Although it was stored in the same niche, the torch was newer than the batch they’d hoarded during the war. Smaller, but brighter. Worse weapon, better light.
Along the tunnel and then forty-two steps to descend to the cavern floor. He could navigate the route from memory, so he shut off the torch and waited for his senses to adjust in the absolute dark. The cave smelled exactly as it had seventy years ago, no rot or mildew, just wet. Without hundreds of sweaty tourists tramping through daily leaving odors, the steady drip of water carried a crisp smell of minerals. This was a living cave. Much of the town had hidden here during the Ardennes shelling and bombing, and he’d been comfortable in it for the two years he’d operated in Belgium.
He moved forward, one hand trailing the wall and counting his paces. Air brushed his skin, as substantial as a missed kiss. Cold, wet caves had never bothered him because the one trove he’d known better than to steal, the one treasure that terrified instead of tempted, had been in a hot cave.
* * *
“A grand tunnel.” Galan’s voice emerged from inside the earth.
“It’s a barrow.” Deep in the bushes, flat stones twice Stigr’s height faced each other like a giant’s door. Runes of an ancient tongue marked the lintel. He wouldn’t have agreed to teach his friend cliff scaling if he had known what hid here in the rocks. “Come out.”
Galan must not have heard. Grave-robbing stained men in the eyes of the gods, and surely he would not continue if he knew this place was sacred to the dead. Galan’s next words were muffled, as if he’d passed where his voice couldn’t travel the stone path to the surface.
Despite the wind pushing Thor-clouds across the western horizon like frenzied steeds, the cliff stone was warm underhand. Far at sea, three ships, their red sails billowing, raced the storm. Perhaps they brought tributes for Lord Beowulf. Fifty winters, and he was as strong as the day he had sundered the monster’s arm sinews. All of their company were.
The longships might make harbor before the storm. Men took bigger risks than riding the dark sea.
When Galan emerged from the stone door, the whites around his eyes showed brighter than the sea-froth below. Stigr forgot about the ships.
Galan unwrapped his cloak to reveal a golden goblet.
The cup was exquisite. Workmanship from a forge the Geats could not master, nor the Swedes, nor any of the tribes of the Finns or farther east. The smooth white balls of soft stone decorating the base came from the warm seas several months’ journey south. This was surely the work of the gods.
Galan shoved the treasure toward him. “Take it.”
His hand opened wide to catch the cup, and then he sucked his breath dry at the pain of heated metal on his palm. Like he’d reached into a forge.
The goblet clattered to the stones between them.
“Put it back.” Stigr spit into his hand, but nothing doused the heat as a red blister rose on his palm. The mark obscured his lifeline, and fear of the unknown at the end of that stone passage made his knees feel like thin winter milk. “Put it back.”
“Nay.” Galan quaked. “I’ll not return. It’s a fire-drake.”
His gut had known as soon as he touched the warm rock, but he had denied the truth until Galan spoke. No natural heat, no sun, made a sea cliff like a hearth. Only a wyrm of the old stories could do that.
The blister faded to a flat red mark that would disappear before he and Galan resolved this problem. The skalds sung tales about the hoard-counting of the night-fire breathers. Nothing could be missing. Ever. “You have to put it back.”
“I can’t.” Galan trembled, backing toward the rope they had descended from the headland. “You do it. I can’t.”
Stigr was a thief, but now he would have to return a treasure.
* * *
The wet stone on his cheek was the first thing Stig noticed when he returned to himself. His body felt complete, although his mind was hazy. He’d fallen. Waking dreams or visions, his problem had been called long ago. He supposed the internet would diagnose him with a traumatic disorder. Plenty of source material after fifteen hundred years, no doubt, but only if he talked about what he saw or felt. A bed of cold stone was far from Christina’s warmth, further still from the ancient scourge awoken in the fire cave. He craved light to drive the last memory away, but in his fugue he must have dropped the torch.
He rose to his knees and brushed his hands left and right across the floor.
Light burst on his face, as blinding as a stage spot. Instantly, he threw himself to the ground and rolled toward a mineral formation that had thousands more years before it reached the ceiling.
Ruff-ruff-ruff. A familiar little dog bark echoed in the stone chamber.
Relief left him flat on his back. “Hallo, Porkchop. Not my ear please.”
Thomas Locke stood twenty feet away with a boxy high-powered spotlight in his left hand and a bluntly effective-looking revolver in his right. The man he’d been hunting had found him. “Good evening again.” The pistol didn’t waver.
“I see we both thought it was a nice night for a stroll.” Stig stood and dusted his trousers and coat, but water didn’t like to brush off as easily as dirt did. Locke must have come into the caves through the disused tourist entrance. “If one finds hundred-thousand-year-old limestone caves to be nice spots for midnight dog-walking, the Ardennes makes an ideal vacation, I must agree.”
“Dachshunds were bred to be tunnel dogs. Walking Porkchop is a little more believable at this hour than sight-seeing.” He had a metal case, the damp-proof type, next to his feet.
