The Swede: A Novel

by Robert Karjel

  “Shut up,” said one of the leaders.

  Romeo pulled down his cap and shrugged again.

  “So where do you come into this?” asked Grip, with a nod toward the leg jiggler.

  “Who’s asking?” Romeo, older than Grip, rocked backward on his chair.

  “He drives,” replied the one who’d told him to shut up.

  Grip stared at Romeo. “People can’t drive with their head up their ass. Try to remember that.”

  The chair’s front legs hung in midair. Romeo lifted his hand, urging Grip to come closer. He was just about to say something when the other man hissed: “He drives!” Cutting it off. Grip shrugged again.

  Then the two leaders threw him a few what-if questions. It was mostly for show; there were no holes in Grip’s plan.

  “We’ll be in touch,” they said then.

  Grip stood for a moment, legs apart, and looked at them, memorizing their faces. Ben had assured him he’d only have to listen, give advice, not participate, not get caught. That was for laborers. A paid job that brought people together, with someone invisible pulling the strings. The men in the workshop didn’t know anything about an art expert—how Ben’s eyes and hands would eventually confirm that the pieces of granite were indeed authentic sculptures by Arp, protruding from the Styrofoam in broken crates. And Ben was never one to mention names. So far, everything seemed fine. So far.

  “You do whatever,” he told them. Heart not racing, palms dry. “If you use my plan, you pay.”

  He left. Walked all the way over the Brooklyn Bridge and back to Ben’s apartment in Chelsea.

  When he woke up the next night, it all seemed like a costume party. A kind of game. Like when drunk cops sat at home together and, instead of playing cards, slurred over the heists they’d dreamed up—how easy it’d be to pull them off. This time was hardly worse: a workshop, some first names, a torn map, and some good advice.

  Nothing really, just a little talk. Right?

  Back in Sweden again, Grip bought the New York Times every evening from the Pressbyrån newsstand at Central Station. Twenty-six days in a row, twenty-six front pages about Bush and Iraq, before the article finally appeared. Not large, but not small either. Two stolen sculptures by Arp, a fuzzy picture. A truck that disappeared, no violence—a footnote.

  Ben phoned later that evening. Began by saying that he loved Grip, talked nonstop, maybe had been drinking, and ended by saying that they had paid. There was no shame in the silence between them. It was done. They said good-bye and hung up.

  Autumn rolled along, a doctor treated Ben, and his cough went away. It could have been fine that way. It could have been enough, right there.

  CHAPTER 12

  Weejay’s, January 21, 2005

  WHAT IF YOU ACTUALLY DECIDE to take action?” It was Bill who said it, Bill Adderloy. Bill had slowly slipped into their circle. After calling Reza an idiot, he’d repeatedly turned up at their table with his cane, which was, it turned out, mostly for show. Slightly older than the others, Bill Adderloy had a grizzled beard that rose when he spoke. He smoked, wore long sleeves, and had a large ring on one hand. Like other Americans, he jingled coins in his pockets and constantly asked for more ice in his drinks.

  “I mean—actually decide.”

  He didn’t take the sting out of what he’d said with a laugh—the usual way out when someone touched on something serious under the palm-leaf roof. Instead he waited them out: Vladislav, N., Mary, and Reza. Bill Adderloy was serious.

  By the time Bill joined them, circumstances had already changed. N. suffered from severe restlessness. The night with Mary had left him with an inexplicable anxiety, as if at the beginning of a good-bye. He was forced to drink more and more to fall asleep at night, and the fat bundles of banknotes in his bag now fit too easily in one envelope. The others were also down to eating fruit for lunch, and even the generous Reza often paid for only his own Coke at the bar. Mary showed up later and later every morning and had started sleepwalking. Or at least, so N. thought. He woke up in his bungalow one night to find her standing next to his bed in just a white T-shirt, nothing else, looking at him. His first instinct was to lift the sheet for her, but then he hesitated.

  “What is it?” he asked, seeing the whites of her dark eyes, not much more. She stood like that for an eternity, motionless as if he were a stranger, before she turned around and walked out. N. hadn’t been able to go back to sleep, not until he got up and locked the door from inside.

