The Swimmer

by Joakim Zander

  She took back her card and jumped out of the cab. The clock on her cell phone showed 00:12 a.m. An unusual time to visit your boss at his home. But it was Wiman who’d suggested it. It felt good somehow. That Wiman cared about this.

  His house was undeniably magnificent, she reflected as she walked up the beautifully laid cobblestone path that led to the entrance. Gabriella had heard the stories. The house was legendary among the young lawyers at the firm who’d been honored with an invitation. It was a perfect, cream-colored cube, two stories, maybe three thousand square feet. The house sat on a small hill, which made it feel somewhat secluded, as if it were too exclusive even for Djursholm, Stockholm’s most upscale suburb. The wind howled through the bare oaks.

  The doorbell emitted a deep ding-dong when she pressed the little white button next to the double doors. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for them to open.

  ‘Gabriella, welcome. Come in,’ Wiman said.

  He was, despite the hour, dressed impeccably in his usual style. A dark suit with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket. White shirt. The only compromise was his lack of tie. He was holding a whiskey glass with a rounded bottom. The amber liquid seemed to glow in the dull light from inside.

  ‘Sorry to bother you so late,’ Gabriella said. ‘It certainly wasn’t my intention, we could have discussed this tomorrow. I just wanted to keep you informed.’

  Wiman waved impatiently with his hand and led the way across the marble floor of the hall.

  ‘I invited you here, Gabriella. If I had wanted to wait until tomorrow, I would have said so.’

  He led her into what seemed to be an office or library. Did people still have private libraries? Gabriella looked around in wonder. Three tall windows, facing the water, took up the long side of the room. In the darkness, she could only imagine the water, but she assumed the house was on a seafront property. A window on the short side also presumably looked out over the water. The rest of the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with books. A fire was burning in the fireplace next to the door they’d just come through. How much did a house like this cost? Twenty million kronor? More? Is this what you could expect if you became a partner?

  ‘Wow, what a fantastic house,’ she said.

  ‘It’s from the turn of the century,’ Wiman said, completely unfazed by the compliment. ‘But it was rebuilt in the twenties in the Italian style. And I’ve done some renovations, of course. Can I offer you something? A cognac? Red wine?’

  He gestured toward a small, but well-stocked mahogany cart that stood in the corner by the windows.

  ‘I’ll have a whiskey,’ Gabriella said.

  She suddenly felt that a drink was just what she needed.

  Wiman went over to the cart and poured a hefty amount of whiskey in a glass similar to his own. Before putting the bottle back, he refilled his own glass.

  ‘Water?’ he asked.

  Gabriella shook her head, and Wiman handed her the glass before they sat down across from each other in the Bruno Mathsson armchairs in front of the fireplace. The room was dark, lit only by the fire and the subdued floor lamp beside the bar cart.

  ‘I was sad to hear about your friend. I’m sorry,’ Wiman said and took a small sip of whiskey.

  Gabriella took a much larger sip and leaned back against the sheepskin of the armchair. She wasn’t going to cry, not here, not now.

  ‘Yes,’ she said instead. ‘It’s terrible. Shocking. I don’t think I’ve really grasped it yet.’

  She couldn’t help it. A tear escaped the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek. It was still so fresh, so utterly incomprehensible.

  Wiman said nothing, just stared into the fire. He looked older. Haggard. As if something was weighing on him. Klara had never seen him like this. Usually his face seemed made of Teflon, completely resistant to emotions.

  ‘And now you’ve been in touch with Ms Walldéen? Who, according to the media, was with Mr Shammosh when he was shot in Paris?’

  Wiman got up and put a birch log onto the fire, which crackled as the bark started to burn. Gabriella heard the wind whistling through the ancient trees outside. She wiped the tear from her cheek and ran her hands through her hair. She nodded.

  ‘Klara called me a little while ago and asked me to represent her. And I intend to do so, of course. That is, if she even needs representation. She’s not suspected of anything, as far as I know.’

  ‘And where is she now?’ Wiman said.

