by Dan Sehlberg
‘Do you have more water?’
The woman gestured at the bottle.
‘Here. There’s some left.’
‘No, I mean for them.’
Gino shook his head.
‘We only have one case, and we’ll need it whether we get through or not.’ He looked at his colleagues, adding, ‘And if we want to have any chance of getting through, we absolutely can’t be seen with them.’ Eric looked at him doubtfully.
‘Them? Come on. You have a whole case of water; they have nothing.’
The man closest to the woman said something to her in Italian. She nodded and ducked into the car. When she came back, she had three bottles of Neviot in her arms. She gave them to Eric.
‘You want to do it?’
He took them and was just about to go when the man placed his bag of sweets on the bottles. Gino shook his head and kept mumbling curses. Eric couldn’t see any soldiers, but there were several security cameras on the gate. He walked purposefully over to the group of Palestinians. There were many more than he’d thought at first; there must have been at least thirty. And now he saw that there were children there, too, including at least one little boy. The boy was the first to react. He tugged at his mother’s arm and pointed. She seemed to be sick, or maybe she was just detached. She kept looking down at the ground. One of the men stood up. He was a large man of about Eric’s age.
‘Esh beddak?’
His voice was threatening. Eric stopped and held out the bottles of water. The bag of sweets fell to the ground. The man made eye contact. Eric smiled, trying to show that the water was for them.
‘Please.’
The man swallowed and nodded. He threw a hasty glance at the woman, and then took the bottles. Eric bent down, picked up the bag of sweets, and held it out to the little boy. The boy hesitated. The man shouted something, and the boy flew forward and snatched the sweets. The woman, who was thin and dark-skinned, with narrow, cracked lips and yellowed eyes, reached out to Eric.
‘Assalamu alaikum. Shukran. Shukran.’
Without meaning to, he backed away. Something about her scared him. He wanted to get away. There was an odour about the group that made him feel ill. The man raised both his hands.
‘Shukran. Shukran.’
Eric gave a forced smile, turned around, and started walking quickly back to the Italians. His pulse throbbed in his head, and he had to lean against the scorching metal of the van. Was this the most heroic and unselfish thing he’d ever done? He had risked the possibility of getting into Gaza — all to give those people a little warm water. He caught sight of a purple sweet on the ground. He bent down, picked it up, and unpeeled the rustling paper. It tasted like sugar with grape flavouring. He sneaked a look at the Palestinians. Was he sharing the experience of a sugary grape taste with the little boy right now? He was filled with a peculiar sense of satisfaction. He let the sun burn his face as he sucked on the juice from the sweet.
‘Here they come again.’
Gino pointed at the customs station. The officer and the soldier were on their way toward them. The woman was whispering quietly.
‘Il momento della verità.’ — ‘The moment of truth.’
Eric noticed that they hadn’t brought the passports. The younger soldier got into the driver’s seat of the van and stuck his hand out of the window expectantly.
‘Keys.’
Gino rolled his eyes and looked at the others in desperation.
‘What the fuck. Not the van.’
The officer held up his hands.
‘Calm down. Everything is in order. You may come through. But Weizman is driving the car to our inspection garage. You have to walk through the customs station anyway. Follow me.’
Without further ado, he turned around and walked back the same way he’d come. Gino stood as if petrified, but when the guard honked the horn he quickly got out the keys. The woman thumped Eric on the back.
‘There you go. The Madonna likes you. Now an endless number of security checks, long concrete corridors, and thousands of questions await us. If we’re lucky, we’ll be in Gaza in about an hour.’
Stockholm, Sweden
Paul Clinton had never been to Sweden before. He’d been to Norway, Finland, and Denmark, but never Sweden. The sun was shining, and the fields along the highway from the airport were fertile and green. He saw horses, and in one field something that looked like small deer. Michael Yates was dozing with his head against the car window. They had been supposed to land at the more centrally located Bromma airport, but it had been closed when the control tower’s computers were infected with the virus. They had ended up at Arlanda, just over thirty kilometres north of Stockholm.
