“You’re right, as always, my friend,” Carl said. “There is no way for me to express the gratitude I feel for what you’ve done.”
Wallentin smiled. It was the last time Carl would see his smile.
“On the table there are two albums,” said Wallentin, pointing to a little desk at the other end of the bedroom. “They contain pictures and all the information I have. I took the liberty of putting a purple lily on the cover of each.”
THURSDAY, MARCH 7
106
Max looked out the window. Bright sunshine filled the car when the train began its eastward journey. Around the tracks lay heaps of snow and icy patches, and the streets were still covered by a layer of dirty gravel. But on some of the lawns, the first flowers of the year could be seen.
The train hurried past houses, villas—a kaleidoscope of painted wood panels, plaster, and clay roof tiles. Hundreds of families, all with their own sets of stories, secrets, and lies.
Max leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. Thought about everything that had happened and what lay ahead of him now. Would he finally get the answers he had sought for so long?
A nun met Max at the entrance to the hospice. A little staircase led to a large salon, at the far end of which there was an extension, an alcove with a bay window looking out on a lawn that sloped down to the beach and the sea.
On a sofa in the alcove sat a lone man.
“Is that . . .”
“Yes, that’s Carl Borgenstierna,” said the nun. “He insisted on dressing up and meeting you down here instead of in his room.”
Borgenstierna saw Max approaching but did not stand up. The top of his head was bald; he had only a few thin gray strands of hair at his temples.
“Thank you for finally contacting me,” said Max.
Max extended his hand, and Borgenstierna took it.
“I apologize for having been so difficult to reach, Max,” he finally said.
With a shaking hand, he reached for a glass of water that stood on the table in front of the sofa. Took a sip, spilled a little on himself. “What were the questions you wanted to ask me?”
Max sat down in a wicker chair next to him.
“You and Dr. Wallentin testified falsely about the attacks on February 22, 1944, didn’t you?”
Carl Borgenstierna looked down at his hands.
“Nineteen forty-four was a long time ago.”
“A woman died that night,” said Max.
He unzipped his jacket and took out the little frame. He placed the photo on the table with the back toward Borgenstierna. He could see that Carl was reading the text.
Tatyana Sedova.
Born on November 7, 1919, in Bayrak, Ukraine.
Died on February 22, 1944, in Stockholm, Sweden.
Borgenstierna turned the frame around and looked at the picture.
“She died the night a bomb destroyed the Eriksdal Theater,” said Max. “I thought it was strange that the Russian planes bombed a theater in addition to all the military targets. But now I know why. She was your woman, but she also belonged to another man. A dangerous man.”
Borgenstierna’s hands shook when he replied. “Her marriage had been arranged against her will.”
Max leaned forward.
“The attack was not a mistake. It was not the result of a navigational error. It was intended to create pressure that would get a man known as the Goose released from a Swedish prison, and it was an act of vengeance with the purpose of murdering the woman who had betrayed her country and her own husband. A man Stalin himself saw as his son.”
Borgenstierna closed his eyes.
When he finally opened them again, it was as if he were looking past Max, through the glass windows, down at the sloping lawn and the water.
“It was a perfect crime, one for which no one could be punished, one for which no vengeance could be taken.” He caressed the photograph. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“So why did you conceal everything that had to do with her?”
Borgenstierna turned to face Max.
“It wasn’t just that someone had died that night. Someone had been born, too. The child she had carried.”
“And you wanted to protect the child.”
Borgenstierna was silent.
“The child was threatened from both sides,” Max said finally. “By Russian aggression and by Sweden’s desire to preserve peace. The child constituted proof that there had been a motive for the attack and that it had not been carried out in error. Because of this, the child could not be permitted to exist. But you wanted to save it. Because you loved her.”
“And always will.”
Carl Borgenstierna looked at Max again.
“The child she was carrying was your father. She was your grandmother, Max.”
Max felt something growing inside him, a warm relief. This was the mystery his father had tried to solve by seeking the tracks that led backward, tracks that would reveal where the Anger family had really come from. Max knew he would never feel whole until he had discovered the whole truth about himself. Regardless of what that truth looked like. An important piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
“My grandmother was Russian, then?”
“Yes, but she grew up in Bayrak in eastern Ukraine. The black earth, as she called it.”
Borgenstierna allowed himself a smile; something about the black earth had triggered a memory.
“That was you, wasn’t it?” said Max. “It was you who called Pashie from a hotel in Davos?”
Borgenstierna nodded.
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you’ve followed me from a distance my entire life,” said Max. “I know that in large part my family lived on support that came from your Baltic Foundation and that you provided the necessary funding when Vektor wanted to recruit me. Nevertheless, until now you’ve rejected the efforts I and Sarah made to contact you. Suddenly, though, you did make contact, but you chose to do so via our employee in Saint Petersburg, Pashie Kovalenko.”
“I heard on the news that he’s dead,” said Borgenstierna. “Did you kill him?”
Max displayed no reaction to this question. He wasn’t going to let Borgenstierna change the subject.
