The Valhalla Prophecy (66 page)

“No, but—”

“Then can you please respect my decision?” He was taken aback by her hard tone; she softened it in apology. “Believe me, if the circumstances were different I wouldn’t be leaving. But … I have to. There are other things I want to do—
need
to do.”

“Such as writing your book?”

She was a little surprised. “You heard about that?”

“Having my own office at the UN does not isolate me from the latest gossip. And I would be a poor diplomat if I did not keep my ear to the ground.”

“I guess so. But yes, I’ve already accepted the offer to write it. Don’t worry, I’ll vet everything through the UN before publication. The IHA’s secrets are safe with me.”

“I never doubted it,” Seretse assured her. “But on the subject of secrets, you clearly have some of your own. I am being pressured, particularly by the US State Department, to find out exactly what happened on your most recent operation. We know there was a gun battle at the lake in Norway that resulted in several deaths, and that according to Mr. Trulli and the other survivors you left the scene with a Russian; but after that you vanished from the radar until reappearing in Moscow, then traveled back to Sweden … and finally turned up in northern Canada! All without a word of explanation beyond your decidedly sparse report. And Dr. Skilfinger has been equally uncommunicative, except to say that you and Eddie saved her life.” He leaned forward. “What
is
going on, Nina?”

“I can’t tell you, Oswald,” she replied. “I’m sorry. But part of the IHA’s remit from its founding six years ago was to make sure that potentially dangerous archaeological discoveries stayed out of the wrong hands. As director of the IHA, I made a decision to restrict all information about what we found, for reasons of global security.”

“Even from the nations funding the IHA?”

“
Especially
from them,” Eddie rumbled.

Seretse eyed him. “I see.” He leaned back. “Would I be correct in assuming that if the information were to be released, it could result in, shall we say,
disagreements
between certain members of the UN Security Council? Certain nuclear-armed members?”

“To put it mildly, yes,” Nina told him.

The diplomat nodded. “Then I had better accept your resignation immediately.” He slid the letter across the desk to an out-tray. “After all, I can’t use my position as United Nations liaison to demand answers from somebody who no longer works for the organization, can I?”

Nina managed a faint smile. “Thank you, Oswald.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt
I
have not heard the last of this. But now that you both no longer work for the IHA, such matters are no longer your concern.” He stood, straightening his immaculate suit before extending his hand. “I may have only worked with you briefly, but you both lived up to your reputations.”

Eddie rose and crossed the room to stand beside Nina. “Good or bad?”

Now it was Seretse’s turn to smile slightly. “It’s perhaps best that I do not say.” He shook their hands. “Good luck, to the pair of you.”

“Thanks,” said Nina. “I’m sorry to have dropped this bomb on you”—Eddie suppressed a sarcastic comment on her choice of words—“but we need to do this. We want to …” She was more careful with her phraseology this time. “We want to spend as much time with each other as we can.”

“Ah, yes, I can quite understand that. A job like this can keep us away from our families for too long.” But there was something in Seretse’s eyes that suggested he had picked up a little more meaning from Nina’s remark. “I hope you do everything you want to achieve.”

“So do I,” she said, heartfelt.

He rounded his desk to show them out. “If I may ask, what
are
you going to do?”

“Travel, for one thing. And not with my archaeologist’s hat on. I want to see new places, meet new people.”

Seretse nodded. “It sounds most agreeable. Where are you going?”

“Vietnam first,” Eddie said. “There’s a place I want to visit there. And then, well … kind of a world tour.”

“We’re going to see some friends in Hollywood too, at some point,” said Nina. “Do you know Grant Thorn? The movie star?”

Seretse shook his head. “I must admit to preferring French cinema to Hollywood blockbusters.”

“Me too, actually. Although I don’t think I’ll ever talk Eddie around to my point of view.”

“You know those Jason Statham
Transporter
movies
technically count as French cinema, right?” he said with a grin.

Nina sighed. “Yes, this is the man I’m going to be spending the rest of my … time with.” She shook Seretse’s hand again. “Good-bye, Oswald.”

“Bye, Ozzy,” Eddie added. Seretse gave them both a tired look, but smiled in farewell.

Nina held her upbeat expression as she and Eddie walked to the elevators, but her façade crumbled as they descended toward the lobby of the Secretariat Building. He put his arm around her. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to reassure her. “It’s okay.”

“It’s
not
okay,” she replied, struggling to keep her composure. “Eddie, I’m going to
die
! You saw the doctor’s report. Even if they didn’t know what was wrong with me, they still knew it was bad. The eitr infected me, and … I don’t know how long I’ve got.”

“It might be years.”

“And it might be weeks! The Russians told us how quickly the stuff can kill, even in small doses.” She unconsciously touched her cheek; the red mark had faded, but was still visible, a hardened blemish against her otherwise smooth skin. “I only got hit by a drop, but we both know that’s all it takes. I’ve lasted longer than the nine steps Thor took, but … it’s only a matter of time.”

The elevator doors opened. She blinked away tears before stepping out. “All right then,” said Eddie softly as he walked beside her. “We don’t know how long you’ve got. But there might be a cure out there somewhere. We can’t give up on finding it, ever—I’m sure as fuck not going to, and I’m not going to let you either! And until we find it, we can make what you’ve got—what
we’ve
got—as good as it possibly can be. Okay?”

“Okay,” she managed to say.

They crossed the lobby, heading for the exits to the plaza outside. Eddie looked around at their modernist surroundings. “You know, I’m actually going to miss this place.”

“So am I,” Nina replied. “But there’s something I’m going to miss more.”

“What?”

“Being—” Her voice caught, choked off by a sudden rush of emotion. She breathed hard, forcing out the words. “Being the mother of your children.”