The taxi passed a nearly-empty golf course. He tried to remember the last time he’d played. It was before his heart attack — over five years ago. Damn. He looked away from the course, instead going through the inbox on his phone. There were eighty-four unread messages in it. The flight from Tel Aviv had only taken a bit more than five hours. How the hell could a person end up with eighty-four emails in just five hours? Just then, a short email from David Yassur caught his attention:
RACHEL PAPO INJURED. BEN SHAVIT UNDER GREAT PRESSURE.
He looked out the window again; they were just passing a McDonald’s drive-through. It looked like home. What was going on with Rachel? She seemed to be a hardy girl. And Ben Shavit? He was weak. He was about to give in to Hezbollah’s demands. Shouldn’t they inform Shavit that they had gotten a break? That they might be about to find the terrorists? That would totally change the playing field, and give him a shot in the arm. Speaking of which, how were things going for Eric Söderqvist? He scrolled through the emails and found a status report on Eric. He had arrived in Erez and was on his way into Gaza. That was probably a good thing. Gaza was a mess, but it was a mess they were relatively familiar with — except for all the damn rat tunnels, of course. It was definitely time to give Ben Shavit some good news. He finished an answer to David Yassur just as the taxi driver turned around.
‘Do you want to go to the hotel first? The other way around would be better.’
Paul leaned forward and looked briefly at the driver’s ID card. Andre Bajic. Must be of Serbian or Croatian origin.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You said you wanted to go to hotel first. Then to hospital. But hospital is now.’
He saw the sign up ahead and to the right. Karolinska Hospital. He thought quickly.
‘Let me off here, and drive my colleague and the bags to the hotel. That will be better. Thanks.’
The driver nodded. His powerful forearms were full of tattoos, and an ugly scar ran across his right wrist. This part of the world had had its wars, too. The taxi turned in at the hospital’s main entrance, and Paul hopped out with just his jacket under his arm. Michael wouldn’t have a clue when he woke up, but what the hell. He was trained to expect the unexpected. On his way to the reception desk, he thought about what he should say — probably not that the FBI suspected Hanna Söderqvist of having been infected with a biological weapon. A flower delivery person would be a good disguise, except he didn’t have any flowers. What were the rules for hospital visits in Sweden? Could he pass as a relative?
When the woman at the reception desk gave him a tired smile, he went with the family-member option. After she searched in the computer, he was directed toward the far elevators. He was a distant relative who had come all the way from the US to see how dear, sweet Hanna was doing. Ten minutes later, he was putting on shoe protectors, rubbing clear gel on his hands, and stepping into unit I62. According to the receptionist, Hanna had just been moved to a closed unit. Paul wanted to speak with the attending physician, but he was unavailable. A cute nurse with a blonde ponytail explained that Hanna Söderqvist was in a single room with an airlock, something that was only used fo
r patients who might be carrying an airborne infection. The nurse also told him that Hanna’s sister was usually there with her. And Jens, of course. Maybe he ought to have known who Jens was, since he was supposed to be a relative, but he asked anyway.
She laughed.
‘Jens has become part of the unit. He’s a close friend of Hanna’s, and takes such good care of her, now that her husband is gone. He actually takes care of all of us up here — buys us treats and flowers. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to have flowers in this unit, but he keeps buying them anyway. And the other night he brought along wine and cheese. A fantastic guy. Big heart.’
While she was speaking, she made notes on a form that was hanging beside the door to the office. The unit was quiet. A red light was blinking at the far end of the corridor; otherwise, everything was still. It smelled like disinfectant and coffee. The nurse secured the pen beside the form, ran her hands down her jacket a few times, as though to brush off dirt, and then studied him up and down.
‘It’s not actually visiting hours right now, but since it’s quiet and you’ve come so far, we can make an exception.’
She started down the corridor, and he followed her closely.
‘Where is her husband?’
They stopped outside room 115.
‘Apparently, he’s out of the country. We hope he’ll come home soon. That would probably be good for her.’
‘How is she?’
She looked at him and bit her lip.
‘You’ll have to ask the doctor, but I think it’s very serious. We’re having trouble coming up with a diagnosis. It’s possible she’ll be moved to Huddinge’s isolation clinic.’