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t want to tell me over the phone. But I asked her to come back to Sweden. It felt like the right thing to do. So that we can sit down and go over what happened before she contacts the police. She’s in shock, of course. Completely in shock.’

  ‘What is this about?’ Wiman’s tone bordered on impatience. ‘Why were Shammosh and that other Swede murdered? It’s extremely important that we find out what’s behind all this.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gabriella said. ‘I honestly have no idea. And I’m not sure if Klara knows either.’

  ‘Is that the impression you got? That she didn’t know why they were being hunted?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Or no. I don’t think she knows what’s going on. Or at least she didn’t tell me.’

  Wiman nodded slowly.

  ‘Exactly what did she say on the phone? Try to remember verbatim.’

  Gabriella reconstructed their short conversation as best she could. It was soothing to be questioned by Wiman. Safe, somehow. A lawyer’s icy focus on details. It helped her to achieve some distance.

  ‘And when she comes to Sweden?’ Wiman said, after she’d finished describing the call. ‘If she comes to Sweden, that is. What’s the plan then?’

  ‘She mentioned that she knows someplace in the archipelago where she can hide while we figure out what’s going on. Outside Arkösund. And I guess that was really the reason I wanted to talk to you. What should I do? What should I say? The media will probably have their own version of the story by tomorrow.’

  Gabriella downed the last drink of her whiskey and felt it warming her from the inside.

  ‘Forget the media for now,’ Wiman said.

  He took Gabriella’s empty glass and went to the bar to refill it.

  ‘The only thing you need to focus on right now is getting her to Sweden. Keep her hidden while we figure things out. Keep me informed of exactly where you are, okay? It’s important that we stay connected.’

  Wiman handed the whiskey glass to Gabriella.

  ‘Give me all the details as soon as you have them,’ he said. ‘No fucking solo flights now. I mean that.’

  Gabriella nodded and gulped down the whiskey in a single burning mouthful.

  ‘I should really call a cab,’ she said and picked up her phone.

  51

  December 20, 2013

  Washington, DC, USA

  Twenty minutes later we’re sitting in a hazy bar in Georgetown, in a booth near the back, the burgundy vinyl seats slippery against my chinos. It’s a place for those of us who are serious about our alcohol. My first Rusty Nail tastes smooth and nostalgic against my lips. The second plants my feet firmly on the ground, makes history fade temporarily. I set the glass down on the dark, well-worn table.

  Susan is sipping on her club soda. Spinning her highball glass so the ice clinks against the edges. The sound blends together with a song I vaguely recognize. That warm guitar, those lines about the mist-covered mountains. In the dim light she looks translucent, almost ghostly. She’s followed me here. How much further?

  ‘So why now?’ she says.

  We have arrived. We have followed the complicated tentacles of history all the way here. All the way to the surface. To a point where everything is about forgetting, forgiving, saving what can be saved.

  ‘My daughter,’ I say. ‘It’s about my daughter.’

  Her expression doesn’t change. She takes a small sip of her drink.

  ‘Klara Walldéen,’ I say. ‘She’s in our register. I
want access to everything about her. All of our reports, all real-time data, everything. And I want it now. Immediately. Tonight.’

  Susan just looks at me. The neutrality of her look is paralyzing.

  ‘And if you were to get it?’ she says. ‘If you were to gain access to what you want? What would that change?’

  I drink what’s left of my drink in one gulp, until the ice cubes hit my teeth. I lean back and feel how the room is shrinking around me. How the world outside is growing. I feel the warmth of the alcohol and the grief from my past. I feel the anxiety and the thrill of the hunt. I feel the power of every wrong decision outweighed by the power of a single possibility to set something right. At a certain point relativism can no longer save a person’s soul. I have so much to make amends for.

  ‘What is this about?’ I say. ‘What has she gotten involved in?’

  Susan’s eyes look right through me.

  ‘Why have you never mentioned your daughter?’

  Even though I know I shouldn’t, that I’ve already gone too far, crossed a line, I wave to the bartender and see him nod and reach for a glass, filling it with ice, whiskey, Drambuie.

