The Swimmer

by Joakim Zander

  She insists that we take her car, and we drive in silence through the wide suburban streets, under the bare maples, past the endless football fields and baseball cages of an enormous school, past the dark houses and sealed McMansions sinking under the weight of their twinkling Christmas decorations. Through the slumbering, American dream.

  The highway is deserted, an echo, and we say nothing, temporarily mesmerized by the rhythm of the tires over the seams in the concrete. On the radio, someone calls in screaming about the president, the Muslims, the Supreme Court. Susan moves her thumbs over the leather-wrapped controls on the steering wheel and the idiot’s voice dies out. We drive south on 245. Toward DC. Her eyes are fixed on the farthest point in the cone of light coming from the car’s headlights. I sense something ambivalent in her gestures. Perhaps she’s weighing secrets against secrets, lies against lies. The truth. Moving them between scales to find the balance.

  Finally she turns off the highway, down toward Potomac Park and stops at the FDR Memorial. We get out of the car, and the sound of doors closing behind us echoes across the park, out toward the water. We walk slowly over to the sculpture, where artificial light renders Roosevelt ghostly in his bronze wheelchair. We shiver in the cold sweeping in from the Tidal Basin. Around us monuments and their remote reflections shine in the still, black water. Narcissus. Is that what we’ve become?

  ‘So,’ she says at last. ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

  She looks small, gazing out over the water. It occurs to me that we’ve all made our own compromises, our own senseless choices. Maybe she made more than most. She was a manager before there were barely any female employees in the Agency. How many bodies did she step over, ignore, hoard for use when the occasion required it?

  I prepare myself, amazed at my own calm. Start right in.

  ‘Who did I kill in Beirut?’

  48

  December 20, 2013

  Paris, France

  Klara plunged a pair of scissors into the thick hair just below her ears. Five quick snips and a hairstyle that cost her eighty-five euros at Toni & Guy in Brussels’ EU Quarter became a distant memory.

  She continued upward and forward, turning her head to look at herself from the side in the dirty hotel mirror. She caught the wisps of hair with her left hand and threw them in the trash next to the sink. She’d paid for the tiny hotel room with money taken out in a completely different part of the city using Cyril’s ATM card. The code had proved to be correct. The cowardly bastard. She’d taken out 2000 euros, apparently the daily maximum for withdrawals. It was a cheap price to pay for betrayal. Then she’d ripped the cards apart and tossed them into the trash.

  It took her fifteen minutes to transform her shoulder-length hair into a short, boyish haircut. She leaned forward and doused her hair with the icy water from the tap, before emptying nearly an entire bottle of hair bleach into her hand and massaging it into her scalp.

  All she wanted to do was cry. All she wanted to do was to lie down on the worn, flowered sheets in the rock hard bed, close the curtains, and sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Never ever wake up again. All she wanted was to escape, or give up, or just close her eyes and turn to nothing. To cease to exist. But the tears refused to fall. And every time she closed her eyes, she saw Mahmoud’s wide eyes, smelled the scent of cheap wine, felt the silent bullets whizzing past her face. Why couldn’t she just cry?

  When the bleach started burning her scalp, she unwrapped the hotel room’s frayed and thin towel and climbed into the yellowish tub to wash her hair. There was no shampoo, so she used someone’s forgotten soap. When she was done, she dried off and gazed into the mirror again. To say that she was blond would be an exaggeration. Light brown instead of jet-black. But with short hair. Perhaps the difference was enough. A halfhearted, clichéd attempt at metamorphosis. It might be ridiculous, a waste. More ritual than disguise. She couldn’t save Moody. But she could save his memory.

  She left the mirror and walked over to the little MacBook open on the bed behind her. It was locked with a password, impossible to bypass. An electronic sphinx. Hidden in its binary maze was something people were willing to kill to keep hidden.

  She wanted to break it open, tear apart the hard drive and throw its contents onto the bed. Do whatever it took to gain access to what was inside. Instead she closed her eyes and leaned back. Almost immediately she sat up with a start.

