Chain of Events

by Fredrik T. Olsson

  He would say all of that, and then he’d explain that this was just another case of the same phenomenon.

  But then Albert van Dijk had handled him the yellow envelope. And suddenly none of the things he’d rehearsed were applicable any more.

  The first thing he noted was that the envelope was stamped with an electronic franking machine. And next to the thick letters showing the postage and the date there was the name of a city. Bern. Printed in a thin, simple typeface.

  Neijzen took the letter, opened it, removed three sheets of paper covered in writing.

  Feminine hand. Tightly spaced. And Albert nodded at him. Read it.

  He did. And then he read it again. And again.

  Albert said nothing, merely waited for Neijzen to finish.

  And Neijzen read it through a third time. Even more carefully now.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said when he was done.

  Albert didn’t expect him to say otherwise. At first he hadn’t been able to work it out either, standing at the entrance to his building on campus, reading it over and over and with a growing disappointment.

  There was no doubt it was written by her. She was the only person in the world who could address a letter to Emmanuel Sphynx. And the handwriting was her neat print, the same lettering he used to find scribbled on Post-it notes in unexpected places, often sarcastic and taking him by surprise and sometimes tucked away inside his lecture manuscripts, making him stand there and smile sheepishly in front of a packed auditorium. The entire letter contained references to things they’d experienced together, secret places they’d visited and things they’d seen and the food poisoning they both got from the dried ham at the corner deli, the one that had smelled of petrol, but that the old man had convinced them was supposed to smell that way.

  And yet, it contained nothing. The letter said nothing about where she was, how he could find her, what she was doing. All it said was how much she missed him. And then, this long list of things they’d done together. Three pages of elegant handwriting, one single letter after seven months of silence. And no content, other than nostalgia?

  Eventually, it had fallen into place. ‘It’s childishly simple,’ he said to Neijzen.

  He’d been standing in the university courtyard, reading the letter over and over, until finally he asked himself the right question. Why the rambling? Places and objects and food and things. And then suddenly he’d understood, there and then it had become clear to him and all he wanted to do was to hold her close and tell her how great she was. Which, obviously, he couldn’t.

  The seminar. That day. Their day.

  They had sat beside each other, inventing names and acronyms, giggling like children. And it was Emanuel Sphynx that had stuck in their memory and become a part of their mutual past.

  But – the acronyms. The absurd abbreviations of one phrase after the other, solemnly recounted by the speaker at the podium. It was them she wanted him to remember, that was why she’d lined up the words like that, and he’d sat down on the stone staircase, read the letter again, and this time it took on an entirely different content and he loved her more than ever.

  Simple enough that he could work it out. Yet devious enough to make it under the radar in case someone found it before it reached him.

  ‘I give up,’ Neijzen said.

  ‘Take all the nouns – names, places, things. Take the first letter in each word.’

  ‘You’re joking?’

  Albert shrugged. And Neijzen read the letter through again. And for a moment he felt a chill travel through his three hundred and twenty-six pounds as if somebody had just opened his body like a refrigerator and replaced his internal organs with cold air.

  As codes went, it was ridiculously simple. But he’d missed it all the same. And Albert hadn’t, which meant it had done exactly the job it was intended to.

  Neijzen spelled his way through the first page a couple of times to find out where he should separate the words and the sentences. They weren’t very long, but they were succinct enough.

  ‘What – I – See,’ he mouthed.

  Albert nodded to confirm.

  ‘Castle. Alpine lake. High mountains. No snow.’

  That was all he could make out from the first page. And Neijzen glanced over at Albert. As information went, it wasn’t much to go on. ‘That could be almost anywhere,’ he said.

  Albert disagreed. ‘It could be many places. But not anywhere.’

  Neijzen kept silent. Van Dijk was both right and wrong. There were probably hundreds upon hundreds of castles surrounded by alpine lakes, and even if you checked the weather, looking for mountains near castles that hadn’t had any snow yet, there would still be far too many to mount a search.

  Albert knew it too. But gestured to Neijzen to continue. ‘There are two more pages.’

  Okay. Neijzen turned to the next page, scanned the handwriting, once again stopping at every noun and pointing them out one by one with his finger. He could have marked them with a pen, but he didn’t want to contaminate the original and he was too absorbed with the contents to walk out across the hallway and make a copy.

  ‘Names – I’ve – Heard,’ he mouthed.

  Albert nodded again.

  ‘Connors. Franquin. Helena Watkins.’

  ‘We must be able to do a search on that,’ said Albert. ‘A Connors and a Franquin and a Helena Watkins. Maybe they have criminal records, or they’re in the tax register, I don’t know. That’s your thing. But there must be a way, mustn’t there?’

  ‘We can definitely give it a try,’ he said.

  And Albert breathed a silent thank-you. Waited as Neijzen turned to the final page. And fell silent.

  It was on the third page that things got strange.

  ‘What – I – Know,’ he said finally.

  Albert confirmed with a nod.

