It was dawn before they arrived at Karl-Henrik’s apartment. They handed him the bags containing the photos, the books and the folders.
He met Jens’s gaze.
“It’s awful,” Jens said. But there were no words that could do justice to what they had with them. He just shook his head and handed him the bag he was carrying.
“Go home,” Karl-Henrik said. “Get some sleep. Come back later.”
54.
Blackåsen Mountain
Another dream. Taneli sat up abruptly. In the bed, the director’s shape, a slight wheezing as he breathed. It had been Javanna again. Voices, barely human, both men and women. Moans, screams, whispers. The moaning was full of fear. The screaming must have been going on for a long time for the voices were so hoarse, they cracked and ended up in nothing. The whispers had been the worst. They came when there was nothing else left. Sighs wrung out of deep and empty pits, out of that which was forever broken. And then, cutting through it all, Javanna’s voice: Not much time left now.
“What do you mean?” he had asked.
Hurry, little brother. Hurry.
“What do you mean? What do you mean!”
But all was silent. And then he woke up. Why wasn’t there time? And hurry how?
Taneli had clenched his teeth so hard it hurt when he relaxed his mouth. He stood up, careful not to wake the director. Taneli didn’t like his raspy breathing. He sounded sick. But the doctor had said he would be fine.
Taneli snuck through the house. Some of the floorboards creaked, but the director wouldn’t hear anything tonight.
He opened the front door slowly and just enough to sneak out.
The night sky over Blackåsen Mountain was as light as day. Soon there would be no night at all. Taneli missed the camp. It didn’t feel right to sleep inside, so far away from everything alive. Especially now, in spring.
He hesitated. Something was wrong with the picture before him. It took a while, but then he spotted them. Three men. Miners. Were they watching the director’s house? It looked like it. They hadn’t yet seen him. Not very good watchers, he thought.
He crouched and hurried down the steps and alongside the house. At the corner, he stopped, looked back. No, they hadn’t noticed.
He walked through the town, worried that someone would see him. Mr. Notholm, perhaps. He took the forest path instead and felt the springiness under his feet. He inhaled the scent of pine and resin and dry leaves.
He hadn’t planned where he was going but soon realized that there was only one destination: the land the director had said Mr. Notholm rented from him.
ON THE SIDE of the mountain there was an entry wound. Standing nearby were men and a line of horses.
Taneli squatted down behind a large pine to watch them.
Sami people carried boxes out of the hole in the mountain’s side, down the slope and then added them to sacks hanging over the backs of the animals. Sami people. But not like any Sami he had ever seen before. These ones were skin and bones. They walked gingerly, knees buckling under the weight. They looked ancient. They were the missing people, he was certain.
Taneli rose. He needed to see Javanna. But there were no children. No women. Only men.
A man on a horse, a whip slicing through the air. “Faster!” he yelled.
Mr. Notholm!
Notholm turned to another man also on a horse. “I can’t believe you’re forcing us to move,” he muttered.
The other man was dressed in a black suit. He was sitting leaning on the horse’s neck, arms crossed. “What did you expect?” he said, unmoved. “People are getting too close.”
“We could just have shut him up,” Notholm said.
“He’s not the only one,” the other man said. “Enough now.”
“There are so many things to pack up,” Notholm complained.
“Better get a move on then.”
They were moving. That was what Javanna had meant! Once they had moved, he’d never find them.
Taneli retraced his footsteps, slowly at first. Then he began to run. He needed to wake the director.
“HE JUST LEFT,” the housekeeper said, mouth tight. She still didn’t like him. “Went to see the foreman.”
Taneli whirled around, pushed open the door and ran after him.
He saw the director farther down the road, approaching the mine. The foreman was standing waiting for him and the director reached out to shake his hand.
Then, suddenly, he went down on his knees, as if to pray.
“Help!” the foreman yelled as he bent down and tried to keep him upright.
Taneli stopped.
Men came running.
Taneli began to run again. Soon he was beside the director and put his hand on his. It was burning hot. He felt the foreman look at him, but he didn’t say anything. Someone got a stretcher. Gingerly, they lifted the director onto it.
“His skin is on fire,” Taneli said.
“You!” the foreman shouted to one of the younger men. “Get Dr. Ingemarsson. Ask him to come to the director’s house.”
“Faster,” he yelled at the men carrying the stretcher. They half ran toward the villa. The director lay absolutely still. He might be dead, Taneli thought.
The housekeeper met them in the hallway. She silently followed the men up to the director’s bedroom.
The director’s skin was flushed. He had sweated through the front of his shirt.
The foreman and Taneli’s eyes met.
The doctor came running up the stairs, his coat flapping behind him.
“Everyone out,” he said.
55.
Laura
Laura couldn’t sleep. She was lying in her childhood room. The safest place on earth, though it didn’t feel like it any longer. The house was quiet. Nobody had been up when she came home, but she would have avoided her father anyway. She didn’t understand how he could overlook the fact that people were dying. Dying. And being tortured. Surely it had to be exposed. This was the man who had always been there for her. Who had taught her everything she knew. Who had raised her. Who had all the right answers. She had always trusted his opinion.