  Jörgen! Of course. Jörgen Apelbom and his hacker contacts. Maybe he could help her? She looked at the clock. It wasn’t even eight-thirty. Without another thought, she threw on her clothes and ran down the stairs.

  The sleepy Spanish exchange student surfing on his laptop behind the small table that constituted the reception didn’t seem to recognize her at first.

  ‘I’m staying in room twelve,’ Klara said. ‘I dyed my hair.’

  She took out an international phone card she’d bought in order to call Gabriella and walked over to the pay phone in the corner facing the street. She could feel the student following her with his eyes but ignored him. Jörgen answered after one ring.

  ‘Jörgen,’ Klara said. ‘This is Klara Walldéen. Did I wake you up?’

  She heard Jörgen clearing his throat on the other end.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Wow!’

  ‘Why “wow”? What do you mean?’ Klara said. Maybe this was a stupid idea.

  ‘I just saw your picture on Aftonbladet. You’re…’

  Jörgen cleared his throat again.

  ‘You’re wanted by the police,’ he said.

  Klara closed her eyes and ran her hand through her short hair. Wanted. At the front desk the exchange student waved at her. She lifted her hand, gestured for him to wait.

  ‘I have to ask you for a favor,’ she said. ‘And I truly understand if you can’t help me.’

  There was silence on the other end for a second.

  ‘Go on,’ Jörgen said at last. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Someone who can crack the code to a computer. A Mac. Someone who’s discreet. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘Someone who can crack a code?’ Jörgen asked.

  He sounded cautious, thoughtful.

  ‘Never mind,’ Klara said. ‘I’m sorry that I even called you. It was idiotic, I really don’t want to drag you into anything.’

  ‘Where are you?’ interrupted Jörgen. ‘In Brussels?’

  ‘It’s probably better if you don’t know, okay? But if you can find someone in Brussels, that works for me.’

  ‘Where can I reach you?’

  Klara gave him the number to the burner phone they’d bought in Brussels.

  ‘But, please, don’t give that number to anyone, okay?’

  They hung up. On the way up to her room, she thanked the exchange student but ignored his attempt to talk. She took off her jeans, still wet from her attempts to wash Mahmoud’s blood out of them in the bathtub. The bed was hard, and the cold streamed in from the window facing the street. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t sleep anyway.

  Klara was sitting on the windowsill, head leaning against the window, when the phone sounded on the bed. She’d been sitting quietly in the dark room as the snow gave way to a serene, drumming rain. When she stood up, she saw her face in the black glass. The short, badly dyed hair. The weary eyes. The same change she’d seen in Mahmoud. The proximity to violence, the paralyzing fear. And something more. Something deeper, darker than the night outside. Something that she’d still barely even touched. The unfathomable, overwhelming grief. She steered her thoughts in a different direction, forcing herself away from the tempting darkness, that selfish, self-pitying, velvety feeling that would shut everything else out.

  ‘Not now,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Not tonight. Not until this is over.’

  The message had been sent from an unknown number. Good, thought Klara, he didn’t use his own phone. Would they still be able to trace their contact? Maybe, it was impossible to know. The message was short: prinsengracht 34
4, amsterdam. tomorrow after 10:00. he calls himself Blitzworm97. say SoulXsearcher sent you. no names, no phones. 200 euros. will that work?

  That was all. Like a confirmation for a doctor’s appointment. Though it was an unusual name for a doctor.

  yes replied Klara. thank you.

  After she sent the message, she shut off the phone and removed the battery. Then she put on her jeans again. They were still damp. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay here one second longer. If they’d somehow tracked her phone, they’d be here any minute. On her way out she threw the phone and the battery into the trash can by the door. She stopped in the lobby at the dirty computer the hotel kept for guests. The buses to Amsterdam left from the other side of Paris. The next one was the night bus, leaving at 11:00 p.m. She glanced at the computer’s clock. 21:30.

  To Amsterdam.

  49

  December 20, 2013

  Washington, DC, USA

  Susan turns around slowly. Our eyes meet. Her eyes are empty, lonely, gray.

