“Save the stereotypical BS, Dufort. I get it. You’re a villain, and you’re supposed to say something to me that is supposed to warn me that we’re about to be killed. Been there, done that. So skip it.”
The Frenchman seemed somewhat surprised at the outburst. He changed the subject immediately. “I thought there were three of them,” he directed his question to Caron.
“There were.” He left it at that.
Sean knew what the henchman was doing; his answer suggesting they’d killed Tommy. Sean doubted it for a second, but that could be a possibility. Had they killed his friend, or was this guy just covering up for not accounting for the third member of their party? To avoid further inquiry, he interrupted. “Look, I know you’re going to kill us, so don’t give me any of that crap about how we’ll be free to go once you have what you want.”
Dufort shrugged and snorted a laugh. He rubbed his nose for a second before speaking. “Well, I like to extend an olive branch when I can. I find it makes the transition to getting what I want much easier. But I can see you’re a man who likes to get right to the point and doesn’t care for pleasantries.”
“That would be affirmative.”
“Very well,” Dufort sighed. “Tell me where to go and what we are looking for, and my men will take you and your girlfriend out into a field and shoot you in the head. Is that what you want?”
It was Sean’s turn to laugh. “Well, it would, except that there’s just one problem. We don’t have the slightest idea what we’re looking for or where to find it.”
Dufort’s face bent into a frown. “That is a shame. I was hoping we could do this without any elements of torture, but I can see things are going to have to get messy. We’ll start with the girl, of course. I find the best way to get people to give their deepest confession is to stab them where it hurts them the most. The heart.”
“If you torture her and kill her, you’ll get nothing from me. Then you’ll never have your precious spear.”
Surprise washed over Dufort’s face, and his eyes opened wide, as if he’d just witnessed some kind of miracle. “So you do know about the lance? How fascinating. I wonder, how did you come to realize that was what this is all about?”
Sean feigned disinterest, but while he was talking he formulated a quick plan in his head. It wasn’t a solution to the immediate problem, but it could buy them some time. He turned his head and gazed out the window at a short line of taxis waiting to take visitors around the village.
“It wasn’t too difficult to figure out, actually. Once we had the book, figuring out the code was easy enough.”
“Ah. So there was a book with the body of our friend Monsieur Stuart? I told my man he missed something there, but he insisted the coin was all there was to be found.”
Sean grinned. “That why you killed him?” He stopped himself and laughed derisively. “Sorry, I know the gunshot wound was self-inflicted. The broken arm and busted-up face on the other hand, I’m sure you had something to do with.”
Dufort winced at the comment but wouldn’t be thrown off for long. He faced forward and stared out the front of the vehicle for a moment. Sean used it as an opportunity to carry on.
“The book had a code built into it. It seems Stuart wanted someone to know that Kronborg Slot was the place to go to find the next clue. From what we understand, somewhere in that castle is what we are looking for.” He let the lie marinate for a minute.
Dufort considered the story and turned around to face Sean again. “Which room?”
“Well, that’s the thing, Pierre,” he used the common French name as an insult. Something he’d picked up in a commercial once. “We don’t know which room. Our plan was to snoop around and see what we could find.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan. We could do the same thing without your help.”
“Maybe,” Sean shrugged. “You’re welcome to try. Although it could take you a long time to check all the rooms in that castle. Not to mention the basement. By the time you finished, you still might not know where the clue is.”
“And you believe you possess some advantage? Is that it?”
“Seems like we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you so far. What part of this were you or your goons able to figure out without us?”
The callous words stung in the ears of the other men in the SUV, but they bounced off Dufort. “Your point is well taken, Sean. Very well. You will accompany us to the castle. We will search the main rooms of the palace and see what we can turn up. I must warn you, however, if you do not find the clue we are looking for by the end of today, I will cut off one of your girlfriend’s fingers, and will continue to do so for every day you spend wasting my time. Do I make myself clear?”
Sean clenched his teeth. The pistol under his arm was screaming to be drawn and fired, but the guy to his right hadn’t taken his eyes off him since they’d left Copenhagen. Even the slightest move would prove fatal. Once he was dead, they would kill Adriana too. Or worse.
“Crystal.”
Chapter 35
Tommy watched through the train station’s windows as the black SUVs sat idling for ten minutes. It was difficult to see through the window tinting, but the sunshine helped at least illuminate a few silhouettes in the vehicles’ interiors.
He’d seen the men take Sean and Adriana and put them in separate vehicles. Now he wasn’t sure what was happening. From the looks of it, the guy in the front seat of the second car was talking to someone in the back. Tommy assumed it was Sean. Though he couldn’t get a clear look at the man, Tommy assumed it was either the mastermind behind all of this or one of his trusted associates.
Thunder boomed on the horizon to the northwest, startling him for the briefest of seconds. The remaining tourists exited the building: a few elderly people with fanny packs and a younger couple with book bags slung over one shoulder. Then the train station was still. The only commotion was the sounds of preparing the train for its return trip to Copenhagen.
On the train ride, Tommy had studied the overhead images of the Kronborg Slot. Tara had been right about the fortress layout. The inner walls closest to the palace looked like a giant throwing star, surrounded by a fifteen- to twenty-foot moat on all sides. The walls themselves were an imposing twenty to twenty-five feet high. Mounds were built around the moat to slope down into the murky water, making a ground assault nearly impossible for anyone who dared attack the mighty castle. Of course, to reach that, an invader would have to get through the outer defenses, a perimeter wall of around ten feet that protected a stable house, gatehouse, and various other points of entry, designed in a larger star shape.
While he observed the castle’s layout, something stuck out in his mind regarding the numbers and letters Tara had given him. Two thousand, sw. He stared at the four points of the inner wall, each with a circular rampart designed for the guards to be able to see several miles in each direction. The only logical explanation he could come up with for the large number was that whatever they were looking for had to be two thousand feet from somewhere. Decoding what the s and w meant had to be the key. The two points closest to the sea would be of no help. At least that’s what he hoped. If the clue were buried in the channel, he’d have no way to get to it. That sort of expedition would take weeks of preparation and a ton of equipment. Besides, the story Francis Jackson had relayed from Jonathan Stuart was that they’d discovered a mound somewhere inland, most likely a burial mound.
Tommy remembered that part explicitly, in particular because he found that kind of interment to be strange for a Viking such as Holger Danske or his captain, Asmund. Viking leaders, even most of the commoners, were put in boats and pushed out into the open water where they were set on fire. There were several instances in history, however, where a Norse funeral was carried out on land. They would bury the deceased in a stone ship and place grave offerings in it according to how high up the person was in Nordic society. He recalled reading how some of the more gruesome Norse funerals involved slave sacrifices, though those seemed to be far less common.