God Of Thunder

“Not me,” Annja said stubbornly. “I’ve had a few other offers.”

“I’m sure you have,” Doug said good-naturedly. “But we both know that if you had someone else who would give you the budget this show does you’d have departed with a smile on your face that day.”

Annja sighed. It was true.

“Look, I know this stinks. I’ll be the first to agree with you. But, like it or not, we’re stuck with the shark.”

“But we’re not stuck with the wooden shark carved out of driftwood and painted with airplane paint,” Annja said.

“Right. We’re not stuck with that one. Annja, I’m asking you to come in tomorrow so we can recut the segment. I need some voice-overs for the new shark segments.”

“Oohs and aahs and a bloodcurdling scream or two?”

“I thought that was too much to ask for, but if you’re willing to—”

“Doug,” Annja interrupted.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“I figured you were just leading me on. That’s okay. You’ve got a few shots coming. I don’t hold it against you.” Doug cleared his throat. “We’re gonna have to deal with the computer-generated shark. It’s going to happen. But I’d like to save as much as we can of what you want to show.”

“This really stinks.”

“It’s a fact of life. Gigantic killer sharks are a lot more interesting than Caboosa Indians.”

“Calusa.”

“That proves my point. People will remember the shark. I remember the shark more than I remember the Indians.”

“You know,” Annja said sarcastically, “maybe you should tell the marketing guys the shark was really an alien robot that disguised itself as a shark.”

“And it can take other forms? Like a Transformer?” Doug perked up and Annja knew she’d made a mistake. “That’s totally cool. Man, they’d go crazy over that.”

“Doug?”

“Yeah?”

“No Transformers.”

“I’m telling you, you should rethink that.”

“No.”

“All right. Are you coming in tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you don’t, Editing will do the cuts without you.”

Annja didn’t want to deal with that. It would just be an exercise in frustration. She focused on Mario Fellini. “Did Mario leave a number where he could be reached?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I couldn’t understand his message.”

“He sent you a message? I thought you talked to him.”

“I did talk to him. He spoke English when he talked to me. When he left a message on your answering service here at the—”

Annja broke the connection and dialed the studio number, quickly going through the electronic filters to get to her voice mail. She should have remembered it, but she never used it.

Only occasionally did she even go through the messages. Usually they were spam. Most of the people she had contact with, including fans of the show, used her e-mail addresses.

A few exchanges later, she had the message and triggered the playback.

5

“Hey, Annja. This is Mario Fellini. Don’t know if you remember me, but we worked Hadrian’s Wall together a few years ago.” Fellini spoke his native Italian.

Despite the tension of the situation, Annja couldn’t help smiling as she thought of him. Mario had always carried boyish charm with him and he wasn’t forgettable.

Then Annja remembered the woman who had called. She wondered who Erene Skujans was to Mario.

“I got your number from a professional list,” Mario went on. “Seems you aren’t listed in the White Pages anymore.” He laughed at that.

There was a reason for that, Annja thought. Her life had been crazy dealing with the television show even before she’d inherited Joan of Arc’s sword.

“You’ve gone off and gotten famous.”

Despite the good-natured and relaxed tone Mario had in his voice, Annja also detected tension. It sounded as if he was calling from a street pay phone. She heard traffic in the background.

That meant that even if the studio had Caller ID on her line or kept track of the incoming calls, the number she got wouldn’t help.

But calling from a public pay phone didn’t make sense unless Mario was trying to hide.

From Agent Smith and his fun boys? Annja wondered. Or was someone else involved? Maybe a woman with a sexy voice?

“I see you all the time,” Mario said. “I ordered the Chasing History’s Monsters DVDs and I’ve started recording the show. It’s good stuff. I don’t know how you work under those conditions, though. And I have to admit, that other woman gets on my nerves.”

But do you have one of her posters? Annja wondered. She’d met professors of archaeology who had Kristie Chatham posters on their office walls. A few museum curators in Florida had them as screen savers on their computers.

“You’re probably surprised to hear from me,” Mario continued. “Or maybe now that you’re famous, you’re getting calls all the time from old associates.”

The traffic noise in the background shifted, and Annja imagined Mario looking around for anyone who might be watching him.