“Gee, thanks. Get on the blower to Eden,” Hawke said, still scanning the tops of the castillo’s crenelated walls for any sign of the men. “Tell him Javier and Gunnar are dead and whoever murdered them not only has Lea’s flash-drive but also the cloak of invisibility and the axe.”
“Can’t you tell him?” Lea said.
“Why me?” Hawke said. “I’m the new guy!”
“I don’t want to break it to him…”
Scarlet sighed. “Give the phone to me, you big baby!” She snatched the phone and made the call as they made their way deep into the olive trees. They lost the men more easily than they thought, but Hawke knew their escape was probably a lot more to do with the fact that whoever the gunmen were they now had a nice, new invisibility cloak and a mysterious axe handle, which was probably what they were there for in the first place. Chasing half a dozen people around an olive orchard would be nothing more than a waste of their time and resources.
“What now?” Lea asked as they reached the road.
Hawke glanced at Victoria. She looked like she needed a very strong drink.
“We hitch a ride into town.”
Lea stood on the side of the road doing her best interpretation of a lost lamb for half an hour before an old Mitsubishi Fuso flatbed creaked and rattled around the corner. One of its headlights was flickering and it looked a little worse for wear, but a lift was a lift, Hawke thought.
An old man wound down the window and leaned halfway out, grinning at Lea.
“Necesitas ayuda?”
Lea smiled. “If that means you can offer five people a lift into town, then the answer’s yes!”
Before the man knew what was happening, Hawke and the others scrambled out from behind the olive trees and down the stony bank to the road.
“Hey!” the man said in English. “What is this, some kind of robbery?”
“Don’t be silly now, darling,” Scarlet said, climbing into the cab. “We just need a short ride into town. Now you be a good chap and drive us, will you?”
The man started to object, but then he noticed that most of them were carrying side arms, and the tall Englishman was even carrying a submachine gun slung over his shoulder.
“My truck is your truck!” he said with a nervous smile.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After Scarlet rang off, Eden was in shock about the news of Gunnar’s death. He had known him for many years and couldn’t believe what had happened. He felt a wave of hatred rise in him but knew how thoughts of vengeance clouded judgement, so put it out of his mind to concentrate on the mission. Revenge could come later.
In the meantime, he looked at the images of the cloak they had sent. Losing the cloak to the enemy was a major blow, but something told him the axe handle might be of more use. Either way, he agreed with Hawke that whoever the assailants were they must have used information on Lea’s stolen flash-drive to get the location of the Castillo de la Cosa. That meant Lea’s father had known a lot more about all of this than they did, but now wasn’t the time to go down that particular rabbit hole.
Now was the time to get Alex and Ryan working together on Gunnar Jónsson’s notebook, which luckily he’d lent to Ryan before his murder. Now the Icelandic scholar was dead, there was no way to decode the Runic script on the axe handle unless they cracked the code themselves. They had little to go on — the Icelandic scrawl in the notebooks and Gunnar’s translation of the symbols on the cloak as ‘Sigurd’ — but Eden knew this was enough for Alex to get started on.
They put Ryan’s pictures of Gunnar’s notebook and the cloak up on the plasma screen in the main room alongside the original script written by Lea’s father. It was projected with almost cinematic scale and impressiveness.
“So what do you think?” Eden asked the young American woman. “Gunnar told us this part says ‘Sigurd’, but the rest is down to us, and by us, I mean you.”
Alex squinted at the images and tipped her head to one side as she lost herself in the study of the strange, scratchy lines. “It’s going to be tough, for sure, but I think I can use what’s been translated so far by Gunnar to try and translate the script — which seems more like some kind of Pre-Runic system to me.”
“Which is exactly what Mr Bale said.”
“Right… and he’s not often wrong.”
“Annoying but true,” Eden said with a rare smile.
Alex returned the smile but it quickly faded when she immersed herself back in the study of the script. “I’m going to need some time to crack this little baby, Rich.” She looked more closely at the images of Gunnar’s notebook. “It’s so unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“It’s vital we decode them, Alex. When the team catch up with that axe handle and join it to the one in Sweden the inscriptions could lead us to Thor’s tomb. Why these maniacs are so desperate to get into that tomb we don’t know, but we need to beat them to it.”
“Got it, but looking at this…” She took a step forward and pointed at a couple of places along the strange markings. “I’m just saying these notes are all over the place and look like they’re missing important elements… and while the script is obviously similar to Runic it obviously isn’t, so that’s another big deal right there. I wish Ryan had had time to get a picture of the axe as well. Damn it!”
“All right — well get started with what we have for now. In the meantime I have a call to make to Diego Velasco and then hopefully I’ll have something to give the team.”
“Who’s he?”
“An old friend of mine.”
“You think he can help us with what’s going on?”
“I’ve no doubt of it. He’s the Spanish Minister of the Interior.”
Half an hour later, Hawke disconnected the call and turned to Lea and Scarlet. Eden had just called him back with the information he’d gleaned from his conversation with Diego Velasco. Now, the three of them were in a hotel room in San Sebastián on the northern coast of Spain. Ryan, who had argued strongly in favour of making the truck driver take them all the way to Biarritz, was with Victoria downstairs in the bar. After the deaths of Gunnar and Javier the English archaeologist had decided it was time for a strong drink or three.
“And?” Scarlet said impatiently.
Hawke looked at her. “Turns out Rich just happens to be old fishing buddies with the Spanish Minister of the Interior.”
“Oh sure, I met Diego once,” Lea said matter-of-factly. “Funny guy after a few sherries.”
Hawke looked at her for a few seconds, speechless, and then continued. “Anyway, according to this Diego bloke, the man we’re after could well be an individual named Álvaro Sala. He’s an Andorran national with a past that’s proving very difficult to shine any light on, but the good news is that the French and Spanish authorities have been watching him for some time in connection with some pretty serious drugs trafficking.”
“So how does this help us?” Lea said.
“It helps us because they just happen to know where his little hidey hole is — he’s the fortuitous owner of a château in the Andorran Pyrenees. It would certainly explain how he was able to mobilize men to assault Javier’s castle so fast.”
“So we’re off to Andorra?” Scarlet said.
“Looks that way, but there’s one more thing. Apparently one of Sala’s associates is a creature named Marcus Deprez. He’s a convicted serial killer who escaped from a high security prison on the outskirts of Brussels. He’s a nasty piece of work so keep an eye out for him.”
“I’m worried about Victoria,” Lea said. “Things look like they’re going to get nasty and I’m not sure she’s up to it.”