by Jo Nesbo
21
Leningrad. 17 January 1944.
A RUSSIAN YAK 1 FIGHTER PLANE THUNDERED OVER Edvard Mosken’s head as he ran along the trench, bent double.
Generally speaking, the fighter planes didn’t do a lot of damage. The Russians seemed to have run out of bombs. The latest thing he had heard was that they had equipped pilots with hand-grenades, which they were trying to lob into the trenches as they flew over.
Edvard had been in the Northern Sector to collect letters for the men and to catch up on the news. The whole autumn had been one long series of depressing reports of losses and retreats all along the Eastern Front. The Russians had recaptured Kiev in November, and in October the German army had narrowly avoided becoming surrounded north of the Black Sea. The situation was not made any easier by Hitler redirecting forces to the Western Front, but the most worrying thing was what Edvard had heard today. Two days ago Lieutenant General Gusev had launched a fierce offensive from Oranienbaum on the southern side of the Finnish Bay. Edvard remembered Oranienbaum because it was a small bridgehead they had passed on the march to Leningrad. They had let the Russians keep it because it had no strategic importance. Now the Ivans had managed to assemble a whole army around the Kronstadt fort in secret, and according to reports Katusha cannons were tirelessly bombarding German positions. The once dense spruce forests had been reduced to firewood. It was true they had heard the music from Stalin’s artillery in the distance for several nights now, but no one had guessed that things were so bad.
Edvard had taken the opportunity during the trip to go to the field hospital to visit one of his men who had lost a foot on a landmine in no man’s land, but the nurse, a tiny Estonian woman with pained eyes in such dark blue sockets that she seemed to be wearing a mask, had only shaken her head and said the German word she had presumably practised most: ‘Tot.’
Edvard must have looked very sorry for himself, because she had tried to cheer him up by pointing to a bed where apparently there was another Norwegian.
‘Leben,’ she had said with a smile. But her eyes were still pained.
Edvard didn’t know the man sleeping in the bed, but when he caught sight of the shiny white leather jacket hanging over the chair, he knew who it was: it was the company commander, Lindvig himself, from Regiment Norge. A legend. And now here he was. He decided he would spare the men this item of news.
Another fighter plane roared over their heads. Where were all these planes suddenly coming from? Last year the Ivans didn’t appear to have any left.
He rounded a corner and saw a stooped Hallgrim Dale standing with his back to him.
‘Dale!’
Dale didn’t move. After a shell had knocked him unconscious last November, Dale didn’t hear so well any more. He didn’t talk much either, and he had the glazed, introverted eyes that men with shell-shock often had. Dale had complained of headaches at first, but the medical orderly who had attended to him said there wasn’t a great deal they could do; they could only wait and see if he recovered. The shortage of fighting men was bad enough without sending healthy ones to the field hospital, he had said.
Edvard put an arm round Dale’s shoulder. Dale swivelled round so suddenly and with such force that Edvard lost his footing on the ice which had become wet and slippery in the sun. At least it’s a mild winter, Edvard thought, and he had to laugh as he lay there on his back, but the laughter died as he looked up into the barrel of Dale’s rifle.
‘Passwort!’ Dale shouted. Over the rifle sights Edvard saw one wide-open eye.
‘Hey, it’s me, Dale.’
‘Passwort!’
‘Move that gun away! It’s me, Edvard, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Passwort!’
‘Gluthaufen.’
Edvard felt panic rising as he saw Dale’s finger curling around the trigger. Couldn’t he hear?
‘Gluthaufen!’ he shouted with all the power in his lungs. ‘For Christ’s sake, Gluthaufen.’
‘Falsch! Ich schieße!’
My God, the man was insane! In a flash Edvard realised they had changed the password that morning. After he had gone to the Northern Sector. Dale’s finger applied pressure to the trigger, but it wouldn’t go any further. He had a strange wrinkle above his eye. Then he released the safety catch and cocked the gun again. Was this how it was going to end? After all he had survived, was he going to die from a bullet fired by a shell-shocked compatriot. Edvard stared into the black muzzle and waited for the jet of flame. Would he actually see it? Jesus Christ. He shifted his gaze past the rifle, into the blue sky above them where a black cross was outlined against the sky, a Russian fighter plane. It was too high up for them to hear. Then he closed his eyes.
