Assignment - Black Viking Read Online Free Page A

disappeared, as you know. Eric and he lived on the Baltic coast up north. A dismal and not very interesting land in winter. But Eric insists he can best recreate the world of the first millennium there.” “Charming,” Durell said.
    “We will go there, to Skelleftsvik, after Stockholm, to learn more about Uncle Peter’s disappearance. They say we must hurry—the weather up north is disastrous, just now. When we get there, you must not be surprised at anything Eric does. He has reconstructed an old Viking home, where he lives, and even has a Viking ship and swords and shields—oh, it is harmless enough, but sometimes a little—barbaric.”
    “Does Eric know we’re coming?”
    “No.”
    “Do you think Peter Gustaffson is still alive?”
    Her blue eyes grew sober. “Well, that is the whole thing. No one heard anything from him for months. Then Uncle Eric got a letter from him. It was not postmarked; it was delivered by hand. A man from the far North came down to deliver it, a trapper and fur hunter in Lapland. It was in Peter’s handwriting, and it simply told him— Eric—not to worry about him, that he was safe and well and—busy.”
    “ ‘Busy.’ ” Durell met her serious eyes. “Did Peter say with what?”
    “No.”
    “And how did this trapper get the message?”
    “He said he met some men on the ice—they were lost, he thought, and he wanted to help them, but they drove him off. But one of them came after him—it was snowing, and the one who came after him was not seen by the others—and gave him the letter.”
    “Was there anything in it besides simple good wishes and ‘I’m-well, wish-you-were-here?’ sort of thing?”
    Sigrid said: “It ended with ‘God forgive me.’ ”
    Durell was silent.
    Then he asked: “Did this trapper say anything more about the others in the party on the ice?”
    “Yes.” Sigrid drank her coffee, paused a moment, then looked up at Durell. “He said they were all Chinese.”

    They walked back to the Black Swan Inn along the banks of the Minnewater, under the copper beeches reflected in the still surface of the Lake of Love. It was peaceful and sunny now, the air a sudden soft caress perfumed by springtime flowers growing in their beds near the Baguinage. The Minnewater was a calm and reflective ornament for Bruges, a place for swans and willows and the ornate facades of Flemish houses in the distance. Cathedral bells rang softly as the sun sent warm shafts of light through the newly budded leaves of the beech trees.
    “My superiors at Desk Five,” Sigrid said suddenly, “are most disturbed. We have our traditional neutrality to maintain, and the balance of our relations with the Soviet Union is always subject to sudden and unpredictable pressures. It was with great reluctance that they assigned me to work with you on this strange matter. . . . Do you believe that?”
    “That, and about the weather?”
    “Yes. All this sense of impending catastrophe, this brooding feeling that was so contagious among those men at the conference—intelligent, rational men whose judgment is respected everywhere. It seems so—-so unreal.” “The phenomena need to be explained. Was your Uncle Peter so advanced in his research that his brain could be picked to achieve such a thing?”
    “He is a genius,” Sigrid replied simply. “And I wonder why you speak of him as if he were dead.”
    “Do you think he is, Sigrid? After all, there is the letter you say was received. It could be phony.”
    “I don’t know. I cannot think of it as possible—that Peter is dead. We Swedes tend to be too morbid, you know. It would be just too terrible to contemplate, if such a disaster came about.”
    He took her arm as they turned toward his inn along the bank of the canal. “Maybe we can uncover something between us to cheer us up,” he grinned.
    She nodded abstractedly. “Do we go back to the Vesper now?”
    “As soon as I check some things at the inn. McFee ordered some special