Ask No Mercy

by Martin Österdahl

  Max looked down at his lap, at the calluses on his hands. Then nodded slowly.

  “Yes, I visited him.”

  “Was he happy to see you?”

  “Hard to say. He was sleeping, and his face was covered by an oxygen mask. He’d had a double kidney transplant.”

  Max recalled how pitiful the old man had looked as he lay hooked up to the dialysis machine. He’d heard Carl Borgenstierna’s name many times during his childhood, often when his father, Jakob, had been at his drunkest, and it had felt almost like a dream to finally see him.

  On the nightstand next to him there had been an album with a lily on it, and next to that a photograph. A sepia-colored portrait of a pretty young woman who had looked like the star of an old Hollywood film. Something about her gaze had stayed with Max. It had contained a fire, a longing, that had reminded him of someone else. Of Pashie.

  Max’s mother, Josefin, had always taken the side of the weak and told Max that he should treat all people the same. It had been logical for her to marry the orphaned Jakob, whose unknown parentage was still the subject of gossip on the island. Over the years, Josefin had to put up with all kinds of rumors about her husband’s biological parents. Some said they were homeless drunks from the gutters of Stockholm. Others claimed that Jakob Anger was the son of a prominent society man, the result of one night of passion, a mistake.

  A month ago, when Josefin had died, Max had decided to seek out the truth about the names his father had pronounced with such hatred.

  Wallentin and Borgenstierna.

  Max had returned to Arholma a single time after his mother’s funeral. He spoke with Anita Elofsson, the woman who had taken his father as her foster son. During his childhood, Max had had no contact with her, and he knew that when Jakob had legally become an adult he had barely spoken with her. To Max, Anita had just been a woman who smoked a great deal and whom he had sometimes run into at the store. Anita Elofsson had been reluctant, but she had finally told him the date of his father’s arrival on the island. March 1, 1944. She had said that was “the day the trouble began.” It certainly wasn’t easy to raise someone else’s child. But at least she had received regular payments for her efforts, from something called the Baltic Foundation.

  Max had continued his investigation and discovered that the Baltic Foundation had been established by two men whose names he knew all too well: the physician Wolfgang Wallentin and the attorney Carl Borgenstierna. He had visited the head of the Roslagens Sparbank branch in Älmsta and received confirmation that his family had received payments from the foundation every year.

  That didn’t necessarily mean anything. But it was certainly a strange coincidence.

  Last week, Max had sat in the library and looked through public records. Dr. Wallentin had been dead for many years. Carl Borgenstierna was still alive, but he hadn’t replied to any of Max’s letters and calls. And when Max had finally gotten an opportunity to meet him, he hadn’t been conscious.

  Max still didn’t understand how everything was connected, but his investigation had shown that Borgenstierna had somehow been involved in placing Max’s father in foster care on Arholma.

  If the old man was responsible for the family’s unhappiness, he would have to pay.

  Max had spent his whole life wondering who his paternal grandparents were, and now he felt closer than ever to solving the mystery. In the end, he hadn’t been able to keep this secret; he had told Pashie about the names he had heard during his childhood and about how his investigation into his father’s past had led him to the people behind those names.

  In the hospital, Max had shaken the old man and tried to get him to wake up. He had had to fight the urge to pull the tubes out of the dialysis machine.

  “What do you know about Borgenstierna?” Max asked.

  Sarah looked at him questioningly.

  “I’ve already told you. All I know about him is that fifty years ago he founded the Baltic Foundation, which has contributed money to Vektor for a number of years. I’ve never met him, but he’s a man I respect and am grateful to.”

  She turned in her chair and laid her hand on a thick file on her desk. “You’re going to have to put your private investigations aside now. Your vacation is over.”

  She slid the file over to Max’s side of the desk. “This is your homework for tonight.”

  Max flipped through the pile of papers. He tried to look enthusiastic.

  “It’s the schoolchildren who are on their winter break now, Max. You had last week off. You should really have been back yesterday.”

  She pointed at the papers. “Go home and read your way through that. And get some sleep, for God’s sake. I have someone coming over tonight, so if you have questions, they’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “Her name is Gabbi.”

  “Wonderful. I won’t bother you.”

  Sarah nodded meaningfully. Damn right you won’t.

  She stood up. The meeting was over. It was time for her to meet the next person who needed advice on Russia and Eastern Europe. She stopped halfway to the door.

  “And call your girlfriend, would you? I haven’t heard from her for almost a week now.”

  Max had kept his relationship with Pashie Kovalenko a secret at first; he’d been unsure how Sarah would react to finding out he was in a relationship with Vektor’s representative in Saint Petersburg. But just as Max had hoped, she’d made yet another exception for him.

  Call his girlfriend was exactly what Max planned to do.

  3

  Max closed the door to his apartment, hung up his jacket, and looked at his face in the hall mirror. The way he had since he had first noticed the change. There were even darker circles around his brown eyes today. He knew that this was a side effect of the benzodiazepine pills and that he should stop taking them for a while.

  His eyes were bloodshot. The skin around them looked wrinkled and lifeless. He was turning into his father, into the man his father had been just before he died.

