Ask No Mercy

by Martin Österdahl

  Suddenly, she started. What was that? What had she seen?

  She went back to a poster she had hurried past. She lost her breath for a moment.

  “Russian bombs fall on Stockholm.”

  The date was February 23, 1944.

  47

  “Coco Pops!” screamed Vilma. “Coco Pops!”

  Caspar joined in. “We want Coco Pops! We want Coco Pops!”

  Gabbi Julin looked at the two of them. They had transformed a shopping cart full of food into a playground, a children’s pirate ship loaded down with pasta, diapers, wet wipes, bread—everything needed to survive a week’s worth of the storms of family life.

  It was such a contrast to Sarah Hansen’s life, a life in perfect order in which a woman could choose when she would work and when she would enjoy herself. Gabbi loved her children—she truly did—but what kind of person had they and her husband turned her into? What kind of life was this? Could she have more?

  She knew many people, straight and gay, had secret lives. What difference did it make? Who cared? As long as she could keep it secret, it couldn’t do any harm, could it? On the contrary, perhaps it could even help her manage this better, help her become a better mother to the Coco Pops–demanding monsters screaming at her at this moment.

  Gabbi sighed and laid a package of Coco Pops in the overfilled cart. Vilma and Caspar fell silent immediately. Gabbi tried to avoid all aisles with ice cream, toys, soda, and candy as she slowly rolled toward the checkout counters. She was almost done now, and the cart was so heavy she could barely get it rolling. She pushed the cart in front of her with one hand and pulled the baby carriage with Teodor in it behind her with the other.

  She looked at the shopping list she’d brought. David’s things—how could she have forgotten them?

  She crumpled the slip of paper. Had she managed to convince David when he’d asked about Sarah? She didn’t know; she hadn’t been able to interpret his look. She used to be able to read him like an open book.

  I have to leave him; I can’t do this any longer.

  Gabbi shook her head.

  Listen to the way I sound. A bitter old woman at twenty-nine.

  Gabbi placed ground beef, hamburger buns, and sauce in the cart and was finally ready to move toward the checkout lines, which seemed to be very long. When she had managed to maneuver the cart and baby carriage to the checkout line that seemed to be moving fastest, Caspar jumped out of the cart and ran away.

  Gabbi held her hands up in front of Vilma’s face to get her to stop screaming hysterically.

  “I’ll be back in a second, okay? Stay here.”

  She managed to catch hold of the hood of Caspar’s jacket just before he began his attack on the mix-your-own candy offerings. She turned him around so he was facing her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she said, shaking him. “Never run away from me again, you hear?”

  Caspar’s lower lip started trembling, and Gabbi immediately felt a stabbing sensation in her stomach. She hugged him.

  “I’m sorry, Caspar. I’m sorry. Mama just got so scared when you ran away.”

  Holding his warm little body brought her pulse rate down.

  My God, I’m losing my mind.

  Gabbi stood up with Caspar in her arms and hurried back to the checkout line. Vilma was standing up in the shopping cart. She had thrown out half of what Gabbi had loaded into the cart and had managed to pee her pants.

  All Gabbi needed now was for Teodor to wake up in the baby carriage.

  She closed her eyes, imagined Sarah’s warm fingers bringing her to life.

  “Sweetie, don’t do that, please,” she said, her eyes open again, surprised at how calm she sounded.

  “Are you a member?” the checkout girl asked. There was more animation in her bobbing ponytail than in her voice.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Do you have an ICA customer card?” asked the ponytail.

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “Coco Pops! Coco Pops!”

  Vilma threw herself at the conveyor belt onto which Gabbi had transferred everything from the cart. Gabbi held her back, and Vilma started to cry.

  “Would you like to become a member?”

  “What?” said Gabbi. “No, thank you. I would like to pay.”

  And leave.

  The checkout girl told Gabbi the total amount due.

  “Here.” Gabbi handed over her black American Express card.

