs.

  Her arms went wide, hands tremoring like felled doves. She looked down with astonishment at a silver cylinder that had appeared in the center of her chest. Elizabeth turned and saw the rest of the arrow sticking out of Nasrin’s back, the steel of the shaft and fletching shining in the sunlight.

  Elizabeth screamed.

  Nasrin clasped Elizabeth’s forearm and gripped tight, eyes wide with terror and pleading. She tried to speak but could only make a gurgling sound. A splash of blood, bright and red, gushed out her mouth and onto her shirt. Nasrin’s whole body shuddered and her eyes rolled up. Her body dropped backwards on the arrow, which jammed straight up from the rock to hold her in a grotesque arch, head back, arms dangling like discarded puppet.

  Elizabeth screamed again.

  Gravity slowly forced the tip of the arrow to fully emerge as Nasrin slid down the shaft, until the fletching halted her movement. She made a final groaning noise as her lungs collapsed.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes and spoke to herself … calm mind, be strong, speak to the psyche. She turned her head slowly and saw him with both feet confidently planted at the tip of the Troll’s Tongue.

  “How … how … how did you?”

  “Easy peasy,” Daryl Parnell said. “A little top roping around the edge, that’s all. Learned it in a stint with the 10th Mountain Division. These rocks are nothing compared to some of the hairy inclines I encountered in Afghanistan. I’m going to miss Nasrin Jones. Quite an impressive gal, that one.”

  Daryl was dressed in a form-fitting, two-piece undersuit, half of it in camo colors and the rest in dark brown. He wore green gloves, one hand gripping a thin bow of black carbon, the other hand clasping another metal arrow glinting in the sunlight.

  “I’d like to see your gun go over the side, if you please.”

  Elizabeth lifted the gun off her leg and knew that she could not possibly fully turn, aim and shoot Daryl Parnell before he put an arrow through her chest. But if she didn’t shoot him he’d throw her off the side.

  Nasrin had said it was 2,300 feet down, about half a mile.

  Where Daryl stood, a good thirty feet from her, the rock was barely a yard wide and a slight incline up, as if the stone tongue were licking a giant ice cream cone. From where Elizabeth sat, she had a good ten feet of clearance on either side.

  The urge to run toward the trail, to Lars and the others, to go home to Max, was an urgent, physical desire.

  Elizabeth stood, faced Daryl and hurled the gun over the side, just as he had asked.

  He was a little squatter and more compact than Elizabeth had pictured him, and a little grayer now. But he had the same strong, stubbled jaw, the same friendly looking cast about the eyes. He had the body of a man who spends several hours every day in the gym. He rested the arrow on the cable of his bow and motioned for Elizabeth to come forward.

  She had no choice, so she did, taking the phone with her.

  Everything now fit. Daryl Parnell had been a Rhodes Scholar finalist at VMI, an English major who would have acquired a love of Norse myth and literature. As colloquial and Southern as he was, he had the education to easily shift to the elevated, womanly diction of Freyja.

  He had also been Special Forces with combat decorations from Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and likely other places not recorded in his bio. He had finished his career in SIGNIT, where he would have acquired a sophisticated understanding of cyberwar, which included Internet hacking and the darker uses of social media and psychological warfare.

  “Why the binaural beat?”

  “Something I was inspired to create by old CIA mind experiments. I had a high clearance level for classified material, back in the day.”

  “And the DMT?”

  “It loosens the mind, makes even strong-willed people suggestible. I found a kid in Oslo who can make it into pill form.”

  Daryl threw the bow and arrow on the ground with the indifference of a god. He stepped forward to meet Elizabeth five feet from the tip of the tongue. He unclipped a backpack, pulled it around and let it fall to the ground between them.

  The wind rustled her hair, making it wave and flutter in her eyes. The wind caught Daryl’s odor. He stank of exertion and sweat.

  “Are you going to kill me now?”

  “You don’t have to die today, Elizabeth, not if you are brave. Unzip the bag.”

  Elizabeth again wanted to turn and run but knew she couldn’t outrun him. She bent down and unzipped the backpack. There was a canteen inside, crampons and two yellow suits.

  “Pull them out.”

  She did. The suits were complicated, a stitch work of advanced synthetic material with many Velcro straps, metal rings and zippers.

  “These are wing suits?”

  “Elizabeth, my dear, would you care to join me for a little afternoon ride?”

  “This is how you …?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Without a parachute, no less.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “A wingsuit landing has only been done once before,
and it wasn’t into water. A brave—or foolhardy—man landed safely into 18,000 empty cardboard boxes set up to cushion his fall. I was the second to attempt it, and the world’s first and only water lander. You see, Elizabeth, the hardest part for me was not maintaining control down to the ground. It was leveling off and hitting the water at a precise angle so that I would skip like a stone, losing energy without breaking a bone.”

  “Halo,” Elizabeth said aloud, remembering the word Thor had jotted down on his note. She had guessed it was some ironic reference to saints or imagery from Norse gods.

  “That’s right,” Daryl said. “High Altitude Low Opening, one of the more poetic acronyms of our military.”

  “And the others who jumped knew you were going to do this?” she asked.

  “I told them the truth about my odds. I had extensive HALO training and had done a wingsuit a couple of times with a parachute. I told them my chance of survival was about one in a hundred. I plunged straight down the cliff as the others rolled and screamed. I pulled up over the rocks and shot straight out into the fjord. That was the moment, if I had packed a parachute, that I would have cobraed up and pulled the ripcord. I improvised. I did spiral turns, cresting and falling, losing altitude, getting a little burbled now and then, but keeping steady. As I came in just over a hundred feet, I felt calm, assured, gliding over the face of the waters.”

  Elizabeth noted the Biblical resonance in his choice of words.

  “I squeezed my butt cheeks and stretched my elevators between my feet and leveled out just close enough to almost feel the wetness of the lake on my face. I trailed the toes of my booties in the water for just an instant, pulled up, leveled off, and did it again. And again, until I had bled enough speed to go into the drink bruised but not broken. I kicked off my heavy booties, swam to a trail head and that’s that.”

  “And if you had died?”

  “I am ready to die—will die—soon. So why not make it interesting? I was wrong about my odds, though. On that day, it was more like one in ten. I give myself one in five today. I give you about one in ten thousand.”

  Elizabeth took a step back.

  “On the plus side, you do have some training. You know how to feather, how to pivot, how to make a graceful descent.”