The Historians

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  “Right.”

  The man kicked the side of his horse and rode toward the sound, where Nihkko and the others were hiding, where they’d pull him off his horse and silence him.

  “John?” his friend asked after a while. “John?”

  “Gone wolf hunting,” another one sniggered.

  “Taking a shit, more like it,” someone else muttered.

  There was a kerfuffle from the wood, wings beating, a cry, branches breaking.

  “John!”

  “That’s just a grouse taking flight,” one of the local men said. “Your friend must have disturbed it.”

  The men were looking in the direction of the thicket now. Taneli held his breath for what was to come. Olet left his side. He made his way in among the captured Sami, grabbed a box and hoisted it onto a horse’s back. At the same time, three of the guards were pulled down from their horses and replaced by three miners. It was so quiet, only shadows moving. The three new guards took their horses farther away and made sure to keep their faces turned so as not to be noticed.

  “Hey, you!” one of the remaining guards suddenly shouted; one of the local men.

  Taneli held his breath. The guard was pointing his rifle at Olet.

  Olet approached, head down.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” the guard said.

  “Come on,” another guard said. “How could you possibly say that?”

  “No, it’s true,” the first guard said. “Look at him. He’s fatter than the others, too.”

  “You’re seeing things. How would we suddenly have a new prisoner?”

  The first guard muttered something but lowered his weapon.

  Nihkko and his men rushed to pull the two down but not before one of the guards managed to let out a shout before being silenced.

  “What’s going on down there?” A guard at the mine entrance was looking over at them.

  “Nothing!” one of the miners shouted back. “John here is unsteady on his horse, that’s all. First it’s wolves. Now it’s his horse.” He laughed and the other miners chimed in.

  Please, Taneli thought. Please don’t come and check.

  “Bloody amateurs,” the guard at the opening replied.

  Taneli exhaled.

  A line of Sami joined the prisoners. Don’t react, Taneli thought to the prisoners, and they didn’t. The way they looked . . . Perhaps they were beyond reacting. The tribesmen walked up the slope, heads bent. The miners watched intently.

  A quick attack. Two more guards down. Two more tied. Now, the only ones remaining were the ones inside the mine.

  The miners joined the Sami, running up the slope to the opening of the mine.

  Taneli ran with them. He needed to be there. He needed to find his sister.

  As he came closer to the prisoners, he saw they had been starved. Their ragged clothing hung off them. Their heads had been shaved and their eyes looked like black buttons in their gaunt faces.

  “You can sit down now,” one of the miners said to one of the Sami prisoners. He lifted his box off his shoulders.

  The man stared at him with empty eyes.

  “It’s over,” the miner said. “You’re free.”

  TANELI FOLLOWED THE Sami and the miners into the depths of the earth. The path was sloping downwards. It was getting cooler.

  Soon, the ragged mine path turned to cement. A floor. An antiseptic smell; same as at the doctor’s clinic. There were side rooms, hospital beds, surgical instruments, shelves full of jars.

  The corridor opened up into a larger room. The room was full of cages. All were empty apart from the farthest one. Inside were four girls. Their bones protruded so sharply that it hurt to look. They were filthy dirty, and they were naked.

  Around him, men were wrestling other men. Taneli ran for the cage. And his sister.

  As he approached, she lifted her head. She made a croak that didn’t sound human. A thin scream. A bird’s cry.

  Using his fingers, Taneli tore at the chain securing the door.

  “Here.” One of the miners had found a pair of bolt cutters. He cut the chain and they opened the door to the cage. Javanna crawled out first. She tried to stand but couldn’t. Taneli put his arm around her waist and held her up. There were no words.

  “Javanna,” he whispered.

  Gunfire. They froze. A man ran out from a side door, carrying a rifle. One of the miners fell to the ground. Two. Then Nihkko leaped at the man. A flash of silver, a gargling sound, and the man fell.

  After that, all was quiet . . . until someone began to cry.

  64.

  Laura

  Laura was sitting on the dock by the water outside her father’s house. The evening was warm, with a blend of apple blossom and seawater in the air. The dark water moved slowly, clucking when it hit the wooden pillars.

  There was nowhere to go. No hope. The evidence was gone again. What had they threatened Emil with? Professor Lindahl had won. How could she not have seen what he was like? They had talked about the elite a lot. It had all sounded right to her.

  “Most Swedes were caught up in the rhetoric,” Jens had said on the way home when she tried to express her feelings of guilt to him. “Nobody ever imagined it would go this far.”

  “They think we’re beaten,” she said.

  “But we are not.” But then he sighed and fell silent.

  She wished Karl-Henrik was still with them. He was so good at seeing a way forward.

  She didn’t think she could face her father. Now that she knew what he thought of her, how could she? Somewhere in her mind, she had always hoped he would admit to having driven her mother away. It would have been easier. Instead, her mother had simply left and not tried to bring Laura with her.

  For years, Laura had secretly thought that, one day, her mother would seek her out. Perhaps when she turned eighteen. I’ll explain everything. This is why I’ve been absent . . .

