This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  The rustic two-story hunting lodge, newly built to resemble something out of the nineteenth century, featured Beaux Arts touches, bygone relics from the Swedish upper class’s obsession with Parisian culture. The numerous barns and outbuildings were constructed out of fieldstone, not falu red wood. The estate spoke of wealth, solidity, and a stubborn, haughty anachronism.

  The help, too, struck Brand with a timeless sort of feel. Many of them appeared to be African. Given what Hammar told her of the baron’s virulently anti-immigrant politics, that didn’t make much sense, either. But there they were. She and Hammar could see several laborers pass in and out of the barns, all wearing calf-high rubber boots.

  The expansive central yard of packed snow, only partially plowed and everywhere dirtied by the tracks of animals, displayed all the touches of a working farm. Plastic wrapped hay bales were stacked and covered with tarps, spoiling the old-time feel. White-painted wooden fences in fine repair led off toward the fields. An old Scania truck had pulled up near one of the barns, parked back-end in.

  A half hour earlier at the Romani encampment, the rifleman-in-a-snowsuit had sternly informed Brand and Hammar that they were trespassing. He marched them back to the Saab. Climbing into his own vehicle, he ordered them to follow him.

  “I’m Hugo,” he pronounced in imperious English. “The baron’s man.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Brand demanded of Hammar.

  “We are summoned,” Hammar said.

  “Yes? Where?”

  “To the estate of this so-called noble man whose land we have invaded,” Hammar said in a mocking tone. “Baron Gösta Kron.”

  The “baron’s man,” Magnusson, drove a shiny black Volvo station wagon. Brand and Hammar humped along close behind him in the Saab. They left the Västvall area and headed a few kilometers farther into the mountains. The surrounding landscape seemed to have been tilted up on its end, given a good shake, and emptied of people. The baron’s estate, as they approached, appeared as a rare center of life and activity in the area.

  Brand drove up an elegant, quarter-mile alée posted with denuded birch trees, then pulled into a cobblestoned courtyard swept clean of snow. Among several vehicles parked there were a Daimler Maybach twice as ancient as the Saab, but in sparkling shape, as well as a mud-splattered Land Rover and a Volvo box truck.

  Now, as Hammar and she climbed out of the Saab and glanced around at the lodge, farmyard, and grounds, Brand couldn’t decide how deep in trouble they had landed. She was certainly surprised about the diversity of the laborers. Some she swore were Romani, as strange as that might be.

  Then Baron Gösta Kron emerged from his residence, a vision-from-the-past example of Swedish nobility. He halted on the elevated stone porch of the hunting lodge, hands on hips.

  “Krister!” he called out almost merrily.

  “Hej,” Hammar answered with a nod.

  “You two know each other?” Brand muttered under her breath to Hammar. He didn’t respond.

  Baron Kron kept the tone light. “And you must be Veronika Brand,” he said. “The New York detective who is poor Gustav Dalgren’s granddaughter.”

  Brand felt vaguely intimidated. She reacted as she always did to intimidation, with an immediate frostiness. “Are we being detained or something?” she asked, staring up at the bony figure of the estate’s owner. “Under arrest?”

  “Oh, no, no,” said the baron. “I merely requested Hugo here to ask if you cared to join me this afternoon.”

  “When a request is made by someone carrying a hunting rifle, it tends to sound more like an order,” Brand said.

  “An attitude of command is common in an overseer,” the baron responded. “That’s all, Hugo,” he added, dismissing the man.

  He extended an arm to motion Hammar and Brand forward. “I was just settling in with a pre-luncheon cocktail, if you’d care to join me.”

  The invitation, the setting, the faint air of danger proved impossible to resist, at least as far as Brand was concerned. She mounted the steps to the small terrace, examining her host. Not David Bowie’s thin white duke, exactly, but a thin white baron. Trim, casually well-dressed, he wore his age well. Brand estimated the baron had to be at least seventy years. She would learn that he was actually over eighty.

