“Daniel was being followed before he died. His sister . . .”
“Daniel was sick, Jens.”
Jens paused. Sven was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, the open blue eyes, the expression on his face one of intense concentration. “Why are you trying to invalidate everything I say?” he asked.
Sven leaned back and lifted his hands as if to placate him. “I’m not. I just don’t think you’re right.”
Sven didn’t believe any of it. Or was there something else? Why was Sven not willing to entertain the thought, not even hear him out? Jens hesitated.
Sven sighed. “There isn’t one scrap of proof for what you’ve told me. It can all be explained away.” His face changed to one of concern. “I worry about you, my friend. You’ve been under stress lately. Perhaps . . .”
Jens stood up. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I would have thought you, of all people, would believe me.”
Sven shook his head slowly. “Oh, Jens, I wish I could. Listen, my friend, it’s the weekend. You need to relax.”
Jens walked out, slamming the door behind him. Outside on the pavement, he stopped and took a deep breath. It didn’t bring relief. He couldn’t relax. It was all wrong, he thought. All wrong.
42.
Blackåsen Mountain
The woman from the south, Laura, was staying at the Winter Palace. Taneli couldn’t imagine a worse place to stay, now that they knew about Mr. Notholm. But the director had said that if Laura changed her lodging that would raise questions, and she had agreed. Taneli wondered if she’d been able to sleep last night.
He sat waiting for her on a large rock in the forest behind the hotel. It was early. “First thing in the morning” could mean something different to Laura, of course. He should have contacted his parents, he thought. He wondered if they were worried and what Olet had told them. It was a small town: they’d know one way or another where he was. Though they wouldn’t know why. Olet would also be looking after Raija, he knew. All of a sudden he missed his home so much his chest twisted. He’d go home once they were back, he decided. Laura came around the building. Her blond hair shone silvery gray in the morning light. She was tall, he realized. She was wearing trousers and a jacket and she’d changed her shoes for a pair of heavy boots.
“Good,” Taneli said and pointed to her footwear.
“They’re men’s boots,” she said. She lifted a foot off the ground. “They must start young in the mine.”
Taneli shrugged. He didn’t know.
“I was wondering,” she said as they set off. “You said it was a two-day walk. Where will we sleep?”
“In the forest,” Taneli said.
“What will we eat?”
“We’ll find something,” he answered.
She looked back at the hotel—as if she might change her mind—but then she didn’t say anything more. As they left, Taneli glanced over his shoulder. He got a feeling the black, clipped mountain was watching them. Brooding. He thought about what might be kept inside it and about his father telling him that the mountain’s spirit was fickle, unfair in punishment, quick to anger, difficult to please. But to hold captured people . . . How could you? he thought and felt the mountain lean on his back. He walked more quickly, eager to be gone.
They walked the whole day. At the start, they were silent. Both of them had things to think about. Later, they began to talk, first about small things: the weather, the region. Taneli pointed out animal tracks to her. He showed her flowers and roots you could eat. Whenever they found a rivulet, he told her they had to drink until they weren’t thirsty any longer. The woman’s face was serious. Her speech, too. Did she ever laugh? She was the kind of person you wanted to make laugh. There were stars in her gray eyes around her pupils. Taneli thought it might be a sign. Stars leading the way.
Midafternoon, Taneli began to worry that something was following them. But there were no sounds or sights; more like a feeling. Perhaps it was the woman’s past, hovering. He wondered what it was trying to tell her.
Late afternoon, Laura began to tire. She stumbled, her pace slowed and she kept waving her hands at the mosquitoes. Taneli announced that it was time to stop. He built a fire and lit it. Not for the cold, but for the comfort of light and the smoke. Before them, the river was bouncing blue with snowmelt and the sound of life relaxed everything around it. The ground was bumpy with stones and new grass. There was a cluster of birch trees on the top of the hill behind them. They were young and reedy. Their leaves were pushing to get out of their shells, small, shimmering green tops on each bud.
“Sit in the smoke,” he told her. “It will hurt your eyes, but the bugs will stay away.”
He had to build her a shelter for the night, he thought. Close to the fire, so that the smoke would continue to ease things for her.
“I’ll find us something to eat,” he said.
She’d taken off her boots and was rubbing her feet, grimacing.
It took him a while, but he found them a grouse. When he came back with it, her eyes widened. She watched as he removed the feathers and the innards. He put it on a stick and placed it over the fire. Soon, their glade smelled of roasting meat. When it was ready, he handed her some on a stick. She took a bite.
“It’s good,” she said, eyebrows raised as if surprised. Taneli nodded and they ate.
“When did your sister disappear?” she asked when their stomachs were full.
“In winter,” Taneli said. “But she is still alive.”
It was strange to talk about it with a stranger. He fell silent for a while, thought of his family again.
“How do you know your sister isn’t dead?” Her voice had turned gentle.
“I just know,” he said. “My sister is special to our people. Perhaps that is why they haven’t killed her.”
