The Other Son

by Alexander Soderberg

  It shouldn’t be like that. But that was how it felt, which made him feel rather sad. What was he going to do after this? Nothing could match the life he had lived over the past twenty years.

  The copilot offered him a roll-up. Jens took it, even though he’d given up a while back. He lit the cigarette with the copilot’s gold lighter, then slid into the glazed nose section.

  It was pitch-black outside and the cigarette tasted of hay and caught angrily in his throat. The plane was lurching in the wind, the roar of the engines rose and fell, the paneling rattled and clattered, and the rivets creaked. But Jens was used to it, and trusted in God and a bit of goodwill to hold the plane together.

  They had left Dushanbe two days before, crossing Turkmenistan and Turkey, then following a southwesterly arc across Africa, flying the last stretch on fumes before refueling and spending the night in western Algeria. Then an unsteady and turbulent flight across the Atlantic to Central America.

  It was solid night outside. Jens rolled with the pitch of the plane and tried to see any landmarks but could make out nothing but the weak flash of the plane’s navigation lights and clouds drifting past.

  Eventually they approached the ground with all lights extinguished. He could see a few lights on the ground below them, but otherwise everything was dark. That was good. They were arriving without clearance—the plan was to come down on a landing strip without being noticed, then take off again.

  The wheels unfolded from the body of the plane. There was a creaking, banging sound before they locked into position. The increased air resistance was noticeable as the machine forced its way forward with its engines roaring at top speed.

  Jens could see the contours of the ground, mountains on either side etched against the dark sky, narrow roads, trees, small villages. Occasionally a few houses clustered together, vanishing quickly beneath him. The Mexican countryside, nothing more, nothing less.

  The ground leveled out and the copilot opened the flaps to maximum. The air resistance increased still further and the plane seemed to just hang in midair. There was a makeshift barely lit landing strip beneath them. The Antonov tilted forward slightly. Suddenly it dived thirty meters and then leveled out again. The noise of the engines disappeared as the copilot eased off the gas. They hovered silently for a few seconds before the wheels hit the ground. There was a hard thud, then another brief, soundless period of flight before another thud, then gravity kicked in and held the plane to the ground. The machine raced across the uneven surface and the roaring sound came back as the pilot reversed the engines and the plane braked in a cloud of sand and dust. They came to a halt, slightly askew, and the engines were switched off. Silence, except for a whining tinnitus sound in Jens’s head.

  When the plane came to a halt, Jens crept out of the nose. The copilot was already standing by the loading ramp, and he pressed a button on the side of the plane. The entire rear section of the plane opened up like a massive jaw.

  The air that streamed in was warm, soft, and dry.

  Mexico, he’d never been to Mexico before….

  The headlights of three vehicles approached along the landing strip. He glanced at his watch. The Americans were clearly early. Time to get going. Jens and the copilot loosened the straps from the large crates.

  The vehicles stopped abruptly below the ramp. A gang of armed Mexicans in modern military uniform stormed into the plane. The copilot was hit first. Before he could come up with anything practical, Jens was struck on the cheek by the butt of a rifle, then again on the side of the head, and collapsed.

  Leszek was driving. Sophie was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. They were heading out of Arlanda Airport, toward Stockholm. He was clutching a cell phone to his ear.

  “I’ve just picked her up,” he said.

  Sophie heard Aron’s voice crackle quietly in Leszek’s ear.

  Would she lie to them now?…Or would she tell the truth? How Hanke and Ramirez collaborated to unreservedly force Hector down on his knees, once and for all.

  Either way, truth or lie, the consequences would be enormous, in both directions. The truth would lead to prolonged violence and death, a scorched-earth strategy. The lie, on the other hand, would lead to more lies, procrastination, and her loneliness and powerlessness. Because who would she have on her side if she chose the lie? No one, absolutely no one. She’d be all alone.

  Leszek angled the phone toward her.

  “Off you go,” he told her.

  Sophie watched the road ahead. Traveling fast to an unknown future.

  “Sophie?” Leszek said.

  She looked at him.

  Did she even have a choice?

  The lie…

  “As expected,” she said in a slightly louder voice than usual.

  Aron said something, and Leszek repeated it to Sophie: “What do they want?”

  “For us to expand.”

  Three people in the same conversation. Two speaking, one acting as a go-between. Aron thought that led to fewer misunderstandings.

  “And what did you reply?” Leszek asked Sophie.

  “That we’ll hold back on that,” she replied.

  “Did they accept that?”

  “Yes.”

  Aron asked Leszek a question.

  “Just like that?” Leszek asked Sophie.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “The price?”

  “The same.”

  Aron’s voice from the tiny speaker, Leszek mediating: “Why?”

  “We got on well,” she lied.

  Leszek listened, then asked Sophie a question: “Are they calm?”

  “Yes, I think so,” she lied once more, looking out the side window.

  Out-of-focus fir trees flashed past.

  “Anything else?” Leszek asked.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Leszek and Aron exchanged a few quiet sentences, then Leszek ended the call and concentrated on driving down the motorway.

  She sat there, staring at nothing, trying to maintain the relaxed air she hoped she was exuding. She would have to think twice about everything she said from now on.