‘Engelstimme!’ someone close at hand shouted.
Edvard opened his eyes and saw Dale blink twice behind the sights. It was Gudbrand. He held his head beside Dale’s and yelled in his ear.
‘Engelstimme!’
Dale lowered the rifle. Then he grinned at Edvard and nodded. ‘Engelstimme,’ he repeated.
Edvard closed his eyes again and breathed out. ‘Are there any letters?’ Gudbrand asked.
Edvard struggled to his feet and handed Gudbrand the pile. Dale still had the grin on his lips, but also the same vacant eyes. Edvard grabbed hold of Dale’s gun barrel and stood his face.
‘Is there anyone at home, Dale?’
He had meant to say it in his normal voice, but all that came out was a rough, husky whisper.
‘He can’t hear,’ Gudbrand said, flicking through the letters. ‘I wasn’t aware he was so ill,’ Edvard said, waving a hand in front of Dale’s face.
‘He shouldn’t be here. Here’s a letter from his family. Show it to him, and then you’ll see what I mean.’
Edvard took the letter and held it up in front of Dale’s face, but it evoked no reaction beyond a fleeting smile. Then he resumed his gaping into eternity, or whatever it was his gaze had been attracted by out there.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘He’s had it.’
Gudbrand passed a letter to Edvard. ‘How are things at home?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you know . . .’ Edvard said, staring at the letter.
Gudbrand didn’t know, because he and Edvard hadn’t spoken much since last winter. It was odd, but even here, under these conditions, two people could easily manage to avoid each other if they wanted to enough. Not that Gudbrand disliked Edvard; on the contrary, he respected the Mjøndal man whom he considered a clever person, a brave soldier and supportive to the new, young men in the section. In the autumn they had promoted Edvard to Scharführer, which corresponded to the rank of sergeant in the Norwegian army, but his responsibilities had remained the same. Edvard joked that he had been promoted because all the others were dead, so they had a lot of sergeants’ caps left over.
Gudbrand had often thought that in different circumstances the two of them might have been good friends. However, events the previous winter – Sindre’s desertion and the mysterious reappearance of Daniel’s corpse – had remained an issue between them.
The dull thud of a distant explosion broke the silence, followed by the chatter of machine guns.
‘Opposition’s stiffening,’ Gudbrand said, more as a question than a statement.
‘Yes,’ Edvard said. ‘It’s this damned mild weather. Our supplies lorries are getting stuck in the mud.’
‘Will we have to retreat?’
Edvard hunched his shoulders. ‘A few kilometres perhaps. But we’ll be back.’
Gudbrand shielded his eyes with his hand and looked towards the south. He had no desire to come back. He wanted to return home and see if there was still a life for him there.
‘Have you seen the Norwegian road sign at the crossing outside the field hospital, the one with the sun cross?’ he asked. ‘With one arm pointing down the road to the east, showing: Leningrad five kilometres?’
Edvard nodded.
‘Do you remember what’s on the arm pointing west?’
‘Oslo,’ Edvard said. ‘2,611 kilometres.’
‘It’s a long way.’
‘Yes, it is a long way.’
Dale had allowed Edvard to keep the rifle and sat on the ground with his hands buried in the snow in front of him. His head hung like a snapped dandelion between his narrow shoulders. They heard another explosion, closer this time.
‘Thank you very much for —’
‘Not at all,’ Gudbrand said quickly.
‘I saw Olaf Lindvig in the hospital,’ Edvard said. He didn’t know why he had said that. Maybe because Gudbrand was the only person in the section, apart from Dale, who had been there as long as he had.
‘Was he . . . ?’
‘Just a minor wound, I believe. I saw his white uniform.’
‘He’s a good man, I hear.’
‘Yes, we have many good men.’