  The interior of Gammelhem revealed itself not as a residence but as a full-blown shrine to blood sports. Dead animals crowded every square meter of wall space. The trophies seemingly came from all seven continents, including a stuffed sea leopard from Antarctica. Rhinos and big cats surrounded a line of timber wolves mounted as if in a snarling pack. From closer to home in Sweden, elk, moose, fallow deer, and wild boar contended with full-size bear, lynx, and wolverine. All were preserved by faultless taxidermy.

  Through a bank of windows giving out on the grounds, Brand saw something she could hardly credit. In a large steel cage, a pair of Bengal tigers playfully shadow boxed with each other in the snow. The enormous animals stopped tussling and turned to stare directly at the window where she and Hammar stood.

  “Are those…?”

  Hammar followed Brand’s wide-eyed gaze. “Oh, yes. The baron keeps quite an extensive menagerie.”

  Penned goats and sheep foraged in a sloping paddock below the lodge. The twin tigers seemed to have an eye for them, too. Farther down the hill, near the collection of barns, a herd of exotic, shaggy-haired Highland cattle gathered in hock-deep snow drifts. The combination of predators and prey animals struck Brand as somehow perverse.

  She gestured at the Bengals. “Woody Allen made an observation, ‘The lion will lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.’ When those tigers let out their roars in the middle of the night, do the cattle stampede?”

  “How typical of a Jew to misquote the Holy Bible,” the baron said. “The prophet Isaiah mentions not the lion but the wolf and the lamb.”

  “I think the insomnia is the main point, isn’t it?” Brand returned lightly.

  “My dear ones are named Hillary and Bill,” Baron Kron said, indicating the two tigers. “It amused me to name them so, even though they are actually mother and son. We can visit them later, perhaps to get their views on the latest Middle East crisis. But now, come, I am anxious to introduce you to Jimmy.”

  He led them up another set of stone steps, walls on both sides again dominated by heads of dead beasts. At the top of the stairway stood a welcoming committee of two: a Romani woman, colorfully dressed, standing with a small-statured chimpanzee got up in a traditional bellhop’s uniform.

  “You see, I have turned out the whole circus for you,” the baron said.

  36.

  The little ape took Brand by the hand and led her into an immense, gallery-like sitting room. The woman, evidently the ape’s keeper, trailed behind. Hammar and the baron brought up the rear.

  Brand had never experienced the touch of a chimpanzee before. The little guy’s skin was creased and black but gave off the uncanny warmth of a human hand. He loosened his grasp when they all arrived at a small seating arrangement of couches and leather club chairs.

  “Veronika.” The baron took up Brand’s hand that the chimpanzee had just dropped, put it to his lips, and led her to a couch. He sat down beside her. Up close, he smelled of tobacco. Underlying that was the slight scent of decay.

  “I must have your permission to call you by your Christian name,” he said. “I feel as though we are old friends. You must use mine, which is Gösta.”

  The baron gestured toward the chimp bellhop. “What might Jimmy get for you? He makes an excellent martini. And we also have a very nice bottle of French champagne just waiting to be corked. Or perhaps beer?”

  Brand resisted informing the man she wasn’t thirsty. The emotional hangover from the scene at the sauna the night before put her off alcohol. More to see the animal perform than because she would consume one, she chose the cocktail.

  The chimp’s female handler pronounced a few curt words in an unrecognizable tong
ue. The little ape ambled over to a wet bar set-up. He climbed with an easy movement onto a stool in order to reach the countertop. Brand watched, fascinated. Jimmy unerringly selected an emerald bottle of vermouth from a crowded shelf of liquors. He opened it, splashed a few drops into a shaker and then immediately dumped the liquid back out.

  “He needs to know if you prefer gin or vodka,” the baron asked.

  “Um, gin, I guess,” Brand said.

  Again, the Romani woman directed the chimp with a brief command. From the collection of bottles, the animal fetched up a liter of Beefeater. He poured a generous portion into the shaker that had been rinsed with vermouth. Using a scoop, he added ice, then closed the shaker and gave it an agitated rattle.

  “Shaken, not stirred, you see?” the baron called out.

