The Mortality Principle

“It’s possible,” Annja said. She knew how papers worked. The reporter would have a lot of material that hadn’t made it into the finished copy. Was there anything in there that would be of interest to her? Maybe.

“I’ll make sure I tell him that. He’s more likely to give you a call if there’s a chance of money changing hands. You know how these freelancers are. If you don’t hear from him, you might want to check out some of the places where people sleep outside. He’s been talking to a lot of the homeless people late at night. I think he’s even slept on the streets himself a couple of nights this week in the hope that he might catch the killer himself. The police warned him off that, though, so hopefully he listened to them. To be honest, I don’t like the idea of him out there. It’s not safe.”

“Thanks,” Annja said.

If the man didn’t call her back, she was going to have to go looking for him, but she would have somewhere to start, which was more than she’d had an hour ago. How many Jan Tureks could there be in the city?

She was more than capable of looking after herself no matter who she found herself up against. But it was still seven or eight hours until it would start to get dark, and another six or seven until it was the right time to go hunting the killer, which made as much sense as hunting for the journalist who was writing about him.

That meant she was at a loose end.

She had time to kill.

She had exhausted the research she had brought with her three times over, but now she had another angle to chase. She decided to check the internet to see if there were better reports about the killings that had made it into the international press. Worst case, she could run Turek’s reports—assuming they were online—through a translation app and at least get some sort of idea what theories he was putting forward. It wouldn’t hurt to know just how much fear he was causing with his pieces, either. That was where the comments sections came in.

She headed back to the hotel, assuming Garin would still be occupying himself for a while yet.

From outside, the hotel was an unassuming building. It had been a Dominican monastery back in the golem’s day. Now it offered her space for quiet contemplation. Both the businessmen and the tourists had long since left, leaving the foyer empty. Annja walked toward the desk, which was between her and the single flight of stairs that led to the first floor where her room was. The receptionist looked up and smiled, returning to her work when Annja turned toward the stairs.

A middle-aged couple talking rapidly in German emerged from the stairway and walked straight to the reception desk without giving her a second glance.

Annja climbed the stairs two at a time, eager to get to work now that she had something to focus on.

She passed Garin’s room, hearing voices behind the door. No doubt he was charming the waitress with talk of his jet airplane and a trip to Paris for champagne and strawberries that evening. That was his usual technique when it came to sweeping women off their feet: leave them dizzy with the heady rush of a life barely even imagined. If not Paris, maybe it would be pizza in Rome or Venetian ice cream, gazing out over the Lido. How many times in the past few years had Garin tried to impress her the same way? More than enough was the answer, though in truth he’d never impressed her more than that very first time they’d come face-to-face as she hunted the Beast of Gévaudan. He’d saved her life that day. To Annja’s way of thinking that was more impressive than traveling half the world to dine at some fancy five-star restaurant, but as she’d quickly come to learn she was pretty much one of a kind.

She smiled to herself as she moved on to her own room.

5 (#ulink_f338ce4b-d276-575e-891c-05622ff8cfeb)

Two hours sped by with Annja reading the various reports. It wasn’t easy, the language barrier present even online, but she managed to track down more and more articles on the internet—though, painfully, as the translation site had a habit of turning the original Czech articles into gibberish.

She could have taken them to a translation service, but that would take time and cost money and probably only serve to annoy her paymasters. Or she could have asked around for a person who was fluent in English—fluent enough to give her a real idea of just how emotive the language in the articles was.

Of course, she had an ace up her proverbial sleeve. Roux. The man knew so much and had seen so much more. Even if he didn’t have the answers, he would know someone who did. And in this case, he had no agenda, no wish to gain anything from her requests for help. That was the primary difference between the old man and Garin. Garin was like the song: he was his first, his last, his everything. He always put the interests of Garin Braden ahead of the interests of others. It wasn’t just about being selfish, it was about being himself. You didn’t live six hundred years of decadence without picking up some bad habits along the way. It was only inevitable that centuries of getting neck-deep in fecal matter and somehow emerging smelling of roses gave you a warped perspective on life. Roux was different. She didn’t know why—on a fundamental level—that should be so. But it was. The only thing she’d noticed, and it was through years of quiet observation as opposed to direct confrontation, was that Roux welcomed the idea that he might not live forever whereas Garin dreaded it.