  Gabbi felt the hair on the back of her neck standing up and turned around. A man in his sixties was, in fact, looking at her. He was wearing a checked tweed jacket and round-rimmed brown glasses. He smiled at her.

  There was something familiar about him, but Gabbi couldn’t place him, and she turned back to the ponytail.

  “We don’t take American Express,” the clerk said in her monotone.

  “Okay.” Gabbi opened her purse and took out her debit card from Handelsbanken. “Maybe this one is okay?” She turned toward the line to see whether the man was still looking at her. She started when she realized that everyone in the line was looking at her. Staring. The man in the tweed jacket was the only one who looked friendly.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Julin, but your card was declined.”

  “What did you say?”

  “The purchase didn’t go through. Your bank says they won’t approve it. You must not have sufficient funds in your account.”

  For the first time, there was life in the girl’s voice. Now she was obviously enjoying herself.

  “Can you try again?”

  “I’ve already tried three times.”

  At least she wasn’t saying “Ms. Julin” anymore. A woman behind Gabbi sighed loudly and set her shopping basket down with a thud.

  “Coco Pops!”

  Vilma’s scream was earsplitting. Caspar managed to snatch the package from the conveyor belt and threw it at Gabbi’s chest.

  “Do you have cash?” asked the ponytail.

  Gabbi closed her eyes, shook her head, and waited for the ground to swallow her up.

  “Perhaps I could help you out?”

  Gabbi looked up. The smiling man in the tweed jacket was suddenly standing next to her.

  “You seem to have a little problem here, Gabbi. Let me help you.”

  She looked at the man. Gabbi? He smiled again. Did she know him?

  The man handed his bank card to the checkout girl together with a small number of items he was buying for himself. The transaction was over before Gabbi could understand what was happening.

  Was this a dream? Suddenly the children were calm and quiet.

  The strange interaction continued. The man helped Gabbi pack her purchases into cardboard boxes and then took control of the shopping cart and started walking toward the exit. In the parking lot, Gabbi pointed at her Saab. The man loaded everything into the car and closed the trunk.

  “I don’t know how I can thank you for this,” said Gabbi.

  “It will be enough if you say hello to David when you get home,” the man said.

  “Say hello to . . . I’m afraid I can’t place you.”

  “All my friends call me Charlie K,” said the man, shaking Gabbi’s hand. “We met a few years ago when David was named Entrepreneur of the Year. There were many people who wanted to congratulate both of you, so I can understand that you wouldn’t remember me.”

  The man smiled again, and now Gabbi in fact did recognize him. That day two years ago had felt like a scene in a movie. It seemed unreal that she had played a significant role in it. David had reached the goal of his dreams. He had built something with his own hands, earned a fortune, and been chosen to join an exclusive global group of high-performance individuals. They had gotten a babysitter and booked a suite at the Grand Hôtel. They had made love in the Jacuzzi.

  “I’m happy to be able to say that I’ve stayed in touch with many of my old students.”

  “Were you his teacher?” asked Gabbi.

  “Internat
ional marketing at the Stockholm School of Economics. David was a good student, but marketing wasn’t what he was most interested in.”

  “I guess not. But how can we get in touch with you now? We have to pay you for—”

  “Don’t worry about that. David knows where to find me. Just ask him to give me a call.”

  “Of course. I’ll do that,” said Gabbi. “Thanks again.”

  He smiled again. Then he turned and left Gabbi standing next to her car.

  48

  Information accessible to the public has become more difficult to control, thought Nestor Lazarev as he entered the marble- and granite-clad hall of the National Library of Russia. The proliferation of personal computers and the internet had created huge challenges. This was the future—he knew that—but his time would soon be at an end, and it would be up to others to maintain control. But if it was as he believed—if the people from Stockholm were digging into his past and tracking him down—then he would need to have eyes in places like this. It was only a matter of time before they came here. If they hadn’t been here already.

  He sat down in front of one of the monitors in the library’s department of newspapers and magazines. He typed in his real name. No hits. Good.