  But at twenty-six?

  Sarah was right. He looked like hell. Or like someone who had met the devil.

  Max pulled aside the curtains in the living room and opened a window to let in some fresh air. It was a bleak day in Stockholm; the sun could not break through the thick layer of dark-gray clouds, and spring seemed far away.

  The only sources of light in the apartment were indicators on his electronic devices: the blinking red one on his telephone answering machine, the anxiety-inducing numeral beside it that let him know he had eight messages, the blue standby light on the TV, the green one on the VHS player.

  The furniture had not been replaced since his days at the military academy. Max didn’t share Sarah’s interest in home furnishing and antiques. The living room contained a brown IKEA sofa and a black fake-leather armchair. On the sofa lay two blankets he had brought from his childhood home on Arholma: a gray one in mohair that a visitor from Iceland had given his mother and a plaid one he had bought himself when he sailed to the Shetland Islands on the navy’s school ship Gladan.

  A map of the Soviet Union covered the wall above the sofa.

  He pushed the button on the answering machine to play his messages. The first one was almost a week old. He really hadn’t kept an eye on the machine; he hadn’t been able to focus on anything but his Wallentin and Borgenstierna investigations. He’d waited so long to start his search that the matter had completely consumed him. He had hardly slept or eaten and had spoken with Pashie very little. She would have noticed how obsessed he was and forced him to take it easy.

  Max forwarded past messages from a librarian, Vektor employees and sponsors, employees at Radio Sweden’s archives, and other individuals he had contacted during his recent investigations.

  One message was from Hein Espen, a Norwegian who had taken early retirement from Max’s amphibious platoon. He always got in touch this time of year, around the anniversary of the acciden
t. During an exercise at Haakonsvern Naval Base, Hein Espen’s diving equipment had malfunctioned, and he had panicked when he had suddenly found himself without air. Max had saved him from death in the underwater tunnels. He had gotten to Hein Espen in time, held on to him while he kicked and thrashed, and succeeded in bringing him up to the surface.

  Max would call him back, but not now.

  And then, finally: “Hi there.”

  The sound of her voice from the little speaker in the answering machine gave him a warm feeling in his chest.

  “It’s me. I think I have something for you. Something new, something you didn’t expect. But you have to come here and pick it up yourself. When are you coming, baby?”

  Max had met Pashie Kovalenko a little over a year before at a conference in Helsinki. Standing in front of a slow, loud coffee machine, they’d started talking, and when they had finished their coffee they had reluctantly gone back to their meetings, both filled with a new, strong longing.

  She had been dressed in a worn navy-blue duffle coat and stonewashed jeans. Her dark skin probably would have had most people guessing she was South American, but her high cheekbones and—despite the bright green irises—her narrow eyes gave Max a clue to her Asian roots. He hadn’t been able to get enough of the curly black hair that cascaded softly over her shoulders. Later Max realized this style had been a rare exception, as Pashie usually braided her hair or piled it on top of her head in a knot.

  They had exchanged business cards. Hers was one she had made herself; handwritten in silver ink on black paper, it bore only her name, a Russian telephone number, a fax number, and an e-mail address.

  With an effort, Max looked away from the answering machine. Traces of Pashie were everywhere in the apartment: the colorful patterned wooden spoons they’d bought at Gostiny Dvor in Saint Petersburg, the red-and-brown plaid blanket that lay bunched up at the foot of the bed, and her new white rubber boots in the front hall. And the mannequin she had said she needed because she was going to start sewing her own clothes, just as her mother had. Pashie had made a few attempts but soon realized that she had neither the time nor the talent. Now the mannequin stood there wearing half a dress and one of Pashie’s hats, the yellow cowboy hat, on its head.

  “Reflection, Max, is something you devote yourself to afterward, not before.”

  She was just as chaotic as he was. Their paths took them in different directions, but they saw to it that they met as often as possible.

  One year together. Their long-distance relationship was built on long telephone calls and e-mails, conversations about everything from smart business ideas they should realize to summer dreams of places in the Stockholm archipelago Max wanted to show her.

  Could they have a life together for real?

  “I think I have something for you.”

  What had she found? Other than Sarah, Pashie was the only person who knew about Max’s own research. She had been with him on that beautiful and at the same time terrible afternoon in the church. She had taken his shaking hand when the organ began to play “Fairest Lord Jesus” and gently squeezed it; Max had been unable to tear his gaze from the coffin up there. The coffin in which his mother lay.

  Pashie understood that Max was no longer bound by his promise not to look back, not to dwell on what had happened in the past. She knew how it felt to be robbed of your family and denied your origins. She knew that there was no longer anything that could stop him from digging into his family’s history. Pashie would never criticize Max for doing what he had to do, and she would never let their relationship stand in his way.

  “Something new, something you didn’t expect.”

  Max picked up the telephone and called Pashie’s cell phone again, but it was still off. After waiting about a minute, he tried once more. This time there was an error tone, and he heard a computerized female voice. “Your call cannot be put through. Please try again later.” Max looked out the window at the gray city. He brought up the most recent text messages on his cell phone screen again to see whether he might have missed some earlier message. He hadn’t.