Sleep, she told herself. You need it. Just a few hours. Sleep.
Those photos . . . Her stomach clenched. She turned on her back as if to avoid the images, then ended up covering her face with her hands. Subject thirty-three . . . She still couldn’t fathom it. She wanted to go through the names register line by line, wanted to know exactly who was involved. And their project for Professor Lindahl was quoted in the manifesto. She had read it on the train back and many paragraphs came directly from their work. She remembered writing the words. She would make them pay for what they had done. Professor Lindahl, the most. He had betrayed them. On the train, Erik had flipped through the list of names, but she had been too scared to take out the other papers in public. She would go through them all with Emil today. He would help them. Hang them out for society to deal with. They would pay. And then her father would understand.
Traveling back, Matti had sat beside her. “It was my Finnish heritage,” he’d said. “That’s what Professor Lindahl always prodded me about. He insinuated I was worth less than the rest of you and that I’d end up dragging you down. He kept asking why I couldn’t see it. Or if I just wouldn’t admit it. He always asked as if he was genuinely interested. I ended up feeling I wasn’t in your league.”
She felt a sting of sorrow for the young man she’d known. And then his friends had gone down the same road. How awful.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Would you have listened?”
She had to admit they wouldn’t have.
“Funny, though,” Matti said. “When we had that fight, I left feeling it was my fault and that I had dragged you down after all.” Then he had paused and she hadn’t known what to say.
“We’re losing the war, Laura,” he said. “Sweden will end up having the Soviet Union for its neighbor and of Finland there will be no tr
ace.”
“Are you certain?” she whispered.
“Oh yes.” His face was gray. “This war will end up taking everything.”
“Yet still you are here, tonight, with us,” she said.
“If I’m learning anything from this,” he said, “it’s how important every single battle is. If you don’t fight whatever comes your way, how can you live with yourself?”
“LAURA!” JENS WAS coming toward her on the pavement outside Karl-Henrik’s apartment. He looked like she probably did herself: tired and pale, his bruises still livid on his face. His blond hair was standing straight up, as if he, too, had tossed and turned without being able to fall asleep.
“You came,” she said. He had said he was going back to work.
He nodded. “Couldn’t leave it,” he admitted. “At work, they think I have the flu,” he added sheepishly. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” she said, meeting his gaze. “You?”
He just shook his head.
She sighed. “I guess we should go up. Emil will arrive in an hour. I’d like to see the list of names before he comes.”
They walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell.
“He’s got space to publish tomorrow,” she said.
“Does he know yet what it is?”
“I’ve only told him it’s huge and risky and that it will bring the sky down. He seemed to like that idea,” she said dryly.
“Some people are like that,” Jens said.
Yes. Not long ago, she herself had been like that.
Laura rang the doorbell again.
“Has Emil done something similar before?” he asked. He then seemed to shake his head at himself. Nothing could be similar.
“He’s done articles on the fate of the Jews in Germany, which caused a quite a stir. He is young, hugely ambitious. He won’t be doing this for the same reasons as we are.”
She frowned. “Why isn’t he answering the door?”
Jens shrugged. “Perhaps he’s ill?”
He could have fallen. On his crutches, all on his own. He could be hurt. Laura pressed the door handle. The door was unlocked.
“Karl-Henrik?” Laura called into the apartment.
No response. They exchanged a glance. Laura licked her lips. Something was wrong.
Jens walked in ahead of her. “Karl-Henrik?” he called.
Nothing. Jens walked down the hallway. As he peeked into the living room, he turned as if to stop Laura from entering, but it was too late. She was already beside him, taking it all in.
The living room was destroyed. The sofa and armchairs had been cut up, the padding pulled out. The books had been ripped out from the bookcase and seemingly thrown across the room. And there was blood. A huge pool of it, followed by a red path leading into the kitchen.
Laura couldn’t breathe.
Jens stepped over the bloody path. She followed him. In the kitchen, they found Karl-Henrik lying facedown. He bent down to feel for Karl-Henrik’s pulse. He shook his head and raised his eyes to meet Laura’s. They were too late.
Jens reached for her, perhaps to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away. Instead, she sank down, leaning against the wall and sat staring at her former friend. He wouldn’t have stood a chance. So much blood. She covered her face with her hands. Not Karl-Henrik!
She squinted her eyes as hard as she could. Her chest caved in with the pain. Karl-Henrik was gone. They should never have left him alone. They should never have . . .
The documents . . .
She forced herself together and opened her eyes. Forced her gaze away from her friend on the floor. Karl-Henrik’s shelves were empty. His notes had all been removed. She rose and walked on shaky legs through the living room, searching for the bags they had brought this morning—nothing. She looked into the bedroom—they weren’t there, either. All the material they had gathered was gone. Fuck.
She exhaled. Fuck, fuck, fuck. There were no notes, no files, no photographs. They’d taken them. Her friend was dead and all the proof was gone.
