by Gard Sveen
A minute later the footsteps moved away slowly and disappeared out the door.
The pistol was exactly where it was supposed to be. Agnes didn’t waste any time. She replaced the lid on the large toilet tank, making so little noise she barely heard it herself. She hurried to tear the plastic off the Welrod, which suddenly felt like it was several feet long. Then she threw the plastic in the trash can and covered it with some toilet paper. She wadded up some paper towels and scattered them on top.
She studied the strange steel barrel for a few seconds. She quietly prayed to God that it still worked and that there was a round in the chamber. She opened her purse. It fit perfectly, just as Kaj Holt had said it would.
She crossed herself and left the restroom.
CHAPTER 53
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Schönefeld Airport
Berlin, Germany
Schönefeld Airport, located just outside the former East Berlin, was small and dilapidated, but Tommy Bergmann didn’t care. His mind was on other things as he flicked his cigarette butt into an overflowing ashtray outside the departures hall.
Peter Waldhorst’s last words were still ringing in his ears: “I loved her.” Why had he said that?
Bergmann stopped and set down his suitcase a few steps inside the airport terminal, right between a horde of hungover Englishmen and a young couple weeping and clutching at each other in a tight embrace.
He turned around. First once. Then again. Then he studied the screens displaying the upcoming departing flights in yellow lettering. Two police officers came strolling through the hall. Bergmann fixed his gaze on one of the cops’ holsters, then on the German shepherd who was staring with sorrowful eyes past the muzzle fastened over its snout.
He had an inexplicable feeling that Peter Waldhorst had pulled a veil over his eyes, a kind of smoke screen that made it impossible for him to see clearly.
I loved her, Bergmann repeated to himself. I loved her?
If Krogh had really killed Agnes Gerner, and Waldhorst . . .
He heard a voice over the PA system call out Oslo and his name. It’s time, he thought, glancing at his watch. How long had he actually sat at that sidewalk restaurant? Hadja had called him on his cell, but he hadn’t answered. Suddenly he could feel pressure on his bladder from the three or four beers that he’d imbibed in an attempt to think about something else. At the gate he was met with a disapproving look. The woman behind the counter glanced demonstratively at the clock.
“I’m sorry,” said Bergmann and headed for the restroom on his left.
“Mr. Bergmann,” she said loudly behind him.
Bergmann kept going. It wouldn’t be the worst thing if he missed his flight. Maybe it was meant to be. I loved her, he thought as the urinal filled up with Berlin beer.
He was studying his face in the mirror when his cell phone rang. The bags under his eyes had shrunk a little, and his skin almost seemed to have a healthy glow. Once again—probably for the last time—he heard his name over the PA system.
“What is it?” said Bergmann into the phone, heading straight past the angry flight attendant toward the gate, where the Norwegian Air flight was still waiting for him.
“We’ve gotten the search warrant for Vera Holt’s residence.”
“Not bad,” said Bergmann, standing in the aircraft door. There was no backing out now.
“We’ll do it tomorrow morning,” said Reuter.
Bergmann walked down the center aisle, momentarily enjoying being the object of every idiot’s envious interest.
“No, we’ll do it tonight,” he said. “As soon as I’ve landed.”
Reuter said nothing.
“I thought you were in such a hurry?” said Bergmann. He found his seat, dropping his carry-on in the middle of the aisle to leave the problem of stowing it to the already irritated flight attendant.
“Boarding completed,” the loudspeaker above him announced in English.
“Okay. Call me when you land,” said Reuter.
“And bring Halgeir with you,” said Bergmann.
There was a grunt from Oslo. None of them liked Halgeir Sørvaag, but he was unbeatable when it came to getting through locked doors and hitting the jackpot during searches.
“So, did you meet this Waldhorst?” Reuter asked.
The plane had already backed out of the gate and was approaching the runway. The flight attendant came marching down the aisle and gave Bergmann a withering look to indicate he had to turn off his phone.
