She kissed his neck, and Max slipped his hands inside her black-and-red robe.
They both jumped when they heard Max’s ringtone. If it hadn’t been for the vibrations, they could have ignored it. But the slight shaking of the cell phone against the tiled edge of the bathtub created a screeching noise.
“Who’d be calling you at this hour?” asked Pashie.
“Leave it. I’ll call back.”
Pashie reached for the phone and looked at the blinking screen.
“Who is Sofia Karlsson?”
“She’s the police officer. That I told you about.”
“A female police officer?”
“Decline the call.”
“God damn it.”
Pashie straightened her robe. She exhaled, heavily, and shook her head. Handed him the phone and turned toward the door.
“Tomorrow is the last chance this month. To hell with you if something gets in the way then.”
42
The untreated pine everywhere in the cabin reminded Kandinsky of the place he’d tried to expunge from his memories. In his mind’s eye, he saw the black-and-burgundy cloth of the robes, the small clouds of dust that had risen when they’d dropped to the floor. The naked, pale, flabby bodies of the holy men, exposed. Their large, sweaty hands. The steam that had risen from their shoulders. The sound of the water hissing on the rocks. The Latin words.
De cetero me non peccaturum. Amen.
The screams from the sauna in the cellar from his childhood echoed in his head. The screams were his own, his voice high and brittle, his throat swollen with sorrow and his eyes filled with tears. He covered his ears with his hands and took a few deep breaths. The hate burned, unabated, in his body.
Only by exacting my revenge can I get the voices to fall silent.
He looked at the objects he’d spread out on the large dining table in the hunting cabin. Each object had been chosen to play a special role in a plan developed over the last four years, the plan that would bring justice. He took out the list he kept in a plastic sleeve and looked at the names again. Three names had been crossed out with a black felt-tip pen. With each name he came closer to achieving his ultimate goal. With each name, the stakes and the risks increased. He read the next name on the list to himself.
Wass.
He took a long look at the heavy metal suitcase standing in the corner.
You have still not discovered what is going to send shockwaves not only through Sweden but through the entire world.
He was sure the police had traced him to the bar in Gamla Stan and sent out a nationwide description of him. It was time to change his appearance. He removed a durable, airtight plastic container from his backpack, took the lid off, and carefully lifted out the damp wrapped object. He unfolded the towel. The slightly acid chemical smell burned in his nose, and he couldn’t keep from smiling.
In Russian, he said to himself words he’d learned as a child. “Reach out your hand, comrade. A pioneer will always come to your rescue.” With a clean, dry cloth, he wiped off the formalin solution and applied a small amount of a greasy salve. When he’d finished, he put everything back in the container and closed the lid.
He took out the photographs he had taken from the house in Skeppsmyra. The first picture was an old one from the homeland that showed the woman as a young girl sitting in a hammock with a friend. The second picture was of her son, Taniel, and her husband, Anton. The third showed a lone young boy and had been taken somewhere in Roslagen.
The thought of everything that had been denied him brought his rage to a boil again.
The second picture was false.
The third eluded his understanding.
All three had to be destroyed.
With the jerrican in his hand, he went into the bathroom. There he took out the scissors and razor and cut off his hair and shaved off his eyebrows. Smeared himself with the bronzer. He undressed and laid his clothes in the bathtub along with the photographs. Poured gasoline on the clothes and dropped a match on them.
In the bathroom mirror, he saw his own transformation. He’d taken one step further away from the prison.
From trash to savior.
He laid his right hand on the eight-sided symbol inscribed into his right breast in ink. The light and the heat, you who always protect us, the abandoned. Around his navel curled the black snake that leads us from cradle to grave, binds all that is living to all that is dead. He moved his hand over his cheek and his chin and on down to his neck, which was decorated with a tattooed wreath of downward-pointing arrows, symbols of his own resurrection.
He squeezed his throat but let go when the dizziness became too strong. He laid a hand on the swastika on his chest.
I have sworn to take revenge.
The flames rose from the bathtub, and he felt the heat on his skin. He hid his face in his hands and closed his eyes.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
43
Sofia Karlsson walked slowly from her car to the little cottage on an allotment in the Zinken community garden. She’d listened to the message from Max and had tried to call him back but had gotten no answer. She had put a few colleagues to work checking the information about the Odal defense organization that Max had passed on to her. Then she had hurried here. She had promised to come this evening, and she was now arriving much later than she’d intended to.
She hated to disappoint him.
The door to the garden cottage was locked. She looked in through the white embroidered curtain. Sure enough, he was there, as he’d said he’d be. He always left the little lamp on the kitchen table switched on when he was expecting her.
She pulled open the creaking door of the toolshed next to the house to retrieve the key. Switched on the light. Froze for a moment at the sight of all the things her father couldn’t get rid of. The kubb game, the boccie set, the jump ropes. The tricycle, the dollhouse, the Hula-Hoops, the soccer ball. The small rubber boots. New things had been added since she’d last looked in here. A little plastic fire station that said “Fisher-Price.” A wooden BRIO train set. Things some of his neighbors in the allotment gardens had given away because their children or grandchildren were done playing with them, because they could give joy to the grandchildren her father was still hoping for.