She opened the door. Inside was a small space and another door — an airlock. There was a sink, and hangers for yellow protective gowns made of thin paper. The nurse put her hand into a silver container and took out facemasks with small, blue plastic filters, and thin rubber gloves. She handed them to him, and as he put them on she opened the other door and nodded toward the windows.
‘You can sit on the chair over there. We ask that you avoid touching her. Like I said, there’s a potential risk of infection. Don’t take off your mask. When you’ve finished, wait for me in the anteroom. You may not move around the unit after you’ve been in here. I’ll come in and help you with your decontamination.’
He nodded and went in, and the door slid shut behind him. He adjusted his mask and looked around. The room was large for just one patient. A lone bed stood by the window, surrounded by machines. A thin body was outlined under the sheet, the face hidden by the screens of the respirator and two oxygen tank, and the room was filled with the smell of freshly washed sheets. The rhythmic sound of the artificial lungs was far too familiar to him — he had visited many friends and enemies in a similar condition. A carafe of water and a glass stood beside the bed. At first, he stood by the foot of the bed and studied her. She was more beautiful in real life than in photographs, despite all of this. Someone had washed and brushed her hair, but it looked dull. Her skin was pale, and her cheeks were sunken. He walked cautiously around the bed and stood alongside it. Her thin arm was exposed, and there was an IV line in it. He leaned over her face. It was strange. It looked as if she might wake up at any moment — she just appeared to be dozing lightly. He stood still for a long time, studying her.
How would he get her to Oslo? How do you make off with a seriously ill Swedish citizen? Plan A was to take a chance that the Swedish authorities would be willing to co-operate, but he had the feeling that this crap would get tied up in the local bureaucracy. It was notorious, worse than in Russia. The bureau had had problems with the Swedes before. He contemplated coming back later the same evening with Michael and just taking her — putting her in a wheelchair and going right out the door. That was Plan B. He carefully ran his gloved fingertips along her face, from her forehead along the bridge of her nose, around her lips and her chin. He let his hand rest on her throat. Then he leaned even closer to her and whispered, hardly audible through the mask. ‘I have greetings from Eric. He misses you.’ Perhaps her eyelids twitched. Or perhaps it was just his imagination.
Gaza, Erez
The border facility at Erez had been built to handle twenty-five thousand people per day, but since no one was allowed to cross through anymore, the hallways were empty and the waiting rooms deserted. For the others on the TV team, each security check they made it through was a victory, another step toward their goal. But Eric’s courage sank each time he got closer to Gaza.
After one hour and forty minutes, they were standing on the other side of the facility, waiting for a car they all hoped would show up. All but Eric — he hoped that it would be confiscated. There were no other people in sight.
Twenty minutes later, a siren sounded, and the iron gate opened with a faint clatter. The group cheered as the white van showed up. The soldier driving it hopped out and nodded curtly to them before he went back into the customs station. They climbed back into the bus. Eric placed the black bag on his lap and looked out the window. The engine was already running, and he heard the vehicle’s characteristic bang as it was put into first gear. The van rolled down a narrow concrete ramp and out onto a deserted road. Cultivated fields rolled along the left side, and dry, cracked fields of mud spread as far as he could see on the other side. Gino looked at Eric in the rear-view mirror.
‘Dr Söderqvist, we ought to see your friends soon. They were going to meet us around here somewhere. Keep your eyes peeled.’
Eric fought back the panic. The woman smiled at him.
‘That was nice, what you did.’
He looked at her, bewildered.
‘What did I do?’
‘Back there — with the bottles of water.’
He smiled weakly.
‘Thanks.’
Gino slowed down.
‘Here you are. This is your last stop, amico.’
Eric searched along the grey road, and caught sight of a lone man about a hundred metres ahead, dressed completely in black. As the bus approached, he saw that the man’s face was covered with fabric, too. He held an automatic weapon in his right hand. Gino chuckled.
‘With friends like that, you don’t need enemies.’
His bright tone echoed emptily in the van. Eric took his bag in one hand and got up just as the van stopped.
