The valley trail under the trees was so dark I would have missed the place but for the suddenly alien scent of tires and good-quality leather getting wet. Then there it was, windshield streaming in the rain, both front windows open.
It was when I sat down on civilized leather, when I turned the key and the dark and the rain were outside, that the pain snapped like a gin trap on my back, biting down so hard it seemed to drive its teeth into my lungs and tear my breath apart. The headlights shining into the rain started to recede, as though I were on the back of a train heading into a long tunnel.
I slewed the Volvo to a stop outside the seter and stumbled in. It was two o’clock in the morning. The phone was on the table. I couldn’t remember the phone number of the Hotel Bristol. I called information. They could not understand me.
“Oslo,” I repeated. It sounded muddy and slurred. I shaped the next words carefully. “Hotel Bristol. Kristian VII’s gate.”
They gave me the number. It sounded like surf crashing in my ears.
“Again. Please. Give me the number again.”
“22 41 58 40.”
I had no pen, no paper. 22 41 48…no, 58. 22 58…I called again. The same woman. She gave me the number again. 22 41 58 40. I tapped it in carefully. It rang and rang and rang. Blood dripped down my back.
“Hotel Bristol.” Bright, young, male.
“I need to talk to one of your guests, Julia Lyons-Bennet.”
“Perhaps I could take a message.” His voice started to slide away. I breathed deep.
“No.” I had to hold on. Just another minute, another two. “I have to speak to her, now.”
“It is after two o’clock. In the morning.”
“I am not drunk. I am not in a different time zone. This is an emergency. Please put my call through.”
“After ten p.m. it is our policy that guests—”
“I wish to speak to the night manager.”
“Ma’am, the—”
“Get the night manager.”
He put me on hold. Pain pulsed like a candle under a glass sucking in oxygen and flaring, using up the oxygen and dying, sucking more and flaring; heating my nerve to a white-hot wire. I walked, very slowly, very upright, to the kitchen. Hold on. Hold on for just another minute, another two. I had to tuck the phone under my chin while I opened the cupboard and pulled out half a loaf of bread and a pot of sweet jam. I couldn’t cut the bread with just one hand, so I jammed it between my hip and the counter and tore off chunks, which I dipped straight into the jar. It tasted like dirt, but I chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. Still on hold. The refrigerator yielded a wedge of yellow cheese wrapped in wax paper. My hearing came back in a tumble of discrete sounds: the prickles in each exhalation as it left my lungs, the creak of bone in my elbow as I shifted slightly, soft slap of white paper against cheese. The clarity of delirium. Just another minute, another two.
The phone suddenly seemed to open out as the night manager punched the hold button to off and the myriad hums of a computerized office on standby filled the earpiece. He—and I could tell it was a he from the harmonics of his inhalation—drew breath, but I spoke first.
“My name is Aud Torvingen. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
“Rolf Lothbrok, the night manager.”
“Rolf, if you check your records you will find that Ms. Lyons-Bennet and I stayed with you two weeks ago. It is vitally important, urgent, that I speak to Ms. Lyons-Bennet now. Not later, or soon, but now.” The carbohydrates were metabolising now, hitting my bloodstream, and everything sparkled. Even my words seemed clear: cool, measured, precise. Rolf must have thought so, too.
“Very well, I’ll put your call through.”
A click. Purring electronic ring. Another. Again. On and on. Endless. The carbohydrates were cascading through my system. I disconnected, pressed the redial button.
“Put the manager back on,” I told the flustered young night clerk. “Rolf, she must have turned off the ringer. I want you to go knock on her door.”
“Ms. Torvingen, it is absolutely against our policy to disturb a guest.”
“This is an emergency.”
“Then may I suggest you call the police?”
He had reached the place where the officious become immovable, and the telephone was not a sharp enough tool. I switched tactics. “Rolf, this really is terribly urgent, but I think I know a way you can help me, if I may presume upon you for a favour.” Julia was safe in bed in a well-run hotel. I could be there before breakfast. “If you’re not too busy, perhaps I could persuade you to take down a note and slip it under her door where she will see it as soon as she wakes in the morning.” Where she would see it, bright and incongruous against the carpet if she got up to answer the knock of a strange man in the middle of the night. “Please, Rolf, could I ask you to do that?”
