Grendel's Curse

by Alex Archer

  “Where are you at the moment?”

  “I’m in a coffee shop in Gothenburg, down by the station. Why?” She struggled to remember what it was called, then spotted the name of the place on top of the printed menu that stood upright in front of her. She had been staring at it for the past half an hour but it had not registered.

  “Café Skalunda,” she said. Even when she had been making her way there she had not realized that it bore the same name as the barrow. She smiled despite herself. She really was in a world of her own.

  And then alarm bells started to ring inside her head. Why did the police want to know where she was? She was about to ask the officer why he was ringing her on Lars’s phone when he hung up.

  She stared at the phone, trying to understand what had just happened.

  Was someone pranking her?

  Had something happened to Lars?

  She redialed the number. It went straight to voice mail.

  That made even less sense, unless the caller was going through his call log to reach out to people, but why would he do that?

  As she stared out through the window she saw a car drive past; it was moving much slower than was necessary. Maybe they were lost, or maybe they were looking for something. Or someone. And maybe she was overreacting, but she knew to trust her instincts and her instincts screamed that something was off about the whole thing. She needed to get out of there.

  Annja pulled some cash from her pocket, held it up for the woman behind the counter to see, then left it on the table. She took one more bite of carrot cake as she stood up, and mimed that it was good. The woman behind the counter smiled.

  She thought about heading back to the hotel room, but it wasn’t as if she’d find any answers there. Walking out of the door, she sent a text through to Roux, telling the old man she thought things were about to get interesting. When that was away into the ether, she called Micke’s cameraman.

  “Johan,” she said as a sleep-thick voice grumbled, “Hello?”

  So much for being wide awake and ready to rumble.

  “Time to get your groove on, sunshine. Action stations. I’ll get the car and meet you at the front of the hotel in twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty minutes?”

  “There’s an echo.”

  “It’s unholy o’clock—where on earth are we going this early?”

  “The dig.”

  “The dig?”

  “Yep. Might be good to get a few shots in the early-morning light.”

  “Rubbish. You’re up to something, aren’t you, Annja? Micke’s warned me about you.”

  “Busted,” she said.

  “It’ll cost you breakfast,” Johan said.

  Breakfast, it seemed, was the global currency of early-morning wake-up calls.

  7

  Johan stood on the street corner, beneath the hotel’s awning.

  She pulled up at the curb.

  A couple of times on the walk to the underground parking lot Annja had caught herself looking back over her shoulder. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. She knew it was down to the car that had cruised by the café earlier. Some would have called it paranoia, but for Annja—after everything she’d been through since Roux and Garin came into her life and she first put Joan of Arc’s sword into the otherwhere—there’d been no such thing. It was like it had become a finely honed survival instinct. She knew when to act. And when something bad was happening, she wasn’t going to sit around and wait to find out what, or just how bad, it was.

  She had two options. One, drive out to the dig and start looking for Lars. Someone ought to know where he was. Two, call the police and find out why they’d called her on his phone—if they had.

  “So what’s the panic?” the cameraman asked as he climbed into the passenger seat. He’d stowed his gear in the trunk.

  She pulled away from the curb. “I want to check up on Mortensen now,” she said. “Something’s not right.”

  “Color me intrigued. Love at first sight? A tender moment shared across some decaying old bones?”

  “He rang me this morning, early.”

  “A booty call? I like it. The boy’s got style.”

  “That he might have—but he stood me up for breakfast.”

  “Ah, a woman scorned, I get it.”

  “Nothing so clandestine. He said that he had found something, and then he doesn’t show up? Seems odd to me.”

  Winding their way toward Skalunda, Annja saw the glow of red taillights as cars braked and slowed. Odd. She craned her neck and saw a plume of black smoke in the distance followed by a flame that rose high above the roofs of the cars in front of them.

  Nothing was going to be moving for a while.

  “Keep an eye out,” Annja said. “I’m going to take a look at what’s going on up there. Slide over. If the traffic starts to move, pick me up as you drive by.” She slid out of the car, but before she closed the door she added, “I’ll even let you put the radio on if you like.”

  “Too kind,” Johan said, with just the slightest trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  She smiled sweetly at him.

  Almost every car in the lineup in front of her had the driver’s side window wound down, the drivers craning their necks to try and see what the holdup was. A few of them spoke to her as she walked past, not that she understood what they were saying.

  It was only as she rounded a bend that had been obscured by thick foliage that she saw the burning car.

  Firemen were battling the blaze, struggling to bring it under control before it spread to the vegetation and flamed into a full forest fire. Branches all around the verge had been doused with water but they were still blackened and shriveled from the heat.

  A shift in the blaze revealed that the car on fire was a Volvo. There was something familiar about it; but just about eighty percent of cars in this country seemed to be Volvos. Next she noticed a bumper sticker on the back fender proclaiming Archaeologists Do It Down and Dirty. She quickened her pace, reluctant to break into a run, but dreading what she already knew deep down was the truth. An accident would explain so many things, including why the police would call her on his cell phone.

