The Historians

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  He found the path and ran faster.

  Behind him, the thrumming of horse’s hooves. If he stayed on the path, the horse would run him down.

  There was a smaller trail, a funnel into the trees.

  He took it.

  Next thing, he was lying on the ground facedown and someone was sitting on him, his arms pressed to his side by the person’s legs.

  “I’ve got him!”

  A boy’s voice. Jubilant. Taneli tried to turn, to fight, but he was caught.

  “Good work,” the man said.

  It was over. It was all over.

  The boy turned Taneli over and hoisted him up. Holding his arms behind his back, he forced Taneli to face the man with the empty eyes. Taneli was wriggling, but it was to no avail.

  The man was smiling. “You’re mine now.”

  Then another man’s voice. “Let him go.”

  On the path behind the man with the empty eyes, also on a horse, was the director.

  The man with the empty eyes seemed to growl. “Director.” He pulled out a weapon: a revolver? But he couldn’t . . .

  There was a shot, and Sandler fell heavily off his horse. It sounded like a sack of grain falling to the ground. His mount neighed and ran down the path headed for the town.

  He had killed him!

  Taneli wanted to scream but nothing came out. He had killed the mine director!

  The boy had loosened his grasp on Taneli’s arms as if he, too, was shocked at what had just happened.

  The man turned to face them. He was still smiling. “The director made himself a target,” he said.

  A target? He was the director!

  Then, suddenly, the man’s horse let out a high-pitched neigh and reared up, its front legs kicking the air. The rider wasn’t expecting it and fell backward. The horse set off down the path, galloping, dragging the empty-eyed man behind it, his foot caught in the stirrup.

  The boy behind Taneli let go of him and set off running down the narrow path, leaving behind Taneli, Sandler, and Olet, who appeared out of the bush, bow and arrow in hand.

  “You shot his horse,” Taneli whispered. He felt feverish.

  Olet was bending over Sandler.

  “He’s alive,” he said, “but he needs help.”

  The boys carried the director through the forest. He was very heavy. They had to stop often, rest his body on the ground, and then lift him up again. There was a wound in his chest. There was a lot of blood. A spreading scarlet patch on his shirt.

  “We’ll take him to his house,” Olet said. “They can call for the doctor.”

  “You saved me,” Taneli said. “You saved us.”

  Olet didn’t respond.

  They struggled on with their burden. Sandler’s legs were slipping out of Taneli’s grip. His lower back hurt. “I need to rest,” he said. They lay the body down again. “I just wanted it to be true,” Taneli said.

  “I know,” Olet said.

  “But he knew things about Javanna. Things he couldn’t have known unless she told him.”

  The man who shot the director, Taneli thought. He is the one who told Áslat these things. He is the one who has Javanna.

  At Sandler’s villa, they knocked. The housekeeper opened the door. She screamed when she saw the director’s body on the steps.

  “We found him in the forest,” Olet said. “He needs a doctor.”

  They made to leave just as the director came to. His hand shot out and grabbed Taneli’s arm.

  The stable hand had arrived, standing at the foot of the stairs. He and the housekeeper were both looking at Taneli.

  The director’s hand was still clutching Taneli’s arm.

  Olet was backing out through the garden, shaking his head.

  34.

  Laura

  How would you go about creating a religion that you yourself could believe in?

  Their whole last year at university, 1939, had been spent debating this. What would it take for them to become passionate believers in something?

  Laura was on the train to Uppsala, remembering. What had seemed impossible in the beginning had become easier.

  “So, we just . . . invent a God?” Erik had asked, early on.

  It had been a bitter January. Rain followed by more rain. Nobody wanted to go out and they spent the evenings in Laura’s apartment. On the radio, Hitler was giving a speech. The man’s voice was intimate and yet strong. They all spoke German and it was fascinating to listen to him.

  “Any better idea?” Laura grumbled. Erik had landed them in this spot in the first place.

  “The obvious elements,” Karl-Henrik said. “A common belief system; stories and myths supporting those beliefs; rituals . . . Religion has to be organized to survive . . .”

  “A creation story, a quest for salvation, the end of times,” Erik reeled off. “All religions are basically the same.”

  “This feels bizarre,” Britta said.

  “All gods were made up,” Karl-Henrik pointed out.

  Interesting, Laura thought. They all claimed to be atheists, yet to think that God in the Bible had been made up felt sacrilegious.

  “How about we don’t invent anything new, but we take Asatru and see what would be needed for us to buy into it?” Karl-Henrik said. “After all, that was the question: What would it take for you to believe?”

  “Why Asatru?” Britta asked.

  “Why not? We know it pretty well by now.”

  “I’ll never believe,” Erik muttered.

  Behind him, Hitler’s voice on the radio was building: “It was nearly two thousand years before the scattered Germanic tribes emerged as one people; before the countless lands and states forged one Reich.

  “We may now consider this process of the formation of the German nation as having reached its conclusion. The creation of the Greater German Reich represents the culmination of our Volk’s thousand-year struggle for existence.”

  They had all fallen still, listening.

