Ask No Mercy

by Martin Österdahl

  “Don’t give up. Now it’s not just a matter of what he knows about my father. I think Pashie found out something about him and 1944 that led to her disappearance.”

  “Maybe we should take a closer look at what happened in Sweden in 1944,” said Sarah.

  “That was going to be my next step. But I never got to start, because I had to come here and look for Pashie.”

  “I’ll see if I have time,” said Sarah. “We have to turn over every stone now.”

  “Concentrate on the period around March first. That’s when my father came to Arholma.”

  “Understood.”

  “Thanks, Sarah. But I need your help with something else. Are you in front of your computer?”

  “Yes, now I am.”

  Sarah started typing. Max looked at the wall again. Next to “St. Petersburg GSM” he had written “Ivanovich—foundation.” Drawn a line to “Rousseau.”

  “I want information about a business called Brice & Stadthaller. It’s Marcel Rousseau’s business, a firm doing tax consultancy and auditing here in Saint Petersburg. Marcel worked for one of the big firms in Switzerland, KPMG, before he started his own. A foundation called Ivanovich was registered in Switzerland and controls St. Petersburg GSM. See what you can find out about Brice & Stadthaller and whether you can find anything regarding the foundation he registered. I think there’s something there.”

  “I have some friends in the banking world I can ask,” said Sarah. “I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  Max hung up and sat on the edge of the bed. The soles of his feet were resting steadily on the floor, and his elbows pressed heavily against his knees. His hands, which were holding the pill bottle, were trembling.

  His next-to-last alprazolam had just gone down his throat. His body wanted to lie down again, but Max stayed sitting on the edge of the bed. Didn’t want to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the face of the GRU man. Lazarev. Was he the Lazarev who was chairman of St. Petersburg GSM’s board of directors? Why did he seem so familiar?

  In his head, the church bells were still ringing. It was their ringing that had made him take his medicine. The bells rang twenty-five times.

  Twenty-five times for Pashie.

  He set the bottle on the night table and looked at his forearms. Followed the scars with his fingers. A bullet had ricocheted past him, burned a groove into the skin before it had gone into the throat of another Swedish soldier. Max shouldn’t have been there, in Bosnia; it hadn’t been a mission for attack divers. But Jonas Karlsson from Luleå, with his cheerful nature and his freckled cheeks—he had been the right man in the right place. Perhaps that was why the bullet had only grazed Max’s arm? There were Bosnians who believed bullets bore the names of their victims.

  A bouncing bullet, headed in the wrong direction, in a war that hadn’t been theirs.

  On his other arm was the burn mark from the emergency flare he’d fired when he’d gotten drunk with some teenagers on a neighboring island one Midsummer Eve. They’d been older, had filled him with liquor and let him fall asleep at the water’s edge. Max shouldn’t have been there, either.

  He picked up the bottle again. The pill at the bottom slid around like a puck on ice. There had always been ice on the sea when they varnished the wooden boats and oars. When they finished, Papa said they were so smooth that flies could skate on the varnish.

  Max closed his eyes. Suddenly saw the snoring seal again.

  He had made a second attempt. Gone across the ice one spring morning before the sun had come up. Had wanted to show everyone what he was made of. The prospect of walking across ice covered with meltwater hadn’t deterred him, even though ice floes had floated just a few meters away from him, in water in which he knew no human being would be able to survive for more than a few minutes.

  He had walked onto solid ground just as the sun was coming up. The snow was wet and heavy at the edge of the beach. He walked as quietly as he could, determined the entire time he was climbing to the top of the cliffs.

  Max knew the baby seal would still be there, but when he caught sight of it his doubts returned. This time he had decided he would conquer these doubts. He would kill with a precise blow and then drag the seal across the ice to Arholma in the sunrise.

  One blow with the club was all that was needed. Right between the eyes. So that the blink reflex was gone.

