The Last Pilgrim

by Gard Sveen

  “You speak good Norwegian,” Tommy Bergmann said as he looked at the mansions in the neighborhood. The cab driver turned at the intersection. Much too good, he thought. Peter Waldhorst spoke Norwegian as if he’d hardly done anything else since the war.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I have to say . . . I mean, that’s quite an accomplishment, considering how long ago you were stationed in Norway.”

  Waldhorst looked at his watch.

  “I speak seven languages, Mr. Bergmann. Norwegian is easy. It’s a Germanic language, like my own.”

  “So your wife isn’t Norwegian?”

  Waldhorst shook his head.

  “Swedish. My Gretchen is Swedish, Mr. Bergmann. I also speak Swedish, in case you were wondering.” Waldhorst laughed quietly, as if amused by all this talk about his fluency in Norwegian.

  “I see.” Something fell into place in Bergmann’s mind—like puzzle pieces fitting together. If Waldhorst spoke Swedish with his wife, that could explain why he spoke such good Norwegian, since the two languages were so similar. For a moment he was filled with relief. He’d been about to list Waldhorst as a suspect, but the fact that he had a Swedish wife reassured him. His thoughts returned to another woman, Vera Holt, who found herself in an alternate universe, in the psych ward in Ullevål.

  “It sounds as if you wished you’d had children,” said Bergmann. “With your second wife.”

  Waldhorst gripped the armrest in the cab and turned to look at him.

  “Sometimes you really jump to conclusions, Mr. Bergmann.”

  Bergmann merely nodded. Waldhorst had a point.

  “And who said I don’t have children? My children and my first wife live in the United States. Or rather, my first wife lived in the States, may she rest in peace. It still saddens me to think of her buried over there, in Virginia of all places—the first colony of the English, if you can believe such a thing—and not here in her hometown.”

  Waldhorst motioned toward the windshield, as if that might clarify things for Bergmann.

  For several minutes they rode along in silence. Eventually they emerged from Grunewald and entered an area that looked more like the center of town. Filled with block after block of white-painted buildings, it had to be one of the city’s better neighborhoods.

  “My own children turned their backs on me,” said Waldhorst suddenly. “We became naturalized citizens in the States, my first wife and I. Years after we were divorced, right before I retired, I told my son and daughter the truth, in confidence. That I hadn’t come to the US as a German refugee in 1938. That I’d been a German officer during the war. And a Gestapo officer at that. They washed their hands of me. I was dead to them. Just dead.”

  Bergmann sat up straight. The feeling of relief vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Instead he was beginning to realize that he’d been misled, just as Waldhorst’s own children had been. Or maybe not. He could no longer make any sense of this case.

  “Were you in the Hitler Youth?” he asked.

  Waldhorst exchanged a few words with the cab driver, something about the route the driver had chosen. Bergmann was about to repeat his question but apparently Waldhorst had heard him the first time.

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “It’s just a question,” replied Bergmann.

  Waldhorst seemed to be pondering what to say.

  “You don’t have to answer, of course.”

  “No,” Waldhorst then said. “I was never in the Hitler Youth. My father was not a fanatic Nazi, so he dissuaded me from joining. This was before it became obligatory. He must have turned over in his grave—God be with him—when I joined the Gestapo.”

  “I have to confess something,” said Bergmann as he looked out the window at this city that he knew he would never understand. Any preconceptions that he’d had about Berlin only a few hours earlier were now gone. It felt as if a great sorrow hovered over it, a sorrow that would never go away. “I’m starting to doubt that Krogh actually killed those three people.”

  “Really?”

  “And if I don’t know who killed Agnes, Cecilia, and the maid, then I don’t know who killed Krogh either. And then it can’t be Vera Holt.”

  Waldhorst nodded.

  “Why have you been so convinced about the connection?”

  “Because Krogh was killed shortly after the three skeletons were found in Nordmarka, and because he was in the Resistance cell that is thought to have liquidated the most people during the German occupation of Norway. I think the discovery of the three bodies unleashed something in the killer. Rage directed at Krogh. And Vera Holt? Well, she has killed before.”

