The Valhalla Prophecy

23

‘Well, that was… fun,’ said Nina with a grimace as she put down her phone.

‘Seretse not happy, was he?’ said Eddie, lying on the hotel suite’s bed.

‘He was not. I think being shouted at by a member of the UN Security Council kinda ruined his day.’

He sat up. ‘So what’s going to happen? About us, I mean?’

Nina ran a hand through her hair, tired. ‘As much as he’d probably love to fire both our asses, there’s not much he can do. It seems Kagan’s bosses pull a lot of weight at the Kremlin — they still want Unit 201 to find and destroy the other source of eitr before Hoyt or anyone else can find it, but they need us and Tova to do that. So I’m guessing Seretse’s conversation with the Russian representative went something like: “Two people from the IHA just shot up our nuclear bomber base and caused billions of roubles in damage! But don’t fire them, because we’re still working with them. And we won’t tell you why, only that it’s important. I just needed to vent by yelling at you.”’

‘Yeah, I can see that’d be like someone pissing in his orange juice. I suppose now we’ve got to find the bloody thing.’

Nina glanced towards the door connecting the room to the adjacent suite. ‘All we can do for now is wait and see if Tova manages to come up with a location for Ragnarök.’ She sat beside her husband. ‘Which gives us a chance to talk about something else.’

He waggled his eyebrows. ‘You want to try for a kid right here?’

‘As fun as that would be, no.’ Her face became more serious. ‘What happened in Vietnam, Eddie? What really happened? Hoyt, and Kagan, and that guy Slavin from the bunker — you met them all there. And you knew about the eitr, and about the pit the Russians found.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘And you lied to me about it.’

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry.’ He sat up. ‘But I couldn’t tell you about any of it because… because I made a promise.’

‘To whom?’

He shifted uncomfortably, still conflicted after eight years, before answering. ‘Natalia. The girl I was hired to rescue in Vietnam.’

Nina moved closer, intrigued. ‘What was the promise?’

‘Unit 201 had kidnapped her to run secret tests. That stuff in the jar, Thor’s Hammer — that’s what they were trying to create, using her DNA. My job was to bring her and her friends back safely, but Hoyt and his boss had set the whole thing up as a way to lure Unit 201 out of the bunker. They had it all worked out — Slavin told ’em where the camp was, and then their plan was to nick all the research, burn everything else and try to kill as many of the scientists as they could… and also take Natalia.’

‘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 remembered! 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.’