Dr. Axelsson nodded. He looked at Max’s health form again.
“Your father was born the day your paternal grandmother died? Did she die as a result of the birth?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Axelsson raised his eyes from the health form a last time.
“And your paternal grandfather?”
“As it says there,” said Max, “he is unknown.”
16
Sarah Hansen threw the old coffee filter in the wastebasket a little too violently, and coffee grounds sprayed over the sides of the garbage bag. She didn’t know what it was that made her angriest: Anastasia Friedenberga’s unwilling attitude, which had made this morning’s meeting break down, or her own feeling of being an outsider, brought on by her realization that Charlie Knutsson’s mysterious relationship to this strange woman was directly connected to the meeting’s change in direction.
She didn’t like the feeling of being left out, which was probably a result of everything that had happened while she was growing up, but she wasn’t planning on paying some damned therapist a lot of money to reach that brilliant conclusion. She felt that she was close to Charlie. During her catastrophic marriage to Lisette, it had been Charlie she had confided in. About the doubts she, as a lesbian, had felt about having children, doubts that had grown stronger when she had become a divorced lesbian single mother who is also an immigrant. She would have gone under without Charlie, who had supported her when she had felt that the entire way of thinking in this country was against her.
She didn’t really care about Anastasia and any agendas she might have that would conflict with Vektor’s. What hurt was that Charlie was keeping secrets from her. What did that ice queen actually mean to him? she wondered. And why had she never heard of her?
She put a new filter in the coffee maker, folding the edges to avoid spillover because she had managed to buy the wrong size, as usual. After filling the tank, she left the water running in the sink. When the water had gotten cold enough, she filled a glass and went back to her room while the coffee maker burbled.
Anastasia was amazingly attractive. Damn it, she looked better than Sarah, even though she was twice as old. Sarah had heard other women say they found it somewhat comforting when they saw elderly women who were pretty and sexy, but the sight of Anastasia hadn’t had that effect on Sarah. Anastasia’s aging beauty had just made Sarah angry. Was Charlie attracted to that viper? Had they been in a relationship? Had that been the reason for the game that had gone on in there?
She sat down at her computer and typed the woman’s name into Netscape’s search box. The meeting had made it clear that points of view diverged on the matter of the Kursk. What had not been clear was what role Anastasia was actually playing. Had someone told the prime minister that they would have to let the Baltic states express their views because Russia was one of their closest neighbors?
The Latvian embassy employed Anastasia Friedenberga. Its website suggested that Anastasia was a kind of professional board member, with seats in various international cooperative organizations that focused on the Nordic and Baltic regions. On another website, Sarah found a picture taken at least twenty years previously. Wow, she was hot.
Anastasia was quoted in an article about the Russian exercise in the Barents Sea, published earlier in the week. It was written by Sarah’s old friend from her military days, Peter Tillberg. She picked up the receiver and called his work phone at Dagens Nyheter.
“Hi. I met a woman today I need to check on,” she said when Peter answered. “Your article about this business with the Russian exercise in the Barents Sea quotes her. Her name is Anastasia Friedenberga. What do you know about her?”
“Hang on,” said Peter. “She sounds like somebody I’ve encountered in another context as well.”
He hummed.
“Let’s see. She was in the paper a few times last year and earlier this year, in late May.”
“In connection to what?”
“Last year it was the Washington summit; this year it was connected to the creation of the so-called Vilnius Group.”
“Washington? So we’re talking about NATO?”
“Exactly.”
At the summit in the US capital, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland had joined NATO following an expedited application process.
“What was Friedenberga doing there?” asked Sarah.
“She played a very active role as a representative of Latvia. At the summit, NATO established membership guidelines for a large number of new countries—practically all of Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states.”
“And the Vilnius Group is a lobbying group working to ensure that these countries will become full-fledged members of NATO?” asked Sarah.
“Yes, Anastasia is part of the group’s leadership. A very hardworking woman.”
“She doesn’t care much for the Russians, does she?”
Peter laughed.
“No. And Russia doesn’t care much for the Vilnius Group, either. The countries in it—and we’re talking about all ten—have been invited to the next NATO summit, which will be held in Prague, and apparently the application process will start moving forward at that point. President Putin has indicated that he’s very displeased by this.”
A hundred or so dying Russian sailors meant nothing to someone like Anastasia. No doubt she saw them as insignificant next to the thousands of Latvians Russia had imprisoned, tortured, and murdered during its occupation of the country. She was old enough to remember it. She would never back a project intended to help Russians or work toward a continued thawing between them and the West. She wanted her country to become a NATO member as soon as possible, and to move the Iron Curtain as far to the east as possible. That was all.
It suited her well that the Cold War was back.
17
Kandinsky stood bent over the plastic-covered table in the storage room. He was wearing latex gloves and had stripped to the waist. He looked at the sheet of paper in front of him, on which he had drawn the same symbol again and again, while Torbjörn Lindström, who was tied to a chair behind him, looked on helplessly.
It was a symbol he had tattooed on many bodies in prison, a symbol everyone recognized. Kandinsky doubted that the state secretary knew what it really represented.