They stood facing each other in silence.
Edvard coughed and thrust a hand in his pocket. ‘I got a couple of Russian cigarettes from the Northern Sector. If you’ve got a light . . .’
Gudbrand nodded, unbuttoned his camouflage jacket, found his matches and struck one against the sandpaper. When he looked up, the first thing he saw was Edvard’s enlarged cyclops eye. It was staring over his shoulder. Then he heard the whine.
‘Down!’ Edvard shrieked.
The next moment they were lying on the ice and the sky burst above them with a tearing sound. Gudbrand caught a glimpse of the rudder of a Russian fighter plane flying so low over the trenches that snow whirled up from the ground beneath. Then they were gone and it was quiet again.
‘Well, I’m . . .’ Gudbrand whispered.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Edvard groaned, turning on to his side and smiling at Gudbrand.
‘I could see the pilot. He pulled back the glass and leaned out of the cockpit. The Ivans have gone mad.’ He was panting with laughter. ‘This is turning into a right old day, this is.’
Gudbrand stared at the broken match he still held in his hand. Then he began to laugh too.
‘Ha, ha,’ Dale went, looking at the other two from where he sat in the snow at the side of the trench. ‘Hee, hee.’
Gudbrand caught Edvard’s eye and they both began to roar with laughter. They laughed so much they were gasping for breath and at first they didn’t hear the peculiar sound, coming ever closer.
Clink . . . clink . . .
It sounded like someone patiently hitting the ice with a hoe.
Clink . . .
Then came a sound of metal against metal and Gudbrand and Edvard turned to see Dale slowly keel over in the snow.
‘What the hell —’ Gudbrand started to say.
‘Grenade!’ screamed Edvard.
Gudbrand reacted instinctively to Edvard’s scream and curled into a ball, but as he lay there he caught sight of the pin which was spinning round and round a metre away from him. A lump of metal was attached to one end. He felt his body freezing into the ice as he realised what was about to happen.
‘Move away!’ Edvard screamed behind him.
It was true, the Russian pilots really were throwing hand-grenades from aeroplanes. Gudbrand was on his back and tried to move away, but his arms and legs slipped on the wet ice.
‘Gudbrand!’
The peculiar sound had been the hand-grenade bouncing across the ice into the bottom of the trench. It must have hit Dale right on the helmet!
‘Gudbrand!’
The grenade spun round and round, bounced and danced again, and Gudbrand couldn’t take his eyes off it. Four seconds from defusing to detonation, wasn’t that what they had learned at Sennheim? The Russians’ grenades might be different. Perhaps it was six? Or eight? Round and round the grenade whirled, like one of the big red spinning-tops his father had made him in Brooklyn. Gudbrand would spin it, and Sonny and his little brother stood watching and counting how long it kept going. ‘Twenty-one, twenty-two . . .’ Mummy called from the window on the second floor to say dinner was ready. He was to go in; Daddy would be coming home any minute. ‘Just a minute,’ he shouted up to her, ‘the top’s spinning!’ But she didn’t hear; she had already closed the window. Edvard wasn’t shrieking any more, and all of a sudden it was quiet.
22
Doctor Buer’s Surgery. 22 December 1999.
THE OLD MAN LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. HE HAD BEEN SITTING in the waiting room for a quarter of an hour now. He’d never had to wait in Konrad Buer’s day. Konrad hadn’t taken on more patients than he could manage in his schedule.
A man was sitting at the other end of the room. Dark-skinned, African. He was flicking through a weekly magazine, and the old man established that even at this distance he could read every letter on the front page. Something about the royal family. Was that what this African was sitting reading? An article about the Norwegian royal family? The idea was absurd.