  ‘I asked first,’ I say.

  ‘Did you think you could protect her? By hiding her?’ she says.

  There’s something almost sad about her now. Her pale complexion against the burgundy backrest of the booth. The darkness of the room. The first outlines of dark circles under her eyes that her subtle makeup can’t hide. It’s late, but we’re both accustomed to sleepless nights.

  ‘You understand, of course, that we already knew all of this when you came in from Damascus thirty years ago? We knew you left her at the Swedish embassy a few days after the bomb. We knew she grew up with her grandparents in the Swedish archipelago. I’ve known about your searches in our databases since you started them ten years ago. There’s nothing we don’t know.’

  It’s an out-of-body experience. Staggering. To come face-to-face with your own delusions. To finally stand naked in front of yourself. Floating high above your own body, your own constructed world. I feel my fingers trembling and fight the impulse to down the drink the bartender just put in front of me. I take a sip. The clink of ice. Everything she says, I actually already knew. I take another sip of the drink. Lean my head back, giving in, and down it. Let the sweet liquid rush through me, lend me some kind of fragile strength. The only secret I had actually fooled myself into believing. Not even that. I fumble with the manila folder Susan set on the table between us.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I don’t care what you knew. Give me the information about Klara, Susan. It’s over for me now. It’s done. I’ll go to the Washington Post with what I know and what I can prove. I swear to God, Susan. It’s enough now. Give me the chance to correct what I can.’

  Susan sets her glass down silently and reaches across the table for the folder. Quietly, she opens it. The papers inside flutter in the draft from the door to the bar, spread across the table. Ten. Twenty. Maybe thirty pages. All of them are completely blank. Just white letter-size paper. Nothing else.

  We’re sitting in the car. Susan drives quietly through the sleeping city while telling me all about Klara and Mahmoud. All about the mistakes, the loss of control. All about the usual, hopeless everyday of our world. One more operation that went beyond rhyme or reason.

  When she’s finished, she makes a call and asks some nameless assistant at a safe distance to book my trip. She parks the car carefully in front of my apartment complex. Turns her wrist and takes a look at her simple, expensive watch.

  ‘Four hours until your plane leaves,’ she says. ‘You need a shower and a pot of coffee. Do you still have an alias you can use?’

  I nod, thinking of the two Canadian passports under different names lying in my safe. I thought that was all over. That the game had ended. But there’s always one more move. Always one last chance.

  ‘Why, Susan?’ I say. ‘Why are you doing this for me?’

  The Ford’s engine hums. A few snowflakes dance under the streetlamps outside.

  ‘Maybe I owe you this?’ she says. ‘Maybe you’re our best chance to solve this now? Does it matter?’

  I open the car door. The alcohol turns me into gas, allows me to float out of the car. Nothing matters. Nothing except the next move.

  52

  December 21, 2013

  Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  On the half-empty and poorly cleaned night bus to Amsterdam, fatigue finally overtook Klara. The Eurolines bus out of Paris had been her best option. No ID requirements, and it was unlikely there’d be passport control in Amsterdam. Eurolines—the excruciatingly sluggish cross-continental circulatory system of Europe’s poor—was an exact reflection of the middle class’s clinical network of train and flight routes. The same destinations, but different people. Instead of Samsonite-rolling business travelers and rosy-cheeked families, buses transported Polish carpenters with vodka bottles and toolboxes, Muslim women traveling alone with head scarves and meticulously packed cheap, plastic suitcases. Maybe a student with severe liquidity problems and a sweetheart in another part of the continent. Klara stretched out across two seats, using her handbag as a pillow and with the shoulder strap of the computer bag wrapped several times around her left arm. She was asleep before the bus even left downtown Paris.

