by Natasha Molt
Who is it this time?
She tucks the envelope in her knapsack and catches the subway from Hansaring to Friesenplatz and from there walks back home.
Sitting down on the couch, she takes the yellow envelope out of her bag and opens it. There are two pages of a letter from her mother, containing details about the weather and tennis results. Encoded throughout she deciphers the name: Pelle Knudsen. As she rechecks the letters, the words begin to blur and before her eyes a face appears.
Her first victim, Evan. He had a neck that sagged down like a turkey, streamlined rectangular glasses and stern black eyes. He was a company executive.
She was in the restaurant pushing salad leaves around on a plate, pretending to read a novel. She had a blonde wig on, a thick layer of make-up and extra padding to make her appear ten kilograms heavier. This was it; this was her moment. All the years of working hard and she’d finally made it – she was about to be a true Warrior at the age of nineteen. Her finger itched to pull the trigger, to eliminate this infected creature, to show her family she could be trusted.
But the waiting dragged and it was 10 pm and the storyline in the paperback was thin. The pig was taking his time eating his tiramisu, drinking his shiraz, conversing with the other two men in designer suits. What level of Authenticity did such a person hold? Father had said that it had all gone, that the virus had claimed people like these and it would spread, like a cancer. Watching him, Amira couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to live in a soulless state, and she thought that it must be terrible and that life would be horrible, not to feel the core. But she would send Evan back to it. Finally, when the delay was growing unnerving, he said goodbye to his two companions and rose.
She left the money for the salad on the table and called Kolya from her mobile. ‘Turkey is almost ready.’
She followed Evan outside. The humid Sydney air fused with dirt and grime smothered her skin. Beyond the city lights was blackness. Evan walked towards the underground car park. She wanted to do it there on the footpath, but there were too many bystanders. Patience. Kolya, in an SUV with darkened windows, crept up behind her. She got in just as Evan wandered into the car park.
She and Kolya waited by the kerb. ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’ Kolya asked.
‘Don’t talk,’ she replied. Words would clutter her thinking.
Two minutes, and Evan came out in his navy Mercedes. He drove down Pyrmont Bridge Road and Amira and Koyla were behind him. At the intersection with the Western Distributor’s on ramp to North Sydney, they got lucky: Evan stopped at a red light and there was no other car in the second lane.
‘Quick,’ she said to Kolya. ‘Now. Pull up beside him. Before the lights change.’
The tyres screeched and Amira wound down the window. The pistol in her hand didn’t shake. Without breathing she squeezed the trigger – Pft! One shot into his head. Evan’s window shattered. Then two more – Pft! Pft! He didn’t even have a chance to turn around. The light switched to green and Kolya edged out into the perpetual drag of cars heading into the Cross City Tunnel.
Her graduation is now complete.
Kolya was smiling, telling her what a good job she did. She was proud: she shoved herself down, down so far that she was able to enter Nowhere. In that place, she could do anything.
The name in the briefing is Pelle Knudsen. Amira disables the smoke detector in her dining room, tears the two pages into pieces, puts them in the kitchen sink and sets them alight. When the pieces are burnt she runs the tap for three minutes.
In the living room, she flips open her laptop and clicks on the anonymiser icon in the toolbar to cover her IP address. She starts researching Pelle Knudsen and discovers that he is the owner of one of the world’s largest international furniture franchises and has an estimated net worth of around US$33 billion, which makes him one of the top-ten richest people in the world and the one of the richest in Europe. He is wealthier than her two other billionaire targets, Baumann and the French media tycoon, Gerard Clément.
It takes some searching but she also discovers that he is retired and lives in Épalinges, an outlying suburb of Lausanne, Switzerland. She memorises everything including the church he attends. He is notoriously frugal, flying only economy class and driving a Volvo he’s owned for years. He is a regular contributor to charities.
Tax exemptions that help him deceive the masses and make him look good.
Amira stares at the computer screen and images of Knudsen’s face. There are photos of him standing outside his furniture chain, the company logo in yellow capital letters as he gazes out into the sun with the caption:
Pelle Knudsen: self-made man.
In one picture he is pulling a ridiculous face, his mouth agape, his thin lips curling in on his teeth, his eyebrows white and bushy like Santa Claus’s. He is just an old man. An easy target. She can track him down and be done with it, maybe in a matter of days. Kolya will be relieved. Father will be satisfied. She will still have her family.
She has a sudden shortness of breath, a tension so extreme it shudders through her shoulders, her hands. A blackness intrudes, as if the lights have dimmed. Then whiteness flashes, blinding her.
She is on the floor, with no idea how. What is happening to her? She staggers to her knees and gropes for the glass of water left over from yesterday. Her body is cold, legs weak. This is her retribution for defying Father: panic attacks. Perhaps Kolya is right? Perhaps she is at risk.
She inhales slowly and returns to her laptop. On virtualglobetrotting.com there is a picture of Knudsen’s house. She opens a new tab and searches for the same address in Google Maps. Street View shows her the narrow conifer-hedge-lined roads and houses near Knudsen’s but the image of his home from the front is no longer available – he must have asked to have it removed. All she can see are pines, a silver birch and the hedges that look around a metre high. Street View is not available from the road behind his property. Still, she has a good picture to plan a more practical visit. On the north-east he has a neighbour and then a forest with a walking trail winding through it.