‘And, doctor, don’t forget the passport.’
He gave a short nod and handed the red document to the woman. She took it and looked into his eyes.
‘Is everything okay?’
He forced a smile.
‘Everything is okay. Good luck with your interview. I hope it’s worth all the trouble.’
She didn’t return his smile.
‘Take care of yourself. In bocca al lupo.’
He didn’t bother to ask what that meant. He opened the door and stepped out into the oppressive heat. A strong wind carried the scent of the sea, which he instantly wished he could see. As soon as he closed the door, he heard the bang of the gear stick, and the van sped off along the dusty road. After a minute or two, it was out of sight. He turned toward the man in black, and nodded. The man was shorter than he was, but his shoulders were broad. The barrel of the weapon was aimed at Eric’s chest. The man pointed at the bag.
‘Iftah! Open!’ Eric nodded, sank to his knees, and opened the bag. The man waved Eric back with the weapon. He backed up slowly. The man dug through the bag without putting down the gun, then he stood up and gestured to Eric that he should put his hands on his head. He did as he was told, and the man patted him firmly across the back, chest, and thighs. There was a powerful smell of tobacco and spices that Eric couldn’t identify on the man. Then he took a step back and nodded at the bag. Eric cautiously picked it up and stood there, waiting for his next order. The man looked around, apparently waiting for something
or someone to appear on the deserted road. The wind tugged at his black clothes, and he gestured with his weapon toward the field on the side of the road. Am I going to die here? In the middle of a dry mud flat in Gaza? Eric didn’t really feel fear — just resignation. He walked across the dry, cracked earth, away from the road. A plastic bag with a faded red logo was stuck in a spiny, brown bush, crinkling in the breeze. He considered just putting down the bag and sitting in the gravel. What did it matter? He might as well get it over with.
‘Waqef!’
The word startled him. He was out of breath; his clothes were wet with sweat. He turned around and saw that the man was on his knees. At first, Eric thought he was praying; he had put down his weapon. But then he noticed that the man was searching through the low bushes with his hands. His body tensed, and as he got up he brought a large part of the bush with him. He’d revealed a hatch — a thick, steel hatch door that covered a half-metre-wide hole in the ground. The man backed away from the hatch, picked up his weapon, and pointed. There was no misinterpreting the order. The man looked around him all the while, as if he were worried that someone would see them. Eric approached the opening. A ladder led down into the darkness. He put one strap of the bag across his shoulder and climbed onto the first step, and then looked at the man one last time and started to climb down. He had read about these — the smuggling tunnels. The Gaza Strip was full of them.
Larry Lavon closed his eyes for a long time and tried to gather his strength. The signal was gone. He didn’t understand how this was possible. Eric Söderqvist had three transmitters on him, and Gaza had hardly any mobile-phone traffic to interfere with the signal. The terrain was level, so there was nothing to act as a reflector or obstruction. Their mistake had been in not following them by car. It was his own decision; he couldn’t pin it on someone else. But a tag-along car on the deserted roads of Gaza would have been too easy to discover, and it would have jeopardised the whole project and possibly scared away the target. He had been counting on a good signal and assuming that they would quickly pick it up out of thin air. He had kept the TV team in Erez until he’d gotten the helicopter there. As soon as it was in place, he had told border security to let Eric Söderqvist and the TV team pass. He had waited exactly fifteen minutes before he sent in the helicopter. Maybe that was his mistake — waiting too long. A lot could happen in fifteen minutes, in nine hundred seconds. And yet it was just flat land; there were no cities or villages that Söderqvist could have reached in that short amount of time. All he knew was that, when the helicopter found the van, the signal was no longer on board. The team on the ground that stopped the van seven minutes later learned that one of the passengers, Dr Eric Söderqvist, had been picked up by a lone man just a few kilometres from the border. The team had searched the entire area, from the ground and from the air. Nothing. Now Larry Lavon was leaning against the wall of the officers’ room at Erez border control, smoking a cigarette and squinting at the Gaza side. How the hell could he report this to command in Tel Aviv? He spat in the gravel. He was truly fucked.