  Everyone felt it, the undercurrent of untamed energy. Vladislav ran longer in the mornings, and on his swims his little dot of a head disappeared at the horizon.

  “Fuck you,” he spat out between waves to the boat someone sent out after him one day.

  Then Reza knocked out an Australian with a single punch at the bar. When the man’s two friends pounced on him, he shouted “Come on!” with such a vicious look that they all backed off. Afterward he wept, and said something about being immortal.

  It was at such times that Bill would show up at their table.

  “Impressive,” he told Reza that time, and sat down. He didn’t give a damn about the commotion right behind his chair, but raised a couple of fingers and a waiter came over immediately. The staff at Weejay’s were like flies on a sugar cube, or rather, like hyenas—hyenas around a lion that had just taken down its prey. He left good tips, never just coins. One served while two others calmed the screaming Australians. No one dared to say a word against the American.

  With Bill Adderloy’s cigarettes came discussions. He rarely puffed on them; his cigarettes burned down like incense between his motionless fingers as he laid out his ideology. He didn’t think much of his own country. Reza nodded in agreement without saying anything. N., unimpressed, stayed to get a couple of whiskies at the speaker’s expense. Mary was more engaged, argued on Adderloy’s side, while smiling Vladislav amused himself by provoking people for the sake of it. Their evenings turned predictable.

  N. drank and tried to suppress his yawns.

  One day Adderloy said, “No, you deserve it,” when they found out that he’d paid the Weejay’s bills for all four bungalows and their food. No one argued.

  Another time, Adderloy seemed to know that Mary was from somewhere in Kansas. N. couldn’t remember ever hearing her say anything about it. Vladislav looked at Adderloy suspiciously.

  “But what if you actually decide?” That was the instant their discussions took a different turn.

  “Decide what?” Vladislav sat, his jaws tight. Mary listened intently.

  It had started the night before, when Adderloy snorted at Reza: “Immortality—what’s your secret?”

  Reza had responded with a malevolent gaze. He hadn’t forgotten that Adderloy had called him an idiot.

  “That’s what you feel like,” said Vladislav, conciliatory, “when you’ve survived.”

  “You feel immortal too?”

  “Not immortal,” said Vladislav, and smiled his broadest white grin. “But strong.”

  “I am truly immortal,” said Reza then, and leaned forward. “Right now, I mean—you do not understand. That day, the wave.” He ran both hands through his hair. His lips were moist, his mind tuned to its inner images. “I went to bed late the night before. I fell asleep surrounded by relatives, thought I was sleeping in a city. It really was a city. There was a whole city around me when I fell asleep, but then when I woke up . . . My bed was in a room on the second floor, and I went to the window as I usually do.” He made a motion with his hand, as if he were in a vast, open field. He swallowed. “Everything was gone,” he whispered, “everything. Just me and the house left—nothing else, no one else. God forgot to count me in, I was overlooked.” He leaned back. “You understand?”

  “God?” said Mary. “You think it was God. That’s . . .” She went silent.

  “Immortal,” said Reza grimly.

  “How can you believe . . . God, so silly,” Mary went on.

  “Those hit by the tsunami,
they died for our sins,” said Adderloy. “There are people who believe it.”

  Vladislav shook his head. He looked at Reza.

  “You’ve heard about them too,” continued Adderloy, raising his chin. “About the American church that celebrates what happened as God’s punishment. About their minister, Charles-Ray Turnbull.”

  He looked at N., recalling the night they’d talked about the minister and his followers. N. wasn’t drunk enough yet. The anger took his breath away. His hands trembled. He remembered the pictures: the bloated bodies, the smiling minister called “Beloved Father.” Thank God.

  Adderloy fiddled with his ring, shrugged. “Those struck down were sinners, as simple as that.” He tapped his cigarette, and the ashes fell in the sand. “That’s the price, some say, the price of freedom in a country”—he kept looking down at the sand—“where anyone can say anything.”

