“Me.”
“Hello, Wells.”
“Sit down for this, Drake.” Wells had taken a breath. “The SGG — the Swedish Special Forces, and elements of the Swedish army have been recalled from all over the world.”
Drake was momentarily speechless. “You’re kidding?”
“I don’t joke about work, Drake. Only women.”
“Has that ever happened before?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Do they give a reason?”
“Usual bollocks, I’m afraid. Nothing definitive.”
“Anything else?”
There was a sigh. “Drake, you really owe me some Mai-time stories here, pal. Is Ben still there?”
“Yes, and do you remember Alicia Myles?”
“Jesus. Who wouldn’t? She with you?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I just came across her in the Louvre, about an hour ago.”
Ten seconds of silence, then: “She was part of that? Impossible. She would never betray her own.”
“We were never ‘her own’, or so it seems.”
“Listen, Drake, are you saying she helped rob the museum?”
“That I am, sir. That I am.” Drake walked to the window and stared at the car-lights whipping by below. “Hard to digest isn’t it? Maybe she has made money her new vocation.”
Behind him he could hear Ben and Kennedy making notes about well-known and unknown locations of the Nine Pieces of Odin.
Wells was breathing heavily. “Alicia fucking Myles! Riding with the enemy? No way. No way, Drake.”
“I saw her face, sir. It was her.”
“Jesus on a sidecar. What’s your plan?”
Drake closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not part of the team anymore, Wells. I don’t have a plan, dammit. I shouldn’t need to have a plan.”
“I know. I’ll assemble a team, pal, and start looking into it from this end. The way things are progressing, we might want to make some big strategies. Keep in touch.”
The line went dead. Drake turned. Both Ben and Kennedy were staring at him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not cracking up. What have you got?”
Kennedy used a spoon to whack a few sheets of paper she’d covered in cop shorthand. “Spear — Upsalla. Wolves — New York. After that, not a spiffing clue.”
“We don’t all talk like we were born with silver spoons up our arses,” Drake snapped before he could stop himself. “Okay, okay. We can only deal with what we know.”
Kennedy gave him an odd smile. “I like your style.”
“What we know—” Ben repeated, “is that Upsalla’s next.”
“The question is—” Drake muttered, “can my Gold Card handle it?”
EIGHT
During the flight to Stockholm, Drake decided to take advantage of Kennedy.
Following a series of furious hand-signals between Drake and Ben, the New York cop ended up sitting by the window, with Drake next to her. Less chance of escape that way.
“So,” he said as the plane finally levelled off and Ben flipped open Kennedy’s laptop. “I’m picking up a vibe. I’m not being nosey, Kennedy, I just have a rule. I need to know about the people I work with.”
“I should’ve known… always a price to pay for the window seat, eh? Tell me first, how’d that vibe work with Alicia Myles?”
“Reasonably well,” Drake admitted.
“Can it. Whaddya wanna know?”
“If it’s a personal problem — not a damn thing. If it’s work — a short synopsis.”
“And if it’s both?”
“Shit. I don’t want to pry, I really don’t, but I have to put Ben first. I promised him we’d survive this, and I’d say the same to you. We have a kill order against us. One thing you’re not is stupid, Kennedy, so you know I need to be able to trust you to work with me on this.”
A flight attendant leaned over, offering a paper cup that read ‘We proudly brew Starbucks Coffee’.
“Caffeine.” Kennedy accepted it with apparent glee. She reached out, brushing Drake’s cheek in the process. He noticed she was wearing the third nondescript pant-suit since he’d met her. It told him she was a woman who received attention for the wrong reasons; a woman dressing down to fit in where she seriously wanted to belong.
Drake snagged one for himself. Kennedy drank for a minute, then slipped a strand of hair behind her ear with a gentle gesture that Drake found himself drawn to. Then she turned to him.
“None of your damn business really, but I… I bagged a dirty cop. A forensic scientist. Caught him pocketing a fistful of dollars at a crime scene, and told I.A. about it. Ended up he got a stretch. A few years.”
“Nothing wrong with that. His colleagues giving you shit?”
“Man, shit, I can take. I’ve been taking it since I was five. What isn’t right, what fucks with my brain like a fucking power drill, is the reality you don’t think about — that every single one of this thieving bastard’s previous cases is then brought into question. Every. Single. One.”
“Officially? By who?”
“By shit-eating lawyers. By shit-eating politicians. By future Mayors. By fame-seeking publicity nuts, too blinded by their own ignorance to tell right from wrong. By bureaucrats.”
“Not your fault.”
“Oh, yeah! Tell that to the families of the worst serial killer New York State has ever known. Tell that to thirteen mothers and thirteen fathers, all knowing every terrible detail of how Thomas Kaleb killed their little girls, because they sat through his entire trial at court.”
Drake clenched his fists in anger. “They’re going to release this guy?”
Kennedy’s eyes were dead pits. “They released him two months ago. He’s killed again since, and has now disappeared.”
“No.”
“All on me.”
“No it’s not. It’s on the system.”
“I am the system. I work for the system. It is my life.”
“So they sent you on holiday?”
Kennedy wiped her eyes. “Forced leave. My mind isn’t… what it was. The job requires clarity every minute of every day. A clarity I just can’t achieve anymore.”
She turned her abrasive attitude up full. “So? You happy now? Can you work with me now?”
But Drake didn’t respond. He knew her pain.
They heard the captain’s voice explain that they were thirty minutes from their destination.
Ben said: “Crazy. I just read that Odin’s Valkyries are part of a private collection, whereabouts unknown.” He broke out a notebook. “I’m gonna start writing all this shit down.”
Drake barely heard any of it. Kennedy’s story was tragic, and not what he needed to hear. He buried his reservations, and didn’t hesitate to cover her shaking hand with his own.
“We need your help on this,” he whispered so Ben wouldn’t hear and quiz him later. “I do. A good back-up is essential in any operation.”
Kennedy couldn’t speak, but her brief smile spoke volumes.
A plane change and a fast train later, and they were nearing Upsalla. Drake attempted to shrug off the travel weariness fogging his brain.
Outside, a late afternoon chill brought him around. They waved down a taxi and climbed in. Ben broke the fog of fatigue by saying:
“Gamla Upsalla.That’s old Upsalla. This place—” he indicated Upsalla in general, “was built after a cathedral burned down in Gamla Upsalla a long time ago. This is, essentially — new Upsalla, though it’s hundreds of years old.”