  He crept closer, almost soundlessly, and stopped directly in front of the sleeping baby seal. He could see the breaths it took in the movements of its perfect white fur, hear the soft snoring from its inhalations. He lifted the club high with his strong right arm, positioned himself so he would be able to exert as much force as possible.

  The seal opened its eyes. It looked at him curiously, playfully.

  A stream of rage filled Max, shot up into his head.

  He saw only red.

  A week later, his father came into his room and told Max to get dressed and meet him down by the boat. They rowed over to the neighboring island, and eventually Max understood where they were going. After they had pulled the boat onto the beach, Papa, taking big steps, walked up toward the cliffs. Max lingered by the boat, but his father turned around and waved him forward. He had no choice but to obey.

  Papa stopped in front of a shrunken pile of snow, one of only a few that had not yet melted away, hidden as it was under low branches on the northern side of a pine tree. There had been spring weather ever since Max had last set foot on the island. The red meltwater around the tree trunk had revealed the secret.

  Papa poked around in the pile of snow with a stick, and the dead seal was revealed bit by bit. Max’s memories of what had happened after the seal opened its eyes were played back. The single decisive blow had become a series of uncontrolled blows that had transformed the white animal into a shapeless red mass. All that was recognizable was the fearful look in the dead seal’s eyes.

  “A man always cleans up after his mistakes,” Papa said in a low voice.

  He looked at Max. “Is that understood?”

  Max swallowed a few times. Finally managed to nod.

  He remembered it very clearly even though it had been so long ago. Max looked down at his wrist, could almost see the marks from his father’s grip when he had taken hold of Max and forced him to collect the remains of the seal pup.

  Death had always come quickly in Max’s life; there had never been a chance to say goodbye. Discovering the exact circumstances of a person’s death wouldn’t bring that person back to him; he knew that. But he could honor their memories, give value to the work they had done in their lives.

  He could do this for his father, Jakob.

  He could do it for the journalist who had been murdered on the street in broad daylight.

  He could do it for the intern they had just buried.

  That face in the photograph was still demanding his attention.

  Where have I seen you before?

  The ringing of the church bells in his head diminished, letting voices make themselves heard. Pashie’s voice. “I think I have something for you. Something new, something you didn’t expect.”

  He shook his head. Faces and voices had always haunted him at night, and it was the benzodiazepines’ job to keep them at bay. But now the pills didn’t seem to be helping.

  How many more people have to die?

  The ringing of the telephone interrupted his thoughts.

  “Max, it’s Sarah.”

  Max looked at his watch. Two and a half hours had passed since they had last spoken. He felt so heavy and tired.

  “Have you found something?” he asked.

  “I’ve talked to a friend who works at Credit Suisse in Zurich. He called around to some contacts at KPMG, but no one knew anyone named Marcel Rousseau. There was no way to get any information about the foundation, but I wouldn’t have expected that to be possible, either. But my friend said he had helped a number of Western companies establish themselves in Saint Petersburg himself. The ba
nk has cooperated with most of the auditing firms in the city, and he has made some calls and asked questions. Brice & Stadthaller is not a company that any of the big banks in Zurich recommend; it doesn’t adhere to the same code of conduct as the international firms. Fast-growing and successful, but only for companies from the former Soviet Union. Personally, he suspects they’re good at money laundering. In Switzerland they collaborate with a little private bank whose clients include some of the world’s richest individuals. They maintain the low profile and secrecy this group of clients demands. That kind of thing is popular with Russians.”

  A front that looked like a well-adapted auditing firm in Western dress that was taking care of one of the city’s fastest-growing companies. And was laundering money for Russian gangsters.

  Max remembered what Rousseau had said. “Five years after the fall of the Soviet Union, we’re still living with its constitution. There’s no other constitution we can turn to!”

  A chimera in a lawless land. A disguise for an ancient monster that had awakened? Just like St. Petersburg GSM itself?

