“Likewise,” Kristina purred.
“He doesn’t let us see you, now that you’re an item.”
“I’ll make sure to change that.” Kristina touched the minister’s arm.
Günther then turned to Jens and lowered his voice. “Sad thing, this business with Daniel Jonsson.”
Jens nodded.
“Have they spoken to you yet? The Security Services?”
Jens tensed. He tried to smile, but his jaw felt stiff. “Not yet. Will they?”
“It’s likely. They’ll talk to whoever had interactions with the archives.”
Jens nodded. Then the minister didn’t know about the note. At least, not yet.
“You know that thing you asked me about a while ago?” Günther said.
The phone calls? “Yes?” Jens said.
“I think it would be better if you didn’t mention it . . . To anyone.”
Really? Before Jens could ask anything more, the foreign minister gestured to a corpulent man in a gray suit, standing farther away. “Mr. Richter!” he called and with that, he was gone.
“He’s amazing,” Kristina said, following him with her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Now, don’t get jealous!” She smiled and tucked her hand back under his arm. “I just find him bright, that’s all. This is only the second time I’ve met him, and still he remembers my name. We should try to have him over. Throw a big party.”
She was ambitious, Jens thought. For him, for them . . . “Most Swedes don’t like him,” he pointed out.
“Most Swedes haven’t met him.”
THEY WERE HALFWAY through the evening—many conversations later, many invitations made and received—when Jens noticed Jim Becker by the buffet table. Jim was the last person he had expected to see there.
“I’ll go and get more food,” he said in Kristina’s ear and left her with the group.
He picked up a plate and put a sandwich on it from the buffet, slowly approaching the place where Jim stood.
“What a coincidence,” he said, in a low voice.
“From now on, Jens Regnell, nothing is a coincidence,” Jim said, his gaze focused on the platter of cheese as he picked up a piece. “Meet me outside in ten minutes.” He turned and said something to the woman on his other side.
Jens found Jim standing in the shadows alongside the house, hands in his pocket, coat collar up.
“I’m surprised you’re here,” he said.
Jim nodded. “Hiding in plain view can work quite well. Let’s walk.”
The evening was warm. A pleasant wind swept over the bridge. Farther down the bank, a man was laughing, then a woman followed suit.
“There was a lot more to the kings’ meeting in 1914 than was let on,” Jim said. “They said the foreign ministers spent that Saturday working on the neutrality declaration, but the truth is, they were working on something else.”
“What?” Jens asked.
“For quite a while now, some people in Sweden, Norway and Denmark have talked about a Scandinavian Reich under one strong leader. The foreign ministers’ meeting that day was the culmination of months of work on developing a program that, over time, was supposed to take the three countries there.”
“Impossible.”
“Why? There’ve been unions before.”
“And how does Germany fit into this?”
“It didn’t at the time. But when Hitler later emerged as the German leader, and it became clear he would wage war, the committee decided that the three countries should remain neutral. The plan was to wait for Germany to destroy itself in war. They thought that a Scandinavian union could then win over Germany and expand its territory to what it was like during the reign of Karl XII to include the whole Baltic region and, perhaps, beyond.”
Jens whistled. The Reich, he thought. Britta’s thesis hadn’t been talking about the German Reich at all.
“There’s more. There are two spines to the program. One is a Scandinavian union under one leader and the other is a continual improving of the Scandinavian race.”
Jens shook his head. “Meaning?”
“Scandinavia is thought to be one of the few places that has never been overwhelmed by foreign conquest and in which there has been but a single racial type from the beginning—a race supreme to all the others—one that needs to be safeguarded.”
“And how do they propose to do that?”
Jim shrugged. “The usual: breed from the best; prevent further mixing . . . Remove what is not pure Scandinavian. Remove, but also draw knowledge from, for the sake of science.”
Jens’s mouth was dry. He swallowed. “Drawing knowledge from . . . ?”
“Human experimentation,” Jim said. “And this was where some of us could no longer sit by and watch.”
This couldn’t be happening. Not in his own country. “Look in your own cupboards,” Schnurre had said. Was he aware that this was going on?
“So what happened?” he asked. “What’s happening now?”
“At the meeting in 1939, the decision was made to abandon the program. There was new leadership in all three countries, new ideas. The program was deemed the product of the past, a fleeting madness, embarrassing. Hitler had begun his journey with similar ideas and people found him not necessarily wrong but crude. It was abandoned, shut down.”
Jens nodded.
“Only it wasn’t,” Jim said. “It’s being kept alive.”
Impossible. “By whom?”
“Bureaucrats, the fanatics . . . Those who still want this at any price. Those who hate what’s different. The governments know it’s continuing, but they have lost control.”
“Who’s involved?”
“We no longer know. The State Institute for Racial Biology certainly has a central role; members of the three countries’ Security Services, too, but it has taken on a magnitude that is unbelievable.”
“Is Christian Günther in on it?” Jens thought of the phone calls.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you . . . Are you working against this?”