  A policeman barked at her, waving her back.

  She feigned ignorance, and continued to approach the scene.

  He repeated his warning. She reached inside her back pocket for her press pass to offer as some kind of identification, not that she expected it to grant her access to the scene, but it was worth a shot. She held it out like a shield until she was close enough for him to see what it was, hoping he’d think she was a cop.

  “Anyone hurt?” she asked, still moving toward the car. She looked around, hoping she’d see Lars wrapped in a blanket, being attended by a paramedic. There was no one.

  “The car was already on fire when we got here. Anyone inside didn’t get out. We couldn’t get near it until the fire crews arrived a few minutes ago.”

  “But an officer...” She was about to say called me, but then decided against it. There was only one car here, and his partner—another statuesque blonde woman—was working with the firefighters against the blaze. She couldn’t see into the smoking car, but it was obvious that if it was already on fire when they’d rolled up, there was no way they could have got Lars’s phone out of there. It would have melted in the fireball.

  That meant that the call hadn’t come from the police, and she’d been right to get the hell out of that café.

  A gust of wind took hold of the fire, bringing it roaring back to life. As the flames shifted she caught a glimpse of the windshield. It had shattered, but she saw the shape of a man behind the wheel.

  “There’s someone in there!” Annja cried, running toward the car.

  She knew she was too late to help, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

  The policeman shouted at her back.

  She didn’t stop.

  Annja felt the heat much sooner than she’d expected. It filled the air
and sucked the oxygen from her lungs. Inside five steps it was difficult to breathe.

  She could still see the figure behind the wheel, big and bulky, so obviously male and leaning back in the seat as if he’d just fallen asleep, only there was no chance he was sleeping. His skin was charred black and blistered. Some of the blisters had burst and wept down his cheeks only to shrivel under the sheer heat. There was no way of knowing if this was Lars, but she’d seen that bumper sticker on a car at the dig. She was sure of it. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be someone else in there, no matter how many Volvos there might have been on this particular road on this particular morning.

  She didn’t resist when the policeman grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the overwhelming heat.

  “There’s nothing you can do. Let the firemen do their job.”

  She nodded weakly, letting him lead her away from the burning car.

  “You know the driver, don’t you?” the policeman said.

  She shook her head.

  She could have admitted her suspicions, but knew that doing so would mean explaining things she didn’t really understand and tie her up in knots of endless questions. So she played dumb.

  “No. Sorry. I just thought...you know...I could help.”

  He looked at her, trying to decide if she was telling the truth.

  “I think you should return to your vehicle. Leave it to the professionals. It could be some time before we get the road cleared.”

  “Certainly, officer,” she said, “I’m sorry if I...you know...” Annja shrugged and started back toward the car. A few people had gathered on the grass verge, curious. She scanned their faces but didn’t recognize any of them. She had no reason to believe the car belonged to Lars Mortensen, save for the fact it had an archaeological joke on the fender, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was him in there burning and she didn’t want to be around when it was confirmed.

  “Time to get out of here,” she said as she slipped into the passenger seat, changing the station on the radio as Johan started the engine.

  “Hey,” he protested.

  She shook her head. “I just want some noise. That’s not loud enough. The road won’t be open for a while. We need to find another route to the dig.”

  “Already got it covered. Joys of GPS, programmed in the scenic route. Will take about half an hour longer, but we’ll get there. What’s happened up front?”

  “What are you waiting for, then? Let’s get out of here.”

  Johan angled the rental car back and forth, back and forth, until he could swing around in the middle of the road and head back the way they’d come.

  “You think that Lars got held up on the other side of that accident?”

  “No, I don’t. I think he was the accident. Now drive.”

  8

  Karl Thorssen’s desk was free of clutter.

  There were no family photographs, no ornaments or perpetual motion toys, no mementos of any sort; he didn’t need any reminders of life outside the office. He couldn’t understand those who did. Who wanted to be reminded of something they’d only left behind a few hours ago? You come to work to focus. If you weren’t focusing you weren’t going to achieve anything close to your full potential. It was as simple as that. Karl Thorssen worked long hours in what to all intents and purposes was a sensory depravation unit of an office, and in those hours he approached a Zen-like balance of body, mind, action and achievement.

  He had no time for distractions.

  Distractions were for the weak of will.

  He had no time for weakness.

  The only indulgence he allowed himself was a potted plant on the windowsill. He never watered it. His secretary took care of it. She had bought it for him a couple of years ago—a gift to celebrate his nomination for the party leadership—and despite his best efforts to ignore it, the thing hadn’t just survived, it had thrived. There’s a lesson in that, he thought, looking at it, in full bloom.

  The call came in early.

  He had been expecting it.