  “Is it really a church?” Vladislav wondered.

  Adderloy paid no attention. “You know they celebrated, right? They were especially happy about the children. They think that—”

  “Bastards, they deserve to die,” interrupted N.

  Reza hit his palm on the table. “An American church.” He spat something in his own language and continued: “No American church can come here and talk about my sins.”

  “Where’s that church?” It was N. who asked.

  “In Topeka,” replied Adderloy. “Topeka, Kansas.”

  “But aren’t you . . .” Vladislav looked puzzled.

  “Yeah, I’m from Topeka,” Mary said.

  Adderloy waited as glances went around the table, watching the glow of his cigarette.

  “Mary and I happened to be sitting at the same table one evening when people got started on the fanatics and the demonstrations. That’s when we made the connection.” Then he said to Mary: “Go on, tell them about Charles-Ray.”

  She said, her voice low, “Charles-Ray Turnbull is a hideous man. He often came to the hospital where I work, or worked.” She paused a moment. “He used to donate blood. I’m sure he still does. He needs the money.”

  “They deserve—” continued N., angry again.

  Adderloy looked up quickly at him. “Deserve what—deserve to be talked about?”

  N. shifted uneasily in his chair, as if he had hit on something.

  “And what if you actually decide to act?” continued Adderloy.

  Reza replied with a snort.

  “Decide what?” said Vladislav slowly.

  Mary listened with narrowed eyes.

  “They deserve to die,” repeated N.

  “To give them payback,” replied Adderloy. Vladislav measured him with his eyes.

  “Look at yourself, look at us,” said Adderloy. “We don’t exist. Beyond this stretch of sand . . .” He hesitated for a moment. “We’re all lost. From now on, we make our own choices. We have to seize this opportunity, the time is now. Convergences like these come only once in a lifetime.”

  “For the chance to get revenge on the fanatics, sure. But you can do better,” said Vladislav. “Why us?”

  “We all need money. How long can you keep up this life? A couple of months, and then what? Rent out lounge chairs, or buy a gas stove and a wok to cook for tourists when they eventually return to the beaches? Or become hippies like the other westerners who never made it out of here? You’ve seen them, toothless fucking hobos with their fifteen-year-old girlfriend on the back of their moped. No, we’re going to rob a bank and get a hell of a lot of money, and then lay the blame on someone more deserving. With a bang that gets the whole country’s attention. We frame the minister—and we kill two birds with one stone. We give Charles-Ray what he deserves, at the same time as we get a shitload of money.”

  Vladislav gave a short laugh. “To give the loudmouth fuckers a taste of their own medicine.” He looked at Reza. “I like that.”

  Reza jiggled both legs in his chair. “But he’s a blood donor—what does that have to do with it? How—”

  “No one gets it,” said Vladislav. “Mr. Adderloy has worked it out, but he’s not going to tell us everything yet.”

  Adderloy acknowledged him with a gesture.

  “But to help him, he needs a few people who are invisible. And immortal,” Vladislav added, taking a fresh look at Reza.

  “We don’t exist,” said Mary.

  “Whether we do or don’t,” said Vladislav with a toss of the head, “we need money, obviously, for the life we want to keep living.”

  “I have enough to start us off,” replied Adderloy.

  “Once we get to Topeka, we can stay at my place,” said Mary. “It’s secluded, and big enough for all of us.”

  N. hesitated. What was it they were about to do? He broke in: “What are we talking about here? Are we going to America to rob a bank?”

  No one spoke.

  “Well,” said Vladislav finally in a loud voice, “crusading has never been my cup of tea. But I have to do something. I need the money, and you, Bill, need me. I’m in.”

  Adderloy’s eyes narrowed to slits as he took a drag on his cigarette.

  “See you,” said Vladislav and got up from the table. When he left, it was with the same implacable calm as when he took his gun out of Reza’s hand and walked up to the wounded pelican.

  “Not a big talker, but he makes his point,” said Adderloy when Vladislav disappeared. The only reply was the rush of the sea in the night.