  ‘Is that why we’re here?’ she says. ‘To rummage through the past?’

  I say nothing.

  ‘My God,’ she continues. ‘It’s been almost thirty years. You know who he was. Basil el Fahin. Bomb maker for Hezbollah. You saw his—’

  ‘I know who you said he was,’ I interrupt. ‘I know damn well who you said he was.’

  My voice is filled with adrenaline, completely unstable. It scares me, that voice. I take control of it. Subdue it. Run my hands over my face.

  ‘I know what you said. But he didn’t kill Anna. You weren’t telling the truth.’

  Something in her posture changes. She bends her back like a bow, her features tighten for a moment, then she forces them to smooth out again. All these signs. All these lies.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ she says. ‘What’s the matter with you? Did you drag me out here in the middle of the night just to spout your crazy theories?’

  But there’s something there, a gap in her pretend irritation, a tear in her feigned frustration. Something else, something deeper. I see it in her eyes. The way they rove and jump. Maybe it’s harder to lie to a liar. But there’s something more. As if part of her wants to tell me. Part of her thinks there have been enough lies. There’s a possibility there, an opening.

  I take out the folder, hold it out in front of me, toward her. It is a knife to stick into the crack, to pry it open.

  ‘Give up,’ I say. ‘Please, Susan, I already know everything. See for yourself. Everything is in there.’

  My voice is calm now, under control. I clear my throat and wave the folder encouragingly at her. She lets her arms hang at her sides. We stand like that. On our respective scales. It wouldn’t take much to destroy the balance. She takes the folder and holds it in her hands without opening it.

  I don’t know how long this moment of odd, icy intimacy lasts. Maybe just a second. It’s broken by a car alarm blaring somewhere in the distance. I wait until it stops.

  ‘The Agency killed Anna.’ I whisper. ‘You killed Anna.’

  Susan takes a step back and sits down on the icy bench without drying it off. She puts the folder in her lap and seems to lose herself in the black water facing us.

  I squat in front of her. I can’t breathe. She turns her face toward me, looks at me. Her eyes are suddenly pure, naked. Temporarily without deceit and delusion. She takes a handkerchief out of her purse. Turns away, wipes something from the corner of her eye, blows her nose.

  ‘But you must’ve always known?’ she says.

  Her voice is thin now. I don’t say anything. It’s shocking to see her like this. Suddenly so vulnerable. Suddenly so young, almost like a girl, a child. She, like me, made her journey through the shadows all alone. Two bullets of the same caliber but on different trajectories. Her trajectory went upward and out. Mine was always directed toward myself. Susan and her dreaded intellect, her unforced, natural authority. How much shit had she taken? How much emptiness does she store inside herself? When she starts talking, it’s not to me but to herself, to the monuments, to history itself.

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to go like that, of course. But I didn’t know that. Not then. None of us did. Our operation in Damascus was a Russian nested doll, and you were just the outer layer. I was so new, so inexperienced. You were my first responsibility, my first agent to coordinate. I hadn’t even been in the field except in Paris, and that hardly counts. And I have no idea why no one informed me that we were supplying weapons to the Syrians. It was so naive of me not to make the connection. But I didn’t know then that there would always be other levels, always other decisions made by someone else, in another context. Mistakes are made and have to be atoned for. Debts have to be repaid. The weapons we supplied to the regime were a down payment on another deal we’d made long ago. Someone else’s empty, poorly devised compromise. That was how the cold war worked. One hand never knew what the other was doing. I learned, over time.’

  I straighten up, gently, afraid to disturb her story, her confession. I sit down on the bench beside her.

  ‘And then you found out who was supplying the arms, and I knew it was true, that it was for real. I took it up with Daniels, who was the chief operating officer. All he said was: “Good job, darlin’, we’ll take it from here.” That’s when you know it’s really bad. When they say “we’ll take it from here.” And now I’m the one who says that.’

  She smiles wryly and shakes her head slightly, letting her eyes wander over the black water to the cold, white columns on the other side.

