– The goal of this research was to discover the genetic causes of childlessness. That is apparent from the project application.
Jennifer nodded. – The possibility of helping some childless couples in the future.
– But not many.
– In the great majority of cases, the causes of the childlessness are elsewhere than in the genes.
The man continued.
– We have reason to believe that findings that emerged during the process were communicated to recipients who had things in mind other than helping childless couples.
Jennifer looked at his expressionless face. – And what might those be?
– Lydia Reinertsen is accused of having carried out the sterilisation of women in Bosnia.
Jennifer had gathered this much in the whirlwind of speculation and suspicion blowing about over the past few weeks.
– The women were apparently ignorant of what was being done to them. Some of the operations were conducted under highly dangerous circumstances. Lydia Reinertsen has written about sterilisation programmes in a publication that promoted ethnic cleansing.
– The research project we were engaged in was about the opposite of sterilisation, Jennifer protested. But she began to have some idea of where they were heading with these questions. – Wasn’t it?
The two of them looked at her for a few moments.
– We asked a couple of geneticists to examine as much of the material from the research as survives, the woman said finally. – Their view is that if egg cells can be changed in such a way as to make them easier to fertilise, they can also be affected in the opposite way. Once the code has been discovered and the mechanisms understood. But this is something you know more about than we do.
Jennifer struggled to gather her thoughts.
– Are you talking about finding genetic mechanisms that can obstruct fertilisation?
The woman glanced out of the window. – We’re not excluding that someone out there is working on precisely that.
Jennifer sat up straight in her chair. She felt as though parts of her brain that had been in hibernation over the summer weeks were being prodded into life.
– But that’s absurd. Could Lydia have been involved in something like that?
She grabbed her coffee, swallowed it down. Suddenly it was very important to be awake.
– We’ve been looking for the missing link in this case. Something that would explain why so many resources were invested in trying to keep Lydia Reinertsen’s former identity a secret. At any cost, it seems, someone was determined to prevent close examination of her past. Because that could put us on the trail of something much bigger than what went on in Bosnia. That is why less than ninety minutes passed between the time Ibro Hakanovic recognised her in the emergency unit at the hospital and the arrival of the professional killers who took him out.
The man was silent for a few moments before going on, as though he too were waiting for her to wake up.
– The indications are that we’re dealing with someone with access to a great deal of money. And who sees the possibility of considerable profits. If a vaccine is developed that can prevent pregnancy occurring, what do you suppose that would be worth to people who think they have reason enough to use it?
The postbox hadn’t been opened for several weeks. A few papers protruded from its mouth, and when Jennifer opened it, it all came tumbling out. She picked it up from the floor, most of it circulars, which went straight into the rubbish.
As she turned to walk up the stairs, she heard a knock on the street door behind her. Without turning round, she hurried up, not wanting to talk to anyone, but when the person outside began calling her name, she stopped.
Knut Reinertsen had rung several times, left phone messages too. She hadn’t returned his calls. Now she let him in, held out a hand, stiff and reluctant. He shook it, dropped it immediately.
She had to offer him something or other, coffee, tea. Fortunately he declined both. Possibly because of the way she said it. She opened the balcony door; it seemed easier to deal with him out there.
– You’ve visited her? she said as he sat down.
– No.
She acted as though the answer didn’t surprise her. – There are probably restrictions about who they allow into the embassy, she reasoned.
There was something different about his face. Maybe it was just the new glasses, small and round with black frames.
– I don’t think the embassy is the problem.
Jennifer sat down too, leaned an elbow on the railing.
– Doesn’t Lydia want you to visit?
– Hard to say what she wants. He thought a moment. – I called her on the phone yesterday.
Jennifer looked out into the grey air. A building site somewhere or other in the vicinity. The sound of pneumatic hammers pounding into the earth. She had started reading newspapers again. Saw a piece about how half a million people were expected to move into Oslo and the surrounding area over the next thirty years. And some would be moving out.
– What’s happening to her? she asked.
He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes.
– It’s pretty much stalemate at the moment. There’s no way she can leave there without being arrested. And she can’t stay there for the rest of her life.
– Doesn’t she understand that herself?
He glanced at her. – I’ve no idea what she understands. She keeps talking about a man her father once knew. It seems he fell into a rose bush and got his face scratched up. It’s all about this man now, according to her. When I asked her about her own situation, it seemed hardly to worry her.
– Shouldn’t that worry you?
– Of course. A flicker in his red-veined cheek, a tiny muscle quivering next to his eye. – There’s something I promised to tell you, he said quickly. – I promised to tell you that she is sorry.
Jennifer filled her lungs with air; it filtered slowly out again.
– Is that why you wanted to talk to me?