“May I point out that I’m unarmed, and we appear to have a mutual friend in Luc, so perhaps you could put that weapon back where you like to keep it under your cardigan.”
“Momentarily. Although bullets don’t really matter to you, do they?”
Stig froze solid from his wet feet to his fingertips. “I would bleed and die like anyone else, of course.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Who are you?” Locke couldn’t have followed Ivar to La Roche, because he’d been at Luc’s for weeks already. Stig couldn’t imagine how Unferth would have sent someone here even before Wend and Skafe had made contact. “What do you want?”
“Nothing. I’m an old man looking for a quiet retirement.” He exaggerated his age. “And you?”
“A young man looking for a romantic getaway.”
Locke’s small snort was humorous as they both acknowledged the inherent lies.
“Thank you for Porkchop’s assistance in the pub.”
“Think nothing of it. He likes chew snacks from dried pig’s ear, but I find them disgusting and won’t purchase them. He was thrilled to indulge. Who were they?”
That question, Stig was willing to answer. “Insurance fraud investigators.”
Locke laughed with his full chest this time. “I used to have a similar job. Thankless work. No one’s ever happy to see you.” The revolver disappeared smoothly into the underarm holster, a practiced and easy move. “Even your bosses don’t like your reports, because it means they’re losing money. Luckily no one sicced a dog on me.”
“Would have liked those two well enough if they’d remained in London.” The joking didn’t hide the fact that Locke knew more about him than he should. His friend wasn’t a gossip, not about important things, so Locke must have been listening when he and Luc talked old times. Not only was the house bugged, but unlike Christina, this man believed. Which was interesting. And unsettling.
“You’re one of the good ones, aren’t you?”
Stig’s muscles urged him to run and avoid this conversation, but that would be an admission of its own. Since he didn’t wish to leave Luc’s in the middle of the night, he’d have to brazen it out. “Don’t know about that. I’m a thief.”
The other man ble
w air out his lips, the sound of disdain. “Crime and honor are not mutually exclusive. The man you were with. The one with the gloves.”
He wouldn’t discuss Ivar with this man, not without a lot more pressure than a sausage dog and a holstered weapon.
“I want to help him.” Thomas nudged the metal case forward with his foot. “Here. Use it.”
Chapter Eighteen
No question about it, Christina was caught in a twisted repeat of one of her stepdad’s classic Frank Sinatra heist movies. Riding shotgun with Stig driving, Luc, Thomas and a miniature dachshund in the back, the setup even sounded like a Hollywood farce. Worse if she let the phrase Luc and Locke slip into her head.
This morning she’d walked into the kitchen and faced three men wired on coffee, brandy, suitcases—plural—full of cash and plans to pretend to rob a museum. One night’s sleep, then caffeine, was all she’d wanted, but when she’d interrupted Stig’s argument with Luc, she should have realized nothing that involved Stig, Luc and the man who’d driven them home last night was going to be simple.
“I’ve waited ninety-four years to rob the Germans on their own turf instead of mine!”
“As I said, we’re not actually stealing anything,” Stig had almost shouted at Luc. “The heist is a ruse, a red herring, a play within a play. The relic isn’t there and hasn’t been for a century.”
“Don’t see why we can’t take a little souvenir while we’re inside.”
“You’re not going inside, mate. And we don’t want the Germans after us. We just intend to misdirect whoever might be watching.”
That had sobered the men at the table. “Who exactly is that?” Thomas had asked.
“Germans.” Luc had swigged out of a mug that smelled suspiciously like it was brandy with coffee, not the other way.
“Not Germans. Men like me, perhaps.” Stig’s comment had made Luc cough, Thomas frown and her mind immediately flash to Wend and Skafe.
Now as they drove, large drops of rain spattered on the car windshield, followed by an immediate sheet of water that almost obscured a sign for Aachen in one hundred kilometers.
This morning she’d been confused about why they would rob the Charlemagne treasury if the item Ivar wanted wasn’t in it.
Stig had explained while he’d made her French toast from a leftover baguette. “The real relic is hidden where I’d rather not have any of Ivar’s enemies, or his friends for that matter, find it. I don’t want any chance that a disaster like what happened to the museum in Denmark will happen there.” He’d clamped up after that, and loosening his mouth took a long story from Luc with a punch line about a flatulent goat and a milkmaid.
Three hours after that conversation, they’d double-checked their supplies in the trunk of Thomas’s car, counted noses—four dry, one wet—and rolled away. Tomorrow they’d do the job, Noah-like deluge or not.
“Before we go over the plan one more time,” Stig said, “you never did say what you intend to do with your money.”
She might as well tell them. “I want to buy a vineyard of my own. I studied viticulture and enology, and I want to use that to create my own wines. I want to build a winery that celebrates the people who contribute to the wine, the field workers and the pickers, all the people forgotten by the celebrity wine culture.”
“The due-to-be-deceased Geoffrey Morrison might want to invest in such a noble endeavor.”
“See why I didn’t tell you? I knew you’d tease me.”
“I wasn’t. But there won’t be any money at all if we fail tomorrow, so walk me through the plan.”