“We’ll talk about it when I get there. I’ve gotta go.”
“Okay, but . . .” Reuter said.
“What is it?” Bergmann said with a sigh.
“Something really strange has come up. It might not be important, but . . .”
“Is there anything that isn’t strange about this case?” Bergmann said.
“We got the final report from Forensics today.”
“On Krogh?”
“No, on the three skeletons from Nordmarka.”
Bergmann sat up in his seat. “Yes?” he said softly.
“It wasn’t the maid who was buried up there in the woods.”
Goosebumps appeared on Bergmann’s bare arms.
“Not the maid? Not Johanne Caspersen?”
“For all I know,” said Reuter, “she may still be alive.”
There was a pause. Neither of them knew what to say.
Bergmann turned off his phone and put it in his pocket. Exhausted, he leaned back on the headrest as the plane taxied out to the runway. An image began to form in his mind’s eye. A girl, a woman, and a man had been found in Nordmarka, Reuter had said. The maid must have gotten away, but how? Then on an impulse he dug out the photo in his inside pocket. The picture of Waldhorst and Agnes Gerner facing each other at the table on Midsummer Eve in 1942. Next to Agnes was a dark-haired man, ten years older. Gustav Lande.
Gustav Lande! It struck him like lightning.
Lande was the man in the photo back at Waldhorst’s apartment. The man standing on the rocks. The woman beside him must have been his first wife. Obviously pregnant with the little girl who was later killed.
But why? Bergmann wondered as the plane took off. Why does Peter Waldhorst have a photo of Gustav Lande and his pregnant first wife?
CHAPTER 54
Friday, September 25, 1942
Knaben Molybdenum Mines, Inc.
Rosenkrantz Gate
Oslo, Norway
Her eyes were focused on the back of the two picture frames on the desk. What else would a man with an office like this have, other than photos of his wife and children?
Agnes Gerner cursed herself for allowing such a thought to enter her mind. She cautiously shifted her position on the chair, which was set at an angle in front of the desk. The stiff toilet paper felt like metal inside her panties. She grimaced, then tried to hide it behind a smile.
Seated next to her on an identical chair was Rolborg’s private secretary. Agnes took her eyes off the photographs and, clutching her purse on her lap, shifted her gaze to the woman on her right.
“So, it looks like we’ll be working together. I will be your immediate supervisor,” said the private secretary, sounding a bit nervous. She let her words die out as she turned to face Research Director Rolborg. He was reading through Agnes’s papers and didn’t look up. As he read, he grunted something to himself. His pale skin was tight across his cheekbones, like a death mask.
Agnes could tell that her own face was pale—and cold, as if she knew that this would be the death of her too. How could she have been so naïve as to think that she’d get out of this alive? There was only one way out, and that was back the way she’d come in.
For a moment she was sure she would faint. Her eyes rolled back as she thought about the director having children, three or maybe four.
“My dear, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” said the secretary, whose name Agnes couldn’t for the life of her remember, even though they’d been
introduced only a few minutes before. The secretary got up to put her hand on Agnes’s shoulder. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to take your coat? It’s terribly warm in here, don’t you think?”
Agnes’s whole body seemed to stop functioning for a moment. Feeling as though her heart had stopped pumping blood, she sank farther and farther into a bog, a swamp.
“Would you like a glass of water?” asked the secretary, who was not at all as Agnes had imagined her. She had kind eyes and a gentle voice with a trace of a southern Norwegian dialect. She was probably married and had children.
Agnes nodded silently toward the secretary. She was no longer thinking rationally. She was about to be overwhelmed by a surge of sentimentality, and her goal was becoming less and less clear. The job she was supposed to do now seemed impossible to carry out. She heard the secretary fill a glass with water in the bathroom that adjoined the office. She glanced over at Research Director Rolborg, whose nose was now buried in the papers of the previous candidate he’d interviewed.