– It was obviously very important for her. She repeated it several times. Insisted that she doesn’t regret anything. That people who condemn her don’t understand. You are the only one to whom she wishes to apologise. And I could hear that she meant it. She always liked you, Jenny. You are one of the few people she admires.
– Please.
– She said it earlier too. Before all this happened. Everything you managed to do, and always in the same conscientious way. And at the same time being the best mother to those boys that anyone could hope for.
Jennifer stood up abruptly. He raised a hand as though to detain her. – I do realise that an apology doesn’t help in the least. But I decided to do as she asked me. Perhaps as much for my own sake as hers.
For a long time, she couldn’t say anything. Knut Reinertsen was silent too, sat there staring into the air, still without his glasses on.
– I was interviewed again, two days ago, she finally said. – By the security service.
He nodded. – I’m sure the security forces are deeply involved in the case.
Is this now just a case to you? she felt like shouting.
– They asked me a number of questions about the research project, she said instead. – I was shocked. I’ve been thinking about it since.
She had been. It had become part of the stream of things that flowed through her head in the night. – Do you know anything about it?
– I’ve been asked about it too. Lydia has been in touch with researchers in other parts of the world.
– Nothing surprising about that.
– Places where there are no official codes of practice governing co-operation over research. One of the people she worked with in Bosnia is involved in a similar project in a country she refuses to name. The only other member of the group she was in that is still alive.
– That car crash … Jennifer started to say.
Knut Reinertsen put his glasses on again, looked at her. – That was ar
ranged so that she could get away once the war was over down there. Someone got her a new identity.
Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to ask how come he hadn’t known anything about this.
– Is this whole thing credible at all? she said.
He sat a while, staring out, his jaw rotating slowly. It looked as though he was chewing something.
– No one can blame you, Jenny.
Of course she’d thought about that too. Somewhere in that stream of thoughts that never stopped boiling and bubbling as she sat in the chair, or lay in bed, or on the short walks to and from the neurological wing. She had contributed to a project without knowing what it was about. Left it to others to make use of the things she had discovered.
– Maybe not.
– All research can be used for something that was not its original purpose. And I’m not just thinking of the fact that the ethical boundaries are constantly changing.
It struck her that it was this didactic tone she had always found unbearable in him. Even now there was a whiff of it.
– Any research finding can become a weapon, he added. – It’s one of the dilemmas we seem incapable of dealing with. It makes me fear the worst.
She opened the door to the living room, and finally he got to his feet as well.
– It was Zoran who found out about it.
She jumped at the sound of his name, supported herself against the frame of the door.
– He heard that phone message Ibro Hakanovic left.
– I know, she said.
– He got in touch with people he knew in Bosnia to find out if it was true.
She knew that too.
– He called me, Jenny. Asked what I thought.
Jennifer had to sit down again. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. They were raw and cracked.
– Why didn’t he go to the police immediately?
Knut Reinertsen shook his head. – He wanted to talk to her first. To make sure. You know Zoran, he didn’t want to walk around feeling like a snitch.
For a moment she looked up into his dull eyes.
– I shouldn’t have let him do it, he said.
Afterwards she sat at the table, went through her letters, regular bills in one pile, final reminders in another, along with a dentist’s appointment for the previous week. In a third, letters from people she hadn’t seen for a long time, some of whom she couldn’t really remember any more.
She sat turning one over in her hands, a white envelope, no sender’s address on the back. It had a Swedish stamp, and her name was spelled incorrectly, the letters slanting to the left. The address was wrong too, and attached to the envelope was a note from the post office asking her to get in touch if she was not the addressee.
Inside, a small photograph, an ultrasound image. Nothing else. On the back, in the same frail lettering as on the envelope:
Girl, 15 weeks.
Anamnesis
Emergency call-out to the Russian Embassy 11.08.14 at 21.12. Arrived with ambulance staff 21.21. Taken to a bathroom in one wing, found the body of a woman in the bath. The woman’s name given as Lydia Reinertsen, 52 years old, residing at the embassy since June. Reportedly in a state of increasing psychic unbalance over recent weeks, has been seeing a psychiatrist.
Status praesens
Woman, slightly built, somewhat undernourished, found underwater in bathtub 21.21. Skin pale, no respiration or pulse. Stiff, dilated pupils, no reaction to light stimulation. No reaction to pain stimuli.
On the side of the bath and on the surrounding floor, two empty and one half-full bottles of diazepam, 60 tablets x 10mg. Tablet remains found floating in the bathwater.
Treatment
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation started, defibrillator × 3, treatment terminated after 32 mins.
Conclusion
52-year-old woman, reportedly mentally unbalanced, found in bathtub. Had probably lain under the water for over an hour before the arrival of the emergency team. Finds at the scene indicate ingestion of large quantities of anxiolytic.
Resuscitation attempted without success.
