“I loved you, Jens,” she said. “I really did. I still do.”
He wanted to say that he had loved her, too, but found he couldn’t do it.
51.
Blackåsen Mountain
A target.” The foreman felt sick. He should never have called. What on earth had he been thinking?
He had to stop this before it was too late. He would make amends; lie if he had to.
He found the little white card and dialed the same numbers.
“This is Hallberg at Blackåsen mine,” he said.
It was a woman who answered this time; last time it had been a man.
“I’m guessing you have the wrong number,” she laughed. “This is a dressmaker in Stockholm? Unless you’re ordering for someone?”
He apologized, hung up and dialed the number again. The same woman answered. This time he tried.
“I need to speak with the people about Blackåsen mine,” he said.
“My dear sir,” she said, “nobody here knows anything about a mine. We make dresses.”
He felt sweat break out on his forehead. “I insist,” he said. “You tell them to stop whatever has been put in play.”
“I can’t tell anyone anything.” She lowered her voice. “But it’s my experience that once things have begun, they don’t stop, do they? They have to run their course?”
The foreman banged down the phone and swore to himself.
What had he done? His phone call would get the director killed. “A target.” He exhaled slowly. His hands were trembling.
No. Not like this.
He rose, pushing back his chair so forcefully it fell behind him. He walked to the door and yelled: “Manfred!”
A man approached hat in hand.
“I want a man watching the train station,” Hallberg said. “I want to know if someone arrives and plans to stay in town. Second, I want a couple of men watching the director. Guarding him. I think he might be in danger.”
He stopped himself, waiting for the questions that would surely follow.
“Does this have to do with Georg’s death?” Manfred asked.
That startled him. He hadn’t expected that question. “I think it does,” he said, finally. “Yes, I do. Tell your men not to let the director out of their sight.”
He sat down when Manfred left. He’d have to talk to the director and he wasn’t looking forward to it. “I’m the man who got you shot,” he said out loud.
IT DIDN’T TAKE more than a couple of hours for Manfred to return. “Four men,” he said, “on the train from Stockholm. Suits. Hats. They’re staying at the Winter Palace hotel.”
“Four . . . And the director?”
Manfred nodded. “Harald, Egon and Ivar are outside his house.”
“Don’t let him out of your sight,” the foreman repeated.
“And if they come for him?”
“Stop them; no matter what.”
Manfred hesitated. “There’s a boy staying with him.”
“A boy?”
“Sami.”
That was strange. What would a Sami boy be doing with the director?
The foreman shrugged. “Doesn’t change anything,” he said.
52.
Laura
In the midst of all the misery, she was happy. Happy that they had found one another again—she and Erik, Matti and Karl-Henrik. For they had, hadn’t they? It was just like the old days. Though Britta, of course, was missing. So it wasn’t like the old days, really.
At university, things had gotten so bad; she had to admit that she’d never thought they would speak again.
After that first fight, they’d seen Matti in class but avoided each other. He walked past them, not sparing them a glance.
He should have known better, Laura had thought.
Known better than what, though?
It wasn’t logical, their rage. For that was what it was, rage. They were totally furious with Matti for having held an opposing view, for being different, for being Finnish. For being.
Yes. For being.
And rather than things quietening down, they got worse. She could see it in the way Erik’s gaze followed Matti when he walked in. She could feel it in the way Karl-Henrik avoided getting close to him. She could sense it in herself.
Then one morning, Matti came to school with one eye swollen shut, his cheek bruised and his lip torn. Laura bumped into him in the hallway. “What happened to you?”
“Well, you should know,” he muttered and moved to walk past her.
“Wait.” She reached for him. “What?”
He looked at her, studied her. There was a solemnity to him that she hadn’t seen before.
“You know who did this,” he stated.
“No.” She shook her head, then realized what he meant. “Us? No.”
He said nothing.
“Erik?” she asked. “Karl-Henrik?”
“With a band of others.”
She couldn’t believe it, but his eyes were scared.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, but he was already off.
That night, Laura was woken by someone getting into bed with her. She sat up, gasped.
“It’s only little me,” Britta said, her voice full of laughter. “Either you need to get better at having people jump in and out of your bed, or you shouldn’t leave the door open at night.”
“Oh God! You scared me.” Laura flopped down on the pillow again, her heart still pounding in her chest.
Britta put her head on Laura’s shoulder. She had been off school for a couple of days. A migraine, she’d called it. Laura figured she’d spent the time with someone.
“I saw Matti today,” Laura said.
“Mm-hm?”
“He’d been beaten up. He said Erik and Karl-Henrik did it.”
Britta propped herself up on her elbow.
“They couldn’t have,” Britta said. “Could they?”
She wanted to say no. “They might,” Laura admitted.
Britta was already standing up. “Get dressed.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.” Britta began marching up and down her room. “What the hell do they think they’re doing?” she muttered. “They’ve taken this way too far.”
When Laura was dressed, Britta grabbed her by the hand and dragged her out.
“They were still at the club, when I left,” she said.
