The Valhalla Prophecy (13 page)

Eddie started to make the turn—only to see that both lanes were blocked by traffic waiting at the lights. These were not cars he could slip the Twizy between, either. One was a garbage truck, the other a snowplow, the two metal hulks filling the side street. Railings made it impossible for him to ride the Renault up onto the pavement. “Whoa! No go,” he said, hurriedly swinging back on to Nybrohamnen.

The Russians were now out of sight. “We’ve lost them!” Nina cried in dismay.

“No we bloody haven’t,” he insisted. He powered their little vehicle down the length of the ivy-covered Radisson hotel—then made an abrupt stop. The Twizy skidded sideways, ending up pointing straight at the hotel’s main entrance.

“Oh, you’re not …,” she moaned.

“Oh, I am!” Eddie stamped on the accelerator. The Twizy bounded over the low curb and raced through the doors into the hotel’s lobby.

Guests screamed and dived aside as the little Renault zipped through the building. Eddie sounded the horn in a shrill tattoo. “Get out of the way!” An elderly couple were too slow and befuddled to react, forcing him to swerve. The wet tires slithered on the tiled floor, and the buggy wiped out a table and sent a tall lamp flying before he regained control. “Come on, shift your arses!”

“Sorry,” Nina added.

More yells and shrieks followed them as the Twizy continued through the lobby. The reception desk loomed at its end, staff gawping as the buggy charged toward them. Eddie made another hard right turn, fishtailing around a corner and scattering someone’s luggage. “Hope there’s a way out down here,” he said.

“Oh,
now
you’re thinking about that?” Nina shot back.

“You’ve known me for six years—how often have I ever planned anything in advance?”

“If we have kids, you’re going to have to start!” She spotted a sign on the wall with an arrow pointing right. “There’s an exit down that corridor.”

“It’ll just take us back the way we came,” Eddie objected. He saw a set of doors ahead and aimed for them, sounding the horn again. “This looks better.”

“No it doesn’t!” But it was too late to stop. She braced herself—

The Twizy rammed the doors open, almost ripping one from its hinges. Waiters leapt away on the other side, plates scattering. The couple had burst into a restaurant, what had once been a courtyard now protected from the elements by a glazed ceiling high above. Diners reacted in shock to the unexpected intrusion.

Eddie weaved between the tables. “Where’s the bloody way out?” Large parts of the walls were covered by black curtains. He finally spotted the glow of an
EXIT
sign through a gap in the drapes and angled toward it.

“Ah, don’t mind us,” said Nina, cringing at the stunned gazes of the patrons. Some displayed recognition: she was, after all, a public figure. “Oh boy. Another day in the papers.”

“Thought you’d be used to it by now. ’Scuse me,” Eddie added, sounding the horn again to prompt a waiter to clear his path. The man had been carving a roast on a trolley beside a table; an idea came to the Englishman, and as the Twizy passed he snatched up the big knife.

“What’re you doing?” Nina asked.

“Planning ahead!” He wedged it blade-down beside his seat and steered between the curtains toward the exit. To his relief it was a swing door, the buggy barging it open and humming through. A long corridor stretched out ahead. He accelerated. “Where are we going to come out?”

“I don’t think the app covers the insides of buildings,” she complained as she checked her iPhone’s screen again. “Hold on … okay, this corridor looks long enough to go to the back of the building, so …” She rotated the image, getting a better angle on the 3-D representation of the hotel. “There’s a parking lot at the back—if we can get into that, then if we go right we’ll be back on that one-way street.”

Eddie bleated the horn again, more hotel staff jumping out of their way as the Twizy entered another lobby at the hotel’s rear. A large arched doorway led outside. A man with a staff name tag rushed to the exit as if to block their escape, but when the Renault showed no sign of slowing thought better of it and threw the doors open to save them from damage. “Cheers, mate,” the Englishman said as he whipped past.

Nina gave the man an apologetic look. “I feel like we should have tipped him …”

Cold air hit them as they emerged into the open. The paved area between two wings of the hotel was indeed a small parking lot, a gate open to a road. Eddie drove through it, turning right, then immediately left to rejoin the one-way street. He zipped between the oncoming cars. “Okay, which way?”

“Straight on,” Nina told him. “If they followed the waterfront around, they’ll be coming from the left.”

He nodded in acknowledgment. “Hope we’re still ahead of ’em.” The right lane was now clear of traffic; he swung into it. They were approaching a busy intersection at one end of a bridge over the river, cars and buses milling.

No sirens—or angry horns. The kidnappers hadn’t arrived here yet. But with their massive speed advantage over the little electric buggy, they couldn’t be far away. Steeling himself, Eddie pushed the Twizy to its full speed and shot out of the side street onto the waterfront.

Now
he heard horns, furious blasts sounding to his left. “Here they come!” Nina yelled, seeing a sleek black shape carving through the traffic toward them.

“Hold tight!” Eddie warned, sweeping across the lanes to intercept the Audi. It was already almost upon them, engine snarling. He grabbed the knife as the S4 skidded through the intersection.

The Twizy was distinctive enough to have stuck in the kidnappers’ minds. The driver reacted with surprise on seeing the Renault again, then veered sharply at it. Eddie jerked the wheel, swinging away. The Audi’s
front wing scraped the pod-like body. “Shit!” Nina yelped as the Russian straightened, then made another attempt to sideswipe them.