  “I think most everything has been said,” he added, dropping his cigarette into the sand. “Sleep on it. I can hardly be the only one tired of paradise.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Transcript of Hearing. Tape: 2 (3), N1315263

  Date: April 12, 2008

  Location: El Dorado Correctional Facility, El Dorado, Kansas

  Appearing:

  Examining Officer Gordon Zachy (GZ), FBI

  Assistant Shauna Friedman (SF), FBI

  Defendant Reza Khan (RK), sentenced to death for five counts of complicity in murder; bank robbery; seditious conspiracy; terrorism; obstruction of justice; kidnapping; and aggravated assault

  GZ: But Reza, you were born in Peshawar, isn’t that correct, in Pakistan?

  RK: Must we go over that again?

  GZ: Yes.

  RK: [Says something unintelligible.]

  GZ: Reza, you’re slurring. I know it’s hard, but try.

  RK: I said, I have already answered that question, on at least twenty different occasions. And I am suffering from a headache again.

  GZ: You always have a headache, Reza. Were you born in Peshawar?

  RK: So it states in my passport.

  GZ: I’d like your answer.

  RK: Is it a matter of consequence?

  GZ: Yes, some of our investigations are ongoing.

  RK: And do you genuinely believe I will be affected by that?

  GZ: Very much so.

  RK: [Laughs.]

  GZ: There’s nothing funny about this.

  RK: No. [Clears throat.] Judgment has been made, I am going to die. For five murders, quite impressive.

  GZ: Accessory to five murders, and a bank robbery.

  RK: Right, accessory, absolutely right. My lawyer tries to keep my spirits up, sweating over endless contingencies. Contingencies! A judge has already sentenced me to death.

  GZ: The conviction could be appealed.

  RK: Not in Kansas. Not given what happened. Someone’s blood must be sacrificed. And look, they even got ahold of a Pakistani. America cares about its Muslims, when they are dressed in orange jumpsuits.

  GZ: There are extenuating circumstances. You know that.

  RZ: You mean this here.

  GZ: Mr. Khan was shot in the head in connection with the arrest, it—

  SF: I know the facts.

  RK: Suddenly she opens her mouth. [Silence.] Gordon and I are already well acquainted, but you . . . you are new—correct?

  SF: Yes.

  RK: And we have not met before?

  SF: Ne
ver.

  GZ: Mr. Khan’s memory . . .

  RK: She knows, she sees the damage to my head. Everyone does. You, Gordon, I have not seen in several months, and now you appear with a new woman by your side. Ongoing investigations, you say—how many additional life sentences do you hope to pile on me? Surely you can only kill me once.

  GZ: It’s not that.

  RK: Do you hear how Gordon here is always trying to keep me calm? He knows that I sometimes start a fight. That is what he fears. Where did you say you were from?

  SF: FBI.

  RK: Kansas State Police, US Marshals, FBI. Is there no end to how many police you have—DEA, ATF, Secret Service—

  GZ: Reza, stop with the tirades.

  RK: Shauna, Shauna was it?

  SF: Yes.

  RK: [Inaudible reply.]

  GZ: Reza, we cannot hear you.

  RK: My apologies, Shauna. It was the shot, you know. My psychology, there are many explanations for it now. For how I function. Memory loss in connection with murder—so timely, no? But even the doctors concede that the damage is there. My skull is sunken, look for yourself.

  SF: Thank you, that’s enough.

  RK: But that’s just it, a shot to the head was not enough. I will be strapped down, given the injection, and only then will you be satisfied. And it all takes so much time.

  SF: Do you still claim that you were not involved?

  RK: Are you sure that we have never met before?

  SF: Quite sure.

  RK: Did you have long hair?

  SF: That was a long time ago.

  GZ: You missed her question, Reza.

  RK: Yes, I miss questions, and I slur a little. What was it, right, whether I was involved. I never said that I was not involved. It is very likely that I was there, but I do not remember. They say we robbed a bank.

  SF: What about the others, the ones who were with you, do you remember them?

  RK: Gordon, weren’t you asking just now if I was born in Peshawar?