The Mortality Principle (6 page)

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.”

“So, what do they say?”

“Ostensibly they cover a spate of murders in the Czech capital, and the journalist who wrote these articles—Jan Turek—has found a way of linking them to the legend of the golem. But this, I suspect, you already know.”

“I do. It's why I sent you them.”

“Almost everything in Prague can be linked to the legend in some way, Annja. It is a city filled with hidden dangers. Most of the time they stay hidden, but every now and then one of them finds its way out into the daylight.”

“What does it say, Roux? I'm a big girl. I can look after myself.”

“Just that Turek believes some ancient evil has stirred. I want you to promise me you won't do anything stupid, Annja.”

“I can't promise that,” she said, trying her best to sound light and breezy rather than like some petulant teenager. “Anyway, it's not like I'm on my own.”

“I don't think that cameraman of yours is likely to be much help.”

“I'm not talking about Lars. Garin turned up this morning.”

“Garin? What on earth is he doing there?” Roux asked. Annja noted the change in his voice. It was more than just the mention of Garin's name. Maybe, she surmised, it was even part of the reason why he was here in Prague.

“Did he say why he wanted to see you?” Roux asked, following an identical train of thought.

“No. He made out that he was bored. And to be brutally honest, he seemed intent on relieving that boredom with the waitress who served us breakfast.” She expected some kind of response from Roux, some barbed comment about the younger man's proclivities, some damning indictment of his lifestyle. None came.

Instead, he said, “If we're going to do this, we're going to do it properly. I'm coming. Don't go out after sunset. I'll be there in a few hours.”

“Roux?” Something really had him spooked. “You don't have to.”

“I do. Believe me. There are things about that city you don't understand. Ancient forces. Evil. I am not leaving you alone there.”

“Okay, Roux, now you're scaring me.”

“Good. It's good to be scared.”

“Should I warn Garin?”

“He went there with his eyes open. He almost certainly knows what these murders mean. He isn't a fool, and to use one of your own rather eloquent turns of phrase, he's big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself. I have a few things to take care of, but I'll be with you before sunrise. In the meantime, do not go out after dark. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Annja said, knowing it was a promise she was absolutely going to break, but promising it, anyway.

He hung up on her again. Twice within the hour, now that was almost a record.

What had gotten him so spooked? Ancient evil, dark forces. He wasn't prone to talk like that. So what was so bad it would bring him running? And why no concern for Garin's well-being? There was something she wasn't being told and she didn't like that. She didn't like it at all. While she was the first to admit that she had a habit of getting into scrapes, she had something none of her enemies had: Joan of Arc's sword. She didn't need a bodyguard. All she had to do was to reach out into the otherwhere and close her hand around the reassuring familiarity of the hilt and it was there.

The sword had been reforged after so many years shattered, Roux having scoured the four corners of the Earth to find the shards of metal. That was how this had all begun so many years ago. It wasn't a blacksmith who had healed the wounded blade—and yes, she'd come to think of the sword as something very much alive—she had done it, with nothing more than her bare hands.
Garin had been there, as had Roux. They'd all been in this together from that moment on, despite some hiccups along the way.

Roux hadn't exactly told her not to talk to Garin, only that he could look after himself. There was no way that she was going to stay cooped up in the hotel room. She thought about checking in with Garin, see if he wanted to do a patrol of the streets, try to shake something loose, but decided to call Lars, her cameraman, to warn him that he wouldn't be getting a lot of sleep later.

“We're going monster hunting,” she said when he answered.

“Now?”

“After sundown.”

Lars Mortensen sounded like his head was still somewhere up in Stockholm, his home base. When she'd settled on Prague for the segment, she'd reached out to a few of the cameramen she'd worked with in the region. Lars, who had been with her during their coverage of the Beowulf dig in Skalunda Barrow a couple of years back, jumped at the chance to work with her again. He'd told her he'd meet her under the astronomical clock in twenty-four hours, and like the punctual guy he was, he'd been waiting there for her twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes later.

“When you say monsters, you mean?”

“We've got a segment to tape.”

“Excellent. I've been getting antsy kicking my heels here all day.”

She laughed at that. “I don't know if you've been watching the news, but there's a killer on the loose in the city and we didn't even know about it.”

The penny dropped. “Are you out of your mind? There's a lunatic out there and you
want
us to go looking for him? I thought we were here to shoot a segment about the golem.”

“We are. But it's not quite that simple,” she said. “There's a journalist who seems to think that there's a link to the golem.”

“You mean like it's the golem doing the killing kind of link? Or some kind of homage?”

“I don't know. I want to talk to him, but that means finding him, and the best link I've got is that he's living on the street right now. He's been covering the story since it began, living among the people who are the most vulnerable.”

