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This Land is no Stranger

Page 14

by Sarah Hollister


  “Vuh-raahhh-nee-kah.” The sound was eerie, directionless.

  The icy tick of sleet became constant. There was a strange quality to the weather’s brutality. Occasionally the air would teasingly clear, only to be quickly obliterated again in a swirl of snow. It was as if the storm had multiple eyes, pockets of calm that opened and then just as suddenly, closed.

  During one of these brief lulls, Brand witnessed two children tugging on a pair of chains that were fastened to opposite sides of a huge she-wolf’s neck. The nattmara bent toward a clump of rolled-up carpet that was lying in the snow. The hulking creature’s snout showed blood red. Brand realized the carpet was actually a human form.

  The nattmara was…feeding on…tearing at…wolfing…human flesh. Its pair of kiddie handlers tugged gaily on the chain leashes as if they were leading the family dog on its afternoon walk.

  In the instant before the pocket of calm slammed shut, Brand saw something else, too. Unaware or unconcerned about the sight of a giant beast devouring a corpse, a second pair of children knelt together a few meters away from the spectacle. The girl whom Brand had been pursuing, the little one in the black dress, held open the stolen backpack for an older boy.

  The bigger kid pulled out Brand’s Glock. He stared as if the piece was the Holy Grail. Emitting a cry of triumph, he then banged off two shots, aiming downward at the well-bloodied body lying on the ground. The explosions barely sounded over the roar of the storm. Brand saw the supine form jolt with the impact of the rounds. Then the blizzard closed again. The shooter became merely a dark, shapeless silhouette lost in the white-out.

  The nattmara had been spooked by the gunshots. It tried to tear itself away from its kiddie handlers, dragging them helplessly along as it bounded away from the dead body it had just been feasting upon.

  In only a few strides of its long loping body, the beast was there. It came at Brand like a hellhound, like its name, like a nightmare.

  23.

  Cape Coast, Ghana, April 1957.

  Gösta Kron took a table at a local chop bar’s terrace, kicking out one of the chairs for Loke Voss. His companion suffered from a tropical illness to a severe degree. He could barely do anything for himself. A case of dysentery was the ostensible cause. Kron judged the man’s true malady to be simple homesickness.

  The chop bar’s terrace featured expansive views of the Bay of Guinea. Back over Kron’s left shoulder loomed the white-washed hulk of Cape Coast Castle. Loke saw none of it. He settled heavily into the cane chair offered to him.

  Loke Voss was, what? Approaching forty? Kron had just turned twenty and was seemingly impervious to dysentery, malaria, guinea worm, camp fever and whatever else the tropics could throw at him. His only prophylactic measure was always to drink beer, never the local water, parasite-infested and lethal. He now motioned the boy waiter with two fingers now, ordering imported bottles of Guinness stout, a beverage which possessed the advantage of being okay to drink warm. The hometown brew was pure piss.

  The two of them had just returned from the Ashanti gold fields, a hundred miles to the northwest. The place was in chaos. The British were pulling out. Only a month previous, on 6 March 1957, Kwame Nkruma, now president-for-life, had declared independence for the British colony formerly known as Gold Coast.

  Such an enticing name, Kron thought. Gold Coast. The new one, “Ghana,” meant something like “warrior kingdom.” That was great, too, but didn’t exactly have the same ring as Gold Coast. There was a hole in every human soul, Kron believed, an emptiness that could only be properly filled by gold. Gold was good, gold was great, gold was…everything.

  With independence, Ghana was in transition. The gold fields were in chaos, yes, but the whole country was in chaos, too. Chaos was good, chaos was great, chaos was…everything—for the purposes of the Kron family, at least. Gösta Kron’s father, Baron Henrik Kron, saw the British tucking tail as a golden opportunity. According to the old man’s way of thinking, the current upheavals in Ghana represented a chance to right a historical wrong over three hundred years in the making.

