“Try.” Jack sounded exhausted, his voice barely a whisper.
Maria paused, muttered a few words to herself, then read it out loud. “Only Ulf, Finn and Halldor are left. The Scraelings have taken the outer chamber. Thor protect us. Hann til ragnaroks.”
Jack felt stripped of emotion, too drained to respond. All he could do was reach out and touch the dripping stone.
“Maybe Harald himself scratched this, his last act before the Toltecs were upon him,” Maria said. “It was Stamford Bridge all over again, only this time it truly was the end.” She looked back at the spectral shapes on the platform behind her, then towards the blackness in the water where Loki had disappeared. She gave an involuntary shiver. “They got as far as they humanly could, right to the entrance of the underworld.”
“I can feel what they felt,” Jack murmured. “We’re on the edge of the spirit world here, the very boundary. Something wants me to go down that passageway, to follow Loki. It’s like a malign force drawing me in, willing me to frame the challenge. I feel as close to Harald here as I’ve ever felt, really close.” Jack looked around at the flickering shadows on the cavern walls, then shook himself and raised Loki’s air tank from where it had been left by the edge of the water, attaching it to Maria’s back. “And I know this is not a place we want to be.”
“It’s not over yet,” Maria said.
“You’ve got plenty of air. There’s a line of lights back to the entrance. Piece of cake. I’ll be right behind you.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
Jack gave her shoulder straps a final tug. He splashed water on his face to rub off the black mess and sat down beside her. Maria began to talk, slowly at first, hesitantly, then in full flow, as if she were telling something she had never told before but had rehearsed countless times in her mind. Over the next few minutes Jack heard a story more awful than he could ever have imagined, a story that made the monsters of the underworld seem as potent as they had to the Vikings, that seemed to shape the lurking malevolence of this place into a force too evil to leave unchallenged.
Twenty minutes later Jack heaved himself out of the well-hole into the painted chamber. Costas squatted in front of him, breathless after operating the winch. Maria sat dripping on the stone floor a few metres away. Despite the heat she was shivering slightly, and Costas passed her a towel and an IMU jacket along with a bottle of water. As soon as he saw she was safe, Jack swivelled round and addressed Costas.
“What’s our status?”
“The Mexicans are here,” Costas panted. “Two guys in a jeep about ten minutes ago. They’re judiciales, plain-clothed guys. Pretty unsavoury if you ask me. They said a helicopter is on its way. Apparently all this tract is Reksnys’ territory, but we’re well away from his main compound. It doesn’t look like he trusted any of his own security people to be out here. A few locals live in the jungle, Maya, but they’re on our side. As soon as more police arrive and the Lynx returns from Seaquest II with a full security team, we can relax. Ben’s doing a wide perimeter sweep as we talk.”
Jack jerked his head towards the hole. “You probably gathered our friend Loki won’t be joining us.”
Costas raised his eyebrows. “Permanently?”
“He’s gone for a cave-diving endurance record. Without air.”
“The Toltec underworld,” Costas said quietly. “Not a place I’d want to spend eternity.”
Jack drew Costas aside and huddled with him in the gloom at the rear of the chamber, talking intently. Costas occasionally looked at Maria, his expression increasingly grim. After a few minutes Jack gestured for her to join them. Costas passed her something wrapped in a cloth, which she checked and quickly concealed inside her jacket.
Jeremy suddenly appeared at the entrance, breathless and frantic. “Quick. For God’s sake. Reksnys has escaped. He’s got a local kid. He’s threatening to kill him.”
“How the hell…”
“The Mexican police cut him loose, then they both vanished, did a runner.”
“Shit.”
There was a sudden commotion outside and Reksnys appeared, pushing a boy of about five, the distraught parents pleading in Spanish behind him. Jeremy forced them back out and Reksnys marched in holding a leather belt round the boy’s neck. He paraded in front of them, his head held high and sneering, then dragged the boy like an animal to the centre of the chamber.
“I can break his little neck in a second. Just like that.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand. He seemed to forget his audience, and spoke with almost childish glee. Suddenly he looked around. “Where’s my son?”
“Went for a swim.”
Reksnys failed to take in what Costas had said, and drew the boy towards him. “?Como te llamas?”
The boy was too terror-stricken to reply.
Reksnys jerked the boy up towards his face. “?Como te llamas?”
The boy whispered tearfully, “Daniel.”
“Daniel.” Reksnys let the boy drop and then jerked him back against him, the belt held tight around his neck. “Interesting name for a Maya. When I was his age, I knew some little boys with that name. Daniel, Doron, Menachem. And there were some little girls with them too. But not for long.” Reksnys sneered again, then eyed Maria suspiciously as she detached herself from the others and took a few steps to the wall, to the place where she had recovered consciousness after her nightmare trip from Iona. She stood facing Reksnys, her legs slightly apart.
“I think,” she said, “you once found it a lot easier using this.”
Slowly, deliberately, she raised the Luger and aimed it at Reksnys’ head, both hands clasping the butt, her left index finger brushing the trigger.
Jeremy stared at Maria, shocked.
Reksnys sneered again. “You don’t know how to use that.”
She flipped down the safety catch on the left side of the frame. “Oh yes I do.”
“It’s not loaded.”
“Jack?” Maria said, not moving her eyes.
Jack pulled out a small box with the words NINE MILLIMETRE PARABELLUM printed on one side and showed the half-empty interior. “We found these in your pocket,” he said. “Remember?”
Reksnys was contemptuous. “Put the gun down or the boy dies.”
Maria began to recite words she had memorized when she was a child. “Operational Situation Report USSR, Number 129a,” she said quietly. “Einsatzgruppe D. Location: Nikolayev, Ukraine. Addendum to Report Number 129 concerning the activity of the Einsatzkommandos in freeing places of Jews and finishing off partisan groups. SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Andrius Reksnys personally executed 341 Jews. Revised total for the last two weeks: 32,108.”
There was a stunned silence. Maria kept the Luger levelled at Reksnys’ head. He remained stock still, staring at her with cold loathing, the belt taut and shimmering against the boy’s neck.
“May the fourteenth, 1943,” Maria continued. “A beautiful spring morning. The flowers were up everywhere, the birds singing. The last in line in front of the ditch were a young family, a father and a pregnant mother and four small children. Do you remember? Your father let you finish the little ones.”
“Impossible.” Reksnys spat out the word, looking conspiratorially at the others. “This woman is mad. There were no witnesses. There never were.”
“It was your first batch,” Maria continued matter-of-factly. “You were not very experienced with the Luger. Three days later the youngest child crawled out from among the bodies, a bullet lodged in her skull. A sweet little girl, weeping and helpless in the spring sunshine.” Tears were coursing down Maria’s cheeks, but her voice was unwavering. “A German Wehrmacht soldier found her, took pity on her. She stayed with his unit all the way back to Berlin, looked after by the Germans, men disgusted by what the SS had done. When they were all killed in action she was rescued by a British soldier. Years later she married a Spanish diplomat, had a daughter of her own. Last spring I took her back to Nikolayev, to lie once again in that lovely meadow, to be with her brothers and sisters, her beloved mama and papa. She said they had been missing her, had been desperate to find and protect her.” Maria swallowed hard, blinking away the tears but staring unflinchingly down the barrel. “That little girl was my mother.”