  And Neijzen read it. Then read it again. And one more time.

  Albert said nothing. Waited. Aware what Neijzen must be thinking. And he could only agree: the whole thing seemed unreal. The words were unthinkable, they were words you couldn’t expect in a letter sent from someone you knew – strike that, someone you loved and who shouldn’t be gone, who should be at home and probably still in bed, and who’d refuse to get up even if you called and told her what time it was. That’s where she should be, that’s how everything ought to have been, but now everything was something else and no matter how you refused to believe it, that didn’t stop it from being true.

  Neijzen cleared his throat. Spoke in a low voice. And read the words, extremely slowly.

  ‘Codes in Sumerian writing,’ he said. And then: ‘DNA.’ And: ‘A deadly virus.’

  And then he stopped. Puzzled over the last couple of letters one more time.

  Albert already knew what they said. There were tears in his eyes as Neijzen looked up from the letter.

  And read the last sentence.

  ‘Find me.’

  Neijzen leaned towards Albert, folded his hands under his chin, and for a moment his fingers hung like tangled sausages in front of where his neck would have been, had he had one. He knew the pose wasn’t flattering but right now he didn’t care.

  Everything he’d said until this moment had been true.

  But he had one thing left to say, and it was going to be a lie.

  ‘I am going to do everything within my power to find her,’ he said. He looked sincerely at Albert, two compassionate eyes in a body that had given up and started to decay, perhaps because his body resented who he’d become and had chosen this way to punish him. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes. I need to make a copy of this.’

  He got up, walked to the photocopier, and stood there. Breathing heavily.

  Damn his body, damn his physical condition, damn the doctor at the health service who was right, but more than everything else damn Janine Charlotta Haynes and the people of that blasted Organisation, those anonymous figures who obviously hadn’t been able to stop her from sending this. No
w here he was with their problem in his lap.

  He had a long list of things to do next. And he could only hope that Albert van Dijk didn’t know what they were.

  Because that would make his next step infinitely harder.

  20

  The phone call from Christina Sandberg had come shortly after five in the morning. Her voice had been clear and alert – either she’d already been up for a while or she hadn’t slept – and Leo had fought against heavy eyelids as she’d informed him that she’d be picking him up at exactly ten minutes to six, told him what he needed to pack and then hung up. It wasn’t until he was standing in the shower that he’d realised he was actually awake.

  The obvious thing to do would have been to put on the same clothes as the day before. Instead, he’d grabbed a fresh pair of jeans and a plain long-sleeved T-shirt. And then he asked himself the question that made everything go awry.

  What would a journalist wear? A journalist who’s about to travel abroad?

  The answer he came up with was a blazer.

  Leo hesitated: was he really a journalist? Only if he allowed himself to feel like one. And so at ten to six he found himself in front of his building in his one wrinkled blazer, and the only thing he felt like was an idiot.

  The moment he stepped out of the door he knew he’d made the wrong choice.

  She would think he’d put it on because of her. Or, even if she didn’t, he would think that she did, and that would be bad enough.

  But there was no time to do anything about it.

  The taxi pulled up at the kerb, a click as the door opened, Christina leaning across the back seat summoning him to get in. And as he took his place beside her, the cab turned down towards Folkungagatan, and then north through the empty dawn.

  The only movements were occasional cabs and thousands of almost invisible flakes of early snow, floating in below the yellow streetlights for a few whirly moments before vanishing back into the darkness.

  The sound of the tyres on the cold street. The windscreen wipers. The engine.

  ‘Did you get hold of him?’ asked Leo.

  Christina shook her head. ‘I’ve left a voicemail for his secretary. I’ll try again before we take off.’

  ‘So you don’t know, then. That he’s there. I mean, if.’

  Christina closed her eyes. She had a headache that had kept her company since she got home from the office, and a single hour of sleep on the couch hadn’t helped her much, any more than having her intern question her judgement. Especially having to decipher his half-finished sentences in order to work out that’s what he was doing.

  ‘What I do know is that we don’t have much time,’ she said. ‘Your Dutch student has been off the radar for seven months now.’

  He looked over at her. Your student? What was that about? Was she giving him credit for finding her, or was she trying to unburden herself of responsibility?

  ‘I don’t want William to have to wait that long.’

  She stared out of the window, listening to the engine changing its pitch as they turned on to the Centralbron bridge. Saw Stockholm’s lights reflect in the water beneath it, still too early in the year to ice up.

  ‘Is it okay if I ask you something?’ Leo asked.

  She looked at him. As if I could stop it. She didn’t say, but thought.

  ‘You’re not doing this for the paper, are you? You’re doing it because you still believe in the two of you.’

  It was unexpectedly direct and free of his usual mumblings. She glowered at him, her headache replaced by irritation. Irritation because he had opinions about her decisions, she told herself, not because he read her so annoyingly well.

  ‘We’re journalists,’ she said. ‘Journalists dig. We would be neglecting our duty if we didn’t.’

  Leo gave a smile that was far too grown-up.