  In the middle of the seventeenth century, Sweden controlled every hectare of land that Kron could see from the chop bar terrace. Back then his countrymen had built or at least rebuilt the huge castle that stood up the shoreline a quarter mile away. The Swedish Gold Coast was planned to be the first of many colonies, placing Sweden on the level of the Danish, Dutch and British imperial empires. The Swedes set themselves up as slavers in Cape Coast, using the castle’s dungeon baracoon to hold their human product.

  Young Baron Kron couldn’t care less about history. His father’s tales of Sweden’s colonial past left him cold. What his twenty-year-old mind did like was adventure. His mission to the newly independent warrior kingdom on the Gold Coast of Africa suited Kron to a T. The old baron made him take along Loke Voss, an ally and business associate, to keep his son in line.

  Backed by the old baron, the Voss family was in the midst of building a transportation empire in Sweden, tactics that included extortion, hijacking, and—yes—murder. All perfectly legitimate business strategies, according to Loke Voss. Ghana might have defeated his digestive tract, but the man would no doubt return to fighting form as soon as they got back north.

  Conquering heroes they would be, flush with lucrative contracts for mining rights. Perhaps they’d be loaded down with a few kilogram bars of gold bullion to pass around as well.

  But who knew? Kron gazed over the dirty sand beach parked thick with fishing skiffs, the blue expanse of the Gulf of Guinea, the white man’s big bleached castle throwing its long shadow of slavery—and he had a brief thought of remaining in the Warrior Kingdom. He could access his own inner warrior, carve out a name for himself in Africa. In a few years, a decade at the most, when the native Africans got tired of self-rule and became nostalgic for their former masters, the young baron might position his own fine self to become Ghana’s new president-for-life.

  Gösta Kron had stumbled across something at the sprawling central market in Kumasi that he could not get out of his mind. While strolling among the mounds of plantains, cassava root and other strange foodstuffs—oranges were green here—he encountered an ancient bearded Ashanti male dressed in a spotless white robe and an embroidered yellow skull cap. For some reason the man had a red megaphone in his lap, which Kron didn’t immediately notice. He barely saw the African himself, so stunned was he to see what lay at the man’s feet.

  A huge spotted hyena dozed peacefully in the middle of the busy market, its evil, heavy-lidded eyes at half mast, a red-blond ruff running down its back, a crotchet muzzle fastened firmly in place on its snout. The Ashanti man, who in faltering English told Kron his name was “Kumi the Strong,” casually held a chain leash attached to the beast’s woven leather collar. The smell of the hyena was dead-meat terrible, which somehow only contributed to its allure.

  Fascinated, Kron edged a hand near the animal’s flank. The beast lazily swiveled its head and stared at the encroaching foreigner. At that moment something deep and moving occurred. Kron saw the ancient African savannah in those eyes, baboon prey, rotting carcasses under a pitiless sun, an era long before homo sapiens, before the taming of fire, before God. It was though Kron had embarked on a blazing trip in a time machine.

  What Kron felt most was kinship. Perhaps he was truly an African after all, mistakenly born among the pale Swedes, a warrior king with a destiny he had heretofore not suspected.

  “Jesus,” Kron whispered, addressing not the Savior but himself.

  He started haggling with the beast’s handler right then and there. “How much if I hire you to bring the animal to Sweden?”

  Owning a hyena had instantly become mandatory in his mind. He had already considered shipping home a curated selection of live African wildlife. At the market here in Cape Coast, a lion cub attracted his interest as well as a baby ape. He had eaten bush meat with the best of them on his trip to the gold fields, some from species he would stock in the
private menagerie that he planned for the lodge.

  The hyena would be the centerpiece. Fly it to Sweden by plane. Kron could imagine the fulsome odor of the animal filling the cargo hold of a DC-3.

  Headed home soon, he knew he’d eventually return to Ghana, maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years. If he didn’t grab this particular creature, another blond beast of the same species would do just as well. His possession would represent what surely would be the only pet hyena in Scandinavia.

  Maybe he’d pick up a wild dog, a jackal, or an aardwolf while he was at it, too. Plus hyenas ran in packs, didn’t they? He’d have to have more than two or three. He would present the whole crazy menagerie as a gift to pappa, to wow visitors at the Kron family hunting lodge. The African specimens would also provide a comforting reminder to the young baron himself of his status as never-crowned president-for-life of the Warrior Kingdom.