He could hear Torbjörn Lindström breathing more and more hectically behind him, could almost feel the man’s gaze fixing on what was tattooed on Kandinsky’s back. The image of an eight-pointed cross represented his country’s history as it was described in the Dainas, the old folk poems even Lenin had praised. Kandinsky could feel the symbols filling Lindström with fear and queasiness, as though deep down he understood their meaning. And what they meant for him.
Kandinsky met the state secretary’s gaze. His cheeks were wet with tears. His red eyes moved from Kandinsky’s face to the tattoo on his chest and abdomen.
Kandinsky had wrapped duct tape around his mouth tightly, and he couldn’t get out a word. People in his situation always asked the same questions. Why? Who are you?
I am Lietuvens. He who transforms life into eternal sleep. Who has been called here to render justice. I have accepted my fate. It is time for you to accept yours. You have been chosen for a reason.
Kandinsky lifted the knife in his right hand. Lindström wept so hard that his whole body shook.
Kandinsky walked slowly around the chair and took up a position behind the state secretary. With his free hand, he pressed Lindström’s head forward. Then he began carving the thunder cross into his neck. He could feel Lindström’s whole body tensing up. Blood trickled along the lines, spread like a fine red rain through the short, thin hairs on Lindström’s neck and along his back.
When Kandinsky had finished, he let go of Lindström’s head and took a look at his art. A knife worked as well as a needle and ink when he wanted to mark someone.
Kandinsky walked around in front of his victim again, dropped the knife on the floor. This seemed to have a calming ef
fect on Torbjörn Lindström, who looked up at him and seemed to be asking Was that all? Did you just want to carve something into my neck?
Kandinsky picked up the pencil from the table and, in his mother tongue, said, “As we have suffered, you will suffer.”
The language’s foreign melody again triggered terror in the state secretary’s tightly bound body.
Kandinsky held the sharp-tipped pencil in front of Lindström’s face.
“What do you see in the tip?” he asked in English.
Lindström shook his head wildly.
“You must take a closer look.”
Kandinsky brought the pencil closer, so it almost touched Lindström’s nose.
“Do you see the sunshine?”
He grabbed Lindström’s hair and held the pencil in front of the state secretary’s eye. Lindström stared at the tip.
“Do you see your family? Your children?”
Lindström made a last effort to free his hands, but the tape holding them to the chair legs didn’t budge.
“Look closer.”
Kandinsky moved the pencil to Lindström’s left eye and let the sharp tip rest on the cornea. Lindström squeezed his eyes shut.
“Look, I said.”
Kandinsky forced up Torbjörn Lindström’s eyelid with his thumb and index finger. Then, slowly, so the cornea was punctured, he pushed the pencil through the stiff resistance of the eyeball, which split, and onward, amid surges of blood, into the brain beyond. He held his left hand around Lindström’s neck while the man’s body jerked and he moaned behind the tape.
In the silence that followed, warmth spread through Kandinsky, just as it always did.
He let go of the man’s neck and stuck his hand inside the back of Lindström’s shirt, covering his palm with the blood running from the symbol he’d carved.
With his bloody hand, he stepped over to the wall and painted a large numeral in red: 8.
18
Pashie closed the door of her office at Vektor behind her. She had taken leave of Max down on Valhallavägen. They hadn’t said a word to each other after the appointment at Sophiahemmet Hospital. That would have to wait until tonight. They both had other things to think about right now.
She took off her jacket and stood in front of the mirror next to the coat tree, looked her reflection in the eye.
To hell with you, Sophiahemmet Hospital. To hell with you, Dr. Axelsson, and your damned evaluation. I don’t need you. I’ve already gotten my answer.
She kicked off her high heels, turned toward her desk, and sat down. It was time to do a little good.
Pashie had seen her cousin Nadia and her husband at the home of some relatives in Molodizhne the last time she’d been back. That had been two years ago. Nadia had gotten married the previous year and already had a daughter they had named Almaz, after the Russian word for “diamond.” The little girl had reminded Pashie of herself when she was little; she had, like Pashie, the colors and features that reflected both a Tatar and a Russian parent, a wonderful mix of Europe and Asia. The father had died less than a year after Pashie had met them. Now that the Kursk lay on the bottom of the sea, there was a great risk that his brother—Almaz’s uncle—and a number of others would end up dead, too. Worlds would be crushed, thought Pashie, and there wasn’t even a war going on.
Almaz and thousands of other little Russian girls were waiting for fathers who would never come home. Just as Pashie had done, waiting for her father…because the Russian state and its political goals didn’t show any consideration for people like them.
When will these tragedies end? When will common sense take over?
She picked up the receiver to make the call Sarah had asked her to make. She’d gotten to know Denis Zynoviev at the Russian embassy when she was teaching at the Russian school before she came to work for Vektor. His son was a student there. Denis had been with the Russian embassy staff in Stockholm for two years. He was from Saint Petersburg and good-looking, modern, and Western oriented, like many others under the new president. Pashie had spoken to him a few times; he had always been friendly and openhearted. He agreed with her that Europe was nothing without Russia and that Russia was nothing without good relations with its neighbors, not least Sweden.