A steady stream of noise like an electrical current now filled her head, drowning out the sounds coming through the open window and the words coming out of the mouth of the secretary, who was speaking to her from the bathroom.
One round in the chamber, she thought as the secretary took the first step out of the bathroom. The sound of her heels striking the parquet floor sliced through the blanket of static in Agnes’s head.
She quickly opened her purse, not even considering what would happen if the Welrod failed to fire. Rolborg was still sitting in front of her, muttering to himself as he studied the papers.
A sharp sound came from the street. A tram clattering along Stortingsgata, as if sent by God Himself. The sound would mute the secretary’s fall, dampening the blow as her lithe body hit the floor.
She was less than six feet away now.
As the secretary realized what Agnes was pointing at her, she opened her mouth in a soundless scream.
The sound of the glass striking the floor was drowned out by the rattling of the tram below the windows. Agnes stood with her feet apart, both hands holding the gun. She would never forget the look in the woman’s eyes. Never.
Slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, Agnes then turned toward Research Director Torfinn Rolborg. The backlighting from the window formed almost a halo around him, and Agnes couldn’t see his face clearly. She glanced at the windows in the buildings across the street, but the gray film that covered half the pane made it impossible to see inside the office. No one was going to see what was happening. Shock was making it difficult for Rolborg to open his mouth properly. He sat in his high desk chair as though nailed to it, while a strangled sound—almost like the whimper of an injured animal—came out of his mouth. Agnes drew back the bolt of the Welrod and took four quick steps toward Rolborg, who was now trying to get up from his chair. Before any audible sound issued from his lips, she was only two feet away. He seemed to be simply incapable of understanding what was happening.
The only sound was a muffled pop that merged with the last rumbles of the tram. Rolborg fell backward in his chair with a stifled cry. He stared down at the hole in his jacket, then pressed his hand over the blood that swiftly soaked his pinstriped suit. He stared up at her one last time as Agnes pulled back the bolt to reload.
“Sven,” he said. “Sven, help me.”
Agnes took aim at his chest again and pulled the trigger. She couldn’t bring herself to shoot at his head, but it didn’t matter. The life had already started to ebb out of him. Two shots to the left side of his chest were enough. Agnes went over to the window to examine her coat. There was no blood. When she stuffed the Welrod into the left sleeve of her coat, she started shaking all over. Rolborg’s lifeless body lay slumped over only a few steps away, his head threatening to collapse onto the desk. Agnes turned her head very slowly to the right. Blood was pooling soundlessly on the floor around the dead secretary.
Agnes picked up the phony identification papers from the desk, now stained with blood. She bent down to pick up two of the empty shell casings that lay at her feet. The third one was next to the chair where she’d been sitting only moments ago.
She walked slowly over to the chair and sat down, as if nothing had happened. She opened her purse, wrapped the papers around the three casings, and then stuffed them in the bottom. She sat there motionless for a full five minutes, unable to go back downstairs yet. She’d only been in the office a few minutes. Or was it longer than that? She needed to leave. Why hadn’t anyone told her what to do afterward? This was madness, sheer madness!
From time to time she heard footsteps outside. The whole floor around the secretary had now turned a dark red. Agnes tried to convince herself that the woman was merely sleeping. She told herself that if she hadn’t done this, someone else would have.
She had to get out of there.
Miraculously, Agnes didn’t run into anyone in the corridor. The only sound was a woman’s laughter coming from an open door behind her. When she reached the stairs leading down to the ground floor, the steps looked like a steep cliff. She barely managed to stay on her feet. The receptionist frowned when she caught sight of Agnes in the middle of the lobby.
“Are you done already?”
Agnes nodded and took a few steps toward the receptionist’s desk. She knew that her face was ghostly pale, but there was nothing she could do about that.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice.
The receptionist motioned to a young woman Agnes’s age. She was evidently the next candidate waiting to be interviewed.