  What are you up to, Pashie?

  He pushed the phone away and dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration. He glanced into his simple, empty kitchen. Was reminded of how Pashie had stood in there pressing fresh orange juice for what had seemed like forever, wearing only one of Max’s old white T-shirts. She had spoken of Western distrust of Russia, of the coming presidential election, and of how the Russian markets could not be closed again now that they had been opened up. About how there would be a civil war if the state took back the riches that had been distributed. After all the travails of privatization, things would get better for ordinary Russians, and the country would become an economic superpower.

  “Just wait. You’ll see.”

  The rumors of imminent mass immigration from Russia to the Nordic countries were baseless. Russians wouldn’t leave the mother country; there was no justification for the centuries-old fear of Russia. The country and the people would advance; instead of a European outsider, Russia would be a partner for trade, tourism, and cultural exchange.

  Max and Pashie both knew that the coming presidential election would be a watershed event: it was the first real election since the fall of the Soviet Union. The election five years prior, which Yeltsin had won, had taken place in an atmosphere of national confusion, and the political parties and voters had not had an opportunity to prepare themselves properly. Many outside Russia had strongly criticized the 1991 election.

  Now that reactionary winds were once again blowing hard and cold, all Western powers would need to unite in encouraging democracy in Russia. Before it was too late.

  To maintain a steady stream of firsthand information, Vektor needed someone they could trust, someone who was in place in Saint Petersburg, the big window to the West. This was the key role Pashie played.

  When had he last spoken with her? Friday? It was uncommon for them to go so many days without speaking to each other. He had been focused on his own concerns, had tried to get as much as possible out of his week off from Vektor. Pashie had buried herself in her own work. Perhaps she had spent the past few days harassing businessmen in Saint Petersburg with all her smart questions. Was that why she hadn’t checked in all weekend?

  He walked over to the computer and rolled the mouse around on the mat to activate the screen. He checked his inbox. No new messages from Pashie. The most recent one was from Friday.

  Are you doing okay, Max? You sounded so tense the last time I talked to you I got a little worried. We need to get together soon. You’re coming as planned, right? I’ve gotten an interesting tip I need to talk to you about. Call me!

  He had read the e-mail during the weekend but hadn’t answered.

  Of course I’m coming, he wrote now. Call me as soon as you read this.

  His trip to Saint Petersburg had been planned for a long time. The idea had been for him to take the week of vacation he had just had, do some preparatory work at the office for a few days, and then travel to Saint Petersburg and come back home in time for Vektor’s annual party. Sarah had been very clear about that: don’t miss the annual party.

  Max pulled up his sent messages to make sure he really had sent the e-mail to Pashie.

  You sounded so tense. The lump in his stomach got bigger, and he read the e-mail one more time. The content of this message was more or less identical to those on the answering machine, but there was a significant addition. A tip? What was the tip she wanted to talk to him about?

  Max opened the file Sarah had given him. It contained not one homework assignment but two. She had respected Max’s vacation week, but when he looked through the documents he realized that she probably would have liked to hear what he thought several days ago.

  In the file was an article about election fixing, written by two members of the IFES—the International Foundation of Electoral Systems. He read his way through all of the article’s 120 pages, refreshi
ng his inbox every time he finished a page to see whether Pashie had replied to his e-mail. It was slow reading, and he had heard it all before. “The penetration of photo identification in Russia is limited, particularly among the members of underprivileged groups, including the incarcerated, minorities, and the poor.”

  “My experience suggests that this figure is about ten to fifteen percent,” Max wrote in his notebook.

  “Disinformation and threats. Well-planned attempts to influence voting related to organized crime in Saint Petersburg. Daily mass demonstrations on Saint Petersburg’s most heavily trafficked street in an atmosphere of incipient violence. Knife attacks in cases where people spoke in opposition.”

  Knife attacks in Saint Petersburg. Nothing new under the sun.

  “In Russia, voting at your workplace is common. In the suburbs, employers are responsible for information about voting and for the voting process itself, including voter registration and vote counting. Expect shoe-polish methods.” Max was quite familiar with these methods, which had been common in the Soviet Union. Shoe polish was smeared on the handle of a voting machine so that it would be possible to see from an employee’s hand how he or she had voted. This was usually combined with threats and harsh punishment.

  The IFES article was bleak reading, but the other document was worse. It was the latest opinion poll. Max’s task was not only to read the summary but also to note abnormalities and areas for which data were scarce. The opinion poll showed a clear tendency, and it wasn’t what Vektor had hoped for. The presidential election was only a few months away, and Zyuganov and his retro-communist party were leading.

  The telephone rang, and Max immediately reached for the receiver. But his hopes were soon dashed. It wasn’t Pashie calling him back.

  “Max.” It was Sarah. “You have to come over here.”

  “Do you need a pair of extra hands for Gabbi?”

  “Mishin just called. Pashie should have been at two meetings today, but she didn’t show up. People have been trying to reach her all day, but no one’s been able to.”