The African turned the page. He had the type of moustache that went down at the ends, just like the courier the old man had met the previous night. It had been a brief meeting. The courier had arrived at the container port in a Volvo, probably a rented car. He had pulled up, the window had gone down with a hum and he had said the password: Voice of an Angel. He had had exactly the same kind of moustache. And sorrowful eyes. He had immediately said he didn’t have the gun with him in the car for security reasons, but that they would drive to a place to get it. The old man had hesitated. Then he thought that if they had wanted to rob him, they would have done so at the container port. So he had got in and they had driven to the Radisson SAS hotel, of all places, in Holbergs plass. He had seen Betty Andresen behind the counter as they went through reception, but she had not looked in their direction.
The courier had counted the money in the suitcase while mumbling numbers in German. Then the old man had asked him. The courier had said that his parents came from some place in Elsass, to which the old man said, on a whim, that he had been there, to Sennheim. An impulse.
After he had read so much about the Märklin rifle on the Internet at the University Library, the weapon itself had been something of an anticlimax. It looked like a standard hunting rifle, only a little bigger. The courier had shown him how to assemble it and strip it; he called him ‘Herr Uriah’. Then the old man put the dismantled rifle into a large shoulder-bag and took the lift down to reception. For a brief moment he had considered going over to Betty Andresen and asking her to order a taxi for him. Another impulse.
‘Hello!’
The old man looked up. ‘I think we’ll have to give you a hearing test as well.’
Dr Buer stood in the doorway and made an attempt at a jovial smile. He led him into the surgery. The bags under the doctor’s eyes had become even bigger.
‘I called your name three times.’
I forget my name, the old man reflected. I forget all my names.
The old man deduced from the doctor’s helping hand that he had bad news.
‘Well, I’ve got the results of the samples we took,’ he said, quickly, before he had settled into his chair. To get the bad news over and done with as fast as possible. ‘And I’m afraid it has spread.’
‘Of course it’s spread,’ the old man said. ‘Isn’t that what cancer cells do? Spread?’
‘Ha, ha. Yes, it is.’ Dr Buer brushed an invisible speck of dust off the desk.
‘Cancer is like us,’ the old man said. ‘It just does what it has to do.’
‘Yes,’ Dr Buer said. He looked relaxed in a forced way, in his slumped sitting position.
‘Like you, doctor. You just do what you have to do.’
‘You’re so right, so right.’ Dr Buer smiled and put on his glasses. ‘We’re still considering chemotherapy. It would weaken you, but it could prolong . . . um . . .’
‘My life?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long have I got left without chemo?’
Buer’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘A little less than we had first assumed.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that the cancer has spread from the liver via the blood stream to —’
‘For Christ’s sake, will you just tell me how long.’
Dr Buer gaped blankly.
‘You hate this job, don’t you?’ the old man said. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing. A date, please.’
‘It’s impossible to —’
Dr Buer jumped in his chair as the old man’s fist hit the desktop so hard that the telephone receiver leapt off the cradle. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when he saw the old man’s quivering forefinger. Then he sighed, took off his glasses and ran a tired hand over his face.
‘This summer. June, perhaps earlier. August at the latest.’
‘Great,’ the old man said. ‘That’ll do fine. Pain?’
‘Can come at any time. You’ll be given medicine.’
‘Will I be able to function?’
‘Hard to say. Depends on the pain.’
‘I must have medicine that enables me to function. It’s important. Do you understand?’
‘All painkillers —’
‘I can take a lot of pain. I simply need something to keep me conscious so that I can think and act rationally.’
Happy Christmas. That was the last thing Dr Buer had said. The old man stood on the steps. At first he hadn’t understood why the city was so full of people, but once he had been reminded of the imminent religious festival he saw the panic in the eyes of people dashing along the pavements in search of last-minute Christmas presents. Some shoppers had gathered round a pop group playing in Egerstorget. A man wearing a Salvation Army uniform was going round with a collection box. A junkie stamped his feet in the snow, his eyes flickering like stearin candles about to go out. Two teenage girls, arm in arm, passed him, rosy-cheeked and bursting with stories to tell about boys and expectations of their lives to come. And the candles. There were candles in every damned window. He raised his face to the Oslo sky; a warm, golden dome of reflected light from the city. My God, how he longed for her. Next Christmas, he thought. Next Christmas we will celebrate together, my darling.