Ask No Mercy

by Martin Österdahl

  Max needed to get in there before someone else did.

  His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it hitting the inside of his rib cage. His head felt strangely light, as though the wind blowing past the tall buildings around him were going right through him. He saw the scene on Nevsky Prospekt again as soon as he stopped. Why hadn’t he reacted more quickly? Had he gotten that rusty?

  He bent forward and went through the opening in the fence. On the other side, directly to the right, was the entrance to the building where Domashov had lived. Max looked at his watch. Twenty minutes had passed since Domashov had been run down. If someone had lived here with him, it was unlikely that that person would already have heard of his death.

  The building door was unlocked, and a directory in the stairwell indicated that Domashov had lived three floors up. Max ran up the stairs and then looked around before taking out the key ring. He found the right key, and the door opened with a dull metallic sound. Max entered a hall in which shoes, boots, gloves, and hats were arranged in perfect order. This was not the residence of a man living alone. Next to the entrance hall lay a kitchen; it, too, had been kept scrupulously clean. Max walked past the kitchen and the two bedrooms—one for adults, one for children.

  Next to the bedroom for adults was a study. This seemed to be Domashov’s private domain. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A desk at the window with a view of the university campus.

  Below the window, students were hurrying toward one of the larger buildings. A thin layer of powdery new snow covered the area, and every footstep made the snow whirl up.

  Max let his gaze wander along the facade of the main university building to the place where Pashie and Mishin had worked. Black burn marks and gaping windows. If Domashov had witnessed the explosion from here, he would have seen it all.

  Max began to search the room. The bookshelves contained hundreds of issues of the St. Petersburg Times. Max switched on the desktop computer, and while he was waiting for it to boot up, he opened the desk drawers. They were completely empty. Max looked at the screen again, but nothing seemed to be happening there.

  The front door of the building opened, and Max heard someone running into the stairwell. A woman told her children to behave themselves. Max looked down into the courtyard. No one was down there. He turned toward the computer again, but the screen was still displaying the text Starting up and Please wait.

  A key rattled in the apartment’s entrance door, and Max froze.

  Shit.

  Should he run out the way he had come or climb out the window and make his way to the fire escape?

  “Hello?” a soft voice said from the hall. “Yury?”

  Max looked through the window. The jump over to the fire escape wasn’t going to be easy, but he didn’t really have a choice. As he moved to open the window, his foot caught on the thick rug. Something lay under it—a sheet of paper, front side down.

  He bent down to pick it up.

  “Yury, are you there?”

  It was a large photograph, in the A4 format. A portrait of a man. On the back was a handwritten name.

  The emptiness Max had felt was replaced by a vertiginous feeling, as though he were looking into an abyss rather than at a man’s face.

  What is going on?

  The hand holding the photograph began to tremble.

  The face seemed unbelievably familiar, and yet he couldn’t place it.

  Max folded the paper and put it in his inner jacket pocket.

  Light footsteps came running in his direction, but they stopped somewhere nearby when the woman called out, “Stop, come back!”

  There was a particular charge to the voice, and perhaps the children noticed this, because the apartment suddenly was deathly quiet. Max pulled up the window, which emitted a loud squeak. A strong gust of wind blew through the study when the door was opened.

  The woman screamed, and Max jumped out the window.

  37

  All the days leading up to the big day would be spent making preparations. Soon they would meet for the first time, the group of men who until now had been in contact with each other only via a closed group of agents who acted as couriers and through encrypted conversations over secure telephone lines. What had begun with Nestor Lazarev’s own private project and a confidential conversation with a man he knew he could trust regardless of the direction the winds were blowing at the moment had led to a second conversation, and suddenly the project had involved a whole group.

  On a TV screen connected to security cameras in the rooms Lazarev had started using again very recently, he saw his guest arrive and sit down in the corridor to wait. The simple wooden chair appeared to be uncomfortable, as if its legs were penetrating its seat and poking into the buttocks of the individual sitting there. When the guest twisted back and forth on the chair, it almost looked as though he were pressing himself against the exposed ends of the chair legs in order to send a pain signal to his brain. If Lazarev had not known better, he would have assumed that this was a learned technique intended to control the signals sent to the brain. But Swiss auditors didn’t receive training in such techniques. Perhaps it was something from the man’s obscure past?

  The door to Lazarev’s room was made of heavy wood of an exotic type that didn’t grow at these latitudes. The wood was dark and quite beautiful. The door was framed by an arched portal, the wood of which was exquisitely carved. The carvings enhanced the beauty and symmetry of the door. No rough edges. No deficiencies in clarity.

  The door handle was old and made of brass. His visitor appeared to be staring at it and awaiting its opening.

  Lazarev pressed the button under his desk, and the door opened a few centimeters. He looked at the screen again. Everything was utterly quiet. He sometimes missed the activity of the past, but it wouldn’t be long now before the rooms here were again fully utilized.