Jim shook his head. “At one point, I was. But . . .” He looked away. “One of my team members got killed: shot. A mugging gone wrong, they said. And then my daughter died in a car accident, but, by then, there was no doubt in my mind what had happened. I don’t think anything can stop the program now. It’s taken on a life of its own. The people involved are much too powerful. I’m only meeting you because . . . because, if you’re willing to risk it, I owe it to those who have died to give you something to work with. My daughter was headstrong. She was a strong believer in right and wrong. Were she alive today, she would never have let me stop—regardless of the consequences.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jens said.
Jim nodded.
“Is Blackåsen mine involved in this?” Jens asked, thinking of the drawing on his desk.
“There were rumors that the human experimentation took place up north.”
“I wonder why . . .” It was isolated, yes, but far away.
“The Sami,” Jim said coldly. “They are not deemed pure Scandinavian.”
Jens exhaled. Oh God.
“This is so big, Jens,” Jim said. “You’ll find yourself hunted. You’ll put your loved ones in danger. You’d better be certain before you go any further.”
“I don’t see what choice there is.”
Jim shrugged. “Have it your own way. What concerns me though, Jens, is this note you told me of, the one that gave you my name. Someone wants you to know about this. Who are those people working in the shadows and what do they want?”
“They want to help me,” Jens said.
“Not necessarily,” Jim said. “There are other reasons for making something known.”
“WHERE DID YOU go?” Kristina asked, when he came back.
He wished intensely that he could share his findings with her, with anyone.
“I just got caught speaking to someone,” he said. “But I’m bac
k now.”
36.
Blackåsen Mountain
Around midnight, there was a faint knock. Gunnar opened his eyes. There it was again. It came from the window. A small tapping sound. Gunnar’s father stirred. His mother sighed deeply. His brothers were snoring. Gunnar sat up. Slowly, he tiptoed to the door. He pushed the handle down, waited, but the bedroom was silent.
Outside, at the bottom of the steps, was Abraham, his face white in the moonlight. Abraham had met with Notholm again. Gunnar had refused after what he’d done to the hare. Abraham had called him a coward. But Gunnar still had nightmares about the animal. He’d been scared of saying no, though, worried about what Notholm might do.
He took the steps down to his friend. Closer to, he could see that his friend had been crying. His eyes were red, his cheeks dirty.
“What happened?”
Abraham just shook his head.
Gunnar shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. A cold wind trawled up his bare feet and legs. “Abraham, what happened?”
“Mr. Notholm had a gun.”
“What?”
“He shot the director. He killed him!”
Gunnar couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was impossible.
“Where is the director now? Where is Mr. Notholm?”
“I don’t know. I need to leave,” Abraham said. “Before anyone realizes. I just wanted . . .” His voice broke. “He said the director had made himself a target,” he said.
Gunnar felt cold. People were not prey.
“Just tell my mother that it wasn’t me who did it,” Abraham said.
Abraham’s mother. She’d just lost her husband.
“I’m sure we can work it out,” Gunnar said, even though he wasn’t at all sure.
Abraham was shaking his head. “Not this.”
“But how will you manage?”
Abraham shrugged. “I’ll manage. Promise you’ll tell my mother.”
“I promise.”
Abraham walked away. Gunnar watched until he turned the corner of a house and was gone.
ALL MORNING, GUNNAR waited for activity at the mine to come to a halt. The director’s death would be an enormous event in their town—especially if he had been murdered. Gunnar could not imagine what kind of a response would follow. But there was nothing. Abraham’s desk remained empty. In the morning, the teacher had asked if anyone knew where he was, but Gunnar had said nothing.
Perhaps Notholm had hidden the director’s body, he thought. But surely they would soon discover he was missing?
But the explosions from the dynamite and the droning of the sorting band continued without end.
37.
Laura
Laura was packing a bag. She didn’t know what to expect from Lapland. It was spring, but she assumed that up there, it would still be cold. Perhaps there would even be snow?
There was a knock on her door.
“Your grandfather said you were planning a journey.” Her father was standing in the doorway. He must have just come in from work as he was still wearing a tie. He was frowning.
“I’m going north.”
“Why?”
She stopped packing. The single word had sounded accusing, as if her father was admonishing a young child.
“I want to find out what happened to Andreas, Britta’s friend.”
“Still on Britta.” He shook his head.
“Yes,” she said heatedly. And again, more calmly: “Yes.”
“You’ve lost your job, and your apartment, and you’re still pursuing this?”
“She was my best friend.”
“But it’s not sensible, Laura.”
“Perhaps I’m not sensible.” There was an edge in her voice she didn’t recognize.
“You’re being immature,” her father said, “and I would have expected more from you. Britta lived the life of a loose woman and that brought on an ugly end.”
She tried to ignore the way he spoke about her. “Someone told Britta that the State Institute for Racial Biology was working on a project crucial for Sweden’s future, and that rumor had it that the people involved would stop at nothing. She was on the trail. She wrote about it in her dissertation.”
