The Chosen

by Kristina Ohlsson

  Fredrika was still shocked at the way the previous evening had ended. She had left the Old City alone via the Lion’s Gate, then she had followed the wall until she reached the Damascus Gate. She hadn’t heard from Isak, nor had she expected to. Her suitcase was in the trunk of the cab, and she wanted nothing more than to go home. Leave Israel and forget that she had ever been there.

  Alex had called her and given her yet another job. She hoped she would have time but had to admit to herself that her desire to visit an Israeli security firm was minimal. Anything she did from now on lacked legitimacy, since the Israeli police had disowned her, and she didn’t think Israel was a very good country in which to play at being a police officer.

  The hotel had helped her to book a cab; it was expensive but practical. The driver said something she didn’t hear and pointed through the windshield.

  “Sorry?”

  “Rain,” the driver said in English. “It’s going to rain.”

  Dark clouds had come rolling in over the coast and were moving east. The first heavy drops began to fall as they turned off for Netanya.

  Fredrika was tired. The peace and quiet of the hotel had allayed the fear she had felt when she finally got back, but not the paranoia. She had the sense that someone was watching her, and before she went to bed she checked several times to make sure the door was locked. She had called Spencer to say good night, but that had been a mistake. He knew her so well that after just a few words he could tell that something had happened.

  “I wish I were there with you,” he had said. “Hurry home.”

  He didn’t need to ask more than once; she had absolutely no desire to stay.

  “Here we are,” the driver said. He pulled up; forest on one side of the road, a high fence on the other. Up ahead she could see an entrance with a guard post.

  “Jeich Tikvha,” the driver said, pointing. “It means ‘There is hope’—did you know that?”

  She didn’t, but took some consolation from the words. She certainly needed hope.

  He dropped her off and drove on. Fredrika picked up her suitcase and walked over to the guard. What the hell was she doing here?

  This whole thing was a lunatic project in a country which was one of the most challenging in the entire world in terms of security. It would have been much easier with Isak by her side.

  The rain was falling heavily now, and she increased her speed. The guard stared at her with suspicion.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I’d like to speak to the Goldmann and Eisenberg families if they’re available. It’s about their sons.”

  • • •

  Being on unfamiliar ground with a task that was far from clear wasn’t ideal. Fredrika understood this when she was shown into David and Gali Eisenberg’s house. The place where Gideon Eisenberg had grown up.

  “I’m sorry to turn up unannounced and at such an early hour,” she said once they were seated at the kitchen table. “But we really need your help with our investigation.”

  It was nine o’clock; she had left Jerusalem at seven thirty.

  “Is this about Simon and Polly?” Gali asked.

  She looked as if she were on the verge of tears. Fredrika shuffled uncomfortably; this was an impossible situation.

  “It is. And I have to begin by saying that you are under no obligation to talk to me. I am with the Swedish police, and I don’t have the authority to conduct an investigation in Israel. But I was here on another matter and wanted to take the opportunity to meet you.”

  “We’re happy to help the police in any way we can,” David assured her.

  They seemed like decent people. Calm and collected. And so sad.

  “Do you have other children apart from Gideon?”

  “A daughter,” Gali said. “She lives in Haifa.”

  Not too far away; that must be some consolation when their son had moved all the way to Stockholm.

  The house was small and simply furnished. If Fredrika understood correctly, everything on a kibbutz was owned collectively. Therefore the house was not theirs but had been allocated to them as a place to live. The very thought of not owning her home, or at least having a contract with the landlord, made Fredrika’s head spin.

  She began by asking a question to which she already knew the answer.

  “How long is it since Gideon left Israel?”

  Gali sighed.

  “It’s exactly ten years.”

  “Do you remember what motivated the move to Stockholm? I understand they left at the same time as the Goldmann family.”

  There was no mistaking the reaction. As soon as Fredrika mentioned the name Goldmann, both Gali and David stiffened.

  “It was just a coincidence really,” David said. “The fact that they moved at the same time.”

  “It all happened so fast,” Gali said. “One day the decision was made, and we didn’t understand it at all. They left just a few weeks after Simon was born.”

  “So something must have happened—something that meant they didn’t want to go on living here,” Fredrika said.

  “Gideon always found it very difficult to talk about his job,” David said with some hesitation. “And we respected that. As far as we know, the decision had something to do with his work, but we never found out what happened.”

  Gali shook her head sorrowfully.

  “They just disappeared. We’ve been over to visit them many times, of course, and they’ve been here, but things just aren’t the same.”

  “You said Gideon found it difficult to talk about his job,” Fredrika said, turning to David. “What did you mean by that?”

  “It seemed as if everything he was involved in was top secret.”

  “You mean at the firm where he worked?”

  David looked confused.

  “Firm? Gideon didn’t work for a firm. He was employed by the military until he moved. Just like the others.”

  A thought flitted through her mind. The others?

  David straightened up.

