The container doors opened to the wet gloom of a Norwegian morning. Davila backed the little electric car down the ramp, and Peter clicked the remote-control device to close the doors behind them. Their shipping container had been set down in a fenced yard just off the Gudrun's port side. The sea beyond was choppy and brown, churned up by a drizzly salt breeze. Clouds obscured the horizon, but nearer to shore, a little island stood alone in the harbor.

A second remote control from the glove compartment opened the yard's automatic gate. Merging onto a broad boulevard, they coursed through an empty industrial park. A roundabout delivered them to a low bridge. Crossing a narrow canal, they caught sight of the city and its surroundings.

Trondheim was smaller than Peter imagined from his mother's descriptions. The dense core of stone buildings was ringed by a mantle of autumn-hued trees and brightly painted houses—cheerful counterpoint to the backdrop of dark and misty mountains. Peter could almost hear Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite.

They parked in a central district of quaint specialty boutiques and cafes that probably bustled during the warm tourist season but now sat quiet and shuttered. From Davila's duffel bag, they each took a rain parka and set off on foot toward the cathedral, its weathered green spire towering over the red and golden trees. Peter was reasonably sure he had seen Davila take her gun and phone.

A small bridge led across the River Nid to Trondheim's historic district. They paused at the bridge's ornately carved red portal. The river was maybe a hundred feet wide, its sluggish brown surface frizzled with rain, hemmed in on either side by the high flanks of brightly painted wharves and apartments.

Through narrow and glistening streets, they came to a sprawling pedestrian plaza bordered by a modern shopping mall and old government buildings painted muted shades of yellow. So early on a Wednesday morning, few people were out, just mall employees exiting and entering through service doors. Their Nordic faces reminded Peter of his mother's, her strength, her beauty. Davila watched them too, her dark eyes darting from face to face. She alone could recognize Gryphus by sight.

Out in the center of the plaza, a slender stone column rose from the center of a huge inlaid compass rosette. Atop the column, sixty feet up, stood the weathered bronze statue of a Viking king, sword lowered, scepter held aloft, his helmeted gaze fixed on the western horizon. It was Olav Tryggvason, founder of Trondheim, first Christian king of Norway—and subject of Daniel Barshman's doctoral thesis.

They approached the cathedral from the west. The Norwegians called it Nidarosdomen, the Cathedral at Nidaros, the old Viking name for Trondheim. It reminded Peter of a baby Notre Dame. Still, its spire reached nearly three hundred feet above the River Nid, and its main edifice, a hundred feet tall, offered a dazzling display of stone tracery. To either side of its massive rose window, oversized statues of saints and prophets stood in sheltered ranks. According to the soggy pamphlet they found on a bench, Nidarosdomen was Scandinavia's largest surviving medieval structure.

Unfortunately, it was closed until ten, so they headed across the courtyard to the visitor's center. It too was closed, but Davila rapped on the glass door to catch the attention of a young female clerk inside. Unlocking the door, she opened it just wide enough to accommodate her pudgy pink face.

"The visitor center is closed," she said in almost perfect American English. "We open at ten." Her expression was as inviting as the weather.

"We're looking for the museum," said Davila, pulling back her hood.

The young woman propped the door open with her foot and put up her long strawberry-blond hair. "Everything opens at ten."

"Might the curator be available?"

"Why don't you check back at ten?" She released the door.

Davila grabbed it before it could close and shoved her Israel Antiquities Authority ID badge into the girl's face. "Look, my assistant and I are here on official state business. We've traveled a long way."

The girl squinted at the badge with its embossed golden candelabra. "Try the armory workshop. Herr Markussen is usually there." Then she pulled the door shut and locked it.

They walked under an archway and found themselves in a cobblestone square surrounded by low stone buildings roofed in terra-cotta tiles. Two miniature canons, each painted marine gray, guarded the steps leading down to the workshop. At the bottom was a heavy wooden door bound with black iron. Above it, a single bulb shone weakly from inside its metal cage.

"Assistant?" said Peter.

Davila knocked hard on the door. "Museums are my turf. Let me do the talking."

When no one answered, she tried the handle. Finding it locked, she reached into her cargo pants, took out a small black case, and unzipped it. Inside was a shiny array of delicate instruments, a lock pick set, probably the one she had used to break into Peter's hotel room back in London. With disturbing agility and speed, she solved the lock. Pocketing her tools, she pushed the door inward on its well-greased hinges.

Inside was a dimly lit workshop of sorts, maybe seventy feet to a side, the low ceiling buttressed by vertical steel I-beams. The air was close and piney; a fine layer of sawdust covered the cement floor. Sturdy worktables stood at haphazard angles, cluttered with scraps of wood, metal pipes, odd chunks of masonry and stone. On the back wall hung an assortment of medieval arms, replicas perhaps, spears, swords, daggers, shields, breastplates, even a coat of chain mail.

"I don't think we should be in here," Peter whispered.

"Hello?" Davila called out. "Is anyone here?"

A door at the back of the workshop opened, and out stepped an older man, pale, tall, and thin. His lush white hair was swept back, blue eyes startled behind a pair of bifocals perched on his beak-like nose. Seeing Peter and Davila standing there, he froze.

"Hvem er dere?" he said in what Peter assumed was Norwegian.

Davila stepped forward. "Are you the curator?"

"Who are you?" he replied in clear Oxford English. "And what are you doing in my workshop?" He was inching to his right now, eyes locked on Peter, right hand groping at the weapons hanging on the wall.

"My father studied here at the cathedral, a long time ago. We're just looking for anyone who might have worked with him."

The man's fingers found the hilt of a sword. It was a Viking weapon, brutal and heavy, double-edged with a dense iron pommel at the end of its handgrip. Yanking it from the wall, he strode forward, chopping at the air in front of him, swinging the blade in a full arc that brought it around to a ready position over his shoulder. "I warn you. I know how to use this."

"Wait," said Peter, raising his hand. "We just wanted to ask some questions."

"I've been expecting you. But I'll not go down as easily as the others! Kom igjen! " He lunged forward, hair flying wildly behind him.

Peter grabbed the nearest thing he could, a light wooden chair, and held it up to ward off the attack. The blow was pathetically weak, the dull blade glancing off the chair's leg.

Davila grabbed her own chair and held it up, legs out, advancing like a lion tamer.

Undaunted, the Norwegian prepared to run her through.

"We don't want to hurt you!" she said. "Please!"

His nostril's flared. The blade trembled in his hand. " Til Valhal!" he cried and thrust at Davila. With a heavy thunk, the blade's point sunk into the underside of the chair's seat. She twisted the chair, catching the sword between its legs, wrenching the blade downward. But the Norwegian refused let go. Instead, he reached over with his left hand and pulled the sword free.

Now! Peter dropped his chair and launched himself at the Norwegian's midriff, arms wide for the tackle. At such close range, the three-foot blade would be harmless. It was a bone-crunching hit. But as Peter drove his legs, lifting the Norwegian off his feet, it occurred to him just what the sword's dense iron pommel was for. Then he felt it smash against the back of his skull, and everything went black.

___________________

Photo: Nidarosdomen in early autumn. Image taken from https://www.pinterest.com/ajborstad/beautiful-trondheim-norway/