  24.

  As it galloped down on her, Brand recognized the animal. The beast was the same spotted, sandy-colored, big-shouldered dog she had seen disappearing into the woods at the Voss manor house outside of Ljusdal.

  With its pair of giggling minders in pursuit, the creature blew past Brand in a cloud of the foulest stench that had ever assaulted her nostrils. The smell triggered sense memories of decomposed bodies she had encountered on the job. Somehow the rot managed to contaminate even the clean-smelling freeze of the blizzard. Brand rocked backward and stood helpless as the animal passed within a few feet of her. Stunned, she watched it go, staring as it became merely an indistinct blond blur disappearing into the wind-blown snow.

  But she broke out of her paralysis as the older boy who had fired off her pistol came dashing along after the big dog. He emitted shrill whistles and called out a word in Swedish that Brand did not understand.

  “Fenrir! Fenrir!”

  The kid paid as little attention to Brand as the monster dog had, just seconds before. But he was running with her Glock in his right hand, so she stepped directly into his path.

  “No!” she shouted. Then she thought she’d better try Swedish. “Nej!”

  The young boy performed a slapstick slide on the roadway ice. He slammed into her, knocking Brand to the ground. She managed to kick his feet out from under him as she went down. He wound up falling backward against the bank of plow-hardened snow. They sprawled almost side by side. The hallucinatory quality of the moment embellished itself effortlessly. The kid’s leather bomber cap slipped half-way off his head, revealing what looked like pink hair shaved into the style of a punk mohawk.

  “Nej!” Brand shouted again.

  She watched it happen. First the pink-haired kid took a moment to straighten out his bomber hat. Then with his other hand he raised the Glock and pointed it at her.

  Several times in the course of her police career, Brand had faced off weapons on the mean streets of New York City—and in the mean subway tunnels beneath the streets, too. Knives, nunchuks, once a hatchet, once a sword, several times golf clubs and, more often, handguns, both revolvers and automatics. She had also confronted a homemade zip gun, constructed of wood, metal pipe, and rubber bands, with a threepenny nail for a firing pin. The jury-rigged weapon exploded in the face of the attacker, sending him cuffed to a cot in the ER but leaving Brand unscathed.

  The clichéd time-slowing-to-a-crawl effect had never happened for her. The lesson from the potentially fatal experiences on the job was always the split-second nature of the threats.

  Don’t think. React.

  A rock-hard chunk of plowed snow lay near her right hand, so she grabbed that and threw it at the punk. At the same instant he pulled the trigger. The bang sounded huge. The chunk shattered in a huge cloud of ice. The shot seemed to fly harmlessly past Brand to embed itself in the snowbank.

  She kicked out again and connected with the hand that held her pistol. It spun out of the punk’s grip and hit the ice of the road. Brand realized that whichever one of them got upright first would likely be the one to survive, so she tried to rise.

  The little girl in the black dress scampered forward out of the storm. She flung Brand’s borrowed, half-empty backpack at her. The child’s aim was true. The clumsy pack hit her straight on. Brand’s feet slipped out from under her once again. She collapsed into the snow.

  Her mohawked opponent was already on his feet. He grabbed the Glock. Sweeping up the little girl under one arm, he began blasting shots at Brand as he fled back down the road.

  Brand could do nothing but curl into a ball and count the rounds. They totalled six—which meant, counting the two slugs put into the corpse when the perp first got his hands on her sidearm—there were eleven left in the 9x19 magazine. Unarmed as she was, seething with fury, Brand still had the good sense not to pursue the punk while he had that many rounds left to throw at her.

  The hallucination stuttered to an end. The pink-haired, kid-slinging gunsel vanished into the blizzard. His piercing whistles and his calls to Fenrir faded into the screaming wind.

  She sat upright. She was not killed. She would live to fight another day. Brand swore to herself that she would track down her sidearm if it took everything she had. An image floated into her mind of a pink mohawk scalp, bloody, defeated, and nailed to a trophy wall.