  Klara didn’t wake up again until the bus stopped outside the Amstel station in central Amsterdam. It was still dark outside and a harsh wind flooded the bus as the doors opened with a hiss. Klara put on her coat and pulled the knitted cap over her ears. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she peeked out the window, half expecting to see a throng of police. But the bleak pavement in front of the 1930s building was completely vacant, except for a single city bus standing with its headlights off under a broken streetlight. Klara joined the motley group of passengers moving out of the bus. The station clock read almost 7:00 a.m. Three hours to go.

  Amsterdam’s streets and canals were deserted as Klara wandered through the city. The wind whipped right through her. It had been blustery every time she’d been to Amsterdam—a constant, chilling reminder of how flat Holland was.

  She felt impatient, almost manic. Keeping the thoughts of Mahmoud, the blood, and her impending grief at bay took whatever strength she could muster. At times it felt like her head, her chest, and her heart might burst with a force so violent, she’d be scattered across Europe. She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment. She forced herself to stop thinking about the horror of Paris and instead focus on a place where she was, if not happy, at least safe. She visualized her grandmother in her living room, the crackling fire in the stove, the lace tablecloth and the finest Gustavsberg porcelain. The taste of saffron buns and the sound of an approaching storm. She knew it was far from a permanent solution; it was a temporary bandage on the stump of an amputated leg, but it staunched the bleeding for the moment.

  She’d expected that someone calling himself Blitzworm97 would live in a rougher neighborhood than Prinsengracht proved to be. Maybe in a garage in some concrete suburb, where he—slightly overweight, wearing a Star Trek T-shirt, drinking Jolt Cola—spent his time hammering out plans for the destruction of the world’s financial centers through a highly targeted cyber-attack. Anywhere but here among the picturesque canals and Christmas decorations of central Amsterdam. Did she really have the right address? But she’d checked it a hundred times before getting rid of the phone, and there was only one Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.

  Number 344 appeared to be a single-family home. The large, gleaming windows overlooked the canal. She could see a clinical, stainless steel kitchen inside, where a gray-haired man of about forty-five, in an immaculate, navy suit, sat on a barstool, drinking coffee with a newspaper in front of him. It was the perfect image of a successful European man, taken from the pages of the ‘How to Spend It’ section of the Financial Times. Klara felt her heart sinking in her chest. Damn. There was absolutely no way he could be Blitzworm. Something wa
sn’t right.

  She walked past the house quickly and sat down at a café a few blocks away. She ordered a cappuccino and two croissants. She was suddenly very hungry. When was the last time she’d eaten? She felt confused, worried. The man in the window hardly looked like he was in need of 200 euros. His tie probably cost more than that. But this was her only lead.

  At 10:15 Klara swallowed nervously and rang the doorbell of Prinsengracht 344. She was sweating despite the winter cold. The clouds hung low over Amsterdam, and a nasty drizzle dampened her face. It took almost a minute before she heard footsteps on the stairs inside the house. Ten seconds before the door opened wide.

  A skinny girl of about fifteen stood in front of Klara. High cheekbones and clear blue eyes. A slim, greyhoundlike face, with a mouth that seemed way too big. Long, gangly arms. Baggy jeans and an oversize Justin Bieber T-shirt. Everything about her was out of proportion. Awkward. Klara suspected, judging by those cheekbones and those eyes, that she’d look quite different by the time she got through her teens. The girl was chewing gum. Of course.

  ‘Hi,’ said Klara in English, unsure of how to proceed.

  The girl looked at her. A childish, arrogant smile on her lips.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Who’re you looking for?’

  She spoke American English. Almost without an accent.

  ‘Sorry,’ Klara said. ‘I must have the wrong address.’

  The girl continued looking at her without making any attempt to close the door.

  ‘I’m sorry. Please excuse me,’ Klara said, starting to turn around.

  ‘Come in,’ said the girl. ‘You’re SoulXsearcher’s friend, right?’

  Klara stopped in midmotion.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose so. Are you Blitzworm97?’

  ‘Were you expecting somebody else?’ the girl said as Klara hesitantly stepped into the bright, Philippe Starck-inspired hallway. A tall vase filled with fresh white roses stood on a white rococo table under what could be an authentic Miró.