  “Regardless of how you feel about him, admit it—he is hugely inspiring,” Britta said.

  “But why?” Karl-Henrik said. “What about him do people find inspiring? Why do we?”

  “National pride . . . There’s this sense they could achieve anything.”

  “Superiority,” Britta said. “Of Germany, of their race. Patriotism. You want to be a part of it.”

  “It’s all feelings. No ideology,” Erik muttered.

  “It works,” Matti said. “He’s playing strongly both into the past and the future for the German people—it has to work.”

  “He’s rewriting history,” Britta said.

  “Indeed,” Matti said. “And they believe him.”

  “I think that’s it,” Karl-Henrik said slowly.

  “What?”

  “What if, in Asatru, the element of race was stronger? The Nordic race and the superiority of the same.”

  “Nah, wouldn’t do it for me.” Erik said.

  “Sure, it would,” Karl-Henrik said. “What if Asatru was better at defining a community and got believers to swear complete allegiance to one another, their territory and to Asatru? Don’t you think that could get you going?”

  “You, too, could become a Viking?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That could be interesting,” Laura said, hesitating. “But it’s not enough. People need a quest. A calling.”

  “Yes! You build up the elements around the chosen ones, their intrinsic superiority, and . . .”

  “And?”

  “Their inherent right to rule.”

  “And then whip up enough emotion to get them to act,” Britta said, thoughtfully. “A glorious, firebrand leader.”

  “Manipulation,” Erik said.

  “All religion is manipulation,” Karl-Henrik pointed out.

  “You’ll need a threat.”

  “Easy. Whatever threatens the superior race.”

  Matti had a strange look on his face. “What?” Laura aske
d.

  “Do you think that’s what he’s doing?”

  “Who?”

  “Hitler. Creating a religion.”

  “Of course it is,” Karl-Henrik said. “He already has. You just have to listen to the broadcast.”

  “Fucking clown,” Erik said.

  LAURA’S VISIT TO the student administration office came up empty. While she knew Andreas came from Blackåsen, the administrator had no address or details for his next of kin.

  “Don’t they live in . . . groups?” one of the office staff asked.

  “And they travel, don’t they?” her colleague added. “They don’t have homes.”

  Laura didn’t know. But Andreas’s studies had been sponsored by the church. She remembered Britta talking about a priest up north. “Not my type, but he did do some good,” she’d said.

  She was mighty lucky, the housekeeper at the vicarage told her. The archbishop was in town. Laura walked across the cobblestone square to the cathedral. The sun was hot, and she took off her cardigan, folded it over her arm. She glanced at the Historical Society as she passed it and shuddered.

  Her shoes made tapping sounds on the stone floor. She remembered an occasion during their university days, when she was looking for Erik; another student had told her he was inside the cathedral, and she had found him in the nave, standing gazing up at the arched ceiling by von Linné’s grave.

  “What are you doing?” she’d asked.

  “Worshipping,” he’d said, turning to face her, his glassy eyes widening as if surprised. He’d reeked of beer.

  It seemed funny now. At the time, though, she’d felt she had to get him out of there as soon as possible.

  It was cool in the church and Laura put her cardigan back on.

  The archbishop had a tiny smile on his face. He was dressed in a black robe and wore a large silver cross on his chest. His hands were large and looked soft. “You would like to know the whereabouts of a Sami student?”

  Their voices sounded strange in the cathedral: muted and echoey at the same time.

  She didn’t think he recognized her from the nachspiel. But then, years had passed. She wondered how he would feel if he knew that his talk at the nachspiel had inspired them all to become pagans?

  “He was sponsored by the local church to study here. He is a friend. I think he might be in trouble. He might have traveled home. I’d like to offer him my help.”

  It’s a fine balance, she thought. Honest, but not too honest.

  “He’s a friend? Of yours?” He raised his brows.

  She nodded and looked down on her shoes.

  “Well then,” he said. “We can call the local priest, if you like. After all, caring for the smallest among us is a Christian duty.”

  She waited while he spoke with the operator and got connected. Someone on the other end answered and the two exchanged pleasantries. It must be a shock to a local priest when the archbishop called, she thought.

  He covered the receiver with his hand. “What was the name of your friend?”

  “Andreas Lundius Lappo.”

  The archbishop repeated the name. He had a soft, black leather book that he wrote in while the priest spoke. When they were finished, they said goodbye.

  “He knows the boy well,” he told Laura. “He said he’s bright. He comes from one of the local groups. They spend the summers up in the high mountains and then come closer to Blackåsen during the wintertime. But he says the boy hasn’t returned home. He hasn’t come to visit the church.”

  It didn’t mean much, Laura thought. Andreas might not have wanted to be seen in town.

  “I appreciate you trying,” she said.

  “I hope you manage to locate him,” the archbishop said.

  She had never given Andreas the time of day. But I will find him, she thought, and then I will.

  JUST LIKE LAST time, she found Inspector Ackerman in his office at his desk. He seemed surprised to see her. Surprised—and something else.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “My friend, Britta . . .”

  He rose and closed the door behind her. “I’ve been taken off the case. The Security Services are managing it now.”