They found Erik and Karl-Henrik on Main Street. Erik was in the bar, surrounded by a group of young men, doing all the talking. Karl-Henrik was over by the far wall, drink in his hand, observing.
“What the fuck did you do?” Britta said, after pushing through the crowd around him.
Erik stopped talking. “What?”
“Come with me. You, too,” she ordered Karl-Henrik.
They were on the street outside the club. “What did you do to Matti?” Britta asked.
“Nothing,” Erik protested. He’d brought his beer outside and now took a sip.
“Don’t give me that.” She glared at Erik and then at Karl-Henrik.
“He was being rather difficult,” Karl-Henrik mumbled.
Britta’s mouth opened, then shut. “No, he wasn’t. We’ve had differences of opinion before, a thousand times. It’s never mattered one bit. In fact, we like it when we can debate things. Be honest, this was different.”
“What do you mean?” Erik said.
“We’ve taken on the values of the project. We now judge Matti differently because he’s Finnish and not Scandinavian. It has to stop.”
“Our job is to protect the project!” Erik was raising his voice.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Britta screamed. On the other side of the pavement, a couple hurried past, throwing glances their way. “We got angry with a friend because he wasn’t the right kind?”
“We know about the superiority of the Scandinavian race. Only someone from the Scandinavian race can partake in this new world.”
“We made that up. We invented it! It’s
not true.” Britta’s cheeks were red. “It’s a bloody superhero B-movie!
Erik had turned white. “You’d better shut your mouth.”
“Or what?” Britta said in a low voice. “Or you’ll beat me up, too?”
They stared at each other.
“Oh, and your precious project . . .” Britta said. “Just so you know. I burned our notes before coming here.”
Erik threw his glass at the wall of the building and it exploded in a million shards.
“Tell me you weren’t in on this,” Britta asked Karl-Henrik when Erik had stalked off.
“I didn’t think it was for real,” he mumbled. “I didn’t think they’d actually do it. I didn’t think they would actually hurt him. I didn’t think . . .”
Back at home, Britta did burn the notes from the project. All of them. All their writing: a mighty bonfire. Laura handed her the pages, one after the other. Britta cried the whole time.
The next day, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway and they didn’t get a chance to sort it out.
It had been good of Matti not to bring it up again when they met. How did Erik and Karl-Henrik feel about it now? Probably like her, ashamed.
For a brief while, they’d let insanity take over. It was the times. Luckily, they’d come to their senses. Clearly, not everyone had.
53.
Jens
Jens, Laura, Matti and Erik were on the same late evening train to Uppsala, but they didn’t sit together, as they thought four people traveling in a group would attract more attention than separate individuals. Jens sat across from Laura, a few rows away. He was reading a paper, but he hadn’t turned the pages once. His body still hurt, a dull throb. Laura sat on the other side looking out the window. She looked cool and unruffled, as if she were on her way to a lecture, rather than a break-in. How on earth did she manage it? Erik was in the next car and he assumed Matti was in the one after that. Jens hadn’t been certain Erik would join them. But, at the agreed time, he’d been on the platform and Jens had had to stop himself from nodding to him.
These people were so different from one another, he thought. Unlikely friends. Erik was hotheaded, a fool in many ways, in Jens’s opinion. Matti seemed sober, totally focused on his job for Finland. Karl-Henrik was, in many ways, the biggest brain; the analyst. And then Laura . . .
They were unlikely friends and yet it was clear how intimate they were. Something had come between them at some point, he was pretty certain. They seemed to think they were no longer close, but they were wrong. Rarely had he seen people respond to each other like they did. They seemed to know what each of them needed before it was said out loud. Matti would sometimes walk close to Laura, as if to support her without saying a word. Karl-Henrik would just need to look at Erik for him to quieten down. Erik could make the serious three laugh with abandon. Laura chose who spoke. With her gaze, she gave them the word. He wondered what role Britta had played.
They got off the train in Uppsala. Most of the other passengers were young, likely students. Jens glanced around. It was impossible to tell if they were being followed. There was a cold headwind and he took the street leading to Fyrisån. They had decided that each would bide their time until midnight, when they would meet outside the cathedral.
Farther down Bangårdsgatan, he entered one of the bars and ordered a beer. The waitress took an extra-long look at his face but said nothing.
He tried not to think, for he had nothing good to say to himself. Instead, he watched the people in the bar, so young, so carefree. If they only knew! He wished he didn’t. You didn’t know how you would react when faced with something like this. You just didn’t. Erik had advocated doing nothing. And wasn’t that what was happening in the world at large? If you weren’t directly involved, you looked the other way.
Before midnight, he rose and stepped out into the cold. Through the window, he saw that somebody had already taken his table. It was just as if he’d never been there.
THE SQUARE LAY empty and the cathedral seemed to tower over him as he entered the area. God is watching, he thought, even though he didn’t believe much in God.
He met the others by the side of the church. Erik took Laura’s hand and squeezed it. Jens felt a sting but didn’t understand why.
“Are you sure about this?” Erik asked. “Once we break in, there’s no going back. We can still walk away.”