“I…well, perhaps I could do that.”
“Oh, thank you. The message is to read: ‘Very urgent, take all precautions, call Aud immediately, repeat, immediately.’” He scribbled industriously. I was very, very thirsty. I wanted to say more, but I knew the Rolfs of the world. Any mention of blood, of danger or bullets on the fjell would prompt an immediate withdrawal because it would mean I was a crazy woman: such things did not happen in Norway. “Please add…” What? Don’t talk to two men called Ginger and McCall who have been sent to kill you? “Please add my love. Please underline the words ‘very’ and ‘all.’”
“Very well.”
“And…Mr. Lothbrok”—make him feel big and clever and in charge—“you will see to that right away, won’t you? I just couldn’t sleep until I know she’s got the message. You’ll put it under her door?”
“As soon as I put the phone down, Ms. Torvingen.”
“Thank you, thank you very much.”
Then I suggest you call the police. Oslo police are typical Norwegians—everything one at a time, in the right order, by the book. They would show up at the hotel, ask a few questions, maybe wake Julia and talk to her. Julia would be safe—for tonight. The police would also show up here. They would surround me. They would want to know how I got shot. They would ask whose car it was. They would not let me talk to Julia. And when they stopped surrounding Julia because they thought I was crazy, I would be in a hospital cell, unable to protect her. No, not the police. Julia was safe for the night; Rolf and his staff were sticklers for protocol, wouldn’t tell anyone her room number; and she would see the note when she woke up in the morning.
I needed water, painkillers, heat, more food, in that order, but they would have to wait. I needed to think. A man from Atlanta had hired three Americans to kill Julia. It had to be Honeycutt, or his blackmailer. If it was Honeycutt, he had to be acting on his own; the cartel would have used their own people. Locals. But how had Honeycutt—or the blackmailer—known we were in Norway, and how had he known where to start looking? I should call Annie, but she would have questions and I had no answers. Nothing made sense.
Think about it later. What mattered now was Julia, and for that I would need help. Local help who were not too fussy about the law.
It was nearly three in the morning, an hour earlier in London. I picked up the phone again and called a number my mother had given me when I first left home, one I had never had to use. She answered on the third ring, alert. “Yes.”
“It’s Aud. I need your help.” I could almost see the lightening then sudden stilling of her face as she understood that it was her daughter, not World War III, but that I was in trouble. There was a click on the line.
“A tape,” she said, “so you don’t have to repeat anything.” Norwegian. I couldn’t remember the last time we had spoken our native tongue together.
“I’m at the seter, on a cell phone.” I gave her the number. “I need the phone number of the Federal Police commander in Tijuana. A private number, or home number if possible. And the number of someone else, someone he might know, whom he could call to confirm my identity.”
&n
bsp; She must have had a hundred questions but she asked only one. “How urgent?”
“It…Julia, a woman I love, it might mean her life.”
“I’ll call you back within an hour.”
Until she called, there was nothing more I could do. Now was the time for the water, painkillers, heat and food.
I took the old tin box that was the seter’s first-aid kit down from the bathroom shelf and ministered to myself with grim efficiency. Strip off damp pants. One syrette of morphine in the upper quadrant of right thigh. Pull on clean, dry pants. Drink water while that takes hold, fill kettle with water and put on to boil. Lay out compresses, antibiotic cream, peroxide, bandages. Think how I want to appear tomorrow in Oslo. Find clean dry knit silk tunic. Strip off damp, bloody sweater. Pick up peroxide.