  “Thanks, Sarah. We’ll have to talk tomorrow.”

  “There was one other thing. I forgot to mention it before, but according to the property manager, Carl Borgenstierna traveled to Switzerland in January. He must have made that trip just before his surgery. I thought about it because you mentioned Switzerland and I called Zurich. I don’t know whether there’s a connection.”

  “It’s likely that there is. It’s important that you continue to try to get in touch with Borgenstierna.”

  When he had finished talking to Sarah, Max got out the list of numbers from Pashie’s cell phone. He was feeling the full effect of the benzo now. His arm felt like lead, but he forced himself not to think about that.

  One number stuck out from the others. A foreign number. Could it be a Swiss number? And was it connected to all this? To Brice & Stadthaller, Marcel Rousseau, and St. Petersburg GSM? Or to Carl Borgenstierna?

  Max dialed the number. After a few rings, a female voice answered. “Good evening. This is the Hotel Seehof. How may I help you?”

  “What number have I reached?” His voice sounded much too slow, slightly drugged.

  “You’ve reached the Hotel Seehof, in Davos.”

  Davos? So it was Switzerland. Whom had Pashie spoken with at a hotel in Davos?

  “I was called by someone at this number, and I wonder if you could help me with information about who might have tried to reach me.”

  “This is the number for the main switchboard, Mr. . . .”

  “Olsen,” said Max.

  But you know that, Pashie. He closed his eyes, saw her before him. Wearing nothing but a red-brimmed gray porter’s hat and a dazzling smile.

  “Mr. Olsen, we have many rooms. Did someone call you recently?”

  “Yes. Could you give me the names of the guests who have stayed with you during the past two weeks?”

  “No, unfortunately, I cannot, Mr. Olsen. Our customers value our . . .”

  Damned Swiss. An entire country built on the principle that clients should be able to do whatever they want without anyone finding out.

  “This is a matter of life and death. I need those names.”

  “Unfortunately, I cannot help you. I am transferring this call to our security department. Please hold.”

  Max hung up. He let his heavy body fall toward the mattress. The last thing he saw before he fell asleep was Pashie’s smiling face.

  Stockholm, September 1943

  Carl bent over the stove and breathed in the scents. A stew of rabbit fed on rutabagas, flavored with nutmeg and plums.

  This was the first time they were to meet outside the Russian church. They couldn’t meet at a restaurant, but the headwaiter at Den Gyldene Freden had helped both with the recipe and with the shopping.

  As he stirred the pot, Carl thought of what Tatyana had said. “The famine was severe. My people starved to death.” He hoped the dinner wouldn’t seem too extravagant.

  His family was traveling, and he had the house in Gamla Stan to himself. He had said he couldn’t come along on the family’s trip, claiming that his work for the Stockholm District Court demanded that he put in some time on the weekend.

  Ever since Tatyana had come back from her trip to Moscow during the summer, they had been planning intensively. She had been brave, had adapted to the role her husband and her superior wanted her to play so they wouldn’t suspect anything. This had led to her gaining a little more freedom of movement, freedom she had exploited not only in order to meet Carl more frequently. She had also become involved in Father Stefan’s charity work to benefit refugees who had fled across the Baltic to escape the Red Terror. She was fully aware of how the Soviet leadership and its accomplices at the Swedish embassy would react if they discovered what she was doing. She risked her life every day, and every day she became stronger and happier.

  When the doorbell rang, Carl ran down the stairs to the shop’s premises at street level. This was what they had agreed on; if someone saw her she would say she had wanted to visit one of the city’s finest shops specializing in nautical and maritime maps.

  Tatyana pulled down the hood of her coat and smiled. She looked up at the ceiling, and he saw that she was studying the pattern of purple lilies painted on the ceiling.

  “That is my family’s coat of arms,” he said. “We are the Purple Lilies.”

  “It’s very beautiful.”