  “Rage,” Waldhorst murmured to himself. He turned to look at Bergmann, his lips parted. They were bluish, moist, and dry and cracked all at the same time. His eyes looked sad, as though covered with a veil of tears that might spill over as soon as Bergmann was out of sight. Then he seemed to regain his composure. He turned away to look out at the street. Bergmann was surprised to see which of his words struck Waldhorst the most. Rage.

  He decided to mention what he’d been thinking ever since he went to the National Library—the key to the doubts he had.

  “Was it Agnes Gerner who killed the research director at the molybdenum plant?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Waldhorst.

  Bergmann sighed with resignation.

  “Mr. Waldhorst . . . You are a former security and intelligence officer,” he said. “You were so brilliant that the Americans even got you out of Norway after the war. Officers like yourself never forget such matters. In the fall of 1942 Research Director Torfinn Rolborg was murdered in his office on Rosenkrantz Gate. An assassination, according to the Swedish National Police. And from what I understand, it resulted in an intense hunt for the killer.”

  “Hmm,” said Waldhorst.

  “A man like you would know immediately what I’m talking about.”

  Bergmann took out the file folder from the bag he’d set on the floor of the cab and leafed through the pages until he came to the Aftenposten printouts from the fall of 1942. The hunt for a blonde woman.

  Waldhorst didn’t even glance at the papers. He merely shook his head.

  “Agnes Gerner wasn’t blonde.”

  “So you do remember the incident?”

  “Believe me, that woman, Ms. Gerner, was a Nazi. I would have known if she wasn’t. Believe me.”

  “How would you have known?”

  Waldhorst uttered an annoyed sound. He looked worn out, as if it was foolhardy for a man of his age to play tennis the way he had that morning.

  “Because it was my job to clear her.”

  Bergmann settled back in his seat.

  “My superiors sent me to Gustav Lande when our intelligence discovered he was falling in love with a woman—and someone who was half British. My job was simply to clear her.”

  “And?” said Bergmann.

  “She was genuine.”

  “I see,” said Bergmann. He had nothing more to say. He had only Iver Faalund’s theory that Agnes Gerner was not a Nazi to hold up against Waldhorst’s claim.

  The driver signaled for a right turn and pulled up in front of a large old red-brick building covered with ivy. Bergmann thought it must be a private clinic for wealthy patients. The cars in the parking lot were not exactly economy models. It was true that he was in Berlin, where almost every vehicle surpassed most of the cars in any Oslo lot, but even so, he’d rarely seen so many luxury-class Mercedes or BMWs.

  “For a while I thought you’d found out something about Agnes and killed her,” he said.

  Waldhorst shook his head as he took some euros out of his wallet and handed them to the driver. Yet Bergmann thought he noticed a slight shift in the old man’s body language—as if he froze for a second—before he regained his composure.

  “I’m afraid I have to disappoint you, Mr. Bergmann. If we’d thought she was an assassin, she would have been arrested and not kil
led in the woods. Don’t you agree?”

  Waldhorst climbed out of the taxi with some effort, the driver having gotten out too late to offer him any help. Bergmann got out to say good-bye to the man, who stood there stretching his back after the short cab ride. He took a comb out of the pocket of his poplin jacket, which he wore in spite of the heat, and smoothed back his gray hair. Then he stared up at the building behind Bergmann, who turned to look up at the clinic windows. The reflection in the glass made it impossible to see if anyone was standing there watching them.

  “Is she seriously ill?” asked Bergmann.

  “At our age, most things are serious. That’s why I like to bring her something special when I can.” He nodded at the gift and rose he was holding.

  “When did you first meet?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Bergmann shrugged. He really didn’t know.

  “When Kennedy came to Berlin and said he was a Berliner, I was here, a real Berliner, as an American in my own town. It was awful.”

  “So you met here? In Berlin?” asked Bergmann.

  “We met in the departures hall at Tempelhof Airport, of all places.”

