“Sounds good to me,” Jake said. He took out the camo tarp, and they quickly covered the van with it. Even in the dark, it was one extra measure of protection. He threw a heavy rucksack over his shoulder, with the equipment they’d need to scale the exterior wall.
As they headed into the forest, the ground quickly descended toward the stream that cut through the bottom of the gorge. They worked their way carefully down the hill, avoiding the steepest drops, until they reached the bottom. There was a rough wooden bridge crossing the stream.
“This is fun,” Nick said to Kate. “It’s like we’re married and on a family vacation to see the castles of Europe.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “If we were married, I wouldn’t be sharing a room with my father.”
“Want me to talk to him? See if he’s willing to switch?”
“Only if you have chocolate.”
“Sorry,” he said. “That was Paris. Best I can do here is bratwurst.”
The woods grew thicker, which gave them more handholds, but the thicker canopy also made it darker, and they all kept scraping their faces against the rough branches. As they got closer to the base of the castle, Jake started looking for one specific tree. He and Kate had stood on the road, in the last of the daylight, using his Zeiss binoculars to scan the cliff and identify the best candidate. It had to be tall enough, easy enough to climb, and sturdy enough in its upper branches to support his weight.
The trees were almost exclusively pine. There was one particular tree, about halfway along the southern wall, that Jake and Kate had chosen.
“This is it,” Jake said as he reached the base of the tree. “How’s everybody doing?”
They all took a moment to catch their breath, and to mentally prepare themselves for the next step. Nick looked up at the castle wall, which from down here looked as high as the Empire State Building.
“Are you sure there’s not an elevator we can take?” Nick asked.
Jake squared the load on his pack and started climbing the tree. The climb was as easy as he had hoped. Lots of horizontal branches, regularly spaced. It was their first good break. As he neared the top of the tree, he could feel it holding steady for him. It wasn’t swaying or bending. Second good break.
He worked himself into a solid semi-seated position, unslung the rucksack, and took out the one piece of equipment he was glad he wouldn’t have to carry anymore. It was a military grappling hook launcher, seriously old school, but air powered and therefore nearly silent, and it could easily shoot that hook over a hundred feet.
He would only have one shot, so he had to make it count. That’s why he had already picked out his target. Not a window, because that would be an almost impossible shot, even if the upper windows didn’t have iron bars like the lowers. Not a balcony, because although the castle had plenty overlooking the interior courtyard, the exterior had none. Jake’s one and only best shot was to fire over the courtyard wall, here in this part of the castle where the courtyard met the much higher main building. If he cleared the wall and then pulled back on the hook, there was a good chance it would meet resistance where the two levels joined.
If it didn’t, they would have to retrieve the hook and reload, which Jake knew from experience to be a colossal pain in the ass, even under ideal circumstances.
Jake took a breath, took dead aim with the launcher, then fired. The hook came out with a whoosh. It sailed over the top of the wall, clearing it by maybe two feet. He pulled on the rope, slowly, waiting to feel the hook grab on something. It did. He gave it a good yank. It was solid. Good break number three. Now the fun part, he thought.
Jake hung the launcher on a branch so it wouldn’t fall on anyone below him. He held on tight to the rope with both hands and pushed himself away from the tree. He was maybe twenty-five feet away from the wall, and braced himself as he slammed against it. The rope held.
He caught his breath again, then began climbing, but not like a man climbing a rope in gym class. Instead he used what the Marines call an “S wrap,” looping the rope around and under one foot, holding it secure with the other, using this temporary base to launch himself up a few feet, gaining a new hold with his hands, and then rewrapping the rope through his feet again. The same process, again and again, saving his stamina.
Kate watched her father from below, marveling at what he was doing, so many years past his official date of “retirement.” Jake had packed a lightweight “caving ladder” rope in his pack, and this was what he was securing to the top of the courtyard wall. He dropped the rope and it unrolled as it came all the way to the ground.
Kate grabbed hold. It was still a long way up, but the rope had a loop placed every two feet, on alternating sides. The world’s trickiest rope ladder, but better than a pure free climb and easier than using the S wrap. She pulled herself up, hooked a foot, then another and kept repeating the process, concentrating on the rope, on her next action, and not looking down. When she reached the top, her father put out a hand to help her over the wall. She dropped to the stone floor of the courtyard. The spires of the castle loomed above her, silent and dark. Way better than Disney World, she told herself.
She heard Nick’s voice in her earpiece. “On my way up!”
He came up quickly, got over the wall, and was followed soon after by Quentin. The team went through the archway to an alcove where one stairway led up, another down.
“Orient yourself to this exact point,” Nick said. “This is where we rendezvous. Have your escape route clearly laid out in your mind at all times. Always ask yourself, how do I get back here as fast as possible?”
Everybody nodded.
“Stay on your comms,” Nick said. “Keep talking. Now let’s go find it.”
They broke the huddle, splitting off in four different directions. Kate went up the stairs, heading for the top floor. She would start in the royal bedroom and work her way down. She turned on her penlight, moved quickly and quietly. The door was open. They didn’t have much reason to close doors around here, not if tour groups were coming through every day and you wanted them to see all of the fancy stuff.
“God, this is the worst room of all,” Kate said as she stepped into the bedroom. “They might as well call it the Royal Swan Room.”
Each wall was covered by a mural, floor to ceiling. Swans were swimming, drinking, eating, communing, and probably having sex in some corner of the artwork.
Kate started with the nearest wall, ran a gloved hand across the mouth of a swan. No secret compartment or trapdoor or whatever she was supposed to find.
“One down,” she said. “A million more to go.”
* * *
In one of the great throne rooms, Nick looked at the wooden carved swans placed high on a dozen pilasters running along each wall. They were at least fifteen feet off the ground.
He took out his grappling hook, a lightweight version of the great hook they had used to scale the outside wall. It was connected to a much shorter version of the same caving ladder rope, with the loops for quick climbing. He tossed it over the neck of the first swan and pulled himself up.
* * *
In the other throne room, there was a balcony high against the walls. This made life easy for Quentin because all he had to do was walk along the rail and inspect each of the carved swans. The fun part came when he shined his penlight to the ceiling and saw the great fresco above him, the idyllic pond with the great swan in the middle of it. A huge chandelier hung from the center. That was his only hope to get up to the ceiling.