Eddie couldn’t reply, as overcome as his wife. Tears streaming, they went through the doors and out into the cold of New York.

Two days later, the weather was considerably warmer.

“Are we there yet?” said Nina in joking complaint as she wiped sweat from her forehead. Even though the rented four-by-four had air-conditioning, the temperature at midday was still stifling.

“Not much farther,” said Eddie as he guided their vehicle down the bumpy jungle track. Under normal circumstances, to rent a car in Vietnam he would first have had to apply for a Vietnamese driver’s license, which would have taken at least a week. However, on this occasion the time to process the paperwork had been reduced to a couple of hours; they were both grateful to Seretse that their United Nations documentation would remain valid for a few months.

“So this is where you came eight years ago?” She watched the brilliant greenery roll by. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, it is.” He sounded almost surprised, prompting a questioning look from his wife. “I didn’t really get the chance to play tourist last time I was here. Besides, it was pissing it down.”

“At least it’s not raining today. I wouldn’t fancy trekking through the jungle in a monsoon to find Natalia’s grave.”

He gave her a slightly confused glance. “Sorry, what?”

“Natalia’s grave? That’s why we came here, remember. How far from the village is it?”

“Oh, yeah.” He seemed distracted, but there was something else to his attitude as well. Nina couldn’t quite tell what, though. Almost … 
expectant
? “Not far.”

He guided the Nissan Patrol around a bend in the narrow track, bushes whipping at the vehicle’s flank.
Ahead, a cluster of buildings came into view: the village of Ly Quang. “Is that it?” Nina asked.

“That’s it. Hasn’t changed much.” He brought the four-by-four down the hill and pulled up outside the largest building.

The sweltering heat hit them the moment they opened the Patrol’s doors. Nina screwed up her eyes as pinpricks of sweat beaded around them, then surveyed their surroundings. It was clear that the village did not get many visitors; the few people in sight had already taken an interest in the new arrivals.

One of them, a woman Nina guessed to be in her mid-thirties, regarded Eddie first with uncertainty, then dawning recognition. “Ay up,” he said. “Looks like somebody remembers me.”

The woman hurried to the car to meet him, speaking excitedly. “Sorry, I still don’t speak Vietnamese,” he replied with an apologetic shrug. “But this does.”

He took his phone from inside his leather jacket and brought up an app: an English–Vietnamese translator. A set of phrases had already been saved, a tap of Eddie’s finger prompting the phone to say the first in a mechanical voice. The woman did not seem wowed by the technology—the country’s cellular phone network had been massively expanded over the course of eight years—but her reaction to what it was saying was more excited.

“What did you ask her?” said Nina.

Eddie didn’t answer, instead tapping a second phrase. The woman listened, nodding enthusiastically, then waved for him to wait as she ran into the large building. “Eddie?” Nina asked again. “What did it say?”

“Just checking something,” he replied, though he was having trouble holding back a smile.

“What …,” Nina began, stopping as the Vietnamese woman reappeared—followed by someone else.

A blond Caucasian woman in her late twenties, whose eyes widened in delighted shock at the sight of the Englishman. “Eddie!” she cried. “My God! But that means …”

“Yeah, that means.” Eddie’s grin could no longer be contained. He turned to his wife. “Nina? I’d like you to meet Natalia Pöltl.”

“But you know I am right, Eddie,” Natalia continued, desperation entering her voice. “And it is what I want to do. Please!” She wrapped her hands around his. “I will not let anyone else die because of me. You have to do it. You have to!” She squeezed his hands, then let go and turned away, getting down on her knees. “You … you know how to make it not hurt, don’t you?” she said quietly.

“Yeah, I do,” he replied. “But—”

“Then do it. It is the only way to end this.” She raised her head and closed her eyes.

He stared down at the young woman. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes” came the reply.

He was silent for a long moment. Then he slowly raised the gun.

“Please,” whispered Natalia. “Do it.”

Chase hesitated—then pulled the trigger.

Natalia shrieked, flinching … before slowly opening one eye, not daring to speak for several seconds. “You … did not shoot me.”

Chase’s gun was pointed toward the sky, smoke curling from its barrel. “ ’Course I didn’t bloody shoot you. I’m not a psychopath!”

“But—you have to! If the Americans or the Russians take me alive, they will use me to—”

“They won’t,” he said firmly. “And you know why? ’Cause they’re going to think you
are
dead.”

Natalia stood, regarding him in confusion. “I do not understand.”

“You will. You won’t
like
it, but you’ll understand.” He set off, heading southwest. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“To find your dead body.”

Bewildered, she followed him. “Eddie, what are you talking about?”

“I’m going to keep my promises—both of them,” he told her. “I promised to protect you, and you made me promise not to let anyone carry on your grandfather’s work. And I just had an idea how to do both of those things.”

They continued through the jungle. The valley floor was muddy, still sodden from the storm, but the relatively flat ground let them move at a decent pace. Before long the trees thinned out as they neared the steep earthen wall of the valley’s west side.

Chase looked up at it. “Okay, somewhere at the top of that’s the camp where they were keeping you and your friends. So a bit south of it there’ll be a big mudslide.” His gaze moved along the stepped cliff, spotting an area largely stripped of vegetation about a quarter of a mile away. “That’s where we fell down.”

They picked their way along the valley until they reached the swath of destruction. Chase turned his attention to the ground, trying to match what he remembered from the darkness of the previous night with what he saw now. “There!” he finally said, pointing out a shape half buried in the mud.

Natalia recoiled when she realized what it was: the body of a woman. “Who is she?”

“One of the Russians—she came after me when I was carrying you out of the camp, but we all got washed away by the mudslide.” Feet squelching in the sludge, Chase went to the broken-necked corpse. Insects had already started to feast on it; revolted, he swatted the flies away before picking up the body. Its head lolled horribly.