It was messy, it hurt, I passed out twice. I ended up having to use a doubled-over pillowcase as well as the compresses: I could not afford to bleed in public tomorrow. I made instant coffee, very strong, and wished I had some soup that was not in cans. I ended up tearing chunks of ham from the bone with my teeth, and pulling the rest of the loaf to pieces. The morphine was laving my torn muscles like warm milk, swaddling my nerve sheaths in cotton wool. I could move my left hand well enough to steady a hot-water bottle, which I filled from the kettle in my right. It took four trips to assemble writing paper, ballpoint pen, coffee, hot water bottle and phone on the table in the living room.
The embassy in London would be a hornet’s nest, my mother rousting everyone out of bed, having them in turn rouse people in other embassies who owed her favours; tracking down the information I needed. I had seen her work before.
The pen was an old one, its clear octagonal plastic barrel chewed at the end, and when I put the tip to paper, it left a blot. I wrote the date, then paused. This must have been how Vortigern the High King felt when the last of the Roman legions withdrew, leaving fourth century Britain open to the prowling Saxon seawolves, and he had gambled, had picked a few from the pack and befriended them, gifted them with land along the south shore in return for a promise to defend the country from their hungry, landless cousins. Classic strategy, divide the enemy and hold the two opposing camps in perfect tension, only Vortigern had not known the sheer weight of numbers pressing up against the Saxon shore; the tension was unequal; his gamble had failed. The might of the Tijuana cartel and of Honeycutt were decidedly not equal, but when the cartel crushed Honeycutt and wanted to turn on me, this letter would be my Roman Legion in the hole.
I wrote steadily.
The phone rang. It was my mother. Fifty minutes. “The Tijuana Federal Police commander’s name is Luis Palma. I have his home number, his private work line, and the general office number. The name of the man in Tijuana who can confirm your identity is Hector Lorca, a television anchor. I have already called him, and he has agreed.” He must owe her a tremendous favour. Well, now so did I.
“Thank you.”
“Bring Julia to London to thank me.”
Four a.m. Still yesterday in Mexico, where Luis Palma would be sitting down to dinner with his family while outside the sky turned red.
I dialed. It didn’t have a chance to ring before it was picked up and a smooth male voice said, “Palma residence.”
“I wish to speak to Señor Palma.” My Spanish had been learned in England and Spain a long time ago. It was slow but, thanks to the few days’ practice with Beatriz, reasonably good. The European accent, too, would stand me in good stead.
“Señor Palma is a busy man and this is his family time. No doubt he would be delighted to speak to you tomorrow, from his office.” Unctuous as guacamole.
“Tonight I do not wish to discuss police business. Tonight I wish to impart some information about the cartel’s money launderer in Atlanta.”
“But that, of course, would be police business. However, as you have been kind enough to call with this information for Señor Palma, I will take a message.”
“No message. I need to talk to Señor Palma. Now. Tell him Michael Honeycutt is deceiving the cartel and stealing money.”
“If you will give me the details—”
“I will speak to Señor Palma only. Tell him my name is Aud Torvingen, that my mother is Else Torvingen, Norwegian ambassador to London. Tell him I am to be trusted, but that if he needs to check that I am to be trusted he may call Señor Hector Lorca at his home. Señor Lorca awaits his call. I will call back in twenty minutes.”
The knuckle bones were cast, the game with the bloody-handed Viking begun.
I wrote faster.
I covered three more pages with terse, blotched writing, then called again. The same smooth voice answered.
“Señor Palma will talk to you, Señorita Torvingen.”
“Thank you.”
“This is Luis Palma.” His voice was smooth, too, but smooth like a Rolls-Royce, secure with power and money and the kind of arrogance that does not even have to display itself. “You have some information for me.”
“Information and a request for your help.”
“I am of course happy to help a young lady if it is in my power, but I am just a humble policeman in a poor country.”
