The Seventh Child Read Online Free PDF

Day.
    The letter had arrived at the Ministry of National Affairs, or National Ministry as it was called for short, by regular mail in the wee hours of the morning. The long blue envelope was placed in the stack of mail in the enormous reception room, which since olden days (back when the National Ministry was still called the Ministry of the Interior) had been known as the Palace. And there it remained until 7:30 a.m. when the office manager arrived.
    She didn’t have long to consider the letter’s peculiar appearance—it bulged, as though a piece of cloth or a deflated ball were inside—because her boss, the chief of staff, was already turning on all the machines in the office.
    Orla Berntsen usually began his mornings with a few moments of meditation, breathing calmly in the half-awake ministry. The office manager wondered if this ritual was simply a way for him to catch his breath after bicycling through Copenhagen traffic—or perhaps because he was thinking of his wife and two daughters whom he’d not seen for nearly two months. But because he never talked about himself, no one knew.
    The guard at the gate had informed him that morning that the minister of national affairs was at the Ministry of State but that, as always, he would assume his place at the table at precisely 9:00 a.m. As usual, the chief of staff dropped his bike clips in the round ashtray that bore the ministry’s monogram, and, wetting his fingertips, flattened the creases of his pants before sitting down.
    He wasn’t a morning person, and he wasn’t an athlete: his obsession with cycling was a result of the government’s environmental PR scheme meticulously designed by the Witch Doctor (the nickname given the newly minted PR chief in the afterglow of the unexpected and legendary 2001 election). “We need to demonstrate our concern for the earth’s climate and for the Danish environment in concrete ways!” he had said. And within a few months, the fervor gripped every top politician and high-ranking official, whether voluntarily or not. Throughout the spring of 2008, the faint odor of sweat and deodorant hung in the air, especially early in the morning, and, in the case of the chief of staff, especially around his shoulders and neck.
    As evident by Orla Berntsen’s rare media appearances—rare because he detested such appearances—he was cut from a large, square gray cloth. Thickset, wearing a gray suit and a gray checkered tie, he wasn’t much to look at when hunched over his vast Brazilian rosewood desk. Out his window he had a view of a gorgeously landscaped courtyard in which the gardener had erected a small fountain. A beautifully carved snake rose impressively from the fountain’s center in the shape of the letter S , spouting a blue cloud of water into the sky. In calm weather, the column of water reached so high that it caught the rays of the sun and formed a rainbow spanning several rooftops, and gave the illusion that the various wings of the ministry were connected via a colorful bridge.
    The chief of staff turned away from the window. The view reminded him of days he didn’t care to think about now, days sitting under the rain-drenched trees in the neighborhood he’d hated as a child.
    Instead he turned to the stack of mail that had been placed on his desk. On the top of the pile was the odd blue envelope that would come to cause so much harm. The moment his fingers touched the envelope he sniffled involuntarily, as though anticipating events impossible to imagine.
    Given the acts of terror unleashed on New York, Madrid, and London, the letter probably should have been handed over to a bomb squad. But in its ongoing confrontation with the many terrorist and fundamentalist forces threatening Denmark, the administration had constructed an important and effective image of fearlessness.
    For seven years, the National Ministry had efficiently enforced refugee and immigration policies, in addition to upholding its mission to