  “If you want any more information, you need to ask Gideon,” he said. “He’s in the best position to know what he can and can’t reveal about his past.”

  He realized he had said too much, and Fredrika knew she wouldn’t get any more out of him.

  She tried a different tack.

  “Of course. We’ve already spoken to Gideon and will be doing so again. A moment ago you said just like the others—that he was employed by the military just like the others. I assume you were referring to Saul and Daphne Goldmann?”

  They’d said they stayed on in the army for a year or so after their military service, hadn’t they? A year or so. But if Fredrika was right, it now seemed that they had stayed on until they left Israel.

  “That’s right,” David said.

  He had looked relieved when Fredrika started talking; he didn’t need to feel as if he were betraying his son.

  “And Efraim Kiel,” Gali said.

  “Efraim Kiel?”

  “Gideon, Saul, Daphne, and Efraim did their military service together, then pursued a career in the army. Efraim was the only one who stayed in Israel.”

  “That’s probably because he was the most successful,” David said with a melancholy smile. “He was always a winner, always the leader.”

  “Did he also grow up on this kibbutz?”

  “No, his parents lived in Netanya, but the boys went to junior and high school together.”

  One thread after another was woven together, the pattern growing clearer all the time.

  Efraim Kiel had come up yet again. Efraim Kiel, who didn’t have an alibi for the murder of the two boys. The man Alex couldn’t track down.

  And once again it was apparent that Simon and Abraham’s parents had lied. None of them had revealed that they had gone to school with Efraim and spent time in the army together; they had said only that they did their military service with him.

  As an investigator, Fredrika had to ask herself why. She also wondered if they were
lying for reasons relevant to the inquiry, or because of something completely different. The sense of chasing lost souls became stronger the more she dug into the past. Was it because their work had been top secret?

  “Do Saul Goldmann’s parents live nearby? I’d really like to speak to them, too.”

  A shadow passed across the kitchen table. The rain hammered against the windowpane, and the Swedish cold felt like a distant memory. In Israel it was like the Swedish summer.

  “Unfortunately they are no longer with us,” Gali said. She looked sad, but Fredrika could see something else in her eyes, something indefinable that had nothing to do with sorrow.

  Something that looked a lot like relief, in fact.

  “Were they very old?” she asked.

  David cleared his throat.

  “Aida died in a car accident last year. And Avital . . . Avital took his own life.”

  Silence fell in the small kitchen.

  Avital? It was a coincidence, of course. The Lion had called himself Avital Greenburg. But Saul’s father was Avital Goldmann.

  “It must have been very difficult for Saul, losing both his parents when he’s so young himself,” Fredrika said. Saul was only forty-five; most people don’t expect to lose their parents until much later in life.

  “I shouldn’t think he misses them,” David said, getting up from the table. “He didn’t even come to his mother’s funeral.”

  Gali stroked his back as he passed her on his way to the sink.

  “David, we know nothing about all that,” she said.

  “If he wasn’t close to them in the past, perhaps he’s thinking about them now that he’s lost his own son,” Fredrika said, trying to smooth things over.

  David switched on the coffee machine, and it came to life with a series of noises. The atmosphere in the kitchen was oppressive, as if the air were full of unspoken words.

  “I shouldn’t think Saul cares about the boy either,” he said.

  At that, Gali slammed her fist down on the table.

  “I just said we know nothing about all that!”

  “Nonsense!” David said, turning to face the two women. “I’m sure everyone knows the situation.”

  What situation?

  “May I ask what you’re talking about?” Fredrika said.

  “The fact that Abraham wasn’t Saul’s son.”

  “David!”

  “The boy is dead, Gali. What does it matter?”

  Gali began to cry, silent, heart-rending tears.

  David softened.

  “What are you saying?” Fredrika said, looking at him.

  David couldn’t meet her eye.

  “Well, that’s the rumor. That Saul had had a vasectomy. One of our neighbors who’s a doctor arranged for him to have it done in Haifa, and then along comes Daphne a few years later and announces that she’s pregnant.”

  “But why didn’t Saul want children?”

  Fredrika didn’t understand. He must have been so young when he made the decision not to be a parent.

  David didn’t respond.

  Fredrika gently placed a hand on Gali’s arm.

  “Why didn’t Saul want children?” she repeated.

  An eternity passed before Gali wiped her eyes and answered the question, her voice no more than a faint whisper.

  “Because he was afraid that the Paper Boy would take them.”

  One of the earliest flights from London took off at seven o’clock in the morning, and Eden Lundell was on board. The night had been an endless torment of sleepless anxiety. The story Fred Banks had told her had triggered a chain of thought she was incapable of stopping. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the Palestinian boy who had died in the explosion on the West Bank. Half dozing, half awake, she pictured him running toward the house where he thought he would be safe. Yanking open the door and standing on the trigger mechanism for the bomb that someone had concealed in the entrance to keep enemies away.

  But why had no one told the boy he must never, ever use that door?