Borgenstierna cleared his throat.
“You disseminated a list,” he said. “A list of companies your sponsors wanted you to take a particularly close look at ahead of the upcoming presidential election. One of those companies was St. Petersburg GSM. Telia had put this company on the list because Telia was considering acquiring the company. I couldn’t let that happen. It would have meant inviting Russia’s black generals into the corridors of power in Stockholm without having put up a fight. I knew who Nestor Lazarev really was. Someone had to do something.”
Max absorbed what Borgenstierna had said. He nodded.
“Why didn’t you discuss this with Sarah or me?”
“The reason is the reason I couldn’t communicate directly with your father. When his power was at its height, Viktor Gusin had a hundred agents operating in Sweden. They were always watching me, year after year. I didn’t dare contact you, because I feared you would suffer the same fate as your father. They found him because he had actively sought out me and Wallentin. If I had contacted you, they would have noticed. And then they would have tried to murder you, too, Max. Because you were schooled at home and kept outside society, you flew under their radar. Gusin never knew Jakob had a son. He didn’t know you existed.”
“Yes, he did,” said Max. “He realized it in the end.”
Borgenstierna shook his head.
“Did you ever meet my father?”
Carl Borgenstierna looked at Max calmly.
“No, I never met him. Wallentin saw to it that your father was taken care of. This made it possible for me to remain unaware of where he was. We did everything we could to protect him. It wasn’t until 1986, when Wallentin passed away, that I was made aware of where he had
been living and of your existence and took over the responsibility.”
“Are you my grandfather?”
Borgenstierna reached for the water glass again, took another sip with a shaky hand.
“During the summer of 1943, your paternal grandmother lived with two men, Max. I was one of them.”
Max let Borgenstierna’s words sink in. He was reminded of what Lazarev had said to him in the hangar before he died.
“Did Tatyana have nightmares about that summer, the summer of 1943? About a dark door closing behind her?”
Borgenstierna looked at Max. Was that fear in his gaze?
Then the older man suddenly looked absent. Max thought he heard the voice of the Goose. Fragments of their conversation replayed in his mind. Not for the first time. Or the last.
“I recognize the fire in your eyes. A will of steel. The power skipped a generation.”
“Tell me about Tatyana,” said Max. “Tell me about my father’s mother.”
Borgenstierna cleared his throat.
“She loved the theater,” he said. “When she was a young girl, the famine forced her to go to Moscow, where the government had other plans for her. She was forced to marry a man she didn’t love and to follow him to Sweden to spy on this country.”
They went on talking for hours. Of a time long past. Of a love that had been allowed to flower for only a few short months.
107
A nurse helped him take his clothes off. She had tried to start a conversation, but Carl Borgenstierna didn’t want to talk anymore.
Max Anger.
Something new would be born now; everything terrible that had happened would lead to something better. It had to.
Max had been so determined. So relentless.
He had asked about Tatyana’s nightmares. About the summer of 1943.
Did Gusin’s death mean the end of the old curse that had hung over them for more than half a century? Or would it live on in a new form? Could there now be an end to all the secrecy? If so, why had it been so difficult for him to speak with Max? About his grandmother?
But he had done the best he could.
Had he made the right decision back then, fifty-two years ago? To save himself and the child? He remembered the fateful conversation with Wallentin and the doubts that had plagued him then, that still plagued him.
“How long does it take to get the result from a blood test?”
“For God’s sake, man, pull yourself together! Would the result affect what you want to do with the child?”
Wallentin’s sermon still echoed within him. More strongly now than ever.
“A test like that is only worth the trouble if you want to rule someone out. You need a sample from the man you want to rule out.”
And that had been impossible. That man had been beyond his reach.
When the nurse had turned off the lights and quietly closed the door, Carl got up and sat down at the table over by the TV.
There lay one of the two albums that had been given to him by Wallentin and that contained everything related to the Anger family on Arholma. He looked at the purple lily on the outside. The coat of arms of the Borgenstierna family.
Also lying on the table was the White Archive, which contained the telephone number for Rigus, the company specializing in everything having to do with death.
“People to contact.”
“Questions regarding your estate and your will.”
Carl picked up the telephone and dialed the number.
Something about Max Anger had made the conversation so difficult. A heat—no, a fire—that had felt both familiar and strange at the same time.
But at the same time, he was the living image of Tatyana Sedova. And that was what really mattered.
Rigus.
“Sometimes people change their minds.”
The Baltic Foundation’s archive and activity must be maintained after his death.
When Carl had finished talking to the woman from Rigus, he lay down on the bed and looked out toward the coast. A new kind of tiredness spread through his body. He didn’t manage to keep his gaze focused on the water and the horizon for long before his eyelids fell.
After he had fallen asleep, the nightmare returned, the one that made him sweat and toss and turn.
He saw her worn face, the face he had seen when she had sat in the pew in the Russian church on Birger Jarlsgatan.
