Grendel's Curse. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ about soldiers from the Holy Roman Empire. Give me a good old-fashioned monster hunt any day of the week. I leave the politicking to serious journalists.”

      Lars seemed to like that answer.

      She tried to remember his surname. She had it written on a card in her pocket, but could hardly take it out and check.

      Lars...

      Lars...

      Mortensen.

      That was it: Lars Mortensen.

      “So, what’s your deal with Thorssen? He just letting you in on the action out of the kindness of his heart?” she asked.

      “Hardly.” Lars grunted. “He wants first look at everything we uncover, and any broadcast or press release has to have his name slapped right across it.”

      “It’s all about the glory for him,” one of Lars’s companions explained, joining them. “The more press he gets, the more he gets to play the benevolent champion of Middle Sweden, the more people will lap up his stupid politics and buy into his send-them-back-home promises. Makes me sick just thinking about it.”

      He was right; Thorssen’s rhetoric was the sort that resonated with certain segments of society whenever there were open borders and high unemployment; the flow of people toward a better life was always one-sided, and with any one-sided narrative it was easy to spin it negatively.

      “Well, how about we get one over on him by having you give me a call before anything comes out of the ground, then technically you’re not breaking your promise to Thorssen. Saves him getting his hands dirty, too.”

      “Oh, I’m sure he’s quite happy to get his hands dirty,” Lars said, though the kind of dirt he meant had nothing to do with the rich soil of the dig site.

      Annja glanced across at Karl Thorssen, who was on the podium now, hands braced on either side of the lectern as he leaned forward. His hair fell across his face. He didn’t brush it aside for the longest time, then made a show of biting back the pain when he did. It was quite the theatrical performance. He spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable so no one would miss a word.

      “Today is a landmark day for this proud nation of ours. Today is a day we embrace the past. Today, as we drive the shovel into the ground to turn the earth, we are forging a connection with the land of our forefathers. Think about it. As we open the barrow we are digging through the same ground they strode upon. The same earth. We are tapping into the magic still latent within that soil. Heroes walked upon this land, the greatest of which lies buried beneath it. The past and the present are separated by a few feet of dirt. Think about it.” His voice carried across the quiet crowd. They were obviously doing what they were told. There was an intensity to his voice that demanded it.

      Listening to him, she realized Karl Thorssen was a believer; every word that came out of his mouth, he meant. Yes, it was theater, but weirdly that didn’t make it any less real.

      Believers were always the most dangerous men in her experience. It didn’t matter who did the actual dirty work, just so long as it got done. She’d already seen that Thorssen had an army dedicated to his cause.

      “Ah, my minute in the sun,” Lars said, picking up a pristine shovel that had been leaning against a couple of crates of equipment. “Time to put on a smile for the cameras.”

      Annja studied his face as Thorssen drove the shovel into the yielding dirt, rested his foot upon it, then pushed down. Not once did he wince or show any sign of physical discomfort. Putting on a brave show for the world? she wondered. Or letting the mask slip to show who you really are?

      It was impossible to know one way or the other.

      Thorssen turned over the soil to cheers and applause from the small crowd. The cameras had their sound bite and their visual leader for their news segments; his job here was done. He bowed his head, raised a hand in thank you and farewell and allowed himself to be helped back to his car.

      A short while later he was driven away, and people were left milling around asking what, if anything, would happen next. It didn’t take long for the children to grow restless, several of them deciding that rolling like logs down the hill was a good idea. Their teachers had trouble corralling them, but eventually they were herded onto the waiting coach and whisked away.

      The reporters, who only a few moments before had been pressing their microphones forward trying to catch every word Thorssen said, had their backs to the barrow and were doing their final pieces to camera, telling their viewers what they’d just seen and why it was so significant. Fifteen minutes later it was a ghost town. The TV crews had packed away their equipment and driven off in a convoy. Now that Thorssen was gone the barrow was back to being a grassy hill. They’d return if and when evidence was unearthed that Skalunda Barrow truly was the last resting place of Beowulf. Until then, story filed, they’d forget all about it as soon as the next piece of news broke.

      “How about I make myself useful?” Annja asked as Lars and his team started to unpack rolls of plastic sheeting from their van. He doled out instructions to others, surprisingly in English rather than his native Swedish, which led her to think that it was for her benefit. He had everything under control, but Annja never was one for being a spectator.

      “It’s fine, we’ve got it covered. Unless you fancy a shift with the shovel?”

      Annja laughed, assuming it was a joke. Dig sites used mechanical diggers these days to scrape the surface back and mark out the trenches for excavation, not teams of slave labor with shovels. She looked around for the digger, but there was no sign of one anywhere.

      “So when is the digger arriving?”

      “Digger? You’re looking at him.”

      “Are you serious?”

      “Sadly. Yes.”

      “What? Why?”

      “Red tape. We could only get approval to excavate if everything was done by hand—minimal impact on the environment, every single sod replaced as close to its current position as is humanly possible.”

      “Wow. Better grab a shovel, then. We’re going to be at this for a while.”

      “Tell me about it,” Lars said. “It’ll take us a day to clear out what a backhoe could do in half an hour. But in this as in the rest of life beggars can’t be choosers. Lucky for you I’ve enlisted half of the horticultural department from the university to do the grunt work. Let the big strong farm boys do the backbreaking stuff.”

      “Nothing wrong with a little extra muscle.” She held out her hand. “Pass the shovel.”

      Lars handed her the shiny new shovel Thorssen had used to break the ground.

      “Where do you want me?”

      “Over there, we’ve marked out a trench where, according to geophys results, we believe the entrance to the barrow lies. Have fun.”

      Annja hefted the shovel onto her shoulder, but before she walked off to lose herself in some good old-fashioned manual labor, she asked, “Do you really believe he’s down there?”

      “It’s been a long time, and there’s no way of knowing for sure, but yes. I wouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