  Transferring the mixture into a glass, the chimp climbed down from the stool. He took the cocktail off the countertop. Bringing it over to Brand, he slopped only a very little liquid on the way.

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting the prize. She found it difficult not to applaud.

  The chimp stared up at her with a teeth-baring grin that looked more like a grimace.

  “Should I tip him?” Brand asked.

  The baron laughed. “Oh, you must taste your martini first. Sometimes Jimmy has a heavy hand with the vermouth.”

  “It’s excellent,” Brand said, taking a sip. The taste of the gin took her back to her days as a drunk, and not in a pleasant way.

  “Gå nu,” the Count commanded. Leave now. The handler led the little chimp away. Brand was sorry to see them go.

  “Do you like my little fellow primate?” Kron asked, rising to serve himself and Hammar glasses of champagne. “Chimpanzee, you know, that is a Bantu word that means ‘fake man.’ I find it interesting to keep such a creature around me, though he can get tiresome. The comparison between ape behavior and that of the homo sapiens is always instructive.”

  “Homo sapiens means ‘wise human,’ doesn’t it?” Brand said. “Although there are times when I look around and have to conclude wisdom is not a particularly prominent feature of the species.”

  The baron gave a smile and nodded. “I don’t wonder that you feel that way, knowing how you must have experienced the scum on the streets of New York City.”

  “And the woman, she is Jimmy’s keeper?”

  “The Roma are, as a people, excellent animal trainers,” the baron said, again sitting down beside Brand. “It is one of their traditional skills. Years ago they kept bears, a practice dating from the Middle Ages, perhaps even before. Bears travel well. It was a way for their trainers to earn a few coins in whatever town or region they found themselves.”

  Hammar spoke. “That’s the stereotype, anyway. They were enslaved in Romania for some four hundred years. The Romani had to be creative about ways of earning money. They were skilled coppersmiths, tinsmiths, accomplished when it came to working silver. But surely, Baron Kron, you know more about their history than most.”

  The baron laughed. “One thing I know is that the word ‘money’ in the Romani language is spelled ‘l-o-v-e,’just like love in English. Though they pronounce it ‘low-vey.’”

  “I would suppose equating money with love is probably the real truth in any number of languages,” Krister said.

  “Might you keep wolves, Baron Kron?” Brand felt the need to cut through what sounded to her like a bit of dueling between the two men.

  “Please, call me Gösta, I insist.”

  Brand nodded. “I have seen, twice since I’ve been here in Sweden, a creature I cannot identify, very large, dog-like, with light-colored fur.”

  “Yes, we have gray wolves in Sweden, though I’m quick to say none are captive here at Gammelhem. There is a population nearby, in Fulufjället, the big park on the Norwegian border. They range widely, and a few times have ventured onto my land. We are not here that much in winter. This February visit is an exception. But our caretakers say they sometimes hear the howls at night.”

  He cocked his head and switched accents, from Swedish to something approximating Romanian. “Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”

  He laughed. “Do you recognize the source? How often do you get a chance to hear an actual baron quoting a count? And Count Dracula at that, eh?”

  Brand nodded, not willing to be distracted by the man’s dramatics. “Perhaps the gypsies in the camp by the river, they might keep a tame wolf, maybe a wolf-dog.”

  “Ah, you must really guard your language, my dear. I know the word ‘gypsy’ is still acceptable in America, but here in this country is frowned upon by all our culturally sensitive citizens.”

  “The Romani, then, in the camp by the river.”

  “The Roma in that encampment are my guests.”

  “We encountered a sort of shrine.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know of it?”

  “Of course. I would be a poor landowner not to know of a monstrosity such as that erected on my property.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Are you aware the Romani community has lost many young women in recent months to human trafficking? The shrine seems to commemorate that fact.”

  “You would know more about it than I do, Veronika.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. I suspect you’re a man who knows more than he lets on.”

  Baron Kron drained his champagne cocktail. “It is always refreshing to speak to an American, and even more bracing to speak to a New Yorker. I so rarely have the chance. You come right out and say whatever is on your mind, as contrary and impolitic it may be. Conversation with my countrymen is often indirect. It resembles more of a chess game. Whereas speaking with you, Veronika, I am reminded of a boxing match.”