  On her eighteenth birthday, a thick white envelope had indeed arrived, addressed to Laura. It had been lying on the table together with the presents and the cake. Her heart had bumped in her chest. Thoughtlessly, her father had snatched it up and opened it—as if all mail that arrived at the house was for him. “Would you believe it?” He’d chuckled and waved the pages in the air. “You’re invited to buy shares in L.M. Ericsson. What do you think?”

  That was when she’d understood it would never happen. And something had broken inside her—she had felt it crack. Her mother had not once looked back. She might even have forgotten what day her daughter was born.

  Time had shown her again and again that her mother was not going to come back for her.

  Time . . .

  Wait . . .

  That was what was wrong about the meeting between Britta and Sven Olov Lindholm. Britta had met with him on the Thursday and died on the Monday. After months of researching and digging for her thesis, she had, after that meeting, taken actions that led to her death just four days later. And it had begun with her seeing Sven Olov. She thought about what he had said he told Britta: “Rumors of a project . . . Highest levels . . . Stop at nothing.”

  It wasn’t enough. Britta would have had no idea where to go after that. Just like Laura hadn’t. Something had happened that weekend that got her killed. Perhaps he had told Britta more. Something that he hadn’t told Laura.

  SHE FOUND SVEN Olov as he was getting ready for a late-night speech in a gloomy conference room with gray walls.

  He exhaled noisily when he saw her. “I told you, I won’t talk to you again.” He began unpacking his briefcase, throwing bundles of paper down on the desk in front of him.

  “You told Britta more than you told me,” she said.

  He remained silent, continued unpacking. A newspaper. A pen.

  “You gave her a name,” she guessed. “A starting point.”

  Sven Olov stopped moving. He straightened to look at her, folding his arms.

  “That name got her killed,” Laura said. “And then you got
scared.”

  Still nothing.

  “Sven Olov, I will not leave you alone until you tell me.”

  “They’ll kill you.”

  She shrugged. “That’s not your problem.”

  “They’ll kill me, too.”

  “I don’t think so. Nobody came after you after you spoke to Britta. Nobody needs to come now. I won’t tell.”

  He sighed and shook his head as if wondering how he got himself into this situation. Then he met her gaze. “I told her about a Dane who was seemingly fixing things for this organization.”

  A Dane?

  “An Erik Anker,” he said, grudgingly. “For some reason, that name really upset Britta.”

  LAURA FOUND ERIK at the Grand. All the way there, she tried to deny it. It couldn’t be him. He’d loved Britta. He was with Laura when her apartment blew up. He . . .

  But for every argument there was a counterargument.

  This time, his eyes didn’t light up when he saw her. She walked over to stand beside him at the bar. The women around them were dressed as if for a summer party—beautiful dresses, flowers in their hair. They were drinking champagne. Champagne!

  “I’d offer you a drink,” Erik said, “if I thought you’d come for one.”

  “How could you?”

  He leaned close to her and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. A gentle grip, but one that hurt, nevertheless.

  “Look at the world we live in, Laura,” he said. “Professor Lindahl showed us that we have to safeguard what is Scandinavian. Otherwise, in a few decades, there will be nothing of us left.”

  “Those people . . .” She choked. “God, Erik . . .”

  “The world is falling apart. The current systems aren’t strong enough. The Scandinavian race has a chance, but not if it is sullied by other races. Scandinavia could become a powerful nation once again. Can you imagine that? Can’t you see how crucial this is?”

  “Our project,” she said.

  “Once we started, it was obvious. Professor Lindahl agreed. He said the project could add value on a much greater level.”

  “How could you?” she repeated, crying now.

  “It’s easy for you,” he said, and his face was bitter. “You’ve never had to work for anything.”

  “And Britta?”

  He let go of her, grimaced, rubbed his forehead with his knuckles.

  She felt lightheaded . . . nauseous. “Tell me you didn’t,” she begged. “Oh Erik, please say it wasn’t you!”

  She put her hand on the bar to steady herself. She looked at him: his drawn cheeks, the black eyes. She couldn’t believe it. He had killed her. Tortured her. Britta’s lover, the boy who adored her, had turned into her worst nightmare.

  “It was that bloody thesis,” he said. “She was obsessed. I tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t. Someone kept supplying her with clues about the network and then, in the end, provided her with proof. She also got my name—from him or somebody else. She went crazy! Luckily, she took it all to your father. He called me . . .”

  “My father?”

  Erik sighed and lowered his head.

  The room fell away from her. There was a buzzing in her ears, and she couldn’t see clearly.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said shakily.

  “Believe what you want,” he said. “Your father called me and told me to get rid of the problem.”

  She couldn’t even understand his words. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. But it explained so much. Her father’s refusal to get involved. His attempts to quash her. The fact that she was still alive . . .

  “But we couldn’t find her thesis. We were convinced she’d written about what we were doing in there, but the thesis was gone. We thought she’d sent it to you.”

  “The bomb,” she said.

  He nodded. “My job was to keep you away. I almost didn’t manage it. She should have listened to me, Laura. You all should have,” Erik said. “We had the truth in our project. Instead, you tried to close it down.” His eyes were glittering now.