She walked back into the living room. Jens seemed to have come to the same conclusion. He met her gaze and shook his head.
They had killed Karl-Henrik right there in the middle of the room. His crutches were lying at the far end. The plaster on the wall above was cracked. They must have thrown the crutches against the wall. The wrecked room, the murdered man; the neighbors must have heard something. They had dropped the bags off with Karl-Henrik at seven that morning. The blood was dried brown. She knew nothing about crime scenes, but it occurred to her that the killing must have happened shortly after they had left. Perhaps someone had seen the perpetrators.
How did they know? she thought. Who had told them? Why oh why did they have to kill him . . .
She could visualize Karl-Henrik pulling himself along with the help of his arms and had to close her eyes briefly. It broke her heart imagining the scene.
“We have to go,” Jens said. “If the police come now while we’re still here, we’ll be the prime suspects.”
She squatted down by Karl-Henrik and put her hand on his back. I should have told you, she thought. How much you mattered.
“Come on,” Jens said. “I’m surprised they’re not here already. With all the noise, someone ought to have called them.”
She straightened.
“How did they know?” Laura asked as they ran down the stairs.
Sirens! They were coming. Jens dragged Laura by the hand. They exited the building and hurried past it to a nearby café. They snuck in and sat down at one of the tables. Laura’s heart was pounding. She was shivering, cold with shock.
“Tea?” the waitress asked.
“Yes,” Jens said. “Two.”
Through the window, they could see the arrival of the police: two squad cars, a bunch of officers running in and out of the building.
“It’s like sorcery,” Jens said. He shook his head. “It’s as if they know how to be one step ahead of us at all times. I don’t understand . . .”
“Emil!” Laura said.
They had forgotten all about the journalist. Then, on the other side of the pavement, they saw the young man. Trench coat and hat—briefcase under his arm. Jens half rose but Laura grabbed his hand and he sat down again. Emil spotted the police cars and slowed his gait. He put his head down and walked on, past the police, past the house.
“Clever man,” Jens mumbled.
“I told him to keep away from the police.”
The waitress came with their drinks. Laura’s hands were shaking. Jens put his hand on hers. They must have looked like any young couple meeting for afternoon tea, perhaps upset after hearing some bad news: problems at work, maybe, or a death in the family. She took a breath and blew the air out slowly.
“It’s all gone,” he said. “What do we do now?”
56.
Jens
Only we knew,” Laura said. “Only us. Unless one of you told someone else.”
Matti and Erik shook their heads. Jens did the same. He had told no one. Of course not. They were in Jens’s apartment in Old Town. It was overcast outside, dark clouds covering the sky.
“He died,” Laura said, and her voice broke.
Jens wanted to put his hand on her shoulder, but it was Matti who moved closer to her.
“Perhaps the journalist . . .” Erik began.
“Oh, don’t be daft!” Laura exploded. “It was the scoop of a lifetime!”
“We could have been followed,” Matti said. “They could have had someone watching the Institute; someone we never noticed.”
“Two of our friends have died,” Laura said. “And it’s all been in vain. We have nothing!”
She shut her eyes, then opened them again. “Yet we’re are still alive. Why?”
“Perhaps because of him,” Erik muttered and nodded toward Jens.
“What do you mean?” Jens asked.
“He works for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. How do we kn
ow he’s not involved in this?”
Jens could feel himself bristle. No. He wouldn’t get dragged into a war of words with this joker.
“I am not, but it’s true, you can’t know. Just like we can’t know with you.” He turned to Laura: “Or even you. But the four of us are all that is left. We have to trust each other.”
“If they know, why don’t they come for us?” Laura said. “Why are we protected?”
“We aren’t,” Matti said, slowly. “Look at what happened to Karl-Henrik.”
“I think that’s . . . new,” Laura said.
“They don’t have to come for us,” Jens said. Even to himself, he sounded tired. “If you told people at this stage—who would believe you? I’m certain that if we manage to get fresh proof and hold onto it, they wouldn’t hesitate, but at this stage,” he shrugged, “the sad reality is that they don’t have to.”
“All our leads are gone,” Laura said.
“There’s still your professor . . . What was his name?”
“Professor Lindahl.”
He nodded just as she shook her head.
“We’d never get to him,” she said. “When we studied under him, I always had this impression that he was one step ahead of us.”
“Then I guess we need to be two or three steps ahead of that,” Jens said.
The sun broke through the clouds, daylight in all its glory. Laura, Erik and Matti looked white with tiredness. He imagined he looked just the same. Dead. They all looked dead.
THAT AFTERNOON, JENS passed by the office to say he was no longer sick, and he’d be back the following day. On his desk were two messages: Sven’s father, Magnus Feldt, had tried to contact him. Jens was so tired that he felt he could sleep standing up, but he called Magnus anyway.
Magnus cleared his throat. Speaking over the phone was not ideal, especially if the subject matter was politically dangerous. Jens could imagine him standing up, moving about, full of restless energy.
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