  Waldhorst looked at Bergmann and frowned, as if to say, yes, that was a long time ago. Then he shook his head.

  “Well,” he said, turning to the cab driver and saying something about taking Bergmann on to Tegel. They were so close to the airport that they could see the planes on the runway.

  The old man stepped forward until he was standing right in front of Bergmann.

  “I have to confess,” said Bergmann, “that I feel like I’ve overlooked something.”

  “That’s how things go in your line of work,” said Waldhorst. “It was the same for me. There’s always something you’ve overlooked. Something simple, something totally banal.”

  “I’ve overlooked something banal?” said Bergmann.

  “Start at the beginning and ask yourself one question,” said Waldhorst, pausing for effect. “Who was Carl Oscar Krogh?”

  “Who was Carl Oscar Krogh?” Bergmann repeated.

  Waldhorst nodded.

  “I’m sure the answer lies in that question. In the question itself.”

  “He had bank accounts in Switzerland or Liechtenstein,” said Bergmann.

  Waldhorst shook his head dismissively.

  Bergmann didn’t bother to ask to what extent Krogh had worked for the Germans. Waldhorst would simply have brushed aside such a notion.

  “Well, he must have put some money away from his business, don’t you think?” said Waldhorst. “Don’t make too much of it. The world is much simpler than that.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late, Mr. Bergmann. I don’t have any more time to waste.” He shook hands with Bergmann, who was leaning against the open car door. Their eyes met. Waldhorst’s eyes now looked guarded, as if he’d found his way back to the man he’d once been in Norway during the war. Bergmann didn’t want to think about the things he had done.

  “Good luck,” said Waldhorst. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been of more help.”

  “You’ve actually been a great help,” said Bergmann. Though I’m just not exactly sure how yet, he thought.

  “You were right about one thing,” said Waldhorst.

  “Oh yes?”

  “Agnes,” said Waldhorst.

  Bergmann looked at him, his expression neutral.

  “I loved her. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone else that much . . . No, I haven’t.”

  Bergmann opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t know what to say.

  “From the very first time I saw her,” Peter Waldhorst said quietly. Then he grimaced—or maybe it was a smile—turned on his heel, and headed up the pathway. He was stooped over now. Nothing remained of the man who had come in from the tennis court only a few hours earlier.

  Bergmann watched Waldhorst as he slowly made his way to the entrance of the German Red Cross Clinic. He thought that if the old man turned around, there must be something more, something he hadn’t said.

  But Waldhorst didn’t turn around, and the sliding door closed behind him.

  Bergmann tilted his head back and raised his hand to shield his eyes. He looked at one window after another in the big hospital building.

  “Mein Herr? Shall we go?” said the cab driver behind him.

  I loved her, Bergmann whispered to himself.

  CHAPTER 52

  Friday, September 25, 1942

  Knaben Molybdenum Mines, Inc.

  Rosenkrantz Gate

  Oslo, Norway

  After she got off the tram, Agnes Gerner stopped for a moment to glance down the street, then up. No National Police patrols or checkpoints were set up. A man coming toward her was flirting with her rather obviously. She avoided his gaze and pulled her hat down to hide her eyes. The blue contact lenses felt hard and dried her eyes out, making them sting.

  She turned the corner. There was no turning back now. Her heart was beating so hard that as she stood outside the main entrance to Knaben’s offices, she thought everyone could see it hammering against her coat, pounding beneath the thin blue fabric of her blouse.

  At the provisional checkpoint beyond the entrance stood a Wehrmacht corporal armed with a handgun and a private holding a Schmeisser across his chest. The bored corporal waved her forward and asked for her papers. He studied them briefly, then took her purse and rummaged through it. He barely looked at her when he ordered the private to pat her down.

  “Your business?” he asked. By this time, Agnes had managed to conceal her nervousness. It was as though Agnes Gerner no longer existed, had never existed.

  The echo of her heels across the marble floor resounded under the high arched ceiling and meshed with the sound of quiet conversations and ringing telephones. As she stood at the reception desk of Knaben’s Oslo offices, she was Ms. Irene Bjørnsen from Hamar and no one else.

