40
FUNEN ISLAND, DENMARK: 8:35 P.M., THURSDAY
The lights of the Great Belt Bridge, second-longest suspension bridge in the world, lay like a double strand of pearls over the straits between the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen. Gabriel glanced at the dashboard clock as he headed up the long sweep of the eastern ramp. The trip from Copenhagen to this point should have taken no more than two hours, but the worsening storm had stretched it to nearly four. He returned his eyes to the road and put both hands firmly on the wheel. The bridge was swaying in the high winds. Ibrahim asked again if the weather was truly a good omen. Gabriel replied that he hoped Ibrahim knew how to swim.
It took them twenty minutes to make the eight-mile crossing. On the Funen side of the bridge, a small seaside rail station lay huddled against the storm. A mile beyond the station was a roadside gas station and café. Gabriel topped off the Audi’s tank, then parked outside the café and led Ibrahim inside. It was brightly lit, smartly decorated, and spotlessly clean. In the first room was a well-stocked market and cafeteria-style eatery; in the next was a seating area filled with stranded travelers. There was much animated conversation and, judging from the large number of empty Carlsberg bottles scattered about the pale wooden tables, considerable drinking had taken place.
They bought egg sandwiches and hot tea in the cafeteria and sat at an empty table near the window. Ibrahim ate silently, while Gabriel sipped his tea and stared out at the car. Thirty minutes elapsed before the cell phone finally rang. Gabriel brought it to his ear, listened without speaking, then severed the connection. “Wait here,” he said.
He stopped briefly in the men’s toilet, where he buried his Beretta and phone in the rubbish bin, then went into the market and purchased a large-scale map of Denmark and an English-language tourist guide. When he returned to the dining room, Ibrahim was in the process of unwrapping the second egg sandwich. Ibrahim slipped it into his coat pocket and followed Gabriel outside.
“Here it is,” said Ibrahim. “Lindholm H?je.”
He was hunched over the guidebook, reading it by the light of the overhead lamp. Gabriel kept his eyes fastened to the road.
“What does it say?”
“It’s an old Viking village and cemetery. For centuries it was buried beneath a thick layer of sand. It only was discovered in 1952. According to the book, it has more than seven hundred graves and the remains of a few Viking longhouses.”
“Where is it?”
Ibrahim consulted the book again, then plotted the position of the site on the road map. “Northern Jutland,” he said. “Very northern Jutland, actually.”
“How do I get there?”
“Take the E20 across Funen, then head north on the E45. Lindholm is just after Aalborg. The book says it’s easy to find the place. Just follow the signs.”
“I can’t see the road, let alone the signs.”
“Is that where they’re going to leave the woman?”
Gabriel shook his head. “More instructions. This time they’ll be written. They say they’ll be in the ruins of the longhouse, in the corner farthest from the museum entrance.” He looked briefly at Ibrahim. “It wasn’t Ishaq this time. It was someone else.”
“Egyptian?”
“He sounded Egyptian to me, but I’m no expert.”
“Please,” said Ibrahim dismissively. “Why did they make you get rid of your telephone?”
“No more electronic communication.”
Ibrahim looked down at the map. “It’s a long way from here to Lindholm.”
“Two hours in perfect weather. In this…four at least.”
Ibrahim looked at the clock. “That means it will be Friday morning, if we’re lucky.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “He’s running us up against the deadline.”
“Who? Ishaq?”
A very good question, thought Gabriel. Was it Ishaq? Or was it the Sphinx?…
It took four and a half hours to reach Lindholm and, just as Gabriel had feared, the guidebook’s assurances that the cemetery was easy to find turned out to be false. He drove in circles for twenty minutes through a neighborhood of matching brick houses before finally spotting a postcard-sized sign he had missed three times previously. It was obscured by snow, of course; Gabriel had to climb out of the Audi and brush away the flakes, only to learn that in order to reach the site he had to first scale a formidable hill. The Audi handled the conditions with only a single episode of fishtailing, and two minutes later Gabriel was easing into a car park surrounded by towering pine. He shut down the engine and sat for a moment, his ears ringing from the strain of the drive, before finally opening the door and putting a foot into the snow. Ibrahim stayed where he was.
“You’re not coming?”
“I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of cemeteries.”
“No, just Viking cemeteries.”
“They were only warlike when they took to the seas,” Gabriel said. “Here at home they were largely an agrarian people. The scariest thing we’re likely to run across tonight is the ghost of a vegetable farmer.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just stay here.”
“Suit yourself,” Gabriel said. “If you want to sit here alone, that’s fine with me.”
Ibrahim made a show of thought, then climbed out. Gabriel opened the trunk and removed the flashlight and the tire iron.
“Why are you bringing that?” asked Ibrahim.
“In case we come across any Vikings.” He slipped the tool down the front of his jeans and quietly closed the trunk. “They made me leave my gun back in that service station, too. A crowbar is better than nothing.”
Gabriel switched on the flashlight and set out across the car park with Ibrahim at his side. The snow was six inches deep and within a few steps Gabriel’s brogans were sodden and his feet freezing. Thirty seconds after leaving the car, he stopped suddenly. There were two sets of faint tracks in the snow, one set obviously larger than the other, leading from the car park into the burial ground. Gabriel left Ibrahim alone and followed the footprints back to their point of origin. Judging from the condition of the snow’s surface, it appeared as though a small truck or transit van had entered the lot from a second access road several hours earlier. The larger of the two occupants had stepped into the snow from the driver’s side of the vehicle, the smaller from the passenger side. Gabriel crouched in the snow and scrutinized the smaller prints as though he were examining brushstrokes on a canvas. The prints were feminine, he decided, and whoever had left them had been wearing athletic shoes. There was no evidence of any struggle.
Gabriel rejoined Ibrahim and led him down a footpath into the site. The cemetery fell away before them, down the slope of the hill toward a vast inland bay in the distance. Despite the snowfall it was possible to discern, in the glow of Gabriel’s flashlight, the outlines of individual graves. Some were mounds of stones, some were circles, and still others were shaped like Viking ships. It was not difficult to find the far corner of the longhouse; all Gabriel had to do was follow the twin sets of tracks. He crouched down and probed with his bare hands beneath the surface of the snow. A few seconds later he found what had been left there for him, a small plastic ziplock bag containing a portion of a detailed map. He examined it by the glow of his flashlight. Then he stood and led Ibrahim back to the car.
“Skagen,” said Gabriel as he drove slowly down the hill. “They want us to go to Skagen. Well, almost to Skagen. The spot they circled on the map is a little to the south.”
“You know this place?”
“I’ve never been there, but I know it. There was an artist colony that formed there in the late eighteen hundreds. They were known as the Skagen School of painters. They came there for the light. They say it’s unique—not that we’ll be seeing any of it.”
“Perhaps this is another good omen,” said Ibrahim.
“Perhaps,” said Gabriel.
“Will the ambassador’s daughter be there?”
“It doesn’t say. It just tells us to go to a spot along the North Sea.”
“Was she in the burial ground tonight?”
“They wanted me to think she was,” Gabriel said. “But I don’t believe she was there.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because the woman got out of the vehicle and walked into the cemetery on her own,” Gabriel said. “I saw Elizabeth at the moment of her abduction. She wouldn’t have walked in there on her own. She would have fought them.”
“Unless they told her she was about to be released,” said Ibrahim.
Gabriel gave him an admiring sideways glance. “You’re not bad,” he said.
“I was a professor once,” he said. “And I love detective novels.”