The Bones Of Odin (Matt Drake 1) (2 page)

Ben dropped his mobile in shock and scrambled to retrieve it. Drake heard the screaming rise like a tidal wave and sensed the mob instinct grip the crowd. Without a moment’s thought he grabbed Ben and manhandled him over the railing, then vaulted over himself. They landed next to the cat-walk.

The Apache’s Chain Gun rang out, deep and deadly, its rounds fired above the crowd but still invoking pure panic.

“Ben! Stay close behind me.” Drake raced around the foot of the cat-walk. A few of the models reached down to help. Drake gained his feet and looked back over the surging mass of people stampeding towards the exits. Dozens were clambering onto the cat-walk, being helped by models and staff. Terrified screams laced the air, causing the panic to spread. Fire lit the dark, and the heavy
thunk
of helicopter rotors drowned out most of the tumult.

The Chain Gun rang out again, sending heavy lead into the air with a nightmare sound no civilian anywhere should ever hear.

Drake turned. Models cowered behind him. Odin’s Shield was in front of him. On impulse he risked a few snaps just as soldiers in bullet-proof jackets appeared from backstage. Drake’s first concern was to position himself between Ben, the models and the soldiers, but he kept clicking, narrowing the viewfinder . . ..

With his other hand he pushed his young lodger further away.

“Hey!”

One of the soldiers eyeballed him and swung his machine-gun around threateningly. Drake quelled a feeling of disbelief. This kind of thing didn’t happen in York, in
this
world. York was tourists, ice-cream and American day-trippers. It was the lion that had never been allowed to roar, not even when Rome ruled. But it was safe and it was prudent. It was the place Drake had chosen to get away from the damn SAS in the first place.

To be with his wife. To escape the . . .
bollocks!

The soldier was suddenly in his face. “
Give me that!”
he screamed in a German accent.
“Give it to me!”

The soldier lunged for the camera. Drake chopped at his forearm and twisted his machine-gun away. Surprise lit the soldier’s face. Drake palmed the camera off to Ben behind his back with a move any New York
maitre d’
would have been proud of. Heard him move away at a sprint.

Drake pointed the machine-gun at the floor as three more soldiers started towards him.

“You!”
One of the soldiers raised his weapon. Drake half-closed his eyes, but then heard a raucous shout.

“Wait! Minimal casualties,
idiot
. You really want to shoot someone in cold blood on national television?”

The new soldier nodded at Drake. “Give me the camera.” His German pronunciation carried a lazy twang.

Drake thought ‘
Plan B’
and let the gun clatter to the floor. “Don’t have it.”

The commander nodded to his subordinates. “Check him.”

“There was someone else . . .” the first soldier picked up his gun, looking embarrassed. “He . . . he’s gone.”

The commander stepped right up in Drake’s face. “Bad move.”

A muzzle pressed against his forehead. His vision was filled with angry German and flying spittle. “
Check him!”

As they frisked him he watched the orchestrated theft of Odin’s Shield under the direction of a newly-arrived masked individual wearing a white suit. Somewhat ostentatiously, he waved and scratched his head, but never spoke. Once the Shield was safely away the man waved a walkie in Drake’s general direction, clearly attracting the commander’s attention.

The commander placed his own walkie to his ear, but Drake kept his eyes on the man in white.

“’til Paris,” the man mouthed. “At six tomorrow.”

SAS training, Drake reflected, still came in handy.

The commander said,
“Dah.”
and was back in Drake’s face, brandishing his credit cards and photographer’s credentials. “Lucky snapper,” he drawled lazily. “The boss says minimal casualties, so you live. ‘But,’ he waved Drake’s wallet, “we have your address, and if you talk,” he added, flashing a smile colder than a polar bear’s scrotum, “trouble
will
find you.”

TWO

YORK, ENGLAND

Later, at home, Drake handed Ben a filtered decaf and joined him to watch coverage of the night’s events.

Odin’s Shield had been stolen because the city of York simply hadn’t been prepared for such a violent onslaught. The real miracle was that no one had died. The burning helicopters were found miles away, abandoned where three motorways converged, their occupants long gone.

“Ruined Frey’s show,” Ben said, partly serious. “The models are already packed up and gone.”

“Damn, and I changed the bed sheets. Well, I’m sure Frey and Prada and Gucci will survive.”

“The Wall of Sleep would’ve played through it all.”

“Been doing the family movie-fest Titanic thing again?”

“That reminds me - they cut my dad off in mid-flow.”

Drake topped his mug off. “Don’t worry. He’ll ring back in three minutes or so.”

“Making fun, crusty?”

Drake shook his head and laughed. “No. You’re just too young to understand.”

Ben had been lodging with Drake for about nine months now. They had grown from strangers to good friends in a few months. Drake subsidised Ben’s rent in return for his photographic knowledge – the young man was on his way to a college degree - and Ben helped by sharing
everything.
He was the kind of guy who wore his feelings on his sleeve, a sign of innocence maybe, but admirable too.

Ben put down his mug. “Night, mate. Guess I’ll go ring sis.”

“Night.”

The door closed, and Drake sat watching Sky News sightlessly for a while. When a picture of Odin’s Shield appeared he started back to the present.

He picked up the camera that represented his livelihood, pocketed the memory card with a mind to view the pictures tomorrow, and then headed for the whirring PC. Having second thoughts he paused to double-check the doors and windows. This house had been safe-proofed years ago whilst he was still in the army. He liked to believe in the rudimentary good of every human being, but one thing war taught you was never to put blind trust in anything. Always have a plan and a back-up - a Plan B.

Seven years on, and now he knew the soldier’s mentality would never leave him.

He Googled ‘Odin’, and ‘Odin’s Shield’. The wind picked up outside the house, rushing around the eaves and wailing like an investment banker who’d had his bonus capped at four mil. He soon realised the Shield was big news. It had been a major archaeological find, the biggest ever in Iceland. Some Indiana Jones types had strayed off the beaten track to investigate an ancient ice flow. A few days later they unearthed the Shield, but then one of Iceland’s largest volcanoes started rumbling and further exploration had to be postponed.

The same volcano, Drake mused, that had sent the ash cloud across Europe recently, disrupting air traffic and people’s holidays.

Drake sipped his coffee and listened to the wind howl. The mantel clock chimed midnight. A glance at the wealth of information provided by the internet told him Ben would make more sense of it than he could. Ben was like any student - able to make fast sense of the mush that came with technology. He read that Odin’s Shield sported many fancy carvings, all of which were being studied by basement-boffins, and that J.R.R.Tolkien had based his wandering wizard, Gandalf, on Odin.

Random stuff. The symbols or hieroglyphs that ringed the outside of the shield were believed to be an ancient form of Odin’s Curse:

Heaven and Hell are but a temporary ignorance,

It is the Immortal Soul that sways towards Right or Wrong.

No script existed explaining the curse, but still everyone believed in its authenticity. At least - it was attributed to the
Vikings,
not Odin
.

Drake sat back in his chair and ran through the events of the night.

One thing cried out to him but at the same time gave him pause. The guy in white had mouthed ‘
’til Paris, six tomorrow.’
If Drake followed that path he could be putting Ben’s life in danger, not to mention his own.

A civilian would let it go. A soldier would reason that he’d already been threatened, that their lives were already in danger, and that any information was good information.

He Googled:
Odin+Paris.

One bold entry leapt out at him.

Odin’s Horse,
Sleipnir
, was on display at the Louvre.

Odin’s
Horse?
Drake scratched his head. For a God this guy was laying claim to some highly material things. Drake brought up the Louvre’s home page. It seemed the sculpture of Odin’s fabled Horse had been discovered years ago in the mountains of Norway. More tales followed. Drake soon became so wrapped up in the many tales of Odin that he almost forgot He was, in fact, a Viking God, simply a myth.

The Louvre? Drake chewed it over. He finished his coffee, tired now, and pushed away from the computer.

In another moment he was asleep.

****

He woke to the sound of the croaking frog. His little sentry. An enemy might expect an alarm or a dog, but he would never suspect the little green ornament nestling beside the wheelie bin - and Drake had been trained to sleep light.

He’d fallen asleep at the computer desk with his head in his arms; now he came instantly awake and slipped into the darkened hallway. The back door rattled. Glass smashed. Only seconds had passed since the frog croaked.

They were in.

Drake ducked below eye-level and saw two men enter, sub-machine-guns held competently, but a little shabbily. Their movement was clean, but not graceful.

No problem.

Drake waited in the shadows, hoping the old soldier in him wouldn’t let him down.

Two came in, an advance team. That showed someone knew what they were doing. Drake’s complete strategy for this situation had been planned years ago when the soldier’s mentality was still strong and experimental, and he’d simply never had to change it around. It was now re-focusing in his mind. When the first soldier’s muzzle poked out of the kitchen Drake grabbed it, jerked it towards him, then twisted it back. At the same time he stepped toward his opponent and spun, effectively wrenching the gun away and finishing up behind the man.

The second soldier was taken aback. That was all it took. Drake fired without a milli-second of pause, then spun and shot the first soldier dead before the second had even crumpled to his knees.

Run!
he thought. Speed was everything now.

He sprinted up the stairs shouting Ben’s name, then squeezed off a burst of automatic fire over his shoulder. He reached the landing, shouted again, then hit Ben’s door at a dead run. It burst open. Ben stood in his boxer shorts, mobile in hand, sheer terror etched into his face.

“Don’t worry,” Drake winked. “Trust me. This is my
other
job.”

To his credit, Ben didn’t ask questions. Drake focused hard. He had disabled the house’s original loft-hatch, and then installed a second one in this room. After that he’d reinforced the bedroom door. It wouldn’t stop a determined enemy but it would certainly slow them down.

All part of the plan.

He bolted the door, making sure the integral bars were fixed to the reinforced frame, then pulled down the loft ladder. Ben shot up first, Drake a second later. The loft space was large and carpeted. Ben just stood and gaped. The entire wall space to east and west was dominated by large bespoke bookcases overflowing with CDs and old cassette cases.

“These all yours, Matt?”

Drake didn’t answer. He crossed over to a pile of boxes that concealed a door tall enough to crawl through; a door that led to the roof.

Drake upended a box on the carpet. A fully packed rucksack fell out which he secured over his shoulders.

“Clothes?” Ben whispered.

He patted the rucksack. “Got ‘em.”

When Ben looked blank Drake understood just how scared he was. He realised he’d turned back into that SAS guy a little too easily. “Clothes. Mobiles. Money. Passports. I-pad. I.D.”

Didn’t mention the gun. The bullets. The knife . . .

“Who’s
doing
this, Matt?”

A boom came from below. Their unknown enemy hitting Ben’s bedroom door, perhaps now realising they had underestimated Drake.

“Time to go.”

Ben turned without expression and crawled out into the windswept night. Drake dived after him and, with a last glance at the walls full of CDs and cassette tapes, pulled the door shut.

He’d adapted the roof as best he could without drawing people’s attention. On pretence of installing new guttering he’d fixed a three foot wide walkway that ran the length of his roof. It was his neighbour’s side that would pose the problem.

The wind tugged at them with eager fingers as they traversed the treacherous roof. Ben stepped carefully, bare feet slipping and jarring against the concrete tiles. Drake held his arm tightly, wishing they’d had time to find his trainers.

Then a strong gust howled around the chimney breast, struck Ben full in the face and sent him stumbling towards the edge. Drake pulled back hard, heard a shriek of pain, but maintained his grip. After a second he reined his friend in.

“Not far,” he whispered. “Nearly there, mate.”

Drake could see that Ben was terrified. His eyes darted between the loft-door and the edge of the roof, then to the garden and back again. Panic twisted his features. His breathing was coming too fast; at this rate they’d never make it.

Drake stole a glance at the door, steeled himself, and turned his back to it. If anyone came through they would see him first. He took hold of Ben’s shoulders and locked eyes.

“Ben, you have to trust me.
Trust
me. I promise I will get you through this.”