  “Why are they there?”

  “They?”

  “The Roma, on your land. A few days ago we encountered a host of them, children mostly, in the forest above Västvall.”

  The Count sighed theatrically. “Virtue being its own reward, I normally do not like to trumpet my charity,” he said. “But since you force me I must confess. To a limited degree I have sponsored some members of the Roma community.”

  “Sponsored?”

  “Yes. We provide them with work opportunities, housing at times—although as you know they are a restless people. Perhaps you also know that this area, Härjedalen, is not my primary home. I come here to hunt. I hail from the south, near Malmö. I thought that to relocate members of the community here might relieve some of the pressure down there.

  “Voluntarily?”

  “Oh, yes, I do it quite voluntarily.”

  “No, I meant, do they ‘relocate’ voluntarily?”

  “I know what you meant. I was just pulling your leg, to employ the American phrase.”

  The conversation was cut short. Three striking women entered from the opposite end of the room. They were all similar in appearance, young, Asian—Thai, perhaps, or some exotic international mix—and all impossibly elegant. This is what wealth can buy, Brand thought.

  “My dears,” Baron Kron said, opening his arms expansively to greet them.

  37.

  The baron stood with Magnusson, his superintendent, watching the dumpy blue Saab leave the estate. It happened that the car followed immediately after the big Scania truck. Dollar Boy was heading out on another veterinarian run to Uppsala.

  “Are you sure we should have allowed that pair to depart unhindered, Baron?” Magnusson asked. “I feel they were insufficiently disciplined.”

  “You put in a call to the Vosses about them?”

  “Yes. With the result that Junior Voss said he would immediately dispatch the two cousins, Ylva and Malte.”

  The baron chuckled lowly. “That young woman, Ylva? With her on the job we’ll soon see Detective Brand and the Sami lawyer field-dressed and hanging by their heels in the big oak tree at Västvall village.”

  Ylva and
Malte Voss were famous within the family—and in the whole country, too—for being world-class biathlon competitors. Their style was a caricature of the mythological Nordic warrior.

  Magnusson understood Gösta Kron preferred to have any nasty business conducted well away from the estate. Thou shall not sully thy master’s hands, was forever the rule. Still, Magnusson worried that the New York detective and her Sami ally would somehow escape the net.

  “They enjoyed the animals,” the baron said mildly.

  Before Brand and Hammar left he had conducted them on a tour of the estate’s private menagerie. His ladies did not accompany him, forced by the very un-Thai Swedish weather to remain indoors. The three—two of them were twins—did not much like Gammelhem, much preferring Malmö, or the penthouse apartments in Stockholm or London.

  Baron Kron accompanied his two guests around the grounds. The big aviary was closed. The birds had been transferred to his place down south. But all the other beasts were present.

  Truth be told, the baron was a little bored with his zoo. The lionesses lazed about, dulled by being retired from the hunt. The big male king of the pride had died almost a year ago. Jimmy the chimp bellhop had been reduced to a party joke. The Bengals, Bill and Hillary, seemed to be rendered somehow less regal by long captivity.

  The tigers dutifully allowed the baron to demonstrate his fearlessness. They padded over to him and lowered their sleek heads to be petted. A funky musk scent rose in a cloud from their pelts.

  The hyenas were the baron’s first and favorite of all the animals in the menagerie. The zoo had been founded around them, in fact, sixty years ago. The beasts never failed to impress visitors. Two from the pack remained in their paddock when he led the New York detective inside the barn. As they always did, they languidly turned their heads toward the humans, as if assessing the visitors as prey. The baron rattled the lid of their food locker and they came alive, trotting forward and vocalizing joyously.

  Ak-ak-ak-ar-ar-ar-haroool!

  Smiling proudly, the baron turned to Brand. “Your American president, Roosevelt, not the communist but the first one, Teddy, he kept a hyena as a pet. He named it Bill.”