“And why are you with the director?”
“He saved me,” Taneli said. “And then we saved him.”
That’s how it was and now they were bound together, the man and the boy. He found he didn’t mind. He liked the tall man, who had proven kind beneath his sternness.
They couldn’t sleep where they had eaten. The leftovers would attract other, bigger, animals. He put the innards in the river. He put out the fire, tidied up and then gestured for her to follow.
They crossed the river and he found them another glade; made a new fire. Then he built her a shelter of spruce branches.
She lay down but her gray eyes were open wide.
“Sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”
She smiled for the first time. “Thank you, Taneli,” she said.
43.
Laura
Laura had thought she’d never manage to sleep out in the open with a fire close by and mosquitoes wailing in her ear, but she must have done; at first, she didn’t know where she was, and then she saw the boy, still sitting up, watching her. He must have been awake all night. She felt bad. He was just a child. She was the adult: she should have stayed up. But he smiled.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning.”
She’d been lucky. Taneli was a good guide. At least, that’s what it seemed like. On the other hand, she was deep in the forest, so who could tell?
“How far away are they?” she asked.
“Not far. Half a day’s journey that way.” He nodded.
They walked. Today, the sun was bright, and she could feel her scalp getting warm. They were climbing uphill now. She had to lean forward and push her feet down to get a good grip. The forest was pine and spruce. It smelled nice: fresh, green. She hadn’t known a forest could smell like this.
Taneli stopped suddenly.
“What?” she asked.
He put a finger over his lips. His forehead wrinkled.
“What?” she whispered.
“I hear someone,” he whispered back. “Someone also walking this way.”
A pulse began to tick in her throat. “Are they following us?”
Hi
s face was serious. “Perhaps.”
He took her hand and led her along a side trail until they came to a river.
“We will walk in the water,” he said. “Take off your shoes.”
She took them off and followed him down into the ice-cold water. The riverbed was full of sharp stones and she winced. They came to a passage where the stones were larger and slippery. Taneli turned around and took her hand and she supported herself on this little boy who seemed to be able to walk on anything, while she could barely move forward.
She could no longer feel her feet because of the cold water.
After half an hour, he nodded. “That should be enough,” he said.
They got out and put their shoes back on.
They were walking faster now. Every now and then Taneli would stop and listen, then nod, indicating that they were alright.
And then, midafternoon, just like Taneli had said, they came out of the forest above the tree line and onto the bare mountain. Clinging to the mountainside were dwellings: wooden structures in the shape of tents. The next gulley was full of people and reindeer. She stood for a while watching the animals and people move in patterns that were unfamiliar to her.
“Here,” Taneli said.
She followed him. A man came to meet them. A Sami, wearing leather trousers and a woven hat with a big, colorful tassel on top.
“We’re looking for Andreas Lappo Lundius,” she said.
He eyed her suspiciously and then frowned at Taneli, most likely for bringing her here.
“It’s important,” the boy said. “We wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“He’s with the animals,” the man finally said, nodding in the direction of the fenced area in the valley.
“The reindeer are calving,” Taneli said.
Now she saw it. A reindeer that had just given birth. The reindeer was lying down and her tiny black calf was trying to stand beside her. The miracle of life, she thought, and felt moved.
There was a commotion in the fenced area. The children and women were helping the animals. It was a while before she noticed him, Andreas. He was sitting on a log, farther away, among the men.
A silence spread amid the disorder as they approached. Men, women and children, all with their eyes on her. Then Andreas stood up. He raised his hand as if to say it was alright and walked to meet them.
He was dressed in leather trousers that were bloody at the thigh. His hands were bloody, too, and one held a knife. He was a different man here, in his element. A man, not a boy. Tall, calm. Britta would have seen him like this, Laura thought. No wonder she’d seen something in Andreas that the rest of them hadn’t.
“You,” he said.
She nodded. “You left suddenly.”
He looked out over his tribe and the animals giving birth. It was everyday life to him but exotic to anybody else.
“I know what’s going on,” she said. “Well, I think I do. But I don’t know who. Or where.” Or what to do next, she thought.
Andreas didn’t speak.
“How did you and Britta find out?” she asked.
Still he remained silent.
“Please, Andreas,” she said.
“I’m surprised you care,” he said and turned his black eyes on her.
“I’m here,” she said.
He sighed, looked out over his people and seemed to make up his mind. “It started many years ago,” he said. “Perhaps as many as ten. Sami people would vanish, never to come back. We thought perhaps wild animals . . . We thought perhaps it was something even more dreadful. Then, sometimes, we found bodies.”
She waited.
“Their bodies had been . . . cut,” he said, frowning as if he couldn’t understand it. “In the most awful ways. Their innards,” he pointed to his own chest, “could be missing. Parts of them, like hearts or lungs, gone. Their heads could be opened and emptied.”
“Didn’t you tell the police?”