Journal entry, emergency medical service, 11 August 2014
Arash stood by the kiosk in the lobby. He had a fifteen-minute break, but didn’t think that gave him time to eat in the canteen. In the newspaper stands, all the papers had the same story and almost identical headlines. She looked younger in the picture they used – it was probably taken some years earlier – but he would have recognised those eyes in any photograph.
The phone rang. He took the call immediately.
– Sorry, my friend, the voice said in English, – you’re going to have to postpone your break.
Benjaminsen had started dropping these English phrases into his conversation over the summer. It had to signify something, but Arash had no need to know what that might be.
– Get right over to A and E, it’s mayhem there. Insane.
– I’ll sort it out.
– Arash, you’re the man.
On his first day back at the hospital, he had spoken with his boss for over an hour. Benjaminsen obviously wanted to reassure himself that Arash was well enough to return to work as a porter. I see you’re wearing your ring, Arash, he offered as his opening remark. I guess that means people don’t need to worry about their fingers. Having said this, Benjaminsen sat there and looked at him, as though testing him. Suddenly he burst out laughing, and Arash had to laugh along with him. Afterwards, he didn’t hear a word from a soul about what had taken place in the mortuary. That must have been Benjaminsen’s doing.
As he hurried along the corridors, Arash ate the banana he had bought. He left the newspaper behind, but that front-page picture stayed with him. Early that morning, Knut Reinertsen had rung. He said he wanted to know how he was doing. Apologised that he couldn’t offer any more conversations, things being what they are. Arash understood that, and didn’t ask for any further explanation. But Knut Reinertsen explained anyway: he was going on sick leave for an indeterminate period, might even be travelling. And that was something Arash could well understand, too. He turned down the offer of a referral to one of Reinertsen’s colleagues. He already had someone to talk to, someone with a similar background to his. His name was Shaygani, and he was a refugee from Iran. He’d come to Norway with nothing but his two empty hands, worked at the hospital, studied medicine, specialised in psychiatry. That’s the way I’m going to do it too, Arash had said to him, and this doctor was in no doubt that he would make it.
The thing Arash had returned to in their conversations, over and over again, was that closed door.
– I should have climbed up and broken a window, he said to Shaygani. – Got inside somehow or other.
Shaygani let him say what he had to say before he spoke.
– You didn’t know what had happened.
– I saw that woman come out of there. I should have realised it was urgent.
It had taken over an hour to get hold of a caretaker who could open the door to Zoran’s flat.
– I read somewhere that after a stroke, one point nine million brain cells die every minute, he said to Shaygani. – Every second matters.
Shaygani didn’t argue with him. Didn’t take anything from him, didn’t add anything.
The ongoing investigation is looking for answers to the question of whether results from the aforementioned research project may have been communicated to other parties whose intention is to use them for other purposes.
Three independent experts in the fields of medical genetics and pregnancy have been approached for their opinions. An extract from Professor S. Mørland’s response is given here:
‘In other words, it would appear in principle possible to further develop the results of the research project in question. One of the discoveries that could turn out to be pioneering concerns a possible genetic basis for certain types of childlessness. This is related to the fact that in some rare cases the membrane of the egg cell does not become im
penetrable after fertilisation. If it proves possible to influence the genes of the egg cell so that the membrane closes in the normal fashion, then the opposite will also be possible. In other words, the genes in a normally functioning egg cell could be changed such that subsequent to fertilisation the membrane of the cell is unable to prevent the entry of other sperm cells, resulting in the failure of the egg. The path from this to a “vaccine” that has these genes as its target, and which could therefore militate against pregnancy throughout an entire life, would seem to be very complex, but that such a thing could be developed, given sufficient resources, cannot be excluded. We are talking about, for example, changing the mRNA of the cell by means of vectors, preferably in the form of a virus. Should this turn out to be possible, the findings from the research project at Akershus University Hospital could be termed a step along the way.’
As is apparent from the attached documents, our anonymous source claims that several so-called independent laboratories in the two countries mentioned are working on a vaccine of this type. The purpose might be to control growth in certain sections of the population, even to bring about a reduction in the numbers in these sections. Over time, this will lead to certain ethnic groups becoming more or less extinct. We put this question to T. Eriksen, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (cf. Appendix 4b). His conclusion includes these words: ‘This is a type of ethnic cleansing that we have not so far seen, and which could be implemented without war or deportations or other physical measures against large groups of a population. A vaccination-like substance could be given to young females in the group in question, possibly mixed with other vaccinations with a documented prophylactic effect and accepted as such by the population at large. What such a preparation would be worth if offered for sale to those cynical enough to wish to use it must be a matter of speculation. One must also bear in mind a situation in which the population of the world as a whole is increasing, leading to further pressure on available resources, not least if changes in the environment make the production of food and other necessities of life even more problematic than it already is.’
Certain Signs that You are Dead Page 36