  Marcel Rousseau stood up. Brushed a little dandruff from his shoulders. On his way through the doorway, he looked at the painting hanging beside the door. The great leader stood at the top of a flight of stairs, his hands spread in a welcoming gesture. Around him stood dignitaries from Russian history, and below him, standing on the steps and the floor, were representatives of all the peoples who were under his control. Every line in the painting, every ray of light, radiated from the man in the center of the painting.

  He was the sun.

  When Rousseau approached the desk, Lazarev stood up and pointed to the visitor’s chair.

  “Sit down,” he said with a smile.

  He noted that the sound of his voice made the younger man’s worried look disappear.

  You decided to abandon the life you lived, your career, and your family to work for me. Perhaps not for my goals, but for my money.

  “What’s on your mind today, Marcel?”

  “I have special business.”

  Lazarev raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry, but it appears we have another one,” said Rousseau. “Now there’s a man looking for the woman.”

  Yes, of course we have another one, thought Lazarev. Don’t forget I’m always a step ahead of you.

  “Is that so?” he asked. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “He used a trick to arrange a meeting with me. He asked about her, but he never asked the question she had asked. He seemed unaware of it.”

  “Russian?” asked Lazarev.

  “No, Swedish. He said his name was Paul Olsen.”

  Olsen? That was more Danish than Swedish. A cover?

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “Nothing, of course. Nothing at all!”

  Lazarev raised his hand, and Rousseau took a few deep breaths.

  “What do you think he wanted, Marcel?”

  Rousseau cleared his throat and swallowed. He seemed to be searching his brain for something that could help him proceed without making a mistake. He rubbed his hands as if they had suddenly started itching.

  “I think it’s connected to yo
u personally,” he finally said. “And I think we should inform the others. I’m sorry, but I—”

  Lazarev laid a finger across his lips. The room became deathly quiet apart from the ticking of the clock on the desk.

  “Calm down,” he said. “What do you mean it’s connected to me personally? What is it you’ve discovered?”

  “The question about where you got the technology, the question Pashie asked. It suggests a connection has been made between St. Petersburg GSM and what happened in Stockholm in 1944.”

  Lazarev stretched. So that’s it.

  When they had drawn up the agreement that set forth the conditions under which they cooperated, Lazarev had wondered how much information Rousseau had managed to dig up about his past and about the others in the organization. He must have tried to find out as much as possible before he abandoned his life to work for them. Rousseau did painstaking work; that was clear. He was cowardly by nature but desperate to get rich.

  Lazarev had concluded that Rousseau had done everything he could to find out who he really was. Which hadn’t been a problem.

  Until now.

  “Who would have thought you’d known about that old story all along? I’m impressed.”

  He got up, walked slowly past a row of framed portraits on the wall. Had he really heard Marcel say, “I think we should inform the others”? What right did he think he had to do that? To undermine Lazarev’s authority and thus endanger his leadership of the organization?

  Lazarev walked past a black suit of samurai armor that stood in a corner next to a cello. The room had an unusual shape; Lazarev himself had designed it many years ago, and it was perfect for its purpose. It was still in reasonably good condition despite the fact that it had been allowed to decay during the many years it had not been used.

  The room looked rectangular, but its walls were not parallel. It was designed for optimal recording of sound. Of course, everything said in this room was recorded now, as it had been then.

  Who was this person, Paul Olsen, who was after him now? An ambitious new recruit at MUST, Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service? Lazarev had never been afraid of them or any other branch of the Swedish armed forces. The America-loving, unjustifiably self-confident Social Democratic government’s armed forces were an insult to the armed forces of other nations. Why should he fear them now?

  So Rousseau thought they needed to inform the others that someone from Sweden was suddenly after Lazarev?

  He looked at Rousseau, who had sunk down on his chair and was nervously tugging at his earlobe.

  You come here and threaten my leadership by intimating various things. How dare you question me?

  He stopped by a record player and a little framed picture on a bookshelf. It had been so many years since it was taken in the early forties. In the picture, Lazarev himself was in the middle, between the two people who had been closest to him. One of them had betrayed him and paid with her life.

  In Stockholm.

  Why should he fear the Swedes now? Why should he let himself be affected by this worried auditor? Now, when his life’s work was about to come to its fruition. The organization was growing strong; the company was increasingly successful; they had accumulated fortunes. Soon it would all be put to good use.

  Rousseau was just a coward worried about his beloved retirement savings. There was no reason to tell anyone. On the contrary. This was something he would take care of himself.

  “Who knows about this besides you?” asked Lazarev.

  Rousseau jerked. “No one, of course. I would never—”

  “I mean who helped you dig into my background before you decided to come and work for me?”

  Rousseau pulled at his earlobe again; he was probably weighing his options. Lie or tell the truth? Save himself or someone else?

  “No one helped me at all,” he said, his voice quavering. “I guarantee it.”

  Someone you care about, then, thought Lazarev, caressing the record player. Perhaps your poor wife, whom you left behind in Lugano. She’ll get what’s coming to her, and I’ll make her suffer a little extra because you’ve lied to my face.

  “Things always happen in accordance with some kind of logic,” said Lazarev. “Certain things are obvious from the beginning. Others take a bit longer to discover. But there is always logic.”

