Day Of Atonement. Alex Archer

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       3

       On a winter’s nightThe present

      It was minus seven degrees, closer to minus fifteen with the windchill factored in.

      The extreme conditions presented their own problems for filming, including static discharge ruining shot after shot. It was just bone-chillingly cold, and Annja Creed was going snow blind with the swirling flakes twisting and churning in the air as they turned the world to white.

      They were outside the tent, standing in the last bluster of the storm. An hour ago it had been like Snowmageddon out there. Now, there was air between the flakes and she could see the high walls of the castle, meaning it was the perfect time for the establishing shot of the medieval site in the heart of winter.

      Annja had visited Carcassonne before, more than once, but on her previous visits the weather had always been positively tropical in comparison.

      “You ready to go again, Annja?” Philippe Allard, the cameraman, asked, hoisting his camera onto his shoulder.

      “Let’s do this,” she said, moving back into position.

      On her mark, she waited for the thumbs-up to say that she was good to go.

      She took a deep breath, letting it leak out slowly in a mist that wafted up across her face and earning her a scowl from her cameraman. His thumb went up. Annja started talking to the camera as if she hadn’t taken a three-hour break waiting for the worst of the storm to pass. An observant viewer might spot that the snow on the hillside was deeper, but their brains would quickly fill in the gaps and gloss over that inconsistency.

      She knew that chunks of the footage would be cut, with other images overlaid on the soundtrack. They’d gathered plenty of fantastic material over the past couple of days. And honestly, once she was back in the studio, a fair amount of the commentary would end up being rerecorded because she was a perfectionist and couldn’t stand to watch a segment that was any less than that. So yes, you put in the work on location, but you did it knowing that, when it was all edited together, some of it would end up on the cutting room floor. Subzero conditions or no.

      “Overlooked by the medieval fortress, the Cité de Carcassonne, the land behind me, has been the site of a settlement since Neolithic times. The Romans were among the first to really capitalize on its strategic position, and occupied the same hilltop until the fall of the Western Empire and the incursion of the Visigoths.” She missed a beat as the red light went off, and the cameraman lowered his lens.

      “Something wrong, Philippe?”

      “Don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t you think it’s all a bit…” He shrugged.

      “Weak?” Annja suggested. “Sloppy?” She inclined her head. “How about dull? Or, heaven forbid, boring?” She folded her arms in front of her and shifted her weight, waiting to hear what he had to say.

      “Wordy,” Philippe said eventually, making it sound like one of the greatest crimes that could possibly be perpetrated on TV.

      She grinned. “Wordy?” Wordy she could cope with. Wordy was just another way of saying that she was talking too much and using long words. Sometimes long words were just fine. It wasn’t like she was about to parade around in a bikini trying to sex-up history in the snow.

      “Want to change places?” Her grin was sly. “I’m happy to have a go behind the camera. I’m sure Doug would approve.” Doug Morrell was Annja’s producer.

      “Well, my mom always said I had a face for television.” He grinned right back. “You know, what with the whole sun shining out of my ass thing, I’m definitely special.”

      “No arguments from me.”

      She held out her hand for the camera.

      “Are you serious?”

      “Why not? Consider it your audition tape.”

      “More like the Christmas gag reel.”

      Even so, Philippe handed over the camera and waited on the mark while Annja got the camera on her shoulder and started recording.

      “Over my shoulder,” he said, waving vaguely in the direction of the fortress, “you can see a prime example of intimidation architecture. The people who built this place really didn’t like visitors, and wanted to make them work for it, giving them a long, steep hill to climb when they wanted to drop by for a friendly croissant.” He grinned. “Unsurprisingly, baguette wielders who made it that far almost certainly ended up with a pot of black coffee poured on their heads from the handy murder holes.” He bowed to Annja. “See? Food and murder. That’s what people want.”

      She shook her head. “Okay, okay, I get the point. You’re hungry. Let’s wrap it up for today and go get something to eat.”

      “And there was me thinking subtlety was dead.” Philippe took the camera from her.

      “My treat. Go take a dip in the pool first. Warm up and work the kinks out of your muscles and concentrate on making yourself look pretty. I want to go for a drive.”

      Philippe raised an expressive eyebrow.

      “I feel the need for speed,” she said with a grin.

      He didn’t need telling twice.

      Five minutes later the tent was broken down, the gear stashed in its flight case and loaded into the trunk of their rental car.

      The banter didn’t slow down during the drive back to the hotel. One thing this local hire was good at was talking. Flirting, really. Philippe had that roguish charm that all Frenchmen seemed to have, and an accent to die for. Of course she was going to buy dinner. She was a modern woman laying down a flirtatious gauntlet of her own. All work and no play makes Annja a dull girl, she said to herself, sweeping down the narrow road into the town proper.

      The snow had gathered on the surface, reducing traction.

      Annja drove carefully, enjoying the process of driving stick on a road that really wanted her to work for the privilege of driving down it.

      She parked outside the hotel, and made a promise to meet Philippe in an hour. He double tapped on the roof to СКАЧАТЬ