  ‘But what I don’t think our duty dictates,’ he said, ‘is that you need to put on that thing, there. Especially as you haven’t been wearing it for the last six months.’

  She knew immediately what he was talking about. But she still followed his gaze. Down in her lap, to her left hand, resting there. Her wedding ring.

  Yes, she had put it on. And yes, maybe the brat was right. But couldn’t she please be allowed to make her own decisions without having him sticking his nose in?

  ‘Journalism school,’ she said. ‘First year. My lecturer gave me some advice that I’ve carried with me ever since.’

  He waited for her to go on.

  ‘If you’ve got something important to say? Write it.’ She paused. ‘And don’t talk so fucking much.’

  She looked away, hid her left hand under her handbag, didn’t utter another word for the rest of the journey to Arlanda airport.

  And Leo turned back to his own window, watched the lines on the road whizzing by. Smiled, but did his best not to let her see. She had a sharp tongue. And he was finding the whole situation immensely entertaining.

  On her side of the back seat, Christina Sandberg was doing the same thing. She was smiling too.

  Leo was going to be a first-class journalist.

  And she was perfectly happy about taking him with her to Amsterdam.

  William Sandberg sat at the front of the chapel, almost as if he was waiting for her.

  The sun had moved, painting the pews in a kaleidoscope of colours, William right in the centre like a lecturer in front of a badly focused PowerPoint presentation.

  Maybe it was the room that made her come to a halt. Or maybe it was the knowledge that she was in a part of the castle where only days before she’d had to run, silently and cautiously and in the middle of the night. Whatever it was, Janine paused at the back of the chapel in silence, even though all she wanted was to start talking, eager to tell him what she knew and compare it with what they’d told him.

  To understand why they were there. Or rather: how they could get out.

  Finally, she moved down the aisle towards him. Sat down on the other side of it, facing him from the edge of the bench.

  ‘They’re telling me you’re okay,’ said William.

  ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘who am I to disagree?’

  He half-smiled at her in reply. He looked tired, but in all likelihood so did she.

  ‘We need to sync what we know,’ she said.

  She wanted to move quickly but without undue stress. Somewhere on one of the many floors of stone above them William had his room. And there, if everything was the way she hoped, maybe she’d find the answers to the thoughts that jostled in her brain.

  ‘What do you know?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure I know anything.’

  He leaned against the pew, looked over his shoulder at the huge wooden doors. As if he didn’t feel safe. As if he expected the doors to burst open at any moment, guards to storm in with weapons at the ready, pull them out of there and lock them up and interrogate them about what the other one had said.

  But it didn’t happen.

  Nothing happened. Only silence and the colours and neither of them knowing where to begin.

  ‘AGCT,’ William said eventually.

  To his surprise he found her smiling.

  ‘I didn’t think you saw it,’ she said.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  She hesitated. Since day one, the information she’d been given had been limited to the absolute minimum. What she’d said was true. She didn’t know anything.

  ‘You’re a sumerologist, right?’ he said. He knew perfectly well that she was, but he had to start the dialogue somewhere and why not there.

  She made a quick calculation in her head. She wanted to give him as much as he needed to keep up, but without getting lost in details.

  And then, she began from the beginning. The details she’d skipped during their twelve minutes on the castle terrace. How she’d woken that first morning in a luxurious bed, just like William’s. How they’d escorted her to a huge hall, given her a brief overview of the Organisation
and the codes and the cuneiform script. Told her that everything was urgent and pressing and thank you and goodbye.

  And then they’d shown her to an office, and all of her possessions were there waiting for her: books and publications and computers and reference literature, arranged almost identically to the set-up she’d had at home, except now it was all suddenly here and nobody would tell her why.

  They started by giving her brief excerpts. Single lines of cuneiform script, instructing her to interpret and translate them and come back with the result.

  On a purely academic level, she’d been thrilled. The texts were older than anything she’d seen. There were signs and symbols she’d never come across, like a dialect or linguistic branch that hadn’t been discovered until now, and to every scientist in the world that would have meant success and champagne and writing essays to tell the rest of academia about their breakthrough.

  But this, nobody wanted to tell anyone about.

  And that didn’t make sense. Worse: it tortured her. The more she worked with it, the more apparent it became just how astonishing and pioneering it was, and the more it tore her apart to think that nobody outside those suffocatingly thick walls would ever find out.

  Because it wasn’t an unknown dialect. It wasn’t a later evolution of the Sumerian language.

  It was the opposite.

  The symbols were precursors. The texts she’d been given were older than any text ever found, and the unknown symbols were prototypes, early versions that would develop and become simplified, sometimes combined, sometimes divided through centuries of progress until they came to resemble the oldest examples of writing that science had found.

  It appeared that someone had discovered an unknown ancient civilisation. One that predated any known society in human history.

  And Janine had been overwhelmed – no, ecstatic. But when she asked the men around her where it had come from, and how, and why, they refused to answer.

  William listened. And as soon as she was finished he started speaking.