  Ever since he’d first shaken hands on the deal with Mortensen he’d known the man wasn’t to be trusted. Inserting two of his own people on the late professor’s team had been child’s play. It wasn’t money that made the world go around. Greasing a few palms with silver would offer them an incentive, but if they loved you—truly loved you—there was no question they’d move heaven and earth to make sure you got what you wanted. And plenty of people loved Karl Thorssen.

  And what Karl Thorssen had wanted most of all was eyes on Mortensen day and night.

  He had been right to want it, too.

  “Don’t let it out of your sight.” He knew his instructions would be carried out to the letter. No more, no less. Tostig had never let him down before. He would do whatever was asked of him. Thorssen had always been less certain about Tostig’s partner, a silent brooding Latvian whose Swedish was poor and his English only slightly better. The man exuded an aura of menace even when he tried to smile. But then as Thorssen had only ever seen him smile when he was hurting people that was understandable. Thorssen had a rule: the Latvian did not come into the office. Tostig could use him if he wanted to, but Thorssen didn’t want to know how, where or why. As far as he was concerned it was need to know, and he didn’t need to know.

  He left the office, nodding to his secretary, and headed for the great glass elevator that took him down the outside of the building to the street below.

  He stepped out into the fresh morning—a morning alive with possibilities—and looked for his man. He saw their car parked down the street.

  Tostig acknowledged him with the slightest nod of his head, but made no move to get out of the car; it was one of the rules. They never met at the building. They had a place a few streets away, an apartment Thorssen used as a crash pad in the city. And even then they never entered the apartment together. Tostig always made sure that he had allowed Thorssen enough time to get himself to the rendezvous.

  Ten minutes covered it.

  The two men had no need to exchange any pleasantries. Thorssen liked it that way. There was a table in the middle of the sparsely furnished room. He nodded toward it, indicating that Tostig should relieve himself of his burden.

  The big man winced as he laid it down.

  Thorssen saw the red raw marks on his wrist. Tostig made no attempt to hide them. Thorssen didn’t ask.

  What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Instead, Thorssen reached inside his jacket for his wallet and pulled out a card. He wrote a number on the back of it and held it out.

  “Call this number. Tell him I sent you. I’ll take care of any expenses.”

  Tostig examined the card as if considering the consequences of what taking it meant, then he slipped it into the top pocket of his suit jacket without looking at what Thorssen had written on it.

  The package was wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. There was nothing to indicate that Tostig had examined its contents, though given the fact he had killed to get his hands on it the politician wouldn’t have begrudged his man if he had decided to see for himself what the archaeologist had unearthed.

  He turned the package over to loosen the sack, feeling the jagged uneven edges through the wrapping as he did.

  He took a deep breath before reaching inside the sack.

  He knew that whatever it was it had to be important for the archaeologist to risk betraying him rather than hand it over as per their arrangement.

  But what was it?

  “Nothing’s going to come back to us?”

  “Nothing,” Tostig said. He was a man of few words.

  Thorssen nodded, satisfied. “Do we have any idea who he was going to meet?”

  “Some woman called Annja.”

  “Annja Creed?”

  Tostig shrugged his shoulders. His massive bulk seemed to move with them. “Should I know the name?”

  “If you’re a daytime TV fan.”

  “This is her number.” H
e took a scrap of paper from his pocket. “I disposed of Mortensen’s phone.”

  “How?”

  “I burned it right along with the good professor.”

  He didn’t ask for details. There were more immediate concerns, like the discovery on his table. Taking care, he unwrapped the final layer of plastic to reveal Mortensen’s find.

  He stared at it.

  At both parts of it.

  Thorssen licked his lips. He knew what he was looking at. He’d grown up with the legend of Beowulf’s broken sword; the great blade that had slain the dragon but broken in two because of the sheer force that the warrior had used to deliver the fatal blow.

  Could it really be Nægling?

  He reached out to touch the fabled blade, closing his eyes to truly experience the feel of the silvered blade against his skin.

  It felt alive to his touch.

  “Does Creed know what he had found?”

  “Impossible to say.”

  Thorssen liked that about Tostig. He never guessed, he never speculated; he just assessed a situation quickly, calmly, and responded to the information he had at his fingertips, not the possibilities that might or might not ensue. He was like an old analog computer with two settings—do something or do nothing.

  “Then we assume that she does.” Thorssen picked a shard of debris from the edge of the blade with a carefully manicured fingernail. The corrosion fell away to reveal the still-shining metal beneath. He was no archaeologist, but there was something wrong with that, surely? There was no way that a blade that had lain in the ground for fourteen hundred years could possibly be as honed or polished. It was a physical impossibility. He’d seen swords from three hundred years ago preserved in museums and they were gouged and pitted even if they hadn’t been buried in the ground. The iron oxidized and decayed. They just got old. But not this sword, seemingly. Beneath its crust of rust and corrosion it was as wonderful as the day it had been made. So surely this had to be some kind of hoax....

  “How willing was he to turn the sword over to you?”

  “I’d say he’d rather take it to the grave than hand it over.”