  “The eye . . . Her body at the Historical Society . . . They were messages for us,” she concluded.

  “You never saw,” he said, and now he sounded bitter again. “You had everything from the beginning. You refused to see how important it was for Scandinavia and the rest of us.”

  She shook her head. “Britta didn’t have it all from the beginning,” she said. “You know this. She was born in a mining town to a miner, for Christ’s sake.”

  “She latched onto you as if it were her right,” he said. “As if she belonged with you.” He scoffed. “I wasn’t good enough for her and yet we were cut from the same cloth.”

  She could see it all laid out in front of her now. Her father taking the evidence from Britta, promising to help. The phone call to Erik. Erik at the university, smiling at the women working in the administration office, taking the key to the Historical Society off its hook.

  “Where did you kill her?” she asked.

  “At the Institute,” he said. “I said I needed to see her one last time—for old times’ sake.”

  She shook her head. Britta had still trusted him, perhaps still loved him. She had come one last time, never thinking he might harm her. She visualized Erik carrying Britta across the square, unlocking the door to the Historical Society.

  “Who killed Andreas?”

  He shrugged. It was him. Of course it was, she thought. Erik had been in the military. That was when he had learned to shoot.

  “And Karl-Henrik?”

  He shrugged again. “I like you, Laura,” he said. “I had hoped you’d come around, or at least understand to leave well enough alone.”

  He looked different now. He was no longer Erik the student, the friend, the drinking buddy, but Erik the policeman. A soldier. Ready for everything.

  He shook his head. “I could have killed you a thousand times, Laura, but your father wouldn’t let me. A thousand times, he said no. In Lapland, I had you in my sights. It would have been so easy. I told him you were getting too close, but he said you’d never make it all the way. Not without him. And here we are. Now look, Laura. Look what you’ve done.”

  She straightened.

  “Leaving already?” He nodded. “Well, I’ll see you around. Perhaps sooner than you think.”

  His eyes were on hers, steady, cold. As she walked away, she could feel them following her.

  She walked downstairs, then ran. She pushed open the heavy doors, hurried down the steps. At the side of the hotel, she vomited. When there was nothing left to bring up, she sank down on the pavement, head on her knees, chest still heaving. Erik had tortured Britta while she was still alive. And then he had killed her. All with her father’s approval. And she . . . she was a child of this. She remembered the scribbled note in Britta’s room: Worst is that evil which could be normal; the crossed out normal replaced with good.

  SHE WALKED. SHE walked through Stockholm and the warm night, along the water, out to Djursholm. She cried the whole way. Sometimes she had to stop to lean against a wall, she was crying so hard. And then, in the early morning hours, she was there, outside her father’s house. And she took the wide avenue of elm trees and walked up to the white villa, smelling the apple trees, smelling the sea. She’d been so happy here; felt so protected. She had had it all.

  She wasn’t certain why she had come. She wouldn’t be able to make a difference. And yet she had to speak with him. She had to tell him that she knew and how he disgusted her.

  She walked up the steps to the porch.

  Then someone moved in one of the chairs and she gave a small shriek.

  “It’s me.” Her grandfather’s voice. He was sitting with a blanket around him.

  “What’s going on? Where’s my father?” she asked.

  “Oh Laura. He went to his office and locked the door. I heard a gunshot. Laura, what has he done?”

  65.

  Jens

  When Laura called, Jens
had a pounding headache and swore at himself. He got up and dressed. He swigged three big glasses of water and ran down the stairs. Laura had sent her father’s driver to pick him up and the car was already on the street below his apartment. He wished he’d taken the time to brush his teeth.

  As the car entered the driveway, Laura came out to meet him.

  “They’ve just taken him away,” she said. “His body.”

  Her face was swollen, her eyes red, and he put his arms around her and pulled her close.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She withdrew. “Erik is part of this—Sven Olov Lindholm told me. When I confronted Erik, he told me about my father. I was going to talk to him . . . I think. But when I got here, it was too late.”

  Erik. Somewhere Jens felt relief. Not sorcery. Not an all-seeing evil. That was why the network had been one step ahead of them all the way. Erik.

  It was too early, but he had to ask. “Do you think there’s anything in his office?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I already went through it. Before I called the police. I didn’t want anyone to take anything away.”

  He cringed at the image: Laura stepping over her father’s body to search his belongings. She’d already had to endure too much. But then she was stronger than she thought.

  They sat down on the porch steps. There was twittering coming from the elm trees. Birds shouting that they had survived yet another night.

  “Jens, my father . . . He must have felt he had no option,” Laura said, wiping away tears. “Erik must have told him I knew. And then he—”

  Laura sobbed and covered her mouth with her hand. Jens put his arm around her back.

  “It couldn’t have gone any other way,” he said. “Once he chose this path, this was how it had to end.”

  He held her until the worst was over. Then he told her about Christian Günther.

  “It feels good knowing that it isn’t only us who are working against this,” she said.

  He agreed. The grown-ups had finally gotten themselves involved.

  “I can’t believe he would do this,” she said, returning to her father.