  He switched on the record player. Soon a baritone was heard, accompanied only by a piano. Schubert’s Winterreise. His gaze returned to the old photograph. He turned it toward the wall, picked up his tuning fork, struck the bookshelf with it, and held it to his ear.

  “Perfect tone.”

  Rousseau sat very still at the desk, followed Lazarev with his eyes.

  “In this case, logic tells us that if this is connected to my own background, then eventually the seeker will be led here like a compass needle that always returns to north.”

  Lazarev walked over and stood behind Rousseau, laid his hands on his shoulders.

  “You’re clever, Marcel.”

  Rousseau tensed his shoulders. The strength of Lazarev’s hands surprised everyone.

  “You weren’t satisfied with our arrangement, were you? You felt you had to do a little research on your own initiative, to get the whole picture?”

  Rousseau panted. “I hope that in my efforts to serve the organization, I have not in any way risked—”

  Lazarev pressed the tuning fork against Rousseau’s neck. He seized the base of Rousseau’s head with his left hand, and before Rousseau could react his forehead was pressed against the surface of the desk. Lazarev felt the energy of his youth returning. His left hand was strong; the force holding Rousseau against the desk was irresistible; the fingers digging down to the vertebrae in his neck were like sharp screws.

  Lazarev plunged the tuning fork into Rousseau’s neck. The implement buried itself under his Adam’s apple and was violently jerked first up, then down, and then to the side in a quick movement.

  Rousseau shot up from the chair. His back arched, and from his lips came a scream of pain. But the scream was drowned by the blood that filled his mouth and ran down onto his chest. Rousseau made a few vain efforts to escape Lazarev’s grip, but finally his body relaxed.

  Lazarev released Rousseau’s head. It struck the surface of the desk with a dull thud, and a last surge of blood ran out of his mouth.

  38

  Max got out of the taxi at the Kovalevskoe Cemetery, in the Vsevolozhsky District. He saw the small, relatively new turquoise chapel with its zinc-covered roof pointing at the sky like an arrow. Just as he closed the car door, the bells began to ring. Soon the funeral ceremony would start.

  Max hadn’t spoken with Mishin since the events at the university. Now he saw the older man walking outside the church and raising a hand in greeting.

  “Afanasy,” Max exclaimed. “It’s wonderful to see you in good health.”

  “Likewise,” said Mishin, shaking his hand, pumping it up and down. “I’ve just been to the river. With the walruses.”

  “The walruses?”

  Mishin smiled. “My comrades. We sit in the sauna a few times a week and then take a dip in the river through a hole in the ice. Good for the heart. And the soul.”

  His smile died.

  “I’ve been fired,” he said. “Effective immediately. The department is not to be reestablished.”

  “What? Why not?”

  Mishin shook his head. “I think the decision was made by someone high above the rector.”

  Wasn’t the rector the highest boss? Could it have been the board? Or someone at the top of Saint Petersburg’s municipal administration?

  They joined a group of mourners. The women walked as a separate group, dressed in black, some of them crying loudly. The men held bouquets of red roses; their cheeks were wet with tears, their expressions grim. The procession was led by three Orthodox priests with long hair and bushy beards. They were dressed in cornflower-blue tunics bearing the Orthodox cross with its three horizon
tal beams; the lowest, the footrest, was angled in accordance with Russian tradition.

  Max and Mishin took their places in the pews, and the priests disappeared behind the iconostasis.

  Max closed his eyes as he sat on the wooden bench. He listened to the ringing of the last bells. Seventeen. Around his right wrist he wore the bracelet he had bought from the youth who was lying in the coffin. Somewhere in the church sat the young man’s sister, who had made the bracelet. A sister who would have to sit alone at the market on Saturdays from now on.

  Vladislav Bagayev had been only a boy.

  Max looked around the church. Didn’t recognize any faces. Could there be a bomb here, too?

  I have to get to the bottom of this before more innocent people die. I have to find Pashie.

  The police had told the newspapers that the university had not properly maintained its gas lines. They said the university had been warned that an accident was inevitable if the problems were not addressed. The university rector had said there would be a full investigation and that those responsible would be prosecuted. Mishin had been one of the scapegoats identified.

  Max closed his eyes again. Remembered the funeral in the chapel on Arholma a month earlier. His last farewell to his mother.

  He had been the first to arrive and had sat at the very front of the pretty little church. Hadn’t told Pashie about the funeral. Hadn’t wanted to interrupt her work, had thought he was strong and would do fine on his own.

  But while he had been sitting there in the church, looking at the chalk-white arch of a roof that resembled a sail in the wind, he had regretted it. The loneliness, the sorrow, and the irreversibility of death had overpowered him.

  Then he had felt a hand on his shoulder.

  Sarah had told Pashie about the funeral, and she had come. Had understood that he needed her by his side.

  There and then Max realized he was no longer alone. And that he needed Pashie more than he’d understood.

  He opened his eyes and looked at the coffin at the front of the church. Vladislav was dead, but he refused to believe Pashie was. She couldn’t be.