She prints out some tourist information on Lausanne, Lake Geneva, the Western Alps, finds out about car rental agencies and books a return economy-class train ticket to Switzerland with an open return date. Searching takes about five hours, inclusive of panic attack. She still doesn’t know what she wants to do, but the work is natural to her and gives her an odd sense of calm.
When she is finished she emails Wilhelm:
I’m going on a holiday to Lausanne. Talk when I get back.
At 3 pm Lukas calls. She doesn’t pick up. She is afraid that talking to him will cloud her judgement, distract her all the more.
He calls again at 7 pm and she has to answer, otherwise he will persist. She tells him that she is working on a painting, struggling to transfer the image in her head onto the canvas. Lukas seems to accept this. He asks if he can help. She says she will call him when she needs a break, or some social interaction.
She spends the evening looking at maps, memorising the routes from Lausanne to Knudsen’s house.
She arrives in Lausanne by train at 2.15 pm. Her kit: a small suitcase and backpack filled with some clothes, leather gloves, digital camera with 20x optical zoom for quick shots, mobile, disguise gear, make-up and mirror, notebook and pencil, skeleton keys for picking locks, small screwdrivers, a pocketknife, binoculars, her Anika Vollmer passport and wallet with credit cards, as well as a set for a Karen Murray, a paperback novel and a book about Van Gogh that hides the Glock. At the station’s currency exchange office she swaps euros for Swiss francs. These movements, these routines, she tries to keep close, not thoughts about news reports of how little Britta still is not talking.
Scooters and motorbikes are everywhere on the streets of Lausanne. Electric buses that remind her of the trams she has been on in Melbourne, Sydney and Cologne circle a roundabout and fountain in front of the train station. She crosses the road and checks in at the four
-star Hotel Continental, booking a twin room on the third floor. The room is modest and clean. A mirror hangs above a desk and she ignores her reflection. Not now. After repacking her backpack with essential items she leaves the hotel, returns to the train station where she puts two Swiss francs through a slot and goes into a ‘McClean – safe and clean’ toilet.
Five minutes later she emerges as a blonde with green eyes. The train station is so busy that no-one, not even the French-speaking toilet-cleaning lady, seems to notice her changed appearance.
Now she is Karen Murray. Leather gloves are on. For about fifteen minutes she drives north in a silver Volkswagen Golf hired from the Europcar on Avenue Louis-Ruchonnet 2, up the steep winding slopes of Lausanne. As she approaches Knudsen’s village the buildings become fewer and there are more houses.
In Épalinges she parks the car in apartment parking and treks up along Knudsen’s narrow street where hedges grow high and thick, protruding onto the road, covering a view of the houses that overlook Lake Geneva and the snow-capped Alps. The sound of a tractor in the distance and of children splashing in a pool in the house opposite Knudsen’s. Even from his driveway there is a limited view of the house because of the trees and bushes. At the entranceway she does not pause, as there is an intercom with a worn sticker on it saying ‘under security surveillance’ and above is a camera. She continues past one more house until the street ends and there is a small forest of linden and pine trees. A children’s swinging rope hangs from a sturdy branch. At the base is an old hacksaw, a lock box filled with water and a Grether’s Pastilles container – toys of the children. She climbs a linden tree, sticks prodding at her. One catches on her black top. Without gloves her hands would be scratched. The blonde wig looks like a bird’s nest.
Halfway up she pulls out the binoculars and within seconds locates Knudsen’s horseshoe-shaped house. He has a rear winter garden. She imagines him sitting in it, sipping coffee or schnapps, the sun shining through the glass, warming him. The home is large yet discreet. There is no shimmering external pool, no visible jacuzzi. At the end of the pebble driveway is a shed and next to it a Volvo. Odd that the car isn’t in the garage. He could be home. Someone could be there.
No electric fence; not even a particularly high-security fence. Cameras are at the front and back doors and around the sides. She wonders whether he has dogs. There’s a limit to computer research.
She sits watching, and waiting. The waiting is always the worst part. Sometimes nothing happens at all. Other times everything happens.
The sun is high; there are no clouds. The air is fresh and alive. Not muggy. Swiss air. She wonders how long Swiss people live on average – a statistic she shouldn’t be thinking about right now. If only there were clouds, she could imagine what objects they looked like in between observing Knudsen’s property. The sounds of the children continue mixed with the harmonious ring of cowbells from a field behind the forest.
After an hour and fifteen minutes her bum is sore from the prickly branch, her back aches and she can’t help but think of Lukas. What would he think, seeing her up in a tree as a blonde? He’d laugh good-naturedly, that’s what he’d do – until he found out she was planning to kill someone.
A dog barks somewhere in one of the houses. A deep bow-wow from a big dog, not a hysterical high-pitched bark from a smaller breed. Then from Knudsen’s winter garden a man steps outside. He is old, stooped to his left, a stick in his right hand. Knudsen. A German shepherd follows him to the side of the house where there is a patch of grass. The man throws the stick and the dog chases after it.