  Without looking around the large reception area, she stated her name and her purpose for being there.

  The middle-aged receptionist regarded Agnes for a few seconds with a skeptical expression, as if she wanted to let her know that it wouldn’t help to dress like a whore to get a job at this firm. Research Director Rolborg wasn’t that sort. He wasn’t like other men.

  “Did you bring your papers and references?”

  Agnes smiled her most trustworthy smile and pulled the folder out of her purse.

  “Identification papers?”

  Agnes smiled again as she shoved the papers across the counter.

  “Miss,” said a voice beside her. A man was looking her straight in the eye. For a moment, she feared he could see the false pupils of glass behind the lenses of her spectacles.

  “I’m sorry, miss . . .” he began, still gazing straight into her eyes. Agnes smiled at him. He blushed.

  “Standing orders, miss, I assure you that . . .” He let the sentence die out and reached for her purse.

  Only now did Agnes realize that the man beside her was a plainclothes security officer. For a moment she felt as though she were going to collapse onto the marble floor, but all he did was take a look inside her purse, not even bothering to rummage through it. The stiff toilet paper rubbed against her abdomen whenever she moved, but now it didn’t make her feel sick. She was glad when she got her purse back for the second time that day. The security man nodded to her, but seemed a little too interested in her eyes.

  “There’s someone ahead of you,” said the receptionist, “and one person already waiting, up the stairs to the left. The name is on the door. Please have a seat. You’ll be called in by his private secretary.”

  “I see,” Agnes said quietly, her body stiffening. “So the private secretary will also be present?”

  “Yes,” said the receptionist in a tone that revealed her surprise that anyone would ask such a question. “Of course.”

  Agnes was not prepared for this. She just hadn’t thought that far ahead. None of them had. Her perfectly crafted plan fell ap
art when the receptionist said, “Of course.”

  Agnes hadn’t even had a chance to test-fire the pistol, and each round had to be loaded individually. And now she was supposed to kill two people. How? she wondered. Which one first? And a woman at that. Maybe a mother. No . . . a Nazi, she thought. Like her mother’s husband. Like the research director himself.

  The receptionist gave her another skeptical look with her head cocked, as if Agnes were something the cat had dragged in.

  “Excuse me?” Agnes said, straightening her glasses and smiling as best she could. “Where is the bathroom?”

  The woman pointed to the right and then went back to reading Agnes’s papers, shaking her head as she did so. Agnes nodded to the security man, who sat in one of the visitors’ chairs to the left of the entrance. She now realized that he had simply stared at her with the same look she got from most men. She walked with assured steps toward the door of the ladies’ room, which was marked with a brass nameplate. She felt the security man’s eyes watching her back—and imagined his gaze probably moving farther down. She grasped the door handle without trembling, and once inside she rapidly scanned the tiled room. There were no feet visible in the stalls, and no other women were at the mirrors. Agnes caught sight of herself, a blue shadow, in the mirrors as she took the two steps toward the first stall by the door. When she had closed the door behind her, she stood with her back leaning against it. She again felt how hard her heart was pounding in her chest.

  Just as her heartbeat began to calm down, the bathroom door opened. Automatically she held her breath. She waited as though frozen in place for the person to step inside.

  The security man, she thought.

  The door closed and the sounds from outside vanished. Everything was quiet.

  A woman, Agnes thought. Yes, it’s a woman.

  Thin stiletto heels crossed the floor. Agnes pressed herself against the blue wall of the stall, which extended almost all the way up to the ceiling, and breathed through her nose. The footsteps in the restroom stopped.

  It was impossible to hear anything clearly, to distinguish one sound from another. The throbbing in her head was intolerable. For a second she thought there was more than just the one woman outside the stall. Maybe it was the sound of a handbag being opened, but maybe it was something else. Maybe it was the snap of a holster—maybe the corporal outside had simply lured her into a trap, or Kaj Holt’s contact on the inside was a traitor.