  “Angela and the children are on their way here with Hasani,” Leszek said. “They’re going to stay with Daphne and Thierry until we know what’s going on.”

  Sophie saw a train running parallel to them, racing along the rails at the same speed as the car.

  Leszek’s tone changed. “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  At first she didn’t understand the question.

  “Your schedule?” he clarified.

  Her schedule, of course, the never-ending fucking schedule.

  It was a daily routine with Leszek, the daily schedule, her schedule. The intrusive system of surveillance that he never let up on, which was utterly incompatible with any sort of private life. It was all about what she was going to do, where she was going to be and when, whom she was going to meet, and so on. Sometimes more general, sometimes tiresomely detailed. Every step she took was mapped and controlled by him. He made spot checks. Leszek could show up anywhere without warning, could suddenly call and check where she was and ask her to go to a location close to where she had said she would be.

  It was stressful, but she had gotten used to it and didn’t complain. She never complained.

  Sophie kept her eyes on the world outside, nudging aside some hair that had fallen across her forehead.

  “Home in the morning,” she said in a monotone. “Laundry, then driving Albert to his exercise class in the afternoon. Out to Daphne and Thierry, meet Angela and the boys.”

  —

  Sophie avoided herself in the mirror, focusing instead on her shoes until the elevator stopped at her floor.

  From the hall she could hear laughter from the living room. She put her bag down on the floor and went in.

  Albert was sitting on the sofa with Anna on his lap. She was facing him, cooing, talking, and giggling as he tickled her. She stroked his hair and they kissed.

 
Anna felt Sophie’s presence and quickly got off Albert’s lap. The two youngsters tried to stifle a sense of embarrassment. Sophie laughed at Anna’s peculiar posture as she stood there in the middle of the floor, not knowing where to go, and at the panicked smile that Albert often adopted whenever he felt uncomfortable.

  “Hello,” Anna said with forced cheeriness to hide how awkward she felt.

  Sophie chuckled, then went over and hugged first Anna, then Albert.

  —

  She unpacked in her room, leaving the fake passport and her three phones in her handbag. Three phones, three numbers. One general phone for Sophie Brinkmann, open to everyone. The second had a number known only to a few people, mainly Leszek and Aron. The third was a simpler model, with ordinary buttons, a small screen, and no fancy features. She had been given that one by Jens. It hadn’t rung in six months, but she carried it with her wherever she went. It lay there quietly in her handbag, fulfilling no function other than a sort of vague hope that it might one day make a noise. She looked at it every now and then.

  Jens had gone away without saying goodbye, he just left, sending a bland text message. The days had turned into weeks, the weeks into months. She wanted to think he was weak, that he had let her down, but she couldn’t. She just wished that bastard phone would ring.

  Sophie showered, changed into jogging pants and a blue tennis top, then went into the kitchen. In the pantry she stared at the never-ending supply of homemade blackberry juice.

  She poured some in the bottom of a glass, filled it with ice from the ice maker in the fridge door, then topped it up with water.

  Albert and Anna were laughing again in the living room.

  On the kitchen counter she prepared a pie crust. She pressed the crumbly dough into an ovenproof dish, forcing it up the sides.

  Her options ran through her head….Ruin Hector’s remaining businesses so there was nothing left for the Hankes to take? Could she do that? No…Talk to Leszek? Would he understand? No…Try to talk some sense into them? But who?…Contact all the groups she had visited over the past six months and persuade them to hand themselves over to the Hankes and Ignacio?…No.

  There were no options.

  Sophie started to cut some apples into pieces. Albert had liked apple pie as a child. These days it wasn’t as delicious. But she clung to it so she could still feel like a mother.

  The razor slid through the white shaving foam on Hector Guzman’s cheek, gently, with a practiced gesture, before moving on to the skin between his nose and top lip. The process was accompanied by the wheezing sound of the respirator, the subdued bleeping of the heart monitor, the sinusoidal curve showing his ECG, and the drip that was slowly running through the rubber tube to the needle attached to the back of his right hand.

  The moment Hector had slipped into his coma, security arrangements kicked in. He was moved in secret to this farm in the mountains, hooked up to machines, and looked after day and night by a nurse, Raimunda.

  She was sitting there now on the edge of the bed as she finished shaving him, and she wiped his face, first with a warm, damp flannel, then with a dry towel. Then she rubbed some moisturizing cream into his cheeks and neck.

  Farther away in the large room Sonya sat on a sofa reading a book. Sonya Alizadeh, always at Hector’s side, like a sister to him. She was Iranian; her parents had been business partners of Hector’s father, and they had been murdered in Switzerland when she was young. Adalberto Guzman took her under his wing and she grew up as part of Hector’s family in Marbella.

  On the floor by her feet lay Hector’s father’s old dog, Piño.

  Aron was leaning over the large mahogany dining table.

  The atmosphere in the room was tranquil. They were waiting, just as they had been for six months.