In the alternate world she’d inhabited since she stepped into Bodeby’s, describing the pseudo-heist seemed natural, even logical. “The treasury opens at ten. Thomas goes first and deposits the bag holding the decoy bone at the coat check, and leaves the ticket in the last toilet stall. You and I go in separately after ten. I go straight to the exhibit, you collect Thomas’s claim check, and then head to the room with the golden arm.”
“Perfect so far,” Stig said.
“How will I know which one it is?” Christina asked. Luc didn’t have an internet connection, so they hadn’t been able to find museum details this morning.
“The golden hand and forearm is half your size. You can’t miss it. When there are at least three other people in the room, create a diversion at the far end from where I’m positioned. Something loud and exciting, but not criminal. Maybe trip over a display.”
“Flash ‘em,” Luc offered. “Like it’s a beach.”
She looked at the old man in the back seat with her eyebrows raised. “My chest wouldn’t cause much of a riot.”
Stig coughed. “I beg to differ.”
“This is why great plans fall apart,” Christina chided. “Men get sidetracked by breasts.”
“Never.” Stig glanced over at her, grinning. “That would mean we’d been thinking about something besides thrupenny bits in the first place.”
The car interior was too warm. At least that was what she told herself to explain how hot her cheeks felt.
Attention back on the highway, Stig continued. “While people are looking at Christina, I’ll place the tubes of flash paper we made this morning with the delayed matches, then stick a screwdriver in a socket. It should blow the lights, although there will be emergency ones at the exits. Start counting. The first flame should pop on the five-count. It’ll appear to be coming out of the wall.” He glanced at her, as if checking that she was paying attention.
They’d been over the plan several times, had even done a walk-through at Luc’s before they loaded the car. She knew her role and let her expression tell him so. Creating a slight diversion and then yelling fire hardly sounded worthy of an action movie. Stig had the challenging part with the flash paper.
“Should I stumble into the case?” she asked.
“No, you lead the charge out. Go to the car while I retrieve the bag with the decoy from the check and go around the block the other way.”
Four people kept the vehicle cozy, so Christina lowered the setting for her heated seat. “This is the best car yet on this trip. Has Stig told either of you about our previous three?”
“Helped him put the dented one in the quarry,” Luc said.
“Too bad, I had wonderful memories of that car.” Stig’s comment gave a shiver to her spine, remembering the wild sex on the hood.
“Then there was the one we stole from the insurance investigators.” She rushed into speech to try to control the heat filling her cheeks. The last three days had turned her into a different woman, not the buttoned-down businesswoman who’d spent her nights with double-entry accounting and spreadsheets. “And another car we left on the tunnel train. That’s the one we had to run off the road.”
“Don’t forget Skafe’s car, the one that was booted by the bobbies in London,” Stig said.
“Hope your run of bad luck has ended,” Thomas said from the back seat. “I like my car.”
“I consider it an extended streak of good luck,” Stig replied. “Got away each time.”
“You would.” Luc coughed into a red handkerchief. “Remember when the case of Panzer shells we stole popped off early? That was bad luck.” He shook the red fabric like a flag, and she was unsure if the vibrations were his method of emphasis or tremors in his knobby-knuckled hands. “Swear the cart and horse covered a hectare, but you, you strolled out of the forest without a scratch. After that we called you Monsieur Truc de Merde because you should be all bits and pieces of crap, but no.”
“Monsieur Truc de Merde?” She choked on a combination of amazement at the complexity of Luc and Stig’s fantasy life and disbelief that she was having this absurd conversation in this car with this group of reprobates and geezers. “Where have I heard that before? Maybe you ought to forge a passport for Monsieur Merde.”
Distance flew by as the warmth and the storm and the soft leather seat lulled her eyelids to close. She woke in the middle of a three-way discussion of European economic reforms from Luc’s unique perspective. “Eh, Germans conquered Europe with loans this time. Got the Portuguese, Spaniards and Greeks, didn’t they? But not us.” He pounded his fist into his chest. “Belgian government’s got too big a boot in its ass to sign a loan, so they won’t get us this time.”
“If you wish to change the subject away from twentieth-century geopolitical animosity, you can always ask about his daughter-in-law,” Thomas offered. “Or football, if you have armored protection.”
She closed her eyes and let the voices wash over her. Sort of like listening to Big Frank and his friends when they’d played cards downstairs and she’d sat at the top of the steps to pretend she was a grownup. Her mother had spoken English well but not well enough to follow all of the fast back-and-forth talk around the poker table, so she’d cuddled with Christina and asked for words here and there. And if Frank was winning.
“My son’s wife—mon dieu, sixty-seven herself but treats me like I’m three, not like I’m her father-in-law. Won’t buy me cigarettes anymore.”
“She’s right. They’ll kill you.” That was Stig, setting Luc up for a rant.
“I’ll be cursed to live to see another World Cup tournament at least.” The old man made a raspberry noise, or maybe it was Porkchop.
“Belgium needs a striker to be competitive next round, true.” The reasonable voice belonged to Thomas. They were playing Luc like a piano.
The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) Page 22