The Norse Directive (26 page)

Helsingor, Denmark

The train slowly crept to a stop at the end of the line, nearly touching the bumpers on the wall. When it had reached a complete halt, Caron stood up and motioned with a nod for his man next to Sean to get him out of the seat.

He complied, as did Sean, albeit reluctantly. Sean stared at the man in the black trench coat with disdain. “End of the line, huh?” he said in an irritated tone.

Caron smirked. “Not for me, monsieur.” He ticked his head to the side, and the man behind Sean poked him in the kidneys with his gun.

“Move,” the man said in an American accent.

Sean didn’t think much of it. A lot of mercenaries were American these days. It seemed like everyone had a price.

When they stepped off the train and onto the stone gangway, Sean immediately noticed how the weather had changed. Dark clouds were lumbering in from the northwest, signaling a coming thunderstorm. A foreboding breeze zipped through the group, sending a fresh chill to their bones. It was already cold. If it started raining, the conditions would be downright miserable. Their nostrils filled with a heavy dose of sea air as the salty wind continued to gust.

The Helsingor train station was much smaller than the central station in Copenhagen, though the architecture mimicked the larger facility. It had the same sharply angled slate roofs and brick walls with white window frames built in. The building stretched out in two directions in an L-shape, about two hundred feet in the longest portion.

The men escorted Adriana and Sean down the platform toward one of the lesser-used exits and forced them inside. The group made their way casually through the narrow lobby and back out the doors on the other side.

Now, Sean could see the village. It was a quaint countryside town, with a rolling main street that went up a small rise and over the other side. Flags and banners hung across the central thoroughfare, much like he’d seen in Germany on his trips to similar villages. People roamed the cobblestone street, fetching various things they needed like cheese, beer, meat, and vegetables. Tourists posed in front of buildings they thought were interesting, but that the locals just called the butcher shop. A cafe waiter brought out a huge tray of food to a few patrons sitting at one of the restaurant’s street tables.

Off to the right, beyond the northern corner of the train station, the Kronborg Slot rose up from the earth like a giant stone monster standing by the sea. Standing atop the gigantic castle outline were three domes, greened with time, and a tall spire of similar color that stretched high above everything else. The red-and-white banner of Denmark whipped furiously in the wind’s onslaught, accompanied by three other proud medieval-style Danish flags, equally at full extension.

Two black Mercedes SUVs waited by the sidewalk on the edge of the street. It was nearly impossible to see through the darkly tinted windows. Sean suspected that was their ride.

“You,” Caron said to him, “you’re taking the car in back. Someone wants to meet you.”

“Let me guess. Monsieur Dufort?” Sean lathered the question with sarcasm, something his captor apparently understood. He reared back a fist but decided now wasn’t the time or the place; too many people milling around. Instead, he shoved Sean in the spine with his gun and forced him forward.

He watched, enraged, as they gave Adriana the same treatment. “I don’t appreciate you treating her that way. You’d better be careful.”

“You’re in no position to do anything about it,” Caron said as they neared the SUV convoy.

“I wasn’t talking about what I would do,” Sean said, full of warning.

It only caused his keeper to pause for a second.

The doors flung open, and both captives were shoved inside, followed by a guard. Having already seen the man’s dossier, Sean quickly assessed the thin, dark-haired man in the front to be Gerard Dufort.

“Sean Wyatt,” he said half turning around as one of the guards circled around the front of the vehicle and hopped into the driver’s seat. “You’ve been quite a bit of trouble for me.”

“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.” 

Helsingor, Denmark

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.

An idea popped into his head.
What if Stuart’s s and w meant southern wall?
According to the story, Stuart found a mound after coming ashore when his ship sank in the sound, just off the coast. The pieces to the puzzle began flying by Tommy’s eyes. He pulled out his phone and examined the screen shot Tara sent earlier. He zoomed in on a few areas outside the earthworks that surrounded the interior palace and walls. Most of the terrain appeared flat, with only a few undulations here and there; although with a direct overhead view, it was somewhat difficult to interpret rises and dips in the earth’s surface. Outcroppings of trees dotted random spots in fields of golden grass. A rock formation caught his attention for a moment, but he realized it was just some large boulders sitting out in the open, exposed to millennia of erosion.

Tommy made a note of two potential locations. One was near a stand of trees at a distance he believed would be fairly close to two thousand feet. The other was at a similar distance but off at another angle. It was a small hill that looked more like a hump from the aerial view. Its smooth slopes caused Tommy to think it to be nothing more than a natural occurrence, but he would need to check it out just to be sure.

He lifted his head and noticed some movement in the rear SUV, and a few seconds later the two vehicles rolled away, driving toward the castle. When Tommy felt they’d cleared enough distance, he stepped out of the station and pulled up the hoodie on his coat to provide a small amount of anonymity. He slid his sunglasses onto his nose and began walking at a brisk pace, heading toward the castle. As soon as the two SUVs were at what Tommy considered to be a safe distance, he broke into a moderate jog. He was glad he’d kept in shape through the years, forcing himself to run three to six miles, three times a week. Even though running never seemed to get easier, it sure could have been a lot harder if he hadn’t kept up with his training.

As he started breathing harder, the frigid air burned in his throat and lungs. His legs stiffened, something that normally would have been prevented with a good warm-up and stretch. At least the half mile or so between the station and the castle was flat.

Tommy kept his eyes on the two SUVs until they disappeared through a stone gate built into the earthworks. He quickened his pace a little, forcing his legs to pump harder. His mind ran even faster, trying to devise a plan to free his friends and take out the men who had them. He was armed, though he only had twenty shots with him for the 9 mm Glock on his ankle. A spare magazine was packed tightly in his jacket pocket.

He reached the bridge that provided the only means of entry to the castle grounds and hurried across it, carefully spying the opening the SUVs had just gone through. His eyes watered from the icy air, and despite wearing sunglasses that provided a little wind protection, he had to rub his face several times to wipe the tears away.

Tommy slowed his pace once he’d crossed the bridge. He panted for breath as he cautiously scurried the forty feet to the gatehouse, which thankfully wasn’t manned at the moment. He tucked up against a stone column and peeked around the edge. The occupants of the SUVs were getting out and being ushered into the palace grounds.

Tommy wondered what Sean was up to. Tara had said she’d been unable to reach him by phone, meaning Tommy was the only one with the additional clue about the two strange letters in Stuart’s book. If Dufort’s men were going into the palace that could mean only one thing: Sean had told them what they were looking for was somewhere in there, which meant he was trying to buy some time.

How much time he could purchase, Tommy didn’t know. Either way, he needed to hurry. The plan formulated itself in a matter of seconds. He would find the next clue and use it to bargain for Sean and Adriana. It was the only way. Tommy could handle himself in a fight, but being badly outnumbered and outgunned would only mean he and his friends would be at high risk.

He turned around and looked out across the landscape as the heavy, black clouds continued to pour into the sky above. At an angle off to his right, he could see the hill he’d noticed in the aerial photo. Farther left, more toward the coast, was the stand of trees surrounding another small rise.

He would have to cross the bridge again and go around the outer defenses of the fortress to reach both locations.

Tommy hoped Sean could buy enough time.