Grendel's Curse

It was iconic.

It was exactly what he needed to tip the balance of the upcoming election in his favor. It was a symbol of everything Sweden had once been—a land of heroes, a land of kings, a land of purebloods and warrior spirits. He could see Thorssen holding it above his head, issuing the challenge to his opponents, rallying his followers.

And that was the last thing he wanted.

How could he possibly let something so culturally significant, something so historically important, be used for Thorssen’s fascist agenda?

He’d been prepared for the discovery of an empty tomb, even the decayed remains of a long-dead warrior, but not this, he realized. Despite everything he’d never really believed Beowulf existed. Who fought monsters and dragons in the real world? No one. But here was the evidence of the man if not the legend, right here on his workbench.

Nægling.

It was one thing to have Thorssen’s name attached to a discovery, like some benevolent shadow-figure lurking in the background, a man whose money had made it possible, but it was quite something else to present him with Nægling knowing what he would do with it.

Lars had been on any number of digs over the years, and seen all kinds of finds, but not once had he encountered a find where the years of accumulated grime and decay had fallen away to reveal perfection. Cleaned up, the blade looked as though it had only gone into the ground yesterday.

It was nothing short of miraculous.

But miracles came at a price, didn’t they?

He lit another cigarette. Smoking didn’t steady his nerves, though. It wasn’t some magical cure-all. But it gave him something to do with his hands while he obsessed over the ethics of what he was considering. He’d discovered the sword alone. It wasn’t cataloged. No one had witnessed it. There were no photographs. There was nothing to say it had ever been in that hole. He could pretend it had never been found. He could take precautions to make sure it never fell into Karl Thorssen’s hands.

He wasn’t a doctor; he hadn’t taken some form of Hippocratic oath to always present the truth to the world. Sometimes not knowing was better, wasn’t it? In this case, given the choice of Thorssen using the blade as a focal point to rally his troops, turning himself into a modern-day Beowulf, surely it had to be, didn’t it?

Lars lay in his bunk watching the hands on the clock move impossibly slowly, thinking about all of those immigrant families whose lives would be turned upside down if a man like Thorssen actually rose to power. He thought about the time machine that people often conjectured about when it came to Adolf Hitler, and if they would go back to before his rise in power and kill him if they could. This was his time machine moment. He knew that.

Daylight was already here. It was never far away at this time of year. He still didn’t have a solution. All he could do was turn the same things over in his mind.

He needed to get out of there.

The glimmerings of an excuse formed in his mind: he could tell them that he’d tried to open up the tomb himself because he was impatient, and even go so far as to admit a little glory hunting, before he stopped himself. It might cost him his job on the dig, maybe even his tenure at the university if word got out, but it would deflect attention from the truth. He just needed to make the sword disappear, and for that to happen he needed help.

But he had no idea who he could trust.

* * *

ANNJA SLEPT LIKE the dead.

Even the insistent beep of her alarm clock didn’t rouse her until it had escalated to the point where the guest in the room next door was banging on the wall. She killed the alarm and lurched out of bed. She sat on the edge of the mattress, knuckling sleep out of her eyes. She didn’t exactly feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She’d set her phone to silent and turned off the vibrate function before hitting the sack last night, knowing that someone in New York was bound to forget the time difference and wake her up. The first thing she did was check for missed calls.

Five were showing, from two numbers.

Doug Morrell had called four times.

The fifth was from a number she didn’t recognize. It had a Swedish prefix, meaning it originated inside the country.

She wandered across to open the curtains while she checked her voice mail.

Looking out on the unfamiliar city she was left with a strange sense of dislocation. It took her a moment to realize which hotel room she was in, in which city; there had been so many over the past few years that it wasn’t always easy to tell one from another as they all sort of blurred together.

Annja yawned.

“Hello, Annja? It’s Lars. Lars Mortensen. We met at the dig today. You said you wanted to take a look at anything we found....” There was a long pause, like the speaker didn’t really want to go on and was fighting himself. She half expected him to hang up. She checked the cruel red glow of the time on the alarm clock while she listened to his mumbling. It was only a little after five, but the room was filled with bright daylight. The city was waking up slowly, too. “I’ve found something,” he said at last. “And I don’t know what to do with it. Can you call me when you get this, please? I need to talk to someone and I’m not sure who I can turn to so...you’re the lucky winner of tonight’s lottery. Oh, right...it’s early... Sorry if I woke you.” She couldn’t help but laugh at the halfhearted apology that ended the call. The message was time coded at 4:32 a.m. It was a ridiculous time to phone anyone.

So what had driven him to call at 4:32 rather than just wait for her to arrive at the site at 8:00 a.m. like the rest of them?

There was only one way to find out.

Annja hit redial and called him back.

“Annja?”

“Hi, Lars, thanks for the wake-up call,” she said. “It’ll cost you a decent cup of coffee.”

“Sorry. I—”

“Couldn’t wait to talk to me? I have that effect on men. Well, once in a while, anyway. What’s on your mind?”

“We’ve found something.”

“You mentioned. You don’t sound thrilled. It’s not a clay pot, I take it?”

“No. It’s not. But it’s best you see it for yourself and make up your own mind, rather than me just tell you what I think it is. Can I meet you somewhere?”

“Now that’s what I call an offer you can’t refuse. When and where?” There was something about his voice...he sounded agitated. It took her a second to realize he was on the move. She heard a car door slam on the other end of the line.

“There’s a café,” he said. “Does a decent breakfast.” He reeled off directions to a place down by the central station. “As soon as you can make it.”

“Give me an hour,” she said, despite the fact the address was only a couple of streets away. It wouldn’t take long to get showered and dressed; she’d just put her wet hair up and head out. She didn’t worry about makeup and making herself presentable; she was very much a take-me-as-you-find-me kind of woman.

“Let’s double down, last one there buys breakfast,” she said.

“You’ve got a head start,” Lars said, his voice a little more relaxed at least.

“Of course I have, no one said I had to play fair. See you soon,” Annja promised, and hung up.

He hadn’t spelled it out, but he didn’t need to.

He wasn’t happy about whatever it was he’d found.

They’d only opened the ground a few hours ago; what could he possibly have unearthed in that time that had him so conflicted?

She thought about calling Johan, but the cameraman wasn’t going to thank her for waking him this early so she decided to let him sleep in.

It was only when she was heading out the door that she knew what had been bothering her: why meet at a café? Any find would still be at the site, surely?

What are you up to? Annja wondered, walking out into the early morning to the chorus of traffic sounds, schoolkids and commuters.

* * *