The Valhalla Prophecy_A Novel

  ‘They wanted to use her like the Russians?’ she asked. ‘Use her DNA to work out the composition of the eitr?’

  Eddie nodded. ‘Yeah. Only they wanted to be able to create the stuff, not destroy it.’

  ‘But they didn’t get her, obviously. Neither side did. So what happened?’

  ‘I got to her before Hoyt. The Russians chased us through the jungle, but I managed to get her clear. There was a village not too far away where she had friends, so we went there. On the way, she told me all about the eitr, and her grandad and his experiments. And that’s when I made her a promise.’

  ‘Which was?’ she prompted.

  He was silent for a long moment before answering. ‘She made me promise that no matter what, I wouldn’t let anyone use her to restart her grandfather’s experiments. So I burned the research that Hoyt stole from the Russians. But . . . there was still something else they could have used. So I did what she asked me to, and made sure they couldn’t get it.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  Another, longer pause. ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of what I promised Natalia.’

  ‘You made a promise to me too,’ said Nina, not liking his uncharacteristic evasiveness. ‘When we got married. You know you can trust me, with anything.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘But this is . . . different. I don’t want— I can’t say. Not to anyone.’

  Nina picked up on his hurried correction. To her, it suggested that the reasons for his silence were as much personal as professional. He was keeping more than the secrets of the Soviet research to himself.

  But he would not tell her what else he was hiding, not today. After six years together, she knew when his defences were up. Instead, she changed tack. ‘What about Natalia, then? Did you get her back home?’

  To her surprise, that made him even more defensive. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said, brusque.

  ‘Why not?’ she demanded. No answer. ‘Eddie, what happened to her?’ Another silence. ‘Did . . . did she die?’

  Eddie stood, walking to the window and staring out across Moscow. ‘We saved the other hostages, but Natalia . . .’ He faced her, expression grim. ‘I didn’t get her out.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ She got up and joined him. ‘Eddie, I’m sorry.’ He nodded, but said nothing.

  The moment was broken by a knock at the connecting door. Kagan opened it and stepped through. ‘Good job we weren’t in the middle of trying for a baby right now,’ said Eddie, some of his usual irreverence returning.

  ‘They didn’t teach you what “come in” meant in your English classes?’ Nina asked the Russian.

  ‘There are times to wait with politeness,’ he said. ‘This is not one of them.’

  ‘What’ve you got?’ said Eddie.

  ‘First, Thor’s Hammer is safe. All of Unit 201’s research from Engels has been transferred to a new secure location.’

  ‘I hope the staff’s been vetted better than it was at the bunker,’ Nina said in a barbed tone.

  Kagan glared at her, but continued: ‘Our intelligence services have been trying to locate Hoyt and Dr Berkeley. So far, there has been no indication that they have left Scandinavia.’

  ‘Berkeley might still be translating the runestone,’ said Eddie.

  ‘That seems likely. But since he led Hoyt’s people to the lake in Norway, we have to assume that he will succeed. Once he does, he will have the route to Valhalla. We must get there before them, but . . .’ He glanced back towards the adjoining suite. ‘Dr Skilfinger does not think she has enough information to find it.’

  ‘What has she got so far?’ Nina asked.

  ‘It is best that you ask her that,’ Kagan replied, though his doleful look implied that the answer was not what he’d hoped for. He went back into the other suite, Eddie and Nina following.

  Tova looked up from her laptop as they entered. ‘Hello,’ she said, with a weary smile.

  ‘Hi,’ said Nina. She regarded the pages of notes, printed and handwritten, spread out across the desk beside the computer: every scrap of information they had concerning the runestones. ‘Have you found out anything useful?’

  ‘I am afraid not much,’ Tova admitted with a sigh. ‘If I had been able to read just a little more of the text on the second runestone, it might have been enough to tell me the name of the river on the stone taken from the museum, but . . .’ She gave them a helpless little shrug. ‘It is not enough.’

  ‘Well, tell us what you’ve managed to find out anyway,’ said Nina.

  ‘Anything you have learned may help us,’ Kagan added.