“You mean he's sleeping outside when there's a killer who's preying on the homeless? That's one crazy mofo.”

“He's certainly dedicated to the truth,” Annja said.

“And you want us to go out into his hunting ground? Are you planning on painting a target on our backs, as well?”

“Nothing so risky. I just want to poke about a bit.”

“I remember the last time you just wanted to poke about, Annja. Just promise me no burning churches this time.”

“We'll be fine,” Annja said, trying to reassure him even though she remembered all too vividly what had happened the last time they'd gone out on a shoot together. How could she forget? She really hated fire.

She didn't
have
to take him out on this little recce, but given what she had in mind for the live show, grabbing some footage of the homeless on the streets of Prague might just be useful filler, assuming the program
came together the way she wanted it to. It certainly wouldn't hurt.

“I'll hold you to that. Just tell me what time you want me and I'll be there.”

“I always want you,” Annja said, deliberately flirting with the Swede. They enjoyed a good bit of lighthearted banter. It helped to take her mind off what they were about to do, and that was not a bad thing. “There's no point in heading out before dark, and this place doesn't feel like it slows down even then. All the shops around the Charles Bridge are still open, selling their tourist crap, so we're looking at a late night. Probably after eleven. Turek, the journalist, is almost certainly going to be tucked up in bed until then, but if I hear from him earlier I'll let you know.”

“He knows you're trying to get hold of him?”

“I left a message with the newspaper that's been running his stories, and they promised to reach out to him. Who knows?”

“Well, if that's the case I may just continue my sightseeing tour. First stop, I think, the House of the Black Madonna, the cubist café. Might even catch a movie after that. Someone mentioned an English theater in town.”

“Knock yourself out.”

The rest of the day passed slowly.

The hotel lobby filled and emptied, filled and emptied, all walks of life seeming to drift through the atrium and yet it maintained its sense of calm. She could imagine the monks all those years ago shuffling through the same chambers, heads bowed in quiet contemplation. There was a conference in town, medical supplies by the sounds of the jargon being bandied about by the participants as they tried to one-up one another with jokes and punch lines that made no sense to Annja.

By early evening she was finally starting to feel hungry. She thought about calling room service, but the menu was fairly unappetizing and she had an entire city at her disposal. She'd heard about a place down by the river where the intellectuals and artists used to gather that had become a hive of secret activity during the revolution and now was renown for cheap good-quality eats in an authentic environment. It was proper precapitalism Prague, and it was only a five-minute walk away along one of the wider boulevards. Nothing was going to happen at five-thirty, she told herself, and ventured out in search of food.

Shop windows with words she couldn't read
emblazoned across them shone invitingly at one end of the street and were boarded up at the other. She saw young women walking in groups, laughing, and young men behind them, studious with book bags slung over their shoulders and earnest expressions behind their black plastic-framed glasses. She heard snatches of conversation in English about Kafka and a church around the corner that they were sure was featured in one of his stories. Those strands of intellectualism were cut across by more mundane chatter, including the fact that some website had gone down. What she didn't hear was anyone talking about the murders.

The restaurant itself was the last building on the street, with huge plate-glass windows looking out over the Vltava. Inside, soft lighting from huge chandeliers gave the impression of opulence that was contradicted almost immediately by the tables beneath them, which looked like they would have been at home in a greasy spoon in the Bowery.

She sat at a table by the window, with a great view of the castle on the hill, and watched as one by one the stars came out. She asked the waiter what he'd recommend, something local, authentic Czech cuisine. He came back with a sampler filled with all sorts of peculiarities. She had no idea what she was putting into her mouth. Some of it was delicious, some of it wasn't.

The meal killed another hour, the leisurely coffee after it another thirty minutes. Annja was good when it came to keeping her own company. She didn't need to hide herself in a book, either. She was just content to simply
be
. To sit, gazing out of the window at the world as it passed by. To think.

And tonight she was thinking about Roux and Garin.

There was obviously something going on between the pair of them again. They were like a couple of teenage girls sometimes. She wanted to bang their heads together. But Roux was right: Garin's simply turning up this morning was uncharacteristic even if he tried to pass it off as boredom. Very little Garin Braden did was without some underlying cause, and that cause only ever benefited Garin Braden. That was just the way of the world. It was hard to be angry with him for it. It was who he was. You might as well be angry with the wasp for stinging you or the milk for expiring. To quote the motivational poster: shit happens.

By the time Annja headed back to the hotel, the sun was a thing of the past, and the sky was verging on black. Cities were a different animal at night. Streets that had felt safe even just an hour earlier had a hostile undercurrent once the moon ruled the sky.