The old man might come across as cantankerous at the best of times, but he was the rock she could rely on while all else around her floundered. And he wouldn’t ask for anything else in return, even if he wasn’t completely enthusiastic about getting involved. That was another sign that age was catching up with him. She’d noticed it time and again since what had felt like Garin’s ultimate betrayal beneath the Pass of the Moor’s Sigh. He’d taken that hard. It wasn’t just that Garin had shown his true colors; it was that maybe, just maybe, Roux had finally accepted that he couldn’t change his former apprentice’s nature.

She played with the phone for a moment. Roux was the touchstone that linked both of the lives she lived. He was a constant in an ever-changing world.

She punched in his number and waited for the phone to ring.

“To what do I owe this pleasure, my dear?” the old man said. There was no hint of surprise in Roux’s voice.

“How are you doing?”

“Much the same as I am always doing,” the old man replied. “As wonderful as it is to hear from you, I take it this isn’t a social call? What can I do for you?”

“How good is your Czech?”

“Written or spoken?”

“Written,” she said, unsurprised that he’d made the distinction rather than dismiss her question straightaway.

“Fair,” he said. “As long as it’s not too technical. What are we talking about?”

“A few tabloid articles. I’m sending you the links now.”

“I didn’t say that I was going to help you,” Roux chided lightly. “Sometimes you take things for granted.”

“You also didn’t say you weren’t going to help me,” she said, wishing that he would be a little more obvious when he was feeling prickly. Some sort of code word would save a lot of misunderstanding. “Let’s try again. Will you help me? Pretty please, O great and powerful Roux?”

There was an audible sigh that he exaggerated for her benefit, which guaranteed he’d read the articles for her.

“All right. Send the links. I’ll call you back once I’ve had the chance to digest them. I assume we aren’t looking at War and Peace here? I have a busy day ahead of me.”

“There shouldn’t be too much,” Annja said. “I’m only interested in the pieces that refer to the golem.”

“The golem?”

“Yeah, you know, Rabbi Loew… The Golem of Prague…”

“I’m not a simpleton, Annja, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I just don’t understand what your interest in it might be. After all, it’s a fairy tale.” He paused for a moment. There was an anguished tone lurking beneath his voice when he continued. “I’ve always thought that you considered what you do to be a proper job. Something worthwhile. Not frivolity. Was I wrong?”

Annja didn’t think she’d ever heard him use those kinds of words to describe what she did. “There’s a story here. It’s something that viewers might be interested in, yes, but it’s more than that. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were deliberately being antagonistic. This isn’t like you. So I’m just going to ignore it. I refuse to rise to the bait.”

“Not antagonistic, merely surprised.” She heard the tap of keys as Roux followed up the links to the web-pages she had sent him. “There’s quite a bit here,” he said after another minute or so. “I’ll call you in half an hour.” He hung up without waiting for her response.

It wasn’t the first time he had done that to her, and odds were it wouldn’t be the last. With half an hour to kill, she carried on scrolling through everything she could find about the recent spate of killings in the city while she watched the seconds crawl by. Once upon a time losing herself like Alice down the rabbit hole of the internet could have swallowed thirty minutes in the blink of an eye. All she had to do was follow a link, then another that branched off from the first toward something vaguely interesting, and then another, and suddenly half the day was gone. It wasn’t like that now. Now every second dragged and every link offered frustration.

Even so, fifteen minutes had been wasted by the time her phone rang.

Roux’s name flashed on the screen.

“That was quick,” she said, after snatching it up.

“Some things don’t take long to read,” the old man said. His voice had changed in the few minutes since he’d hung up on her. She knew him well enough to know that meant something was wrong.

“Talk to me. What do you think?”

He waited a moment, as though weighing up what, precisely, to say to her. Finally he said, “I think you might be getting caught up in something you don’t understand.” It was blunt and to the point. And it meant there was no way she was walking away from this now. Because, as well as she knew him, the old man knew her, too. He knew exactly what to say to plant the seed that would grow into obsession.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re not the kid-gloves kind of guy. Spill.”

She could hear the smile in his voice. “I was merely observing that this might not be as simple as it seems.”

“And you know what it’s like when you dangle imminent danger in front of me,” Annja said. “I can’t resist.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather your television show had taken you somewhere else, just this once.”