The Other Crowd. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ as they traversed the rugged road. She tilted her head against the seat and took it all in.

      “You feel like you’re home?” Daniel asked Eric after they’d been driving awhile.

      “Huh?”

      “I mean your heritage.”

      Eric wielded a mini-DV video camera, sweeping it across the horizon.

      “Come to recall a conversation with your father,” Daniel mused, “I think his pa’s grandfather was from around this neighborhood somewhere.”

      “Cool,” Eric said.

      Annja caught Daniel’s eye. He clearly wasn’t impressed with Eric. She had to give the kid credit, though. He was filming, and she liked his focus.

      Ireland did take the prize for being green. Though a dusting of fog hung low above the ground, the rolling fields were coated with what looked like tightly packed moss, though she knew it was wild grass. Dark green shrubs pocked the perfect quilt of emerald here and there.

      “Is that gorse?” Annja asked of the shrubs spotted with golden blooms.

      “When gorse is in flower, kissing is in fashion,” Daniel replied. “Or so they say.” Again he winked at her, and resumed his attention to the road.

      A row of pine trees lined a field where livestock grazed. The cattle were hearty and looked like something out of an old English cottage painting. There were even a couple of sheep.

      They careened around a sharp curve that hugged what Annja knew was a rath, a small hill that locals would be keen to avoid because they believed faeries lived beneath the hill.

      She had brushed up on the local mythology during the flight. It wasn’t in her to resist any kind of mystery, and if that entailed learning more about the history of the land, then she was all for that.

      Faeries were definitely integrated into the Irish culture.

      “Hang on!”

      At Daniel’s shout, Annja gripped the handhold above her head and was crushed up against the steel door. A fast-moving white truck barreled toward them. Daniel swerved sharply to the right. The Jeep slid sideways over the rough gravel, the tires clambering for hold.

      Thick spumes of road dirt clouded over the open-topped Jeep. From the backseat, Eric cursed and coughed. Annja tucked her face into her elbow but she still inhaled a hearty dose of dust.

      “The devil take those lousy bastards!” Daniel gunned the accelerator and managed a remarkable venture over what looked like moss-covered boulders edging the road.

      Through the foggy mire, Annja spied something small and white. “Sheep!”

      The Jeep veered sharply left. Eric clung to the roll bar and swore.

      “Missed the poor bloke,” Daniel announced with cheer. “Won’t be dining on chops tonight!”

      Clinging to the door frame so she wouldn’t be bounced out of the car, Annja called back to see if Eric was all right.

      “And the equipment?” she hollered after his affirmative grunt.

      “Full of dust, but fine.”

      “Sorry ’bout that.” Daniel’s grin met Annja’s worried glance. She offered him a sheepish smile. The Jeep navigated the road in the wake of the truck that had blown by with so little regard. “The bastards in the new camp have all sorts of macho equipment they’re driving back and forth all times of day and night. They’ve no respect for the land, that’s for sure. Fashes me, it does.”

      “The new camp? I thought this was a single dig? Isn’t it just a simple artifact find?” Annja asked.

      “Right. Farmer found a spearhead when he was cutting turf on a dried-up blanket bog. NewWorld, the managing outfit, sent in a team to investigate. That team is headed by Mr. Pierce. When Neville took over financing the dig, he split it into two camps to get twice as much work done.”

      “NewWorld is the company overseeing the dig?”

      “Far as I know. Unless Neville has taken the reins and holds sway over the entire operation.”

      “Who’s Neville? I’ve never heard of a private citizen taking over a dig from a management company. Unless he’s with another overseeing outfit?” Annja asked.

      “Nope, Neville’s private. He’s…” Daniel shifted gears and didn’t say any more.

      Annja suspected he was leery, which struck her as odd. What did he know that he wasn’t willing to say?

      After a strained silence, Daniel spoke. “He’s a very powerful man, let’s leave it at that. He’s seen something he wants. Now he’s going to get it.”

      A dig separated into two camps was unusual. It was financially prohibitive to operate two complete camps. And Annja knew a management corporation always oversaw any dig operated on Irish soil. No private citizen could simply decide to dig for treasure. It just wasn’t done. Annja knew, for a fact, that the average citizen couldn’t even buy a metal detector in this country. A person had to have a permit, and had to be either an archaeologist or an ordnance surveyor.

      This Neville guy must be very powerful. But what did he hope to find on a routine dig that had only turned up a spear shard?

      “You work on the dig?” she asked Daniel.

      “Nope. I’m not a bone kicker. Just stop in every once in a while to chat with friends. It’s close to my house.” He pointed north and Annja spied a small thatch-roofed stone house across the field. “That’s me mum’s home. I’m a half mile beyond but you can’t see for the hill. The dig site is ahead.”

      “Time to film some faeries,” Eric said enthusiastically from the backseat.

      Annja rolled her eyes, but noticed Daniel’s lifted brow at her reaction. She was perfectly willing to allow the older villagers and those born and raised in the country their belief in a folk superstition. Folk tales and myth had been bred into them.

      But Daniel Collins seemed an educated, modern man. Not one to be placing a bowl of cream out on his back porch at night.

      4

      “Looks like the rain is going to stay away today.” Daniel pulled onto a gravel road edged every twenty feet by head-size boulders. It led to the dig site. “You’re in luck.”

      “The luck of the Irish, eh?” Eric intoned from the backseat.

      “Don’t try the leprechaun accent, kid,” Daniel said. “It’ll only get you in trouble around here.”

      “Sorry.”

      Annja offered Eric a conciliatory smile from over her shoulder.

      They rambled over rough pot-holed gravel and dirt tufted with grass. It wasn’t a real road, but had obviously been worn down by the trucks like the one that had run them off the road earlier. Where the truck had come from was a mystery. СКАЧАТЬ