Her heart drums in her body. With a sniper rifle she could take the old fellow out now. Yet, even without a long-range weapon, this is a chance she can’t let slip by. She watches him praise the dog with a tickle under the chin and her mind begins to fuzz; the world seems suddenly to be turning and she is falling, falling, falling into darkness. No, not again. Please, not again.
When she wakes, a black spider, no larger than her thumb, is scampering across her stomach. She flicks it off in panic, feeling nauseous and weak. She checks her limbs but nothing seems broken. Not even falling out of a tree can break her bones.
She rolls over onto her side, finds her feet and climbs up the tree again but Knudsen and the dog are gone. The Volvo is still in the driveway. No-one is on the streets. Too late.
She waits for another three minutes but there is no sign of him. She decides to walk around to the street at the back of his house. Once out of the tree, she makes her way back onto the walking trail, cursing herself for being so clumsy and unstable and, to her surprise, Knudsen and his dog are before her.
She jumps back in fright. Knudsen appears equally startled. The dog growls at her and Knudsen reins him in on the leash.
‘Excuse le chien,’ Knudsen says. ‘He’s not normally like this.’
She wonders if the dog can smell her weapon.
It is the perfect opportunity for her to take Knudsen out at close range. They are alone in the forest. She can easily pull her pistol out and make an exit with the hire car. She’d have to kill the dog, too. He would whine, unless she used at least two bullets. But she can’t move. Her feet are frozen. Knudsen gazes at her, his expression uncertain.
‘De rien,’ she quips at last. It doesn’t matter.
Knudsen and his dog continue down the path, and she watches them disappear around the bend.
11
10–11 JUNE
There is a big bulgy canvas before her. Lukas is pointing at it. He speaks, and at first she can’t hear him. What is he saying? Paint me a dyke? No, that can’t be it. Paint what you like. Paint your life. Yes, that is it. There is a thrill, a wonderful feeling, and she paints a mother holding her, their faces aglow. The sensation vanishes as soon as she wakes, the train trundling along.
She texts Wilhelm to say that the Lausanne trip has been a failure, and he replies saying he wants to meet her, but she calls in sick.
Not long after arriving in her apartment she receives a phone call. She wouldn’t have answered it, except that she had hoped it would be Lukas. The display reads Withheld – which should have warned her against picking up.
‘Hello?’ It is Father’s deep voice.
‘Father?’ she asks, shuddering.
‘What took you so long to get to the phone?’
She gulps, resenting even minor chastisement. ‘I was in the laundry putting on a load of washing.’
‘Why won’t you show tonight?’
‘I’m sick, that’s all. I’ve been ill all night,’ she replies indignantly.
There is a pause for a moment. ‘What with?’
‘Food poisoning,’ she says tetchily, feeling the muscles in her face tensing.
‘Food poisoning?’ he scoffs.
‘I’ve been vomiting,’ she adds in a rush.
Another pause. ‘When we have a weakness, we need to acknowledge it.’
She knew this was coming. Submit. ‘Yes, Father.’
‘And we all have them. You have yours and I have mine. The thing is to get these weaknesses out of us. Don’t let doubt control you – you control it. Unbelief will immobilise you.’
‘Yes, Father,’ she repeats.
‘Do you have any friends yet?’
He means whether she has any possible new recruits. ‘No.’
‘That’s a shame, such a pity. Why not?’
‘I’ve been concentrating on work and I’ve been sick.’
Father sniffs. ‘I have not seen or heard of any recent results.’
‘I’ve been researching.’
‘I see.’
‘Research takes time.’
‘You forget I am your father, and I know you better than anyone. What’s going on?’
She is too disturbed to answer. Her legs tremble.
‘I want to help you focus. Will you let me do that? Will you let me help you?’
She can almost see his condescending eyes peering at her over the brim of his glass
es.
‘Very well, then. What kind of help do I need?’
‘Perhaps I’ll send someone out to collect you? Perhaps that’s the kind of help you need.’
‘Whatever you say, Father.’
There is a long silence between them. Finally, he speaks.
‘If you had information on your birth mother that might help your work.’
She winces.
‘Would I be right in making such an assumption?’
A direct question. How should she answer?
‘Well?’ he asks. ‘I don’t have all day.’
‘Why would you do that?’ her voice sounding small.
‘Your unknown heritage distracts you from your purpose. I trust that, once you know who your birth mother is, you will realise such preoccupations are unhelpful.’
It is difficult for her to believe him. He has always been against her knowing who her birth parents are, believing that knowledge to be irrelevant. Unless Members make a break with the unbelievers, he says, they are unable to be true revolutionaries. Nothing must hold a Member back. They can only have contact with unbelievers if they can be used in some way to further the objectives of the Cause.
‘That is very kind of you, Father.’
‘See your mission through first. After all, we don’t want your birth mother eating the same things you do,’ he remarks. ‘People become ill so easily these days.’
The ground beneath her feet seems to fall. She has to sit down on a dining chair.
‘I’m your daughter,’ she stammers.
‘Yes, you are.’
She imagines Father, then, paintbrush in hand, stippling her face on a canvas.