While she was waiting for her call to connect, she tried to put herself in his position and forget her own.
“It’s Pashie Kovalenko,” she said after he’d answered. “Do you have a minute?”
“I’ve just managed to get rid of Anders of the Norrmalm police.” Denis had switched to Swedish to describe his guest. “I have at least one call from Moscow waiting. But I have time for you, of course. What can I do for you?”
His flattery had always been there; he kept it subtle, as he was married and knew she was living with someone, but he couldn’t keep from flirting a little. Pashie knew who Anders was; he was from the police embassy unit and carried out routine checks to make sure everything was all right as far as the security around the embassy was concerned. Denis had described the entire system as parodic. The Russian embassy knew the Swedish police just wanted to keep an eye on it and that they weren’t actually very concerned about its security. Pashie wondered whether today’s visit had been an extra one, triggered by what had happened.
“We’re working on a proposal to organize Swedish help for the crew of the Kursk,” she said. “We’re in contact with Berga Naval Base. They want to fly in the Swedish rescue submersible and a crew and put it at the disposal of the Russian Navy.”
On the other end, Denis was silent. Pashie could hear telephones ringing and people shouting to each other.
“Suddenly everyone wants to help,” Denis finally said.
“They’re my countrymen, too.”
“I know that. I’ll bring it up at our lunchtime meeting here. Can I call you back in a while?”
“Of course. I just wanted you to know about these plans and to have heard it directly from us so you don’t hear it through the grapevine.”
“There’s a lot coming through the grapevine now, so I really appreciate your call. It’s good that we can be in direct contact. Maybe over dinner?” He paused for a moment. “Just kidding, Pashie. I’ll call you later.”
19
As Max drove, he couldn’t stop thinking about the meeting at Sophiahemmet Hospital. The clumsy handling of their evaluation. The humiliation Pashie had had to endure. Axelsson’s look when he’d asked Max about his closest relatives.
Did your paternal grandmother die as a result of the birth? The date had given that away. Axelsson had been paying attention at that point.
What should I have said? thought Max. That the child in his grandmother’s body had miraculously survived and was born just seconds after she’d drawn her last breath? That she’d been a Soviet spy against her will who’d died when she’d tried to defect to the West? That her own husband had murdered her?
That was the truth, but no one would believe it.
Max wanted to identify Carl Borgenstierna as his paternal grandfather—the man his grandmother had fled to when she’d tried to leave Russia, her husband, and her life as a spy. The man who’d left Max his entire estate when he’d died four years before. But he wasn’t sure that was the truth. He’d only met the man once, shortly before he died, and he hadn’t resembled Max in any way.
We’ve promised each other something that isn’t possible, Pashie.
They had said that they would close the door to the past. That they would never return to what had killed Max’s family and almost killed both of them. But if Pashie was to get help getting pregnant, they had to go back to what had afflicted them. To him. The man who had murdered his grandmother, the man who could just as easily be Max’s grandfather as could Carl Borgenstierna.
Paternal grandfather: unknown.
When Max pulled off Nynäsvägen and onto Berga Naval Base, he tried to focus on the coming meeting. He thought of the text message Sarah had sent about the Defence Ministry’s state secreta
ry being given a key role in the matter of a possible Swedish rescue operation. Max knew no one in Sweden, the NATO countries, or Russia would want to call it a Swedish defense operation. Nevertheless, he felt as if the world had been turned upside down.
The flashing blue lights of two police cars were the first thing Max saw when he turned to enter Berga. They were parked diagonally in front of the sentry station. Max parked in the visitors’ parking lot and walked toward the entrance, clenching his left hand, which had started trembling. A man was sitting in the back seat of one of the police cars with his head bent. He looked like a chauffeur. Max turned back to the guest parking lot and saw the car the man had probably been driving. A blue Volvo sedan. Ministry of Defence?
“This area is sealed off,” said a uniformed police officer walking toward him. “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
The police officer was a big man. He could hardly have come here from the nearby police station in Nynäshamn.
“I’m here for a meeting with the ranking officers at Berga and representatives of the Ministry of Defence,” said Max.
“Unfortunately, you’re going to have to go back home.”
On the other side of the gate, the door of a guard hut opened. A young woman in a brown leather jacket stepped out. Max recognized her from the news segment on TV. Sofia Karlsson. The National Bureau of Investigation. What was she doing here? Wasn’t she busy with the ritual murder?
“Is she running this investigation?” asked Max.
“Time for you to—”
“Sofia?” shouted Max. “Sofia Karlsson?”
The woman turned around and looked at Max. She looked just as calm as she had on television.
“Isn’t it clear to you that you need to leave now?” The policeman took a few steps forward, but Max ignored him.
Sofia walked toward the gate.
“I’ll take care of this,” said the policeman. “This guy’ll be out of here in a minute.”
“Wait,” said Sofia. “Max Anger, right?”
Ten Swedes Must Die Page 8