  Tova shrugged again. ‘I will try.’ She gathered together some of her notes, running a fingertip over them. ‘Okay. The text that I saw on the runestone in Norway was mostly the same as on the other, but one section was different. This is the part that I believe would have told the Vikings which river to follow, but I did not have time to read it properly before Eddie made us move away.’ She gave the Englishman a brief sidelong glower.

  It was Eddie’s turn to shrug. ‘If somebody,’ he said, eyeing his wife, ‘hadn’t gone back for a closer look and made me chuck away the bomb, Hoyt and Berkeley wouldn’t have got away with the stone.’

  ‘Can we play the blame game some other time, thanks?’ Nina complained impatiently. ‘Tova, what did you manage to get?’

  ‘I remember that it named Fjarriheim,’ said the Swede. She opened a map of Sweden and indicated a point roughly halfway up the country’s length. ‘That is an old archaeological site, here. From there it said to go north – no, to “strike” north, which to me suggests travelling a long distance – until they reached some mountains.’

  ‘That doesn’t narrow it down much,’ said Eddie. Coloured contours on the map marked the rugged spine of Scandinavia, Sweden’s mountain ranges running along the border with Norway.

  ‘No, but there was something that may help. I am not completely certain, but I think one of the words I saw in the runes would translate as “saddle”. It may be an Old Norse name for a particular mountain.’

  ‘Is there anywhere in Sweden that fits the bill?’ Nina asked.

  Tova shook her head. ‘Not that I have found.’ She gestured towards a laptop. ‘I have researched as much as I could, and checked the IHA database, but there is nothing that matches.’

  ‘Perhaps the name is a description,’ said Kagan. ‘It is a mountain that looks like a saddle.’

  Eddie laughed sarcastically. ‘Should be easy to find. It’ll be right above the mountain that looks like a horse.’

  ‘I do not think it will be that simple,’ said Tova, with a slight smile. ‘But the Vikings often did use descriptive names for features like mountains and lakes. If only we had just a few more words from the runes!’ She turned to Kagan. ‘You said there was a runestone at the place on Novaya Zemlya. Was it translated?’

  ‘There were translations and pictures,’ said the Russian, ‘but no more.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Nina.

  ‘They were destroyed with the research on the eitr on the orders of Khrushchev. Eisenhov might have been able to remember some of what was written on the stone, but he is dead, and no one else at Unit 201 is old enough to have seen it.’

  ‘Someone else saw it, though,’ said Eddie, with an urgency that immediately caught Nina’s attention. ‘Volkov. Natalia’s grandfather.’

  ‘Yes, but he is also dead,’ Kagan pointed out with a dismissive tone.

  ‘Yeah, I know – but before he died, he wrote a letter to his wife, telling her about what he’d found.’

  Surprise filled Kagan’s face. ‘He wrote a letter? How do you know about this?’

  ‘Because Natalia told me about it – and she told me what it said on the runestone!’

  That produced an electric response in the room. ‘You know what the runestone said? Why did you not tell us this earlier?’ Kagan demanded.

  ‘’Cause I only just rem
embered! Tova reminded me, when she said about the Viking names for lakes. Natalia told me that after the Vikings left Valhalla, they went to a lake.’

  ‘Which lake?’ Nina and Kagan said simultaneously.

  ‘Christ, calm down, I’m trying to think! It was eight years ago, and it wasn’t exactly the main thing I was bothered about at the time. Let’s see, they left Valhalla, and went across a rainbow bridge—’

  ‘Bifröst,’ cut in Tova. ‘It was also in the runes on the first stone as a landmark on the route to Valhalla.’

  ‘Must be on the right track, then. But after that, they went through, er . . .’ He frowned, trying to uproot the memories, before snapping his fingers. ‘Lightning! That was it. The lake of lightning.’

  Nina looked back at Tova. ‘Does that mean anything to you? The lake of lightning?’

  The historian’s eyes widened. ‘Yes, there was a place – let me check!’ She turned back to the laptop and began typing. Very soon, she had results. ‘Here, here! There is a lake called Blixtsjö – it means literally “lightning lake”, and it took its name from Old Norse. It is on a river that in Viking myth was sometimes called Leipt.’