“Of course, señor. You have no doubt heard of the Tijuana business cartel and their business of shipping the produce of certain people in Colombia. No doubt it is already common knowledge to you, as a policeman and well-informed citizen of the region, that a portion of the revenue from this business is administered in Atlanta. Some of the money is put to work immediately, investing in works of art which are bought and sold in this and other countries. The proceeds of these sales should of course find their way into the bank accounts of the Tijuana businessmen who brokered the product, and naturally the banker who oversees these deals should be a very prudent man. He is not. Quite by chance I have discovered that the Atlanta banker, Michael Honeycutt, is”—I didn’t know how to say playing both ends against the middle in my rather formal Spanish—“deceiving these businessmen. He is also drawing attention to himself and therefore the cartel through various illegal activities, including the forging of these works of art, so that he may pocket money for himself.”
“I am sure that these businessmen would like to hear proof of their colleague’s disloyalty.”
“I have proof. I know the names of the people who supplied the forged art to Honeycutt; I know about his accounts in the Seychelles. So does someone else. Señor Palma, I believe someone in Atlanta has discovered Honeycutt’s activities, including his work for the Tijuana businessmen, and is blackmailing him. Honeycutt has made many, many mistakes. Many innocents have become entangled in his web. Many innocents, including myself and a friend whose name is of no importance.”
“And you, of course, have spoken to no one about this.”
“No one. But I have taken the precaution of writing down all that I know and mailing it to my lawyer, to be opened in the case of my death or disappearance.”
“A very foresighted precaution.”
“Thank you. I am now, of course, worried that this banker in Atlanta, Michael Honeycutt, may succeed in his attempts to kill me and my friend, and that this information, this confidential information, may be loosed prematurely and damage the reputation and livelihood of this Tijuana business association. Today, one of the banker’s men came very close to succeeding, and there are two others in Oslo, just waiting for me. I thought perhaps that if these businessmen understood my predicament, they might be willing to put me in touch with some associates. They might offer some local assistance, and perhaps the temporary use of some of their office equipment.”
“A reasonable request. But I am not sure if the business association has an office in your area. Perhaps I could find out and telephone you in, say, one hour?”
“That is acceptable.”
“I will need your phone number.” I gave it to him. “In one hour, Miss Torvingen.”
By five-thirty in the morning I had finished my long letter. I put it in an envelope, whic
h I sealed carefully, then wrote a note to my attorney, which I put, together with the sealed envelope, inside a second envelope, which I addressed to the law firm of Spirkett and Clowes in Atlanta. I had no idea how much international postage was, but ten domestic stamps should be plenty. One little envelope. It wasn’t enough insurance. I started another sheet of paper.
This time it went faster. When I’d finished, I addressed it to myself, in care of Dornan, at Borealis. For the first time in twelve hours I was not cold.
The cotton wool around my nerves was wearing thin and the milk that lapped my muscles evaporating. There were two syrettes of morphine left. It would have to wait.
Outside, the rain had stopped and the sun was coming up. I smeared mud on the Volvo’s license plates, just in case it had been stolen and reported to the police, and drove like an old woman to the post box three kilometers down the bumpy track. The first pickup was at seven-thirty. I slid the envelope addressed to my attorney through the slot, then drove another five kilometers to post the second.
The phone rang as I pulled up outside the seter.
“Miss Torvingen.” It was Guacamole Voice, the assistant. “Señor Palma has asked that I pass on the phone number of a business associate in Oslo who will be waiting for your call.” He gave it to me. It was another cellular number. “Señor Palma also asked me to tell you two things. First of all, that the banker of whom you spoke, Señor Honeycutt, was shot to death at a New York airport ten days ago.”
Honeycutt was shot ten days ago. Ten days ago.
“…association was of course most upset at the time, but given your information, they are not as upset as they had been. They do, however, wish they knew who had set such a thing in motion.”
Someone unknown to the cartel had killed Honeycutt. Honeycutt was dead. The man from Atlanta had killed Honeycutt. Honeycutt was not the man from Atlanta.
“…second item to convey is that despite the death, Señor Palma will honour his agreement. And, of course, should you discover who might have intended harm to Señor Honeycutt, Señor Palma would be most grateful for that information. He also hopes that given your diplomatic contacts, you might be persuaded to act as a goodwill ambassador in the future. Good evening, Miss Torvingen.”
The Blue Place Page 27