  She thought of the two men who had come to her home. “What happened?”

  “Yesterday, some jerk from the foreign ministry called and asked if I had arrested the killer. Next thing I know, these two men show up and say I’m no longer working on the case. They didn’t want to know the details . . . didn’t ask if I had found anything out. I tried to tell them about her Sami friend, Andreas, who disappeared after her murder and who is a person of interest. I don’t think they even listened. They just took my papers, told me my involvement was over and left.”

  “They blew up my flat,” she said, uncertain who “they” were. Shadows, she thought.

  He scrunched up his mouth. “I’ve also been accused of fraud. An anonymous letter.”

  “Fraud?”

  He shrugged. “I have a feeling that you cannot be involved with this matter and get away unscathed.” He looked at her, his forehead lifted into a hundred wrinkles and a tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Don’t worry. It’s not the first time I’ve been in trouble.”

  KARL-HENRIK’S LIVING ROOM was full of paper. Handwritten notes on the sofa, on the table, on the floor. Just like old times.

  “I see you’ve started,” Laura said. She smiled.

  “I got lucky,” Karl-Henrik said. “I found a Norwegian who used to work for the State Institute for Racial Biology in administration. He’s seen the correspondence the institute undertakes, the meeting logs . . . He’s a gold mine, though he doesn’t know it. I ask questions and he says he has no idea, and then he still answers.” Karl-Henrik laughed, a rasping sound.

  “And he’s willing to spend time with you, answering questions?”

  “They feel guilty,” Karl-Henrik said, lightly.

  Seeing Karl-Henrik’s wounds must crush those who’d fled, she thought. It must remind them of what others had sacrificed.

  “It’s amazing, Laura,” Karl-Henrik said and held out a paper with circles and lines on it for her to see. “This institute has its arms going everywhere. Everywhere! The more I look, the more there is. There are anthropology committees, the Institute for Legal Genetics . . . but then there are links to the universities, to the museums, to hospitals—even the Royal Academy of Fine Arts! And then you look at the individuals who are connected to it. They are all prominent: businessmen, politicians. I know race is a widespread concern of the times. I just didn’t know how . . . organized it would feel.”

  She thought of the archbishop’s black book.

  “The church?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he responded and pointed to a black circle on his paper.

  Them, too.

  “Erik was here,” Karl-Henrik said.

  “Yes?”

  “I sent him off to look into the Danish side of things. The Danes have also been pretty active.”

  Where would Erik get his information? Most likely from the Danes hiding out in Stockholm.

  “Did you have any luck in finding out where Andreas has gone?” Karl-Henrik asked.

  Laura shook her head. “He hasn’t been seen up north. Perhaps he doesn’t want to be seen. Perhaps he’s hiding.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “I’m going to go there,” she said, the idea becoming reality as she spoke the words. “I want to find Andreas and speak to Britta’s family.”

  There was a glow about Karl-Henrik amid all his papers. He loved this. Digging into a mystery, following a trail. Then she remembered Erik, back at university, saying that Loki, the trickster god, was following them. She thought about her night visitor in her Uppsala apartment.

  “Be careful,” she said to Karl-Henrik. “If you feel you’re being watched, let me know.”

  Not that she knew what she’d do about it.

  “I’ve been saying that I’m wor
king on a project for Professor Lindahl.” Karl-Henrik smiled. “That seems to go down well with everyone.”

  WHEN SHE CAME home, Emil Persson called. “Funny business,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The bomb in your apartment. Nobody wants to admit it happened. And your friend died, too.”

  “Yes. Yes, she did.”

  Laura hesitated. Such a big leap of faith. But Emil had proven himself to be just. He had not chosen the comfortable path in his journalism; you only had to read his articles about the missing Jews to know this.

  “Emil, you haven’t heard about the State Institute for Racial Biology being involved in a new project, have you?”

  “No. Has it got do with this?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll put feelers out.”

  35.

  Jens

  There was a cocktail party at one of the ministries. To “raise morale,” the foreign minister had stated with a smirk. Jens wasn’t certain whether he had been joking or not. Kristina was with him, glass in her right hand, left hand under his arm. She was wearing a simple black dress, with her hair swept back from her face. She was smiling and greeting other guests; appearing to know more people than he did. The room was decorated with crystal chandeliers and flower arrangements. The buffet tables were laden with food. It was hard to think that just across the water, the world was at war and people were starving to death.

  Jens was troubled: he had found something on his desk again today. He’d been away for not more than ten minutes, talking to one of the administrative assistants about a travel schedule, and when he came back, it was there. Whoever was leaving him things must be watching him. It was a drawing this time. It was an overview of a mine: a diagram of the mine galleries and shafts. A single word was written beneath: Blackåsen. He had no idea why it had been left in his office. He did know he wasn’t supposed to have it. He worried about how bad it was that he did have it . . . if it could be considered spying. And why? Why give it to him? He didn’t understand what the plan of the mine had to do with anything. “Someone wants this known,” Jim had said. But what? Who?

  “Nice to see you again, Miss Bolander.”

  Christian Günther. Jens could feel himself straighten.