  A couple of things happened at once. She heard the far-off buzz of a snowmobile. Then the chug of another engine sounded close by. Hammar’s Saab loomed out of the blizzard-blown snow, skidding to a stop a few meters from where Brand sat.

  Hammar swung open the driver’s side door, leaning halfway out. His blood-spattered face made him appear as a vision out of the Grand Guignol. The minor crack in the Saab’s windshield, dented by an imprint of a child’s head, completed the package.

  “Brand.” Hammar’s voice was oddly cool. “I say we get the hell out of here.”

  Leaving the scene of a crime while the incident remained in progress was another cardinal sin of law enforcement. Secure the scene, call in the cavalry, attempt to stabilize whatever confrontation was occurring. Fleeing went against every bit of Brand’s police instinct. She thought of heading out in pursuit of the mohawked Johnny Rotten and his demon-imp sidekick. She realized she didn’t have the heart for it.

  She ran toward the driver’s side of the Saab.

  “I’ll drive!” Hammar barked back at her, his composure finally rattled.

  But Brand simply remained standing next to the half open door.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Hammar said, finally moving over and allowing her to climb behind the wheel.

  Before she got in, Brand scooped up one of the hardened chunks of snow. She offered it to Hammar. He stared, but finally accepted it and held it up against his still-streaming nose. Everything inside the car was bloodstained. She noticed his leather satchel on the floor at his feet. She engaged the shift and drove off, feeling an immense sense of relief to leave Västvall behind.

  “You got it back,” Brand said, indicating the satchel. “And the ignition keys, too? Did you take them off those kids?”

  “No.” Hammar gave her a rueful smile. His teeth were stained with blood. “I had another set of keys in my bag.”

  “Be prepared, that’s the motto of a good Boy Scout.” Brand felt lightheaded and vaguely high. The Winston Churchill line that police always liked to quote occurred to her, something about how there was nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.

  “You’re bleeding,” Hammar said. His voice came out as a nasal honk.

  She glanced over at him. “No, that’s just your blood.”

  “Your shoulder,” he said, indicating her upper right arm.

  There was a crease in the fabric of her jacket, a rip that showed fresh blood.

  “It’s just a scratch.” It was a sentence that she had always wanted to say but never had the chance before. Elation flooded her.

  “Jesus Christ!” she shouted. “What the hell was that?”

  “Those children were Romani,” Hammar said calmly, his equanimi
ty returning.

  “Did you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “If you have to ask ‘what?’ that means you didn’t see it. The hound of the fucking Baskervilles back there.”

  She hadn’t mentioned the vision of the dog vanishing into the woods at the Ljusdal manor house, not trusting that her own eyes had seen what they had seen.

  Hammar said, “The Swedes around here love to interbreed dogs with the native wolves.”

  “Nuh-uh, pal, that beast was a wolf like King Kong was an ape.” Brand second guessed herself even now, remembering how difficult it was to see anything during the blizzard of the century. She could barely see ten feet in front of her as it was.

  “All that did happen, didn’t it?” she asked, hoping for a reality check from Hammar. “What on earth are a collection of gypsy street urchins doing way out here?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Hammar responded. “A few of the more progressive villages in the area attract Romani from Stockholm with generous social services and welcoming townspeople. Much of the area has become depopulated, so they encourage any influx of outsiders.”

  “And how do the newcomers get along with the locals, some of whom are, so I hear, rabidly anti-immigrant?”

  “There’ve been incidents,” Hammar said.

  “I’ll bet.”

  Brand felt great, even though she realized she should be furious. She had fallen prey to the oddest ambush known to man. She had been deprived of her sidearm by a midget in a black dress, who had turned the pistol over to a teenage madman with pink hair, who in turn tried to kill her with her own gun. Plus there was the big dog.

  And another thing, for which she should blame her bloody-nosed traveling companion. Everywhere she went, looking for Vosses, she ran into Roma. It was too much of a coincidence to pass unnoticed. If her hallucination had been correct, now there were three bodies to account for, two at the Ljusdal manor house and one lying on the ground in the middle of Västvall village.

 

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