  The name sparked Nina’s memory. ‘That’s one of the primal rivers of the Norse creation mythology, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that is right. There were eleven rivers that flowed from the spring of Hvergelmir, and Leipt was one of them. It got its name because it was supposed to streak like lightning. I always thought it was just a myth, but after what we have seen . . .’

  ‘Where’s this lake, then?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘Let me look . . .’ More typing, then, after rapidly reading through the results, Tova returned her attention to the map. ‘It is . . . here!’

  She pointed out a thin, sharply winding lake in the highlands of central Sweden. Eddie took a closer look. ‘It’s pretty much north of Fjarriheim.’

  ‘In the mountains,’ Nina added. ‘If one of them looks like a saddle . . .’ She commandeered the laptop, accessing the IHA database to bring up a satellite image of the lake and its surroundings. ‘I can’t really tell from this, though.’

  ‘All that money the IHA spent on this stuff, and you’d be better off using Google Earth,’ he joked.

  ‘I’ll bring it up at the next budget meeting. But look, the lake’s fed by a river at its north end, and it goes up into the mountains. Tova, what did the Valhalla Runestone say about following the route?’

  Tova didn’t need notes to recite the relevant part of the ancient inscription. ‘Up the river you must travel, until great Bifröst is reached. Across, follow the stream to the falls. At their summit is Odin’s hall, now of the slain.’

  Nina pursed her lips. ‘So if this is the right river, then somewhere up it is Bifröst – the rainbow bridge. But a bridge to where?’ She scrolled the satellite view, following the river northwards, but saw nothing except forests and mountains around it.

  ‘If Valhalla is there, we must find it,’ said Kagan. ‘Berkeley and Hoyt have the same information that we do. They might be on their way already.’

  ‘But how do we find it?’ asked Tova.

  ‘The old-fashioned way,’ said Nina. ‘We go there and look. I’ll contact the IHA to make arrangements with the Swedish government, and get us some suitable transport. Kagan, what’s the situation with your bosses at the Kremlin? Are they going to make trouble for us over what happened at the airbase?’

  The Russian gave her a grim look. ‘The President is very angry – at you in particular, Chase,’ he went on, turning to Eddie. ‘You destroyed some very valuable military aircraft.’

  Eddie grimaced. ‘Great, a world leader with nukes is personally pissed off at me . . .’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Nina reminded him, smiling ruefully.

  ‘But,’ Kagan continued, ‘he knows the importance of Unit 201 and its work. He is willing to accept your United Nations diplomatic immunity and not punish you for what you have done – as long as you help Unit 201 to find the other source of eitr.’

  ‘An offer we can’t refuse, eh?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Slavin did say something about gangsters,’ Nina remarked, to Kagan’s clear displeasure. ‘But under the circumstances, I’ll take it. Okay, if you go deal with your bosses, we can get moving. Tova, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to go back to Sweden anyway, but beyond that . . . it’s up to you if you want to come with us. After everything you’ve been through, I can entirely understand if you’ve had enough.’

  Tova considered this for a moment. ‘No, I . . . I will come with you,’ she said. ‘If Valhalla really exists, if this river really is the way to it, then I want to see it for myself.’

  ‘Thank you. I really appreciate everything you’ve done to help us.’ Nina straightened, gazing down at the map. ‘Okay. Let’s go and find the hall of the slain.’

  Eddie gave her a look of dark humour. ‘Just hope we don’t end up as residents.’

  24

  Sweden

  ‘There’s the lake!’ said Tova excitedly, looking over the helicopter pilot’s shoulder.

  Nina, in the front passenger seat, had a better view. Blixtsjö was a zigzagging ribbon running through the tree-covered hills. They were approaching from the south, looking along its length – and she saw at once why the Vikings, and later the Swedes, had given it its name. From the summit of one of the hills below the aircraft, it would indeed resemble the shape of a lightning bolt. One of the nearby mountains also matched the description in the runes, its bowed summit appearing somewhat like a saddle.