  The whole thing was insane, and Eden couldn’t get her head around it.

  And now two more boys had died. Ten years later and in a different part of the world.

  The fate of the Palestinian boy was the key to the mystery into which the police investigation had developed; she was sure of it.

  She left her hotel at five thirty in the morning and traveled out to Heathrow. She was hoping that Fred would have more to tell her, that he would call.

  And he did.

  The plane had barely touched down at Arlanda when Eden switched on her phone. Fred called as the plane taxied in.

  “Can we meet?” he said.

  “No, I’ve just landed in Stockholm.”

  “We need to talk. I have more information for you.”

  She closed her eyes. Thought for a moment.

  A plane wasn’t the best place to conduct a top-secret conversation, but she had no choice. She tried to remember what the missing child was named.

  Polly Eisenberg.

  Time was running out for her.

  It was for Polly, and for those who had already died, that they had to bend the rules.

  “It will have to be now,” she said.

  “I’ve checked the minutes from meetings on the joint operation with Mossad. On one occasion a couple of representatives from Efraim Kiel’s special team were there; I have their names here.”

  Eden had spent her waking hours during the night trying to piece together the puzzle.

  The boy who died in the explosion was important.

  So was the secret source who led them to the suspected terrorist.

  The source known as the Paper Boy.

  Even before Fred told her the names of the other team members, she knew what he was going to say.

  “Saul Goldmann and Gideon Eisenberg. I’ve read one or two articles online; they’re the fathers of the boys who were murdered, aren’t they?”

  “They are,” Eden said.

  The plane had arrived at its gate and the passengers were beginning to disembark. Eden stayed where she was in her window seat.

  This was nothing but pure revenge.

  An eye for an eye.

  The most classic principle of all, which never seemed to go out of fashion.

  “We have to find out the name of the boy who died on the West Bank,” she said. “Otherwise we’ll never find the murderer.”

  “I know,” Fred said. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you there. His name isn’t in any of the records, nor is there any explanation as to why he was in that house in the first place.”

  “Could he have been the suspect’s son?”

  “More than likely. But he died in the explosion.”

  “Who else was in the house?”

  “It doesn’t say; it just says that three bodies were found inside, the boy and two adult males. As far as MI5 were concerned, the matter was resolved, however tragic the outcome. We have no information about how Mossad chose to follow up what had occurred.”

  Eden worked through what she had heard.

  Efraim Kiel had led a team recruiting sources in the Palestinian enclave of the West Bank. Saul Goldmann and Gideon Eisenberg had been part of that team. After the disaster of the boy’s death, both Saul and Gideon had immediately left the country and moved to Sweden. That was back in 2002. And now, ten years later, when their own sons had reached the same age as that Palestinian boy, at a guess, someone was taking revenge.

  It was hardly surprising that the Goldmanns and Eisenbergs weren’t cooperating, according to Alex. They were keeping quiet because they weren’t allowed to talk about what had happened. An episode that still haunted them a decade later.

  The question was what she should do now. Because officially the information she had been given did not exist.

  “They must see what’s going on,” Fred said.

  “Of course.”

  “I imagine the most likely scenario is that they’ll get in touch
with their parent organization in Israel and ask for help.”

  Eden didn’t think that was going to happen. By leaving Israel, Saul and Gideon had turned their backs on their former employer. There had to be a concrete reason why those two—but not Efraim, who had also been there—had felt compelled to move.

  It was painful to think of Efraim’s name.

  You fucking lunatic, you’re not mixed up in all this, are you?

  She didn’t believe he was. Not as a killer, anyway.

  Nor did she think that he just happened to be in Stockholm when everything kicked off. Could Mossad have sent him to keep a watchful eye on his former colleagues? Could they have had some kind of warning about what was going to happen?

  If so, then Efraim had failed spectacularly.

  “What are you going to do now?” Fred asked.

  The anxiety in his voice gave him away.

  There would be devastating consequences for his career if it emerged that he had passed on classified information, particularly as he had given it to a woman who had once been accused of working as a double agent.

  Eden had never been good at gratitude or being in someone’s debt, but she would never forget this.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Honest and gentle.

  “Don’t burn me,” he said.

  “Not for anything in the world.”

  She was the last to get off the plane. She called GD and told him she was on her way in. She tried to assemble far too many fragments to form a whole. If the motive was revenge, then who was the avenger?

  The Paper Boy, she thought. Is that what this is all about?

  A little while later, in a cab on the way from the airport, she realized that there were only three people who could answer that question:

  Saul, Gideon, and Efraim.

  If they even knew.

  Because something was missing from this story. She felt strongly that it was all related to the boy who had died in the house, but could there be alternative scenarios? She didn’t know how many men had made up Efraim’s team; were there more men and women who had been punished by having their children murdered? Could there be more victims in Israel? If so, the Israelis should have made the connection by this stage and gotten in touch with the Swedish police.