Papa, we have to move on.
She lifted the key ring off the nail it hung on. Switched off the light and went back to the cottage. Opened the door and went in.
Papa’s snoring was like a wave rolling back and forth. She walked over to him where he lay fully dressed in his blue overalls and thick red-plaid lumberjack shirt. His mouth was half-open; his head lay on a little square red pillow. His sharp, pointed chin hung down toward his chest and the crossword in Dagens Nyheter. His pencil had fallen to the floor; it was a carpenter pencil that was much too large and blunt for the small squares in the crossword, for his chubby fingers, for his tired thoughts. The little CD player was playing music at such a low volume that it was barely audible. Papa always pressed Repeat so the music would continue through the night. Tonight it was Gene Kelly’s Song and Dance Man.
She pulled up a blanket and brushed away a few strands of hair that had fallen over his eyes. Listened to the calm rhythm of his breathing.
You’re waiting for me, Papa. Maybe you always will.
She kissed him on the forehead and left the hut.
When she stepped out into the dark night, the sound came back. Regular and tireless, not like the beat of the music or the quiet rhythm of her father’s breathing.
It was the chess clock ticking in her head. The one the murderer had started. The next move would have to be hers.
Örebro Field Hospital, December 1945
When they arrived at the hospital, Normunds’s heart rate was down to thirty-seven beats per minute. Nurses took him to a separate room where he was given medicine. Just like all the others, he refused to abandon the hunger strike. Ozols had managed to get the message out to his brothers at all of the in
ternment camps in Sweden, and the hunger strike had been going on for more than a week. Not a single person had broken the promise they’d all made to each other. Everyone from Ozols’s camp was now at the hospital getting care.
The doctors promised them that no one would be extradited. Head Nurse Wass had told them that a new commission from Stockholm would be coming to reinterview them. But why did they have to talk to another delegation from Stockholm?
The Latvian priest who had visited them before they’d been transferred to the hospital had told Ozols the truth. The Swedish government had received a request from Moscow to extradite the prisoners to the Soviet Union on June 2, 1945, during Ozols’s first weeks in the camp more than half a year ago. They had replied to Moscow more or less immediately that they would comply with this request. But the government also held a closed press conference about the request, asking the assembled press corps to keep quiet about it. In November, local newspapers leaked the information. Discussions with any new commission from Sweden would be meaningless; the government had already made its decision, and that would tie the commission’s hands. If the prisoners could not prove that they had not come to Sweden via the Baltic Sea, there was no possibility of giving them asylum or releasing them. They were Soviet citizens now.
Their fate was sealed.
Ozols had informed his brothers that everything the hospital personnel did and said under Wass’s leadership was intended to give them false hope in order to weaken their alliance. At night, they were told lies that some comrade or other had broken the hunger strike and was at that very moment eating a home-cooked meal.
During the previous few days, it had been impossible to think of anything but food. All other feelings, such as love, longing, and anger, had faded as the flesh had melted from their bodies. When the dizziness had come, Ozols had sucked on a granule of salt to calm his body. In only a few days, his stomach would no longer be producing gastric juice. Dying of starvation was not a hard death. One just had to hold out.
They had practiced staying awake at night, which required a huge mental effort. If they fell asleep in the field hospital, there was a great risk that they would be force-fed. If they started eating again, they would die, because in that case they would be declared healthy and extradited as soon as they had regained their strength. If he didn’t die here in Sweden after all, thought Ozols, what he was going through now would be good preparation for what awaited him in Siberia.
Two men placed him on a bed with wheels and rolled him from the hospital foyer into the ward. An orderly approached him. She was pretty, young, had an expensive coat draped across her shoulders. She hung the coat up and sat down on a stool at the foot of the bed and began unlacing his boots.
“No,” said Ozols.
She ignored him and continued. When she began washing his feet, the tears came.
“No,” he said again, propping himself up on his elbows so he would be able to see her better.
The orderly looked him in the eye.
“Two Latvian brothers from another camp killed themselves after they arrived here,” she said. “That was two days ago. We hadn’t removed all sharp objects from cupboards and drawers. One man drove a knife into his heart. The other cut his stomach open. It’s so terrible.”
Ozols closed his eyes. The dizziness took hold of him. At least three of his brothers had taken their own lives.
“Who are you?” asked Ozols. “How can it be that you speak Latvian?”
“I am a refugee like you. I was born on the island of Snikera Sala, off the coast near Riga. I fled with my parents almost two years ago. You can call me Anna, but that is a name I took in Sweden. No one from the Baltics is permitted to work here if Head Nurse Wass knows about it.”
“Snikera?” said Ozols.
Rebeka had grown up on the island of Snikera. He sank back onto the bed. Was drawn back in time. To the days at the Tallinn harbor. The last voyage of the Triin. How the smugglers on Arholma had betrayed him. The meeting at Skeppsmyra that had been the beginning of the end. The son he had never met.
