Avengers: Unbreakable
The Avengers and all related characters and settings are the property of Marvel Inc. and their respective affiliates. All rights reserved (by them, not me).
Episode 1: Confluence
Chapter 7
[Previous relevant chapter: 1]
Midtre Halogaland Police Station, Norway
Dr. Donald Blake sat in a metal folding chair before a metal folding table in an otherwise barren white room. The door opened, and in stepped an officer with the Norwegian Police Service. He paused briefly as he entered and made sure Blake saw him smile. Then he closed the door and walked over to stand across the table from him. He carried a thick file. He spoke excellent English, with a Scandinavian accent.
"So Dr. Blake . . . I suppose 'welcome back' would be the proper thing to say, would it not?"
"Or 'thank you,'" Blake replied.
"For what?"
"For finding that staff."
"Ah, of course. And let me guess. Your interest in that staff was purely scholarly, no? You had no intention of selling it on the black market."
"Based on the thickness of that file you're holding, I'd say you already know the answer to that," Blake said.
The official looked down at his file and smiled again. "Yes, let me see . . . Borgefjell National Park last year, Storebjorn Mountain the year before, Raggejavreraige cave before that . . . shall I go on?"
"And how many of the antiquities that I found did I steal?"
"That's because you were caught, was it not?"
"Not always."
"Ah, not always," the official said, smiling again. "But this time you were." He leaned down over the table between them. "Dr. Blake, help me understand . . . . Why does one of the leading cardiac surgeons in the world have such an obsession with ancient Nordic artifacts, eh? Why go climbing around in the caves and mountains of Norway? Shouldn't someone like you be sunning himself on the Riviera or yachting in the Caribbean?"
Blake shook his head. "Norse antiquities interest me, that's all I can say."
"They interest you?" the official said. "Well let me tell you . . . you interest me, Dr. Blake. Fourteen trips to Norway in the past three years, always the same – poking around in caves, hiking into high mountain dells, and occasionally finding something in them, yes, but Dr. Blake . . . they are Norwegian national artifacts. They are ours. Not yours."
"And you wouldn't have even known they were there, right under your noses, if not for my efforts."
"Agreed. At least, we wouldn't have known right then. Eventually someone would have found them. Someone more . . . qualified. You see Dr. Blake, you miss the point. Every time you come to Norway, it's not just that you go looking around for old artifacts. But very often, someone has to go looking for you. If not for our service, you could have been killed a half-dozen times over these last three years."
"A risk I'm willing to take."
"Well I'm not!" the official shot back. "Dr. Blake, I and my service, we grow tired of having to go find you and bring you in time after time. You've become a risk to yourself, you've become a risk to my men. Someday one of them is going to get hurt or killed on an expedition to find you."
"Then stop looking for me," Blake said.
"Yes, that's one way," the official said. "But we have another. A more practical one." He removed from his file Blake's passport. "Dr. Blake, I am sorry, but you have left us no other choice. We are an open and tolerant people, but even we have our limits. Effective immediately, you are banned from any further visits to Norway."
"What!" Blake cried.
"Your passport information has been distributed throughout our immigration network, and if you try to enter Norway again, you will be taken into custody and put back on the next plane, boat, car or train you came in on."
"But you can't do this! My research, all my years of research, will be wasted!"
"Your safety, Dr. Blake. Yours and that of my men. That is my concern, not your research."
"But what about the artifacts I've found?"
"Which again misses the point, Dr. Blake. Eventually one of your little adventures is going to result in me being forced to have an unpleasant conversation with someone's widow or bereaved mother. And that is a scenario that neither I nor my service want to contemplate. No, Dr. Blake, this decision has not been taken rashly nor lightly. And it is final. You have made your last hiking trip into our mountains. You are banned from ever visiting this country again."
The official turned toward the door.
"You know, in a way, it does make me sad to have to do this," he said. "Because whatever it is you were looking for here in our country . . . you will now surely never find it."