  The entire table was covered with notes and scraps of paper taped into place, complete with Aron’s personal annotations. This was how he liked to work. It was all about their business, their partners, enemies, costs, expenses, profits….He was like an officer in a bunker, trying to develop a strategy and stick to it, doing all he could to hold Hector’s empire together even though it was gradually disintegrating. But one thing was more important than everything else: the Hankes. He had paid agents out there. They were searching and hunting, then reporting back. They were looking for Ralph Hanke and the traitor, Carlos Fuentes…the bastard who had told the Hankes where Hector was after the incident at Trasten. That bastard was the reason Hector was in his current state. Aron was going to kill Carlos. He had promised himself that, and had whispered it in Hector’s ear more than once. Aron was convinced Hector had heard him, deep down where a little flame of consciousness was flickering. And that gave him strength.

  Aron knew that the Hankes were doing the same thing, trying to find them. And they had managed to lure him into the open with that deal in Istanbul. Aron cursed himself for that. Now everyone was dug in on both sides, aware of what would happen if they showed themselves. After the shootout in Marbella when Adalberto Guzman was killed and Hector wounded, things had been quiet. Nothing on the radar. Then suddenly a bleep. A faint echo of someone or something. Almost invisible. They would check—usually it was nothing. But Istanbul…Aron and Sophie had walked straight into the trap. That mustn’t happen again.

  There was an acid shower installed above the table, in the form of three showerheads fastened together. If anyone approached, or if their cover was blown, Aron would only need to back three meters away from the table, pull the little chain, and a thin cloud of tiny acid crystals would obliterate everything.

  He examined his two-dimensional world, leaning on the table with both hands. He usually stood like that. Building up images, planning, trying to understand.

  Don Ignacio. A longtime business partner. A rapacious business partner. Unreasonable, dictatorial, insane. A drug baron who had oppressed Hector’s organization for years, sucking money from it. Impossible to negotiate with, impossible to walk away from…

  Why did he back down?

  Aron turned to Sonya.

  “Why did he back down?” he asked her.

  Sonya didn’t answer. She was used to him asking questions without actually wanting an answer.

  “Sonya?”

  She looked up from her book. “What?”

  “What’s he like?” Aron asked.

  “Who?”

  “Ignacio.”

  “You’ve met him yourself.”

  “Toward women?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, putting the open book down beside her.

  “What’s he like toward women?”

  Sonya wasn’t following him. Aron went on: “Men behave differently toward women, don’t they? Some flirt, some do other things. Maybe some don’t even care at all?”

  “You’re very narrow in your analysis of relationships, Aron,” she said with a smile.

  He threw up his hands in irritation.

  Sonya thought about the question for a few seconds. “Which one of those categories does Ignacio Ramirez fit into?”

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t care at all,” she said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He isn’t interested. Feminine wiles don’t work on him. Some men are like that, believe it or not.”

  She went back to her book.

  Sonya’s words took root in Aron’s head. He doesn’t care at all. But Hector did, at least when it came to Sophie Brinkmann. He had cared as much as was possible to care, all the way. Hector had fallen in love with her. And consequently had become less cautious.

  What had she said? What had happened at Don Ignacio’s that had made the Colombians so calmly stop demanding more? Because that was what they always did; it was in their nature. And if it wasn’t possible to charm Don Ignacio, why would he let Sophie go home with a guarantee that everything could simply carry on as usual?

  After all, that wasn’t why he had sent her there; he could never have dreamed that it would have gone as well as
that. He had sent Sophie to show Don Ignacio and Alfonse that they were listening to their demands. And Aron had been counting on the fact that she would come home a wet rag, roughed-up and dejected, to pass on a list of mad and unacceptable criteria for their ongoing collaboration. Because that was how Don Ignacio worked. That was how he did business. Always, without exception. But not this time, evidently. Why?

  His mind was whirring; there was no clear structure.

  The table again. The whole of his universe was laid out there. Aron was stiff with concentration, trying to reason with himself.

  And suddenly, out of nowhere, a different thought forced its way in. Purer, clearer. Less opaque, easier to understand: Sophie.

  A beeping sound from one of the machines by Hector’s bed interrupted Aron’s thoughts.

  Raimunda flew up from her chair and hurried over. Aron stared.

  Sonya stared.

  Raimunda examined the machine.

  “What is it?” Aron asked impatiently.

  She didn’t answer, but lifted Hector’s eyelid.

  “Raimunda!” he said sharply.

  She turned around.

  “I don’t know. It might be a sign,” she said.

  “A sign of what?”

  “That he might be with us.”

  The boys sitting on the sofa on either side of their mother looked sad. Their mother was also sad, but she seemed to have run out of tears.

  Sophie was sitting opposite them, perched on the edge of the seat of an armchair. She looked at the elder of Eduardo and Angela’s sons, the seven-year-old, Andres. The boy was picking at his fingers. The younger one, Fabien, was shut off, clinging to his mother, unwilling to look at Sophie or anything else in this strange new world.

  They were sitting in the living room of Daphne and Thierry’s villa, out in the suburbs to the south of Stockholm. Hasani was sitting on his own on a chair over in the corner. He was quiet and relaxed, his gaze focused slightly below everything, as if that were his way of keeping his senses alert the whole time. If you don’t look at anything, you see everything.