“I wake up every night and see that door in front of me, the dark wood, the shining knob. I see my face mirrored in it, how twisted and tortured it is. The door was closed after me. I was alone and helpless. Then he tore off my clothes. I heard the man who had led me into the room, the man who was my true husband in the eyes of the law, laughing on the other side of the black door. While I screamed.”
EPILOGUE
Wednesday, July 3
Max Anger was standing by a little tree in one of the memorial groves in the Woodland Cemetery. It was a peaceful place without any nameplates or gravestones. He had learned of the location via an album that had been sent to his apartment on Sveavägen. A white album with a purple lily on the cover.
Pashie gripped his hand hard while he told her everything. Carl Borgenstierna had willed the family’s house in Gamla Stan to Max and made him the administrator of the Baltic Foundation and its funds.
Pashie’s throat had not healed completely, and it still hurt when she spoke, but there were other ways to communicate—hand motions, looks, facial expressions—and if these weren’t sufficient, she wrote in the notebook she kept in her purse.
The weeks on Arholma had helped. The time they had had together. They had both grown stronger there. Max had visited the graves of his mother and father. When he had wanted to tell his father he knew the truth now, it had been Pashie who had given him the strength to find the words. She had supported him when he had told his mother that she had been right but that he hoped she would nevertheless understand why he couldn’t stop digging into the past.
It felt as if they had been standing there only a few minutes when Pashie squeezed his hand and pointed at an imaginary wristwatch. Time to go, she was signaling. Or perhaps time to go on.
It was time to get back to the city and the people watching live election coverage at Vektor.
Max sent a last greeting to Carl and Tatyana that included a promise to both of them. Then he and Pashie walked to the parking lot, where their taxi was waiting.
Seventeen days earlier, Max had sat with Pashie at the hospital and watched the report on the first round of voting. They had been sitting up in Pashie’s bed, shoulder to shoulder, each holding a milkshake. Russia votes. The results of the first round of voting. A female reporter had been standing outside the parliament building, not far from the place where Yeltsin had launched his democratic mission five years earlier by turning tanks against an uncooperative parliament.
The reporter had been surrounded by ordinary Moscow residents. The graphics were superfluous; the images, the expressions on people’s faces, had said enough. There had been no great euphoria on the streets of Russia that evening. The reporter had informed the television audience that Yeltsin had a narrow lead over the Communist leader Zyuganov, but not enough votes to win. According to a press release from the Central Election Commission, a second round of voting would take place soon.
The big surprise generated by the first round of voting had been that General Lebed had won as much as 15 percent of the votes, almost half what each of the two frontrunners had amassed. The key to an ultimate victory for one of those frontrunners would be convincing the old hero of the Afghan war to join his campaign.
The video had shown General Lebed trying to make his way through a mass of people. Lebed had spoken to a TV reporter in his unmistakable harsh voice. “I want a place in the government that will give me an opportunity to organize the fight against criminality and to oppose extreme movements on the right as well as the left that threaten to plunge the country into deep and bloody chaos.”
Asked whether he would join Yeltsin’s camp, he had said, “Do you think I look like a jester?”
Ilya had sent Max a text message saying that General Lebed would no doubt, in fact, prove to be a jester.
Max had talked to Sarah and Charlie K about what Borgenstierna had been doing in Davos. Charlie K’s fear that Borgenstierna had given away the Baltic Foundation’s funds had proved to be unfounded. Those funds were now administered by Max. He had wanted to use them to help Sarah rebuild her house, but she had politely but firmly told him that she was accustomed to paying her own way.
Gabbi had moved in with her parents in Filipstad, and now Sarah was going to start over on her own, build a house for herself and the children.
There were reports from Davos to the effect that prominent Russian businessmen with great wealth and close ties to Yeltsin had negotiated an international support package the size of which was completely unprecedented. The period just before the election had seen much speculation with regard to what kind of unholy promises Yeltsin might have made to the oligarchs.
There was a rumor that Carl Borgenstierna had been present at the meeting that had resulted in what, in the aftermath of the winter’s World Economic Forum, was being called the Davos Pact. There were also rumors saying that the oligarchs had already chosen Yeltsin’s successor from among the new strongmen in the Saint Petersburg city government, and that this had been a part of the agreement.
The man identified as this successor was the same strongman who had forbidden Vektor’s employees to enter the Russian Federation, justifying this prohibition by accusing Vektor of “illegal intelligence activity.” The signatory of the decree in question was the mayor’s right-hand man, the head of the committee for foreign relations at Saint Petersburg’s town hall: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Max couldn’t stop thinking about Gusin and the organization in the hangar outside Saint Petersburg. About how they had cooperated with the local authorities in Saint Petersburg, not least with regard to covering up what had happened to Mishin’s department at the university. Could it be that these generals were controlling everything, as Gusin had claimed? That they had already chosen Yeltsin’s successor, who would be put in place regardless of how the election went? In that case, the generals were behind the oligarchs, who in turn were influencing Yeltsin. It made his head spin to think about it.
Ask No Mercy (Max Anger Book 1) Page 37