  He led her to the upstairs rooms, hung her coat in the hall, showed her the salons. He watched her take in the art hanging on the walls and touch the gilded frames.

  “Saint Petersburg,” she said, standing in front of a famous oil painting of the Winter Palace. Carl went into the kitchen, poured two glasses of South African wine, and returned to the salon. Tatyana had sat down, not on one of the elegant and comfortable chairs but on a wooden stool, up against a wall, that the cleaner used to reach everything with the feather duster.

  Carl handed her a glass.

  “I have something,” she said. “My . . . husband has been occupied with it for a long time. Something that has attracted considerable interest from both Madame and the men in Moscow. He has gotten access to secret Swedish research. Defense technology. It has to do with communication in the field, but that’s all I know at the moment. He has captured it on microfilm. It’s so sensitive that Madame has insisted the microfilm not be kept at the embassy.”

  “Where is the film?”

  Cautiously, Tatyana sipped her wine. “You can come and get it.”

  She set her wine glass on the floor and stretched her right leg toward Carl.

  Carl’s gaze followed her leg from the hem of her dress all the way down to her shoe.

  The heel.

  “You have the evening at your disposal before I must put the film back.”

  SUNDAY, MARCH 3

  41

  Sarah was in the living room, sitting at her little desk with a view of Kalvfjärden and, on the far side of the bay, Tyresta National Park. When they had agreed to turn over every stone, Max had asked her to concentrate on the period around March 1, 1944. That was when Jakob Anger had arrived on Arholma as a foster child. Fifty-two years ago. That was really like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  Sarah followed a bird’s flight across the bay. She thought of the things she had seen in Max’s little room at Vektor the previous day, of all the papers lying on his desk. Of the article Max had cut out: “Foster Children Get New Families.”

  Anything could have happened to Jakob Anger’s biological parents. Sarah had heard Max talk about the various rumors that had circulated on the island. If Jakob’s parents had really been a couple of impoverished wretches, she would never be able to find out anything about them. She decided she would assume that Jakob’s arrival had been connected with an event, perhaps an accident. Something that could somehow be documented.

  Max’s father had been a week old when he had come to his foster home.
He should, then, have been born on or around February 23. But where had he spent the first week of his life? And how far back in time should she look? A few days before the birth? A week?

  Once again, she let her thoughts drift to the papers in Max’s office.

  Borgenstierna a prominent lawyer, Svea Court of Appeal judge, later chairman of the court of appeal. Wallentin, head of the newly opened Södersjukhuset in 1944. Died in 1986.

  Could Jakob Anger have been born at Södersjukhuset?

  She connected to the internet, waiting patiently while the modem dialed and finally made contact with cyberspace. Via the Passagen web portal’s search box, she managed to access Södersjukhuset’s information page. She skimmed the text and soon found what she was looking for. The hospital had been inaugurated on April 3, 1944.

  That is, after Jakob had arrived on Arholma.

  Sarah closed her laptop. She put her feet up on her desk and let her head fall backward. She took off her glasses, pressed lightly on her eyelids with her thumb and index finger. Think, Sarah. Once upon a time you were the smartest girl in the world.

  She tried to place herself in wartime Stockholm. If something unusual had happened, who would have known about it first?

  She sat up again when a new thought occurred to her. She picked up the telephone, called directory assistance, and asked for the number for Radio Sweden.

  “Switchboard,” said a man who sounded as if he were approaching retirement age.

  “I’m looking for information from the archive,” said Sarah after she had introduced herself. “About Stockholm in 1944, between February twentieth and March first.”

  “If you’re looking for news reports, there are two alternatives,” said the man. “You can order tapes of the broadcasts, or you can request transcripts on paper.”

  “Which is faster?” asked Sarah.

  “You have to fill out a form you can pick up at Radio Sweden’s reception desk on Oxenstiernsgatan, weekdays from eight to four. Or I can send you one. That would be by economy mail, so it would take a few days. Processing time is four weeks.”