“The State Institute?” Her father scoffed. “Really, Laura? Schoolwork doesn’t get people killed.”
“But—”
“No but. Think for a while. Think!”
“If it was about her personal life, then why the bomb in my apartment?”
“I don’t want you to go,” he said and turned toward the door. “In fact, I’m telling you not to.”
“I don’t see how you can do that,” she said, but he had already left and closed the door behind him.
WHILE WAITING FOR her train on the platform, she found herself looking in the direction of the station house. She kept imagining her father coming out of it, coat flapping around his legs, long, determined steps coming toward her, grabbing her, dragging her out of there by her neck. Ridiculous. But there was something in the back of her mind, a memory. She’d been a child. Disobedient or . . . ? Had something like that happened?
No, she was letting her mind run away with her. Her father was the most measured man she knew. Opinionated, clearly. Forceful, certainly. But on her side. He was worried about her, she thought. His only child, putting herself in danger.
A man exited the station house, coat flapping in the wind, and her chest tightened. Then she saw who it was: Jens Regnell.
He walked up to her. “I made it,” he said when he reached her.
“How did you know where I was?”
“I’m resourceful,” he said, then smiled. “I got your grandfather on the telephone. He told me.”
Jens didn’t look well. His face was pale and there were black shadows under his eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept for days. And yet, she couldn’t help feeling drawn to him. He was handsome, but that wasn’t why. The earnest eyes, perhaps. The open face.
“I have some information,” he said. “And it’s awful. I’m not even sure I should tell you.”
“Tell me,” she demanded.
He locked eyes with her, then nodded. “In 1914, the foreign ministers were asked to explore what it would take to put together a Scandinavian Reich under one strong leader. They did this based on the supposed supremacy of the Nordic race.”
In her head, Laura could hear Karl-Henrik’s voice, way back when: You build up the elements around the chosen ones, their intrinsic superiority, and . . . Their inherent right to rule.
“They set up a committee to work toward this aim,” Jens continued.
Her train was coming into the station. Jens began speaking faster. He leaned forward speaking directly into her ear. “There was more to the program, though. They needed to maintain the purity of the Scandinavian race: breed from the best but also eliminate the worst.”
People descended from the train. They came carrying bags and holding children by the hand.
“In 1939, at the second meeting, they decided to abandon the program, only they haven’t managed to shut it down. It’s ongoing, managed by those who want this. It’s a whole network, Laura. They kill whoever gets in the way.”
Laura thought of what Karl-Henrik had said: that the institute had arms going everywhere.
“They conduct human experiments, Laura. And apparently this happens in the north. On the Sami.”
His voice in her ear was too loud. She couldn’t stand that, or what the voice was telling her. She tilted her head away.
“Are you sure?” she asked, and her voice sounded hoarse. This would explain why Andreas had left. If he knew . . . And if Britta died for this . . . He had fled. She felt sick.
He nodded. “As sure as I can be. The person who told me is ex-Security Services. Someone left a diagram of Blackåsen mine on my desk . . . It might be taking place there, in the mine.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps in a shut-down section of the mine . . . I don’
t know.”
The train attendant came down the platform. “All aboard!” he called.
Laura began walking toward the train, Jens beside her.
“I’ll ask questions,” she said.
“Please don’t. Can you imagine what they would do to you if this is true?”
“So what are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. We need evidence.”
“And if we had evidence?”
“We’d expose it,” Jens said. “If everyone were to find out, it would be impossible for them to continue. We’re a neutral country. People are beginning to react to what Hitler is doing in Germany and beyond. The reaction would be fierce.”
Laura thought again of Karl-Henrik’s diagram. There were so many people involved.
“Wouldn’t they just go into hiding?”
“But it would stop and, at the end of the day, isn’t that the most important thing? More important than the perpetrators getting punished.”
She carried on walking.
Jens took her arm and turned her to face him. “Don’t try and get evidence on your own. Please be smart. I’m worried that we’re just pawns in this terrible thing. Some people want it hidden at all costs. Others want it known. We’re caught in the middle.”
“Are you coming or not?” The train attendant had reached them.
“Yes,” she said, hastily. She put her hand on Jens’s cheek but couldn’t find the words. He took her hand and squeezed it. She just nodded.
THE TRAIN ROLLED north. At first, Laura had the impression she was sitting on needles. She kept swallowing and wiping her mouth. She kept repeating to herself what Jens had told her, her mind bouncing from one thing to another. It was unbelievable. It was horrific. It was sick. It couldn’t be true. And then again, it probably was. What if it took place in the mine? She was on her way there. She thought of Britta’s father: the foreman of the mine. Did he know? Was this how Britta had found out? Through the father, who had thought her a tart?
She leaned back, looked out the window without seeing, let the landscape outside still her as evening approached. The gray sky stretched out and the bands of spruce trees that framed the moving train on both sides were black. This is the way the iron travels, she thought. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t already gone to see it.
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