“Mr. Rolborg asked me to say that he didn’t want to be disturbed for a few minutes,” said Agnes. “His private secretary will call you when he’s ready.”
The receptionist nodded sullenly.
“Good-bye,” said Agnes before the receptionist could say anything. The phone under the desk began ringing. The receptionist seemed to hesitate, as if wondering whether to ask Agnes another question or answer the phone instead.
Agnes forced herself to turn away. Looking straight ahead, she started for the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the security guard who had stared at her come in from the left. He headed for the door, past the security gate where the two Germans stood, and opened it for her. Agnes attempted a smile. He said a few words, but she was beyond comprehending what they were. Then she silently brushed past the corporal and the soldier.
A light drizzle was falling on the pavement outside. Agnes walked as slowly as she could along Rosenkrantz Gate, which was nearly deserted. She fixed her gaze on the bakery on the corner, which was only forty or fifty yards away, and focused all her energy on placing one foot in front of the other. A man came toward her, but he dissolved right before her eyes. Behind her they were invisibly chasing after her, and soon her feet would stop moving. In only a few seconds the corporal and soldier would come running out the front door of the Knaben offices. The soldier would open fire with his Schmeisser, and she would be lying on the ground, riddled with bullets, only a few steps from the black cab that was parked in front of the bakery.
“Only thirty more steps,” she whispered to herself. A figure that looked like the Pilgrim—my dear Pilgrim, she thought—came out of the bakery wearing an ill-fitting cab driver’s uniform. Without looking at her, he walked over to the taxi. As she crossed the street, she pictured in her mind’s eye the receptionist knocking on the door of Rolborg’s office and a second later screaming so loud that it could be heard all the way out here. She almost ran right into somebody at the thought and had to resist the urge to turn around. Don’t! she told herself. Don’t! Don’t! Why was she wearing this blue suit? They could see her from fifty yards away. Start up the engine, she thought. Start it up, goddamn it! Start the fucking car! The engine started up with a roar, and she jogged the last two or three yards. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help it. She got in and slammed the door closed, and they were off.
Agnes turned
around in the backseat to get one last look at Rosenkrantz Gate. Nothing was going on. All she saw was an amorphous crowd of people. The street looked like it was now full of people. And a car. No, two. But no soldiers running down the street, no National Police patrol with officers running after it.
“Your coat,” said the Pilgrim from the driver’s seat. “Take it off.” He cast a quick glance at her in the rearview mirror, but his eyes were hard, devoid of life. Beneath that cold veneer, though, Agnes thought that she could see raw fear smoldering deep inside his soul. That’s the last thing I need, she thought as she tore off the blue coat. From a paper bag under the passenger seat, she pulled out a beige coat. As she stuffed the blue coat under the seat, she felt the shaft of the Welrod against her fingers. The private secretary’s face flitted across her retinas for several seconds. That gentle woman who had treated her so kindly, the shocked silence as she stood there holding the glass of water in her hand, the dark-red blood all around her.
“Mission accomplished?” said the Pilgrim in a remarkably calm voice. He shifted gears and the cab raced down Rådhusgata.
Agnes mumbled “yes” without meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. She took off her glasses and put them in her purse. Then she stuck the blue hat under the backseat and leaned forward to pull off the wig. She pulled a light-brown hat with a wide brim out from under the driver’s seat and put it on. Then she straightened up. She just managed to hold back her tears as she removed the contact lenses, which were practically burning her eyes.
After a few more blocks, the Pilgrim drove the cab through a narrow doorway, which was promptly closed behind them. He brought the taxi to an abrupt halt. Agnes looked around in confusion. They were in some sort of mechanic’s workshop. She heard a rumbling from out on the street. A tram was approaching, the sound cutting through the steel door, just as it had sliced through the windowpanes in Rolborg’s office. Who’s Sven? she thought. His son. It must be his son.