After the Monsoon

by Robert Karjel

  Yet another hotel lobby, but now the roles were reversed. Mickels, expecting him at the Kempinski, locked his eyes on Grip the moment he got inside the door and started barking at him across the lobby. Every other sentence started with: “What the hell do you . . .” Most of what he said was absolutely true. Grip was rude, headstrong, and disrespectful of military rank, “which even a freaking maniac like you has to honor.” The officer’s ruddy face blazed with anger. The time for excuses had passed, so now he had to stand and take it. Then came a tirade about how things should be done: “Tomorrow the Sveaborg goes back out to sea . . . it would be best if you . . . it would be expected for you . . .” Grip had burned Mickels, and he felt bad about that.

  But in his ramblings, he ignored the fact that if Grip had followed protocol, kept the captain informed, “relied” on people, and absorbed everything “that was already clearly documented,” then Abdoul Ghermat would still be the one who shot Per-Erik Slunga.

  All those formalities were just for show. Mickels was basically a good guy, but an MP’s job wasn’t so much about defending the truth as it was about keeping the machinery running. The captain wanted nothing more, and people like Hansson counted on that. Grip knew it, and that’s how things had been with the security police, and among the princes and princesses at the royal court, and it was just as true among the ships and shooting ranges in Djibouti.

  “You goddamn ungrateful . . .”

  Grip let the insults slide and just tried to keep track of the essentials. Which for him meant the question of what Mickels actually did or didn’t keep track of.

  Mickels went on and on about Radovanović. “What the hell have you done?” He raised his voice even more when he couldn’t quite make his case. Mickels wasn’t the cool prosecutor kind, with all the right legal terms; he was more of a bumbler. Mickels was the one who made sure people drove back sober, steered them away from the wrong kinds of brothels, and kept sailors and soldiers out of the hands of the local police. Grip understood that this time, he’d been forced to ask for outside help.

  “The legal staff will return . . .”

  He meant the lawyers at military headquarters; they would apparently come tell Grip what he could and couldn’t do with suspects. Grip already knew. He assumed that the lawyers at headquarters were like lawyers in general: precise and very slow. So, while Mickels waited for the fancy formulations he couldn’t come up with himself, Grip would get a few days to milk the Bosnian Serb for details. Mickels wouldn’t call his bluff on Radovanović. Mickels still believed that Ghermat had fired the shot. Mickels would keep track of all the papers that said exactly that. And when Grip asked about the six automatic rifles from the shooting range, he replied, “Damn right, I still keep them in my safe.”

  Tommy Mickels was everyone’s useful idiot. Even Grip’s.

  The military police officer swore one last time and left the Kempinski.

  16

  TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDED PHONE CALL, TS 233:6754

  Recording requestor: Bureau Director Thor Didricksen

  * * *

  TOP SECRET UNDER CHAPTER 2, SECTION 2 OF THE SECRECY ACT (1980:100)

  OF HIGHEST IMPORTANCE TO NATIONAL SECURITY

  * * *

  Persons present: Thor Didricksen (TD) and police officer Ernst Grip (EG)

  EG: Good evening, Boss.

  TD: Good evening. You’re an hour or so ahead, so I gather it’s after midnight there. Is this the only time the air could be called pleasant?

  EG: Something like that.

  TD: I see you’re not interested in small talk. So, what’s happening with the investigation?

  EG: Slow-going.

  TD: I hear your hesitation. Is the military stonewalling?

  EG: They have their machinery, their own way of doing things. They want this over and done with.

  TD: Who wouldn’t? I did get your message.

  EG: Yes, I need backup. I don’t have enough time to do things right.

  TD: Have you made yourself unpopular with the military?

  EG: That too. I suggested that you send von Hoffsten or Skantz.

  TD: I heard you.

  EG: So when will one of them arrive?

  TD: You need someone who understands uniforms, their way of seeing the world.

  EG: Von Hoffsten was in the reserves.

  TD: More than ten years ago, yes. He was probably the officer in charge of cocktails.

  EG: No shortage of those. But I . . .

  TD: Don’t worry, you’ll get someone, as soon as I figure out who’s right for the job. But first I want to hear more about the military. What are they withholding?

  EG: Not withholding, exactly. More that they’re satisfied with their own version of things, as they’ve already written it.

  TD: A shooting accident. One person has been charged, right?

  EG: Yes, a Djiboutian. The problem is, he didn’t do it.

  TD: Really.

  EG: The thing is that . . .

  TD: I can do without the details. That’s why you’re there, not me. I trust your judgment.

  EG: Got it, Boss.

  TD: But this Djiboutian remains a problem?

  EG: Right, he was accused by our Swedish soldiers. Now the local authorities think they have a terrorist on their hands, one who murders foreign officers. I’ve visited the man in jail. I don’t think he’ll last much longer.

  TD: So you want him released. Why?

  EG: The prettiest explanation is that, well, he’s innocent.

  TD: I appreciate your candor. But give me the real reasons.

  EG: It was us—Sweden—who put him in jail. A tabloid journalist could take that story and run with it.

  TD: You mean our government gets nervous when the words prison, Horn of Africa, and journalist appear in the same sentence. Yes, you’re right, and if we can we should fix this. But tell me, why are you so sentimental about a beat-up Djiboutian?

  EG: His name, by the way, is Abdoul Ghermat. And if he gets released, I think the momentum will help my investigation.

  TD: You mean, certain people down there will get nervous?

  EG: Yes, Boss. The ones in Swedish uniforms.

  TD: The military—don’t ever surrender to their smugness. Anything else?

  EG: Not for the moment, Boss.

  TD: I’ll speak to the foreign minister as soon as possible. I know that time is of the essence here, but that’s all I can promise.

  EG: I think it’s the government that will be scrambling—not me—if Abdoul Ghermat doesn’t get released.

  TD: I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Good night.

  17

  At some point after the funeral, when most of Ben had been swept away like a sandcastle hit by a wave, Grip realized that he had insomnia. He imagined it would go away when he returned to Stockholm and went back to work. But only after he got home did the true grief hit, and one night he was caught off guard by his own heaving sobs. For half an hour they went on, as he stood completely alone, in the shadows on a deserted street. He’d seen where his life really stood, how with the distance, other kinds of holes had opened up.

  One thing he never guessed would disappear so quickly: friends. Their mutual acquaintances had in fact been mostly Ben’s. It was in New York that they’d had their life together, Grip being the one who came and went. But Ben was always there; he was the anchor. During the final year, their closest friends helped out when Grip had to return to Stockholm and his job. From some unthinking comments, he gathered that a rift had opened; they couldn’t understand why they were expected to care for a vomiting and trembling Ben, while Grip