  He typed in his new official name, and the same hits as before were displayed. That damned article in the St. Petersburg Times. What was that journalist’s name, again? Lazarev looked farther down in the article, found the name and a little picture of the man with the big hair. Domashov, that was it. Run over on Nevsky Prospekt. What a tragedy.

  He typed in the nickname that had followed him from the black earth of the Ukraine of his childhood to Moscow and then to the GRU and his years in the military. The monitor displayed a large number of hits, most of which had to do with ornithology. For safety’s sake, he looked through all of them. A few unusual articles showed up. Two from a long, long time ago. They could be damaging if the wrong people found them. Was it possible to use this terminal to erase information? Lazarev assumed it wasn’t possible. Presumably there was a central database in which all information was stored, and he didn’t have access to that database—yet.

  He tried to imagine how the people who were after him would think. They had asked where his technology came from. That was the kind of question they wouldn’t ask if they hadn’t had certain information to begin with or received some kind of tip. Could this motley group of academics and journalists really be MUST? If so, their inventiveness surprised him for the first time.

  Why would they be looking for him now? After so many years? Because telecom had become the country’s new Holy Grail? Perhaps. Perhaps the Social Democrats had finally shown their true colors. They were just as right-wing as Reagan.

  Or were his thoughts leading him in the wrong direction? Was this connected to something entirely different?

  What was it Rousseau had suggested? That it had to do with Lazarev himself. Could any of the people looking for him have a personal connection?

  Lazarev stared at the screen while his mind raced. Looked again at the nickname he had typed into the search box.

  He had woken before the dawn on that decisive day in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. The year was 1982. A thick gray blanket of clouds lay over the city. A city and a country that had always been a cornerstone of the empire and always would be.

  The day had finally come, the important step back to a dignified life after decades of being forced to behave obsequiously toward people who hadn’t deserved to wield power over the empire. A personal hell.

  This day would restore order to things, order that had been absent since that abominable night and the early morning of March 5, 1953.

  When everything had gone to hell.

  That was when the incoming administration and the new leader had thrown him out into the cold, along with everything the great leader had done for their country. When he had had only two options: disappear or die. He could disappear to avoid being shot in the forehead with a rag in his mouth like a howling dog and having his ashes scattered in a forest outside Moscow. As Beria’s ashes had been.

  No dark clouds over Donetsk could dampen Lazarev’s good mood on that morning in 1982. He was almost too excited, had to calm himself down to avoid getting ahead of events. The matter had not yet been settled, but he was able to taste victory in his mouth, sweet and warm.

  The contract signing was scheduled for nine o’clock, and he doubted the vodka heavyweight would be up in time. The previous evening he had had dinner with him. A last meal.

  The first steps had been the hardest. He had walked the streets of Moscow, still a young man at that time, and looked for something he could grab onto, something that could take him from the bottom back to the top. He had lived a hidden life for many years, had kept to himself and endured Khrushchev’s era as best he could. But his thoughts gave him no peace, and he knew he would continue to find no peace until his great project had been completed. All he had was his strength and his secret knowledge.

  Finally, he discovered a little workshop that was developing telecommunications components for the military. He knew better than simply to walk onto the shop floor. The KGB doubtless had spies everywhere in the little company, and given the way things worked, it could be assumed that his name was already on their arrest lists.

  So he had taken a new name. As Nestor Lazarev, he had shown up in Gorky Park one Saturday afternoon in 1964. The factory’s chief engineer, Pavel Dubchak, was a major chess player and had arranged simultaneous chess for the factory’s employees and their families at the park.

  The secret Lazarev had been guarding had given him a chance to come in from the cold. The army had been struggling with a major problem, a problem for which Soviet military leaders had found no satisfactory solution but which Swedish engineers had solved. The problem had to do with range. At FOA, the research institute of the Swedish military, engineers had succeeded in developing radio technology that did not require the antennae to be within sight of each other. This meant that radio masts could be up to 150 kilometers apart, not just twenty to forty, the range to which Soviet systems were still limited. The Swedish technology had made revolutionary changes in battlefield conduct possible.

