Grendel's Curse. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ slaughterhouse mix of burned meat and fecal matter that came with death.

      So she lost herself in the simple act of trying to help.

      Annja was among the last to leave the theater, covered in plaster dust and blood. She must have looked like a ghost emerging from the darkness into the bright sunlight. It could just as easily have been midafternoon as dawn; the sky was blue, without a cloud, the air so fresh in her lungs it stung. They were supposed to be breaking ground in Skalunda in a few hours. There’d be no beauty sleep today.

      A stone-jawed policeman came across and started talking to her in rapid-fire Swedish. She didn’t understand a word and just shrugged. “I’m sorry. American?”

      He switched to flawless English. “Before you go, we need your contact details so we can be in touch to take a statement.”

      “Of course,” Annja said. “I’m staying in a hotel downtown.” She pointed toward the hulking shape of her hotel towering over the skyline. It was impossible to miss.

      “If you could give your details to the officer.” He nodded toward an intimidatingly blonde Amazon of a woman with a pistol strapped on her hip and a peaked cap. She was busy taking details from a line of shell-shocked people. Surreally a radio played in the background, a pop song she didn’t know taunting the world to come on and do its worst. She couldn’t help but think it had.

      Annja joined the line to give her contact info, and then wandered the empty streets toward her hotel, a lost girl in a strange town. She felt her cell phone vibrate in her jeans pocket. When she took it out she saw she had seventeen missed calls, all of them from the same New York number: Doug Morrell, her producer on Chasing History’s Monsters. Seventeen calls meant he’d obviously seen the news about the explosion at Thorssen’s rally and put two and two together. She answered with a not-quite-breezy, “Doug!”

      “Annja! I thought you were dead. Answer your damned phone next time, would you? I’ve been calling and calling. We saw footage of the explosion. Tell me you weren’t there.”

      Doug was a decent guy, if young, blunt and not all that interested in life outside of ratings. She liked him as much as it was possible to like a self-obsessed Ivy League charmer like Doug, which in truth was often just enough to get her to agree to things against her better judgment. He knew it and she knew it. And he liked her just enough in return to at least make the lies and manipulations sound plausible. It wasn’t quite a meeting of minds, but in TV terms it was positively synergism.

      “Right in the middle of it,” she replied, just how lucky she’d been registering as she said it.

      “Are you okay? I mean...stupid question...but you know? Two arms, two legs, no bonus bits or bits missing? Every bad word I’ve ever said, every time I’ve conned you into doing something you didn’t want to do—”

      “Don’t go saying anything you’ll regret, Doug. You know, the kind of stuff that can be used in a court of law.” Annja laughed. It was a slightly frazzled laugh. “Because, believe me, I’ll certainly hold it against you.”

      “Okay, good point. You sure you’re in one piece?”

      “All fingers and all toes in place.”

      “You sure?”

      “I’m sure.”

      “Okay, I believe you. So, now we’ve got the mild hysteria out of the way—see what happens when you don’t answer your phone?—time for the million-dollar question. Micke had someone in there filming the rally, right?” He paused for a beat, judging her reaction, then added, “Don’t get me wrong. It’s a tragedy.”

      “It is.”

      “But you have to admit it’d make great television. An episode on the greatest Norse hero of all, a myth that has continued to fascinate us over the centuries, tied in with the assassination attempt on one of the most charismatic politicians of recent times?” She could hear him marveling at the serendipity that had dropped this in his favorite reporter’s lap. “It’s pure television gold. I can see it already, can’t you?”

      Ratings.

      It was always about ratings with Doug when it came right down to it.

      That wasn’t fair, and she knew it. The man who had been terrified when she didn’t answer, that had been the real Doug Morrell; the man who wanted the gory details caught on film, that was the TV producer and they were different beasts. It was only now that Doug was sure she was safe that he let that beast out. It was only natural that he did. “Gold,” she agreed, halfheartedly.

      “Anyway, kiddo, you sound bushed. What is it, one, two in the morning?”

      She looked at her watch. It was closer to 5:00 a.m. and she could smell the hit of cinnamon in the air from a nearby bakery. The Swedes loved their cinnamon buns; it was as close as they came to a societal addiction.

      “Five.”

      “You should be in bed. You’re breaking ground tomorrow, right? Don’t want you looking like you’ve gone ten rounds with...well, I was going to try and be clever and name some female boxer, but you get the idea. Beauty sleep. That’s an order.”

      “You ever notice you only tell me what to do when there’s an ocean between us, Doug?” Annja laughed. “But just this once I’ll be good. I’m too tired to argue.”

      His voice changed. “I’m glad you’re okay, Annja. When you weren’t picking up...”

      “I know,” she finished for him. She couldn’t deal with mawkishness at 5:00 a.m., not that she was a big fan of it at any other time of day. She walked the rest of the way to the hotel, noting that it was still bright out, and had been for hours. This whole land of the midnight sun thing was a bit unnerving. In the height of the summer it was dark for no more than three hours a night, and if you went far enough north, to the Kebnekaise massif, you could watch the sun approach the horizon, then just rise again without ever disappearing from sight. As it was, the distinct lack of darkness as far south as Gothenburg was enough to turn a light sleeper into an insomniac and have them climbing up the hotel wall.

      An early-morning tram drove by on its way to one of the suburbs. The only passenger had her head resting on the window, still half-asleep. Annja waited for it to rumble off down the street before she crossed the road to the hotel.

      The night porter smiled at her as she crossed the marbled foyer and made for the bank of elevators, and her waiting bed. She saw herself in the mirrored elevator doors. It was a wonder he wasn’t reaching for the phone to call for the cops.

      * * *

      TWO HOURS OF restless sleep later, breakfast skipped, Annja was on-site waiting for Karl Thorssen to grace them with his presence.

      There was always something special about that first day on a dig—a sense of anticipation and hope that was almost palpable. Right up until they broke ground, anything was possible.

      This was no different.

      Beowulf’s barrow.

      Was the Geatish king interred here?

      What, if anything, would they find down there?

      Annja grinned despite herself. СКАЧАТЬ