  She looked beyond the lake. The landscape rose higher, snow-capped peaks and ridges standing out between forest-filled valleys as far as she could see. It was a beautiful sight, but her appreciation was now far more archaeological than aesthetic. Hidden somewhere amongst the endless trees was Valhalla.

  If they were right. They were following a route that had been pieced together from the deliberately incomplete writings on one ancient runestone, a few barely remembered scraps of information from another, second-hand recollections of Viking inscriptions that had been melted to glass over half a century earlier – and her husband’s recollections of what Natalia Pöltl had told him, also second-hand, eight years before. The pieces did seem to make up a coherent picture, but there were no guarantees that it was the correct picture . . .

  She put her doubts aside. It was all they had, whereas Berkeley and Hoyt possessed both runestones, and in theory everything they needed to lead them to Valhalla. The disgraced archaeologist had already proven that he could follow the clues left by the Vikings; she had to take the gamble that Tova was as good as or better than her former IHA colleague. It was the only chance they had of finding Valhalla first – and with it, the location of the second source of eitr.

  The helicopter descended. On the lake’s western bank was the little village of Blixtholm, and Nina saw a reception committee waiting on the frozen shoreline. ‘There are the snowmobiles,’ she said. ‘Remind me to thank Melinda for arranging everything so quickly.’

  The pilot landed the chopper on the lake. The ice creaked loudly enough to be heard even over the noise of the rotors as it took the aircraft’s weight, but to the relief of all aboard it showed no sign of cracking. All the same, the four passengers collected their belongings and made their way to land with a degree of haste. The helicopter departed in a whirlwind of sparkling ice crystals.

  While Nina, Tova translating, spoke to the man who had delivered the snowmobiles, Eddie went straight to a box amongst the gear waiting for them. ‘Remind me to thank Melinda,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘What is it?’ Kagan asked.

  Eddie opened the box, which was covered with stickers denoting it a United Nations diplomatic package. Inside was a rectangular metal case about eighteen inches long. He lifted the lid to reveal a gleaming steel handgun, the long, thick barrel reinforced by a hefty rib along its top. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said with a Christmas morning grin. ‘It’s been a while.’ r />
  Nina let out a disapproving sigh when she saw the weapon. ‘Jeez. When did you get another one of those?’

  ‘Picked it up two months ago,’ Eddie replied, taking out the Wildey automatic and checking it admiringly in the morning sunlight.

  ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘No, ’cause I knew you’d throw a fit. I mean, I lost the last couple before I even had a chance to fire them.’

  ‘That’s not why I threw a fit, and anyway I didn’t throw a fit,’ she complained. ‘I don’t like you having them because firstly, they cost two thousand dollars and you keep losing them –’

  ‘See? Fit-throwing.’

  ‘– and secondly, it’s illegal to have them in New York City!’

  Eddie pulled back the slide. ‘That’s why I kept it at work.’

  She spluttered. ‘You – you kept a gun at the United Nations?’

  ‘It’s not technically part of the city, is it?’

  Nina held a hand to her ear. ‘You hear that distant popping sound? That was Seretse’s head exploding. And for God’s sake, put it away before someone calls the cops.’ The helicopter’s arrival had inevitably attracted curious onlookers from the village. ‘If you lose that one, you’re never, ever having another, not at two grand a go. Seriously.’

  Eddie grinned again, then slid one of the two magazines in the case into the pistol. The slide snapped back into place, chambering the first .45 Winchester Magnum cartridge. ‘I just got fed up with being caught out without a gun. If I’d put a couple of bullets through Hoyt when I had the chance, we’d all be a lot better off.’ He took a leather shoulder holster from the box and put the second magazine into a clip on one of its straps, then took off his winter coat to don it.

  Kagan opened his own coat to reveal his SR-1. The Russian gun was considerably smaller than the Wildey. ‘You seem to like overkill, Chase.’

  ‘Overkill’s my middle name,’ the Yorkshireman replied.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Nina. ‘It’s Jeremy.’

  He made a disgruntled sound. ‘Thanks for reminding me, Persephone.’

  Tova gave her a look of surprise. ‘Your middle name is Persephone?’