“I once knew a person who came from Snikera,” he said. “A woman your age.”
Anna looked at him. She had the most beautiful brown eyes he had ever seen. Was he already dead, and this woman an angel? She caressed his forehead.
“Shh,” she said. “Try to rest. You are our brothers’ leader. We need you.”
For the first time in a long time, Ozols felt no hunger. Anna caressed his forehead and cheeks. No evil could touch him as long as she was there.
Anna sang for him quietly, a folk song from their homeland. He let himself drift off to sleep. The words and the melody took him back to his childhood, to the burbling brooks of the Pokaini Forest.
“Aija zuzu laca berni, aija zuzu.”
WEDNESDAY,
AUGUST 16
44
“As a former soldier, you’ve learned to choose your battles,” said Sarah.
Max looked up from his whole-grain bread with liver pâté and pickles. They were sitting at a table for two outside Valhalla Bageriet. The bakery’s sidewalk seating was in high demand, as it always was when the sun was shining. A group of mothers holding small children was sitting next to them. Their baby carriages formed a column that protected the children from the major road next to the outdoor eating area.
“We’ve lost the battle of the Kursk. I understand that the terrible thing that happened to Maj-Lis is eating at you and that you have to help the police. But Pashie needs you right now, and that battle hasn’t been lost. You have to be there for her.”
Max nodded. Before he could stop himself, the words came out.
“Pashie doesn’t like to go to the doctor’s office,” he said. “She’s gone to see a shaman.”
“Do that yourself, if that’s what she wants. Go to yoga with her or sign up both of you for one of those wellness courses. If that’s what she needs, you should do it!”
“Was that what you did? Went and learned to breathe together?”
“Lisette and I?” said Sarah. “We sat down and flipped through a catalogue in Copenhagen. A sperm catalogue. We got stoned, got drunk, and had sex. Then I had to carry those damned young for nine months. Twice. Worst thing that’s happened to me. Best thing I’ve done!”
The mothers at the next table were sitting there in complete silence, looking over at their table. Sarah realized she’d been a little too loud, but just shrugged. She started digging for something in her purse.
“I know the only way for me to move on is to try to find a way to forgive Lisette.” She looked up from her purse with a new sharpness in her gaze. “But who in the hell succeeds in doing that? Do you? Succeed in forgiving and moving on?”
Max’s thoughts wandered for a moment before he answered. “There are things only gods can forgive. I am a simple human being.”
Sarah nodded. “I’ve at least agreed to let her meet me and the children. Over lunch at a restaurant.”
She laid a newspaper article on the table. She had printed it out from the Baltic Report, an online newspaper that published daily news from the Baltics.
“When we were sitting there at that pathetic meeting, that panther, Anastasia Friedenberga, brought up the explosion at Centrs. She said it was an example of new/old Russian methods. A sign that the Cold War was back.”
“She might have a point there,” said Max.
“But we’ve had almost ten years of openness and coming together between Russia and the West. Why would they suddenly change strategies, close themselves off, and start doing shit like this again?”
“They have a new president. You know, the guy who wrote a letter to us four years ago.”
Sarah nodded. Neither of them would ever forget the letter establishing that representatives of Vektor were forbidden to travel to Russia. This prohibition remained in force. One of the men who had signed it had been the head of the committee for external relations and international matters at the mayor’s office: Vladimi
r Putin. The unknown young man who had been standing at Yeltsin’s side on New Year’s Day this year and had announced that he would be taking over the running of the world’s largest country. He had now been Russia’s president for a hundred days.
“I’ve tried to read as much about Centrs as I’ve had time to. Maybe you could do more digging on your own? Anastasia Friedenberga thinks Russian agents carried out the bombing, and Charlie wants us to improve our knowledge of what happened there.”
“Who is Anastasia, anyway?” asked Max.
Sarah brushed a few strands of hair away from her forehead.
“That’s a good question. She has some kind of personal relationship to Charlie, but he really doesn’t want to talk about that. She’s working at the Latvian embassy. Even more interesting is the fact that she’s one of the leaders of the Vilnius Group, which is working to bring about an immediate expansion of NATO to include a large group of Eastern European countries, including the Baltic countries. She often speaks of her intelligence sources.”
Max assumed those intelligence sources were from the organization known by the abbreviation DISS, which stood for “Defence Intelligence and Security Service,” a unit of the Latvian Ministry of Defence. Of all the new intelligence organizations in the former Soviet Republics, it was the organization the Russians vilified most. It was a little group of hardworking security experts who came to work every day with the same manic level of motivation the Israeli intelligence service Mossad showed during the Six-Day War. They blamed everything on the Russians. The Russians blamed everything on them.
“Why did Centrs come up at your meeting?” asked Max.
“Anastasia asked us whether we really wanted to support a regime that does terrible things to its own population and, according to her sources, is moving against its neighbors with a new type of aggression. She specifically identified Sweden as one of those neighbors.”
“And she identified the Centrs bombing as an example of this form of aggression? Why would Russia carry out a bombing that primarily harmed Russians?”
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