“They did nothing. We told the mining company, too. Here, they’re the law.”
She thought about the director. But he was new to his post.
“And?”
“And nothing. For them, as long as there are enough of us for the work to go on . . .”
“How many?” she asked, tasting bile.
“Here in our lands, I’ve counted over one hundred,” he said. “But then we heard the same was happening in Norway. People missing. Bodies found.
“I told Britta,” Andreas said. “She was my friend. I felt there wasn’t much to be done about it.” He shrugged. “But then, last autumn, she met someone who knew more.”
Someone she met in Uppsala, or perhaps in Stockholm. Perhaps Sven Olov Lindholm, Laura thought. But he hadn’t seemed to know much.
“He told her about what was happening to the Sami. Later, just before she died, he gave her proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
Andreas shrugged. “She said photographs. Names of people involved.”
“Where is it now?”
He shook his head. “It was with Britta. She went to Stockholm to show it to someone she said had the power to make a difference.”
Someone who had the power to make a difference . . . Who? Jens Regnell? But if they had met, he would have said.
“The only person she mentioned who was in on it was her professor,” Andreas said.
Laura couldn’t help but gasp. “Professor Lindahl?”
“That’s right.”
That was awful. It couldn’t be true. Or could it? A number of things suddenly made sense. They had trusted him. Her heart ached.
“This person who gave her evidence,” she asked, “do you have any idea who it was?”
“No. She called him her ‘uneasy friend.’”
The first person who came to Laura’s mind was Erik. She had no idea why.
Britta had been a swallow. It must have been a friend she made in that role. Someone working for the Security Services?
“Do you know what she wanted to do with the evidence?”
“She said we were going to expose them. This person who she said could make a difference was going to help her.”
Same reaction as us, Laura thought. And then the person she reached out to must have been in on it. Britta had been trapped.
Andreas had turned his gaze to look past her at the dense forest beneath them at a lower elevation. His eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth. He looked surprised, naked.
“Why did you bring him here?” he asked.
“What?”
Taneli’s hand on her arm.
Andreas was still staring at the forest. She turned but couldn’t see anything. Nothing but shadows and trees.
Then Andreas swirled around, as if to run. And as he did, his head snapped to the side, and there was the crack of a bullet. He fell to the ground, his neck at an angle, his face missing.
Everything was happening in a haze—Taneli, his mouth moving, screaming something to her. Behind him, the animals in their fenced area were panicking, running round and round. The Sami women swept up the children and ran, the men dropped their equipment, let everything go. There was nowhere to hide on the bare mountainside.
Then Taneli pulled her hair. The pain brought her back to her senses. Now, the sounds were unbearable: horrible bleating, thundering hooves, people screaming. Taneli dragged her with him toward the fence and forced her down on the ground behind the animals.
“They shot him,” she mumbled, shocked, not knowing who she meant. Who had Andreas seen? She rubbed her face and her hand came away red and wet with Andreas’s blood.
“He saw something . . .” And then, with horrifying insight: “It was us. Me. We led them here! I did!”
Taneli was looking at the forest below. “We need to leave.”
Laura’s body was shivering, shaking. Andreas was dead, and this was her fault.
“Now,” he said. “Now!”
They began to run back to the tree line from where they’d come.
/> It had to have been a sniper, she thought. While she and Taneli had walked uphill and come to the camp from the side, whoever followed them had walked through the valley and reached the camp from below.
She and Taneli continued to run into the forest. When she thought she couldn’t run any longer, Taneli slowed down and stopped.
“Are they following us?” she asked.
He listened for a long time, then shook his head. “No,” he said.
Why wouldn’t they? Laura thought. Why wouldn’t they follow her and kill her, too? She was the one looking for answers. Why hadn’t there been more shots?
A wail burst from her lips. I did this, she thought.
“It wasn’t your fault,” the boy said.
“I led them here,” Laura said. Her head was hurting. She couldn’t think straight. “They didn’t know where he was until we found him, and now he’s dead.”
She put her head in her hands then straightened. “The director,” she said. “He knew we were coming out here. He was the only one who knew.”
The boy shook his head. “It wasn’t him,” he said.
He put his hand on her arm, a child’s hand with grubby nails, and she wished he’d remove it. She didn’t want his comfort; she didn’t deserve it.
“We couldn’t have known,” he said.
They walked in silence until night fell, and they made another camp. Once again, the boy found food, but Laura couldn’t eat. Andreas was dead. She lay down and, just as he had done the previous night, the boy sat by the fire. But she couldn’t sleep. Perhaps she would never sleep again. For the first time, in a very long while, she yearned for her mother. She turned away from the fire and the boy so that he wouldn’t see her face.
44.
Jens
Two Security Services agents were waiting for him in his office when he arrived. Jens wondered how long they had been there and if they had already gone through his things. He felt violated. And scared. Very scared. Did they know about his involvement? Were they here because of Daniel or because of what Jens had found out?
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