“But we can’t,” Laura said. “We can’t know and do nothing.”
“Perhaps there’s another way . . .”
She shook her head. “We’ve discussed it. This is the only way left.”
“No going back,” he repeated. “So far, you’ve been lucky. After this, all bets are off.”
“I’m sure,” she said.
Matti nodded. Jens, too.
“You don’t have to come,” Laura said.
Erik shook his head. “If you go, I’ll go.”
They approached the building from the side and followed its stone foundations to the back. It used to be a school, he remembered hearing. It was Matti who was eyeing all the low windows, pressing on them, as if trying them. They were in luck; one of the windows was slightly open. Matti put his hands under the sash and lifted it. Then he sank down and offered his knee. One after the other, they climbed in through the window. When it was his turn, he lifted himself up on the window frame.
They were in what looked like an office. Desks and chairs. The walls were lined with bookshelves, crammed with books. There was a skull on one of the desks. A fake one, he hoped.
“It’s a big place,” Matti whispered. “Four floors. I suggest we split up and take one floor each.”
“What are we looking for?” Erik whispered.
“Photographs, or reports, or similar,” Matti said. “Something we can bring with us. I’ll take the top floor.”
“I’ll take the one beneath you,” Laura said. “You can go beneath me,” she said to Erik.
Jens nodded. “I’ll do the ground floor.”
The rest walked toward the door, opened it, waited, but the building lay quiet.
Jens turned on one of the desk lamps and began by looking on each desk but found nothing of obvious value. He pulled out a drawer. It was full of paper. This was going to take forever. Above him, somewhere, a door opened. Erik.
The person at this desk appeared to be working on skull measurements. The drawers contained papers with long lines of data: jaw, forehead, circumference. There was an instrument on top of the desk. Tongs with numbers? Some sort of a measuring tool. It was cold to the touch.
The second desk contained pretty much the same things. This was taking too much time.
There was a scraping sound from the floor above him.
On the wall, between two bookshelves, was a door. A storage room? He tried the handle, but it was locked. Randomly, he opened the top drawers of the desks closest to it. In one, there was a key.
Holding his breath, he put the key in the lock. It turned. He opened the door and found a light switch inside. He turned it on and in front of him was a spiral staircase leading into a basement. His heart began to pound faster. He walked downstairs but kept turning and eyeing the door above him, expecting it to slam shut, the lock to slide home. He knew it was his mind playing games with him, but the feeling was so strong, it was like a premonition.
Downstairs was a table that resembled a surgical table from a hospital and a lone desk. The shelves were full of jars. Jens walked closer and wished he hadn’t. Organs in liquid: livers, brains. He cringed and turned away.
The desk was covered in photos. He couldn’t help but gasp out loud. Those photos . . . He’d never be able to get the images out of his mind. Bodies with gaping wounds, or crudely sewn together; bodies blackened from burns or perhaps from poison. Bodies missing limbs, missing organs. The faces were emaciated and distorted with pain.
He forced himself to see all of it, lift all the papers, look in the books. Then he went to get the others. Don’t close the door. Don’t s
hut me in here with this, he prayed, as he ran up the last few steps.
Erik’s expression hardened when he arrived.
“I found something,” Jens said.
The others followed him down the spiral staircase into the basement. Their reactions at seeing the photos were much like his own. Matti turned away, groaning. Laura looked ashen. Erik leaned heavily on the desk with one hand.
“This isn’t proof,” Erik said after a while. “It could be argued away.”
“But this is,” Jens said. He held up a book he had found before going upstairs. His hands were trembling.
“Subject five,” he read, “faints when cut open without anesthesia, dies from hemorrhaging after ten minutes.” He flipped a page. “Subject thirty-three, dies of starvation after one week. Subject thirty-four, fed water, dies after four weeks. There are photos of each one.” His voice sounded thick. “And I found this.” He lifted another book. “Names,” he said, “and money. I think this might be the list of people involved.”
“And look here,” Matti said and pulled down a file from the bookshelf above the desk. The label on the front read Our Manifesto. Matti read out loud: “The Scandinavian race has long been neglected, made to live like all other races with the same problems . . .”
Laura covered her mouth with her hand. “But that comes from our project. We burned all of it. How did it end up here?”
“We don’t have much time,” Matti said.
“Let’s take all of it,” Jens said, “or as much as we can, so we don’t miss anything. When are we seeing the journalist?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Laura said. “Well, later today. We’re meeting him at Karl-Henrik’s.”
Laura cried as they packed the documents in the bags they’d brought with them; silent tears running down her face and dropping onto her hands. Jens couldn’t bear seeing her tears, but there was nothing he could say in comfort. People were doing this to other people. It was unthinkable.
When they left the building, they made sure to lock the door to the basement.
“It might buy us an hour or two,” Matti said, “before they realize.”
They left the same way they’d come and closed the window behind them. As they walked to the train station, Jens felt tainted with the vileness from the Institute’s basement. He’d seen the face of evil there, and the knowledge of what was being done by human beings to other human beings would take root inside him.
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