  Every time he stood opposite Lazarev at the chessboard, Chief Engineer Pavel Dubchak grew more interested in Lazarev’s descriptions of this new technology. After the games had ended, he had mentioned a person who could offer Lazarev something in exchange for his knowledge without exposing him to the authorities. This man was Pavel’s elder brother, Konstantin Dubchak, a black marketeer who had established himself as the top go-between for the political elite, who transferred national resources to the new leader, Brezhnev, and members of his inner circle in exchange for extremely large sums of money.

  Konstantin’s career had taken off after his childhood friend Nikolai Psurtsev had become one of Brezhnev’s lackeys.

  Unbelievably, Lazarev’s journey from Gorky Park to that dawn in Donetsk had taken eighteen years to complete.

  He had spent most of that time working for Konstantin Dubchak in one way or another. This had threatened to drive him insane.

  At one point he had risked everything and contacted an old acquaintance, Tichakov, who was still highly placed within the GRU. Tichakov had survived the purges and the process of de-Stalinization. Lazarev himself had been much too well known under his own name in the innermost circles. He had had no choice but to go underground. But Tichakov had slipped through and been able to remain in military intelligence, and he had been wise enough to remain loyal to Lazarev. In the spring of 1968, Tichakov had arranged for Lazarev to travel to Prague incognito to play a role in crushing the rebellion. It had been Tichakov who, as he himself had risen through the ranks, had given Lazarev more and more control over the GRU’s second independent Spetsnaz brigade.

  Lazarev’s various tours—first with handpicked men in Scandinavia, the Baltic states, and the Caucasus and then with the entire brigade in Afghanistan—had kept him afloa
t psychologically. As his personal legend had grown, the truth about who he really was had begun to leak out among the men.

  And then the men’s respect for and fear of him had grown even greater.

  By working two jobs, that of an officer and that of a black-market trader, he had gradually amassed a small fortune. He had saved everything for this occasion, for this morning in 1982.

  Rumor had it that the old man in the Kremlin was losing his battle against illness. The country’s economic stagnation was well known all over the world, and the decision to fight the mujahedin in Afghanistan seemed like the last desperate whim of a dying emperor. The friends and family members who were closest to Brezhnev were in a hurry to transact as much business as possible before a new faction within the Communist Party took over and relegated them all to the past.

  It was because of this high-pressure situation that Lazarev had gotten an opportunity to lay his hands on a much-desired national resource of his own. At nine o’clock he had been ready, dressed to receive his distinguished guest from Moscow. A single waiter from the hotel stood in a corner of the room, as still as a statue. The conference table had been laid with silver bowls filled with salo—cold white pork fat, a Ukrainian delicacy Psurtsev loved—marinated herring and caviar; and bottles of vodka and Sovetskoye Shampanskoye.

  At the other end of the table, the documents had been laid out on a brown leather pad, ready to be signed. Lazarev’s body grew heavier with every minute that passed. Sweat broke out on his forehead. What if the dignitary had changed his plans?

  Lazarev had spent fourteen days at the hotel with Dubchak. Dubchak had executed sales of coal mines and steel works and sent money to all the tax paradises of the world, to accounts belonging to people who were blood relations of, or close friends of, Brezhnev or Psurtsev or one of the other highly placed plunderers. Lazarev’s project was small in comparison: a radio license in northwestern Russia. A telecommunications monopoly for the empire’s second-largest city. Saint Petersburg.

  It was from there that he would rebuild the empire. Moscow was full of plunderers and people of little faith. He had had enough of that now. The stagnation he had seen around him, the decadence of Dubchak and the others, had been making him sick. During the previous fourteen days, he had been unable to find a bottle that didn’t contain alcohol. He hadn’t had a single meal made from fresh ingredients. Things had gotten that bad in the part of the empire that had once been known as the breadbasket of Europe.