  ‘It wasn’t my decision to eliminate you to protect the bigger secret. Those weren’t my orders. Not that it matters, but no one told me until afterward. Honestly, I don’t know where it came from. Daniels maybe. Or even higher up. And I don’t know who placed the bomb. But I know it was us.’

  Finally, here we are, encircled by what I always knew, what was always right in front of me. What I chose not to see. Finally we find ourselves in the middle of what I spent half a lifetime trying to escape. A wave of dizziness hits and I lean against the bench for support. My own cowardice is so palpable, so terrible in the light of what might be the truth. But I force my self-hatred aside. We have to go further, all the way up to the surface.

  ‘Why did you let me live after you knew the bomb had failed?’

  Why did you let me live? It’s such a strange thing to say. The words almost stick in my throat. Susan shrugs.

  ‘What were we supposed to do? Execute you in Langley? A car accident in Delaware? It would have been too obvious, of course. If you’d died like that, after the bomb? It would have come out. And we weren’t sure if you understood the connection. If you’d taken some kind of precautions after the bomb. At the same time there was surely someone higher up who must have realized that we couldn’t just go around killing our own agents for doing their job. The whole thing was a mistake from beginning to end. A terrible mistake. And then it turned out you were loyal. More than loyal.’

  My heart stands absolutely still. The heat and the concrete, shards of glass. Your tired eyes, your greasy hair in my car. The baby’s barely perceptible breath against my chest. A mistake. The banality of it. The banality of having avoided that thought for my whole life. I feel the outlines of a horrible anger. Meanwhile, time is escaping me. This is just one part. History is only one part. Perhaps there’s still room for a future.

  ‘And Beirut?’ I say. ‘Who did I kill in Beirut?’

  ‘A bomb maker for Hezbollah. Just like we told you. We’d been looking for him for a long time and had just received new intel that he was in Beirut. We fabricated the information that he was behind the murder of your girlfriend. It was an opportunity to achieve our operational goals and rewrite history. It solved our problems. And it gave you what you wanted, right? It gave you your revenge. It was a win-win situation. Except from a moral perspective. But, well, you understand?’

  She smiles halfheartedly again, sadly. Maybe she thinks like I do, th
at we weigh evil against evil; it’s the equation that led us here. Relativity guided us here. An equation that makes perfect sense until the veil is pulled back, and all we see is the madness. She turns to me.

  ‘Why now?’ she says. ‘Why suddenly decide to see what’s been right in front of you all this time?’

  All I feel is an immense emptiness. All I know is that I want a drink.

  ‘I need a drink,’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t think you were drinking anymore?’ Susan says.

  There’s nothing they don’t know about me.

  50

  December 20, 2013

  Stockholm, Sweden

  ‘That’ll be two hundred seventy-five kronor,’ the taxi driver said, leaning forward to get a better look at the impressive 1920s mansion glistening in soft floodlighting.

  ‘It looks like a castle,’ he said.

  Gabriella fished out her wallet and handed him her company credit card. Klara had called her a couple of hours ago. Terrified and in shock. A small, pitiful voice. It was a nightmare, a strange, perverted fantasy. Mahmoud shot in front of her eyes in Paris. Klara now wanted by the police, her picture on the front of all the tabloids. Doctor Death and the beautiful political secretary.

  ‘Will you represent me?’ Klara had asked. ‘Tell me what to do.’

  Thoughts had flashed through Gabriella’s head. Confusion and fear. The feeling she might be out of her depth. Way out of her depth. She thought of what Bronzelius had said. That what happened to Mahmoud had been a misunderstanding, that Säpo seemed to know that. But who had been hunting Mahmoud and was now out to get Klara?

  ‘Come home,’ she said at last. ‘Come home, and we’ll solve this. Somehow.’

  She had no idea if that was the right decision. Maybe she should have told Klara to contact the French police? According to the media, she was only wanted for questioning. But Gabriella didn’t dare take the chance. She’d called Wiman as soon as she’d hung up.