Slokin’s men mobilized and went straight for Gunnar before his brothers could react. They did not know about the other soldiers Lita had sent to assist Slokin, standing in wait against the walls of the house. Briskly, two of them took hold of Gunnar and held a gun to his head, ordering the furious bikers to hold back or else Gunnar would come to a horrible end.
Having no alternative, the brothers of Sleipnir stood down reluctantly, having no idea who the annoying bastard and his men in black were or what he was referring to. They took Gunnar to one of the black cars.
“If you follow us, we will blow his brains out. Good evening, boys,” Slokin said, dusting himself off and then he casually walked off and got in his car.
Chapter 16
The brethren of the biker club had no choice but to stand and watch their leader being taken away by strangers they knew nothing about, for reasons that eluded them. Befuddled, the bunch stood around, deeply concerned for Gunnar’s safety.
“I got their plates,” one of the men said suddenly. “I can hack in and find their registration details.”
“Then what are you still standing here for?” Alex barked urgently and pushed his friend back into the house to get to the computer and track the abductors. “Where is Jan, by the way? Anyone heard from him yet?” A resounding negative came from them and Alex knew that the unwelcome party they had just encountered had to have had something to do with Jan’s absence and it left a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Alex, what did he want?” asked Erika, his wife. She was a soft spoken, fair haired woman who always had the trait of compassion for others. She was usually the first to offer help whenever someone in the club were distraught or in trouble. Alex was high strung after the taking of his closest friend and now the violent abduction of their leader.
“I really don’t have time for this, Erika,” he snapped. “Just let us sort this out and I’ll tell you everything, okay?”
“What did they want?” she insisted, her voice a bit more firm and Alex knew his wife would pester him until he disclosed the details. “Val is beside herself. The least you can do is tell her what her husband was taken for!”
Alex cast a glance over to Val, wringing her hands where she sat staring into space. A knock at the door prevented him from addressing her. One of the men called back, “Val, someone for you!” Val hardly responded. Listlessly, she looked up and when she saw Dr. Nina Gould standing in the doorway, she broke down and wept bitterly, “This is all my fault! My Gunnar is gone and it’s all my fault. My god, they are going to kill him!”
Some of the women, Nina and Erika included, rushed to her aid and consoled her with hair stroking and hushing. Val buried her face in Erika’s neck and shook soundlessly as she cried.
“Val, what are you involved in?” Nina asked with as much sympathy as she could carry in her tone. It was the perfect opportunity to pry, to pretend she only wanted Val to unload her sorrows, but she would finally get to the bottom of the developments that had been baffling her so. “I can help you, but you have to tell me everything. Now,” Nina whispered to her.
Val turned to her, her eyes swollen and crimson. Her voice was empty and her tone deep, almost vindictive, “Where is the vial I gave you?”
Nina was taken aback by Val’s shade of authority. Unlike the Val she knew, now she did not smile and yield to Nina’s urging, but instead did some domination of her own. Nina could read that Val was different and she knew this was not a good time to protest or insist on information.
“It is in a safe place. Why?” Nina asked, intrigued by the long awaited revelation she was about to let in on.
“WHERE? Nina.”
“With Sam?” Nina hesitated. She felt like a schoolgirl addressed by a strict teacher, careful with her answer and hoping it would please the governess.
“We have to get to Sam, then,” Val said, sniffing, her words distorted by obstructed sinuses.
“Um…” Nina hesitated again, “…he is on his way here.”
“With the vial?”
“No, I don’t think so. I have reason to believe,” Nina continued with a deliberate vagueness, “that he is not keen to handle it.”
“Oh, God, we’re in trouble now,” Val sighed hard and her eyes rolled back in hopeless abandon. “Nina, come with me.”
Val pulled Nina up the stairs of the house by her arm. The historian was worried about Val, about the vial and about Sam. She did not know if she should still ask Val about the robberies, but she knew by intuition that she had come upon something big and deeply engorged in history. It was something, she knew, that was of worldwide significance. Nina felt, as she rarely did, that she was in the company of something truly monumental that was so much bigger, so much older, than the world’s affairs.
The wide stairs, carved in dark wood and clothed by thick carpeting ascended to the second level of the house the Sleipnir Motorcycle Club called home. It was a place very far removed from the smoky bars and club houses of bikers generally have. How odd it was that they would congregate in a grand manor with walls lined with archaic paintings of Templars and Knights of old. Depictions of Vikings longboats sliding on the icy waters amidst the loom of darkened skies wherein the faces of Norse gods were discernable, decorated the canvas. However, Nina could not find evidence of the robberies anywhere. None of the stolen artifacts from any of the world museums hit could be found. Nina looked out for them, but was left disappointed.
“Val,” she started as she was pulled into a small door at the end of the hallway on the second floor.
“Shut up.”
Val pulled Nina into the narrow and steep ascent of another stairwell that led to the room that filled the left tower of the manor. Two such towers flanked the front of the house in the old style of Anglo-Saxon masonry with the ornate quality of flagstones against the walls and employed as tower roofs. Up the musty stained corridor of stairs, they stepped hastily until they reached the room entrance.
Nina was astonished by what she saw. There were no relics or stolen hoard items, but there was no doubt that Val had a few secrets. The room was fraught with tributes to Norse Mythology, not in the contemporary, political sense, but in the old way. Stone hammers adorned the shrine, symbols like the Triple-Horn and Valknut were carved in crude perfection into the wooden panels of the cupboards which held a collection of ancient scrolls and books, much like those procured by Professor Herman Lockhart Esq. when Nina needed rare information. Signs of the practice of Ásatrú were everywhere. Runes of the Elder Futhark spelled out ancient oaths on the wooden floor.
Now Nina understood the name of the Motorcycle Club Val belonged to — Sleipnir. Of course, the eight-legged horse of Odin and the riders hailed their bikes steel horses!
From up in the tower, Val and Nina heard the roar of the motorcycles as they flowed in two adjacent lines through the gate and into the darkening night.
“They have an address, Val!” Erika’s voice sounded muffled by the bends and twists of the walls and staircases as she called up from the base of the tower stair.
“Thank you! Get ready! We’ll be right down!” Val cried in a strong and firm voice.
“Who has an address?” Nina asked.
“The men. They traced the number plates of the kidnappers. That godless, power hungry bitch has my husband and that is reason for war, if I ever knew one,” Val said.
“What godless, power hungry bitch? Val, what is going on?” Nina asked, her voice fraught with confusion and urgency.
“Professor Lita Røderic, direct descendant of Erik Thorvaldsson…”