Drake, Alicia and Mai eyed the area suspiciously as the taxi pulled away.
“An awful lot of flat ground,” Alicia said warily. “You sure about this, Drakey?”
“I didn’t choose it,” he said testily.
The door opened and Torsten Dahl stood there. The big Swede had a lopsided grin on his face.
“Aye up, it’s the mad Swede,” Drake said with warmth in his voice. “I remember that same stupid grin being on yer face when you stood on the edge of Odin’s tomb, staring down at his bones.”
“As did you, my friend.” Dahl came forward. “When I finally let you have a look.”
The pair shook hands. “The bloody A-team,” Dahl said. “Back together.”
“Well, by all accounts,” Drake said seriously, “we’re gonna be needed.”
“Jesus!” Alicia said, brushing them aside. “Make sure his thong doesn’t cut your lip, Drake, when you pull it down with your teeth.”
Drake stared after her. “Bitch always had a way with words.”
Mai followed Alicia. “Let’s see who else came to the party, shall we?”
Drake let Dahl get his back and followed Mai through the ramshackle door. Once inside, the building abruptly changed, everything looking more modernized. A fortified, brick-lined passageway led to another door — this one a big, riveted hard steel affair — with a nearby keypad. Hayden was waiting for them, and after giving them all a brief, tense greeting, she entered a sixteen-digit pin to unlock the door.
She ushered them through. Drake tried to shake off his ideas and plans for the forthcoming trip to the SAS facility in Luxembourg and concentrate on the job at hand. Wells’s material might hold the key to Alyson’s killer, but it might also blow the lid off the Shadow Elite — an organization even now immorally involved in trying to acquire the doomsday weapon that might exist inside the third and final tomb of the gods.
He saw Ben immediately. The young man stood uncomfortably in one corner of the big room, next to his sister, a pint of coke in hand and looking like the geek hanging out at the school disco. The bar behind him glistened with liter bottles full of the sweet nectar of forgetfulness. Drake’s eyes lingered a moment too long.
Dahl clapped him on the back. Hard. “Check that out, mate.”
Alicia had sashayed into the middle of the room, like a capable and confident model surveying an invited audience that, for some reason, never understood it was really the prey, until she came face to face with Daniel Belmonte, the British master thief, her ex-lover.
Drake could hear them speaking. Belmonte, to his credit, had recovered quickest. “Always good to…bump into you, Myles.”
Drake saw Hayden watching them too. And Ben watching Hayden. Such an odd rectangle of ex and current lovers.
Alicia didn’t miss a beat though. “The only thing you’ll be stealing tonight, Belmonte, is glances.” And she walked right by him, continuing toward the bar without looking back.
Mai had watched the exchange too. “She’s good. Though I’d never tell her.”
“Your secret is safe with me, Miss Kitano,” Dahl told her, a big smile lighting his face.
Drake took a moment to study the room. Clearly, this was some kind of local police safe house. Someone, Gates or Hayden or even Dahl, had probably called in a favor, an occurrence that would probably be happening a lot during the next few days. As he thought about it, Drake decided it had been Dahl. The Swede was the least likely of them all to pop up on an enemy’s radar and no doubt had a vast amount of friends and colleagues in mainland Europe. The room was furnished with a couple of big sofas, a solid oak table long enough to seat a horde of Vikings, and at least three makeshift beds in the corners. The bar, of course, was the main feature, especially for those having to deal with a terrible new knowledge.
Dahl took out his wallet and took a moment to study a picture of his two sons and his wife. Still holding it, he turned to Drake. “This is why we fight,” he said. “This is why we try to make things better. So our children can grow up in a safer world.”
Drake opened his mouth to reply. A sudden, unexpected lump of emotion lodged at the back of his throat. Dahl stared at him. The Swede didn’t know Alyson had been pregnant. Even now, Drake was still dealing with the fact that he would never have children, and that the child he had made had been so viciously torn from him.
“I will kill them all,” he whispered. “No one will get away with what they did.”
Dahl looked momentarily confused, then returned the picture to his wallet. Maybe he thought that Drake, in his way, was just agreeing with him. “I have a man on the inside,” he said with a grin. “In Iceland. He’s translating the ancient language as we speak. I should be hearing from him any time.”
“About what?”
“About everything. Bloody hell, why are Yorkshire men so dumb? The whole story is there, mate. About why the gods lay down to die. About the time-travel devices you found near the Bermuda Triangle and in Hawaii. About the doomsday machine. About how they created fate. They hopped through time, Matt, literally hopped, like we would visit different stores in a mall. Do you remember that poem, the one related to Odin?”
Drake collected himself. “Vaguely.”
“The ending went ‘Forever shall thou fear this, hear me sons of men, for to defile the Tomb of Gods is to start the Day of Reckoning.’”
“Yes?”
“We believe that it has begun. The day of reckoning is fast approaching.”
“The Day of Reckoning? Something to do with Armageddon. Or the Viking’s Ragnarok?”
“Exactly. Ragnarok. Either heroes will rise to save the day or villains will end it.”
Drake stared at his Swedish friend. That sentence struck a chord in him. Either heroes will rise to save the day or villains will end it. “So we’ll stay strong until the end,” he said. “And we’ll win the day. For our children, and our friends.”
“No matter what.” Dahl gripped his hand and the two men shared a moment that would lock them together for the rest of their lives.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Drake watched Hayden walk through the crowd as Alicia had done. But this time the crowd parted with respect and expectation.
He saw her command attention with a look, a sigh. He saw Ben staring at her and suddenly felt a wave of sadness for his young friend. There was no future there. Ben, though exceptional in his own right, was not the man for Hayden Jaye. And widening his field of vision, he noticed Komodo — the Delta team leader who had helped him win the day against the Blood King in Hawaii. Drake made a point of catching the man’s eye and nodding in respect, though Komodo seemed more intent on chatting with Karin than noticing Drake.
There were men scattered around who Drake didn’t know. Probably colleagues of Mai and loyal soldiers attached to Jonathan Gates, a US Secretary of Defense who could realistically trust no one except the few people in this very room.
“We’re in desperate times,” Hayden said. “You all know that the third tomb of the gods houses the nastiest of their kind. So we have no idea what to expect. And even worse — it may also contain some kind of doomsday device. We don’t know with any certainty, so we can’t rule anything out. What we do know is that Russell Cayman — under the command of some all-powerful group — will stop at nothing to reach the tomb. The race to reach it first has already begun. If you’re willing to risk your life to become a hero, then stay in this room. Otherwise — just walk away.”