Her husband was less worried about the driver than the man beside him. The front passenger window whirred down—and a gun emerged, pointing at him—

Eddie braked hard—and stabbed the carving knife into the Audi’s rear tire as it shot past.

Pain exploded through his fingers as the blade slashed the rubber before being snatched away. The larger car shimmied, knocking the Twizy into a skid—then the damaged tire ruptured with a flat gunshot
bang
.

The Russian driver sawed at his steering wheel, but not even four-wheel drive could help him keep control as the speeding Audi slewed around on the wet surface. The man in the front passenger seat was thrown against the door, dropping his gun. He tried to pull back inside the cabin—then screamed as he saw what was rushing at him—

The Audi slammed side-on into an articulated bus. Windows shattered and showered passengers with glass. The S4 bounced off and spun to a standstill in the middle of the road. The gunman slumped dead out of the battered side of the car, his face and most of his arm embedded in the shredded concertina connecting the bus’s two halves. The car’s other occupants were left stunned by the impact.

Their pursuers had not escaped a crash either. Despite Eddie’s best efforts to counter its skid, the Twizy wobbled, then overturned—

He gripped the wheel, Nina clinging to his seat to hold herself up as the buggy rasped across the road on its side. It hit a curb, the Renault’s curved roof absorbing the blow with a vicious crack.

Passersby ran to help, worried faces peering down into the vehicle. Eddie winced as he moved; the pain in his left hand had been joined by a throb in his right shoulder where he had scraped the ground. But nothing was broken. His concern was more for his wife. “Nina!” he gasped, struggling upright. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m frickin’
not
!” she cried as the onlookers helped her up. She had struck her head on the icy road, blood running from a gash above her temple. She put a hand to her forehead, then immediately wished she hadn’t as more pain stabbed through her skull. “Son of a
bitch
, that hurts!”

Someone in the growing crowd spoke English. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“Call the cops too!” Eddie ordered, turning to locate the Audi. The driver clambered woozily out. “Shit! They’re still moving.”

“What about Tova?” Nina asked in alarm, concern overcoming discomfort.

Eddie scrambled out of the capsized Twizy. The Russians were pulling Tova from the Audi—

No, they were
trying
to pull her out. But she was limp, apparently unconscious. Her captors seemed little better off. One man hobbled around the car, his hard gaze darting between the historian and the onlookers before he barked a command to his companions. The trio abandoned Tova and ran toward a park to the northwest.

“Nina, make sure she’s okay,” said Eddie as he set off—not to intercept the Russians, but back toward the bus, where he had spotted something on the road.

“What are you going to do?” she demanded.

“Find out who they are,” he called back. He reached what he had seen—the dead man’s fallen gun. He picked it up. It took him a moment to identify it: an SR-1 Vector, a high-powered sidearm used primarily by the FSB—the Russian intelligence service that had succeeded the KGB. That pretty much confirmed
who
had tried to kidnap Tova Skilfinger—but the question now was
why
.

Only one way to find out. As Nina climbed from the wrecked Twizy and started for the Audi, he raced after the fleeing men.

The leader was hurt, running with a limp, but he clearly had the training and fortitude to overcome the pain. As he and his comrades reached the park entrance,
he glanced back and saw Eddie following. Another barked order, and one of his men skidded to a halt on the sidewalk, then drew his gun—

Eddie dived and rolled behind a stationary Volvo as the Russian opened fire. The woman in the car screamed and hunched down in her seat as bullets struck her vehicle.

“Jesus!” Nina gasped, dropping low beside the Audi at the crack of gunfire. Panic spread among the people nearby, sending them scattering like terrified birds. The Russian kept shooting, blowing out some of the Volvo’s windows, then looked back over his shoulder for a moment to see how far his companions had gone—

A moment was all Eddie needed.

He popped up and fired through the car’s cabin in front of the hysterical driver. Two bloody bullet wounds burst open in the Russian’s chest. He crumpled to the ground. The Englishman offered a quick apology to the woman, then ran across the road to kick away the Russian’s gun in case he was still a threat.

He was not, eyes frozen wide. Eddie gave the dead man an angry look, then ran into the park after his companions.

Nina watched him go, then rose and leaned into the Audi. Tova was sprawled on the backseat, unmoving. “Tova?” the American asked fearfully, reaching out to check her neck. “Are you okay?”

For a moment she felt nothing … then she found a faint but steady pulse. Tova reacted to the touch, flinching before crying out in Swedish. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” Nina told her. “They’ve gone.”

The historian stared at her, still frightened. “Who were they? What did they want with me?”

“I don’t know, but you’re safe now. The police are on their way. Are you all right?”

Tova sat up, putting one hand to her head. “I—I think so. I hit my head when we crashed …” She took in Nina’s own injury. “
Oj herre Gud!
You are hurt!”

“I’ll live,” Nina replied through gritted teeth.

“And what about Eddie? Is he okay?”

“God, I hope so.” She turned to see her husband running into the park.

Eddie hurdled a low fence, pounding across a snow-covered flower bed to cut a corner before reaching a wide path. The two Russians were about fifty yards ahead, having passed a large statue on a high stone plinth. The limping leader looked back again, seeing that Eddie was still in pursuit. Another barked order, and the other man stopped and raised his gun.

“Shit!” Eddie yelped, hurriedly changing direction to put the plinth between them. The supersonic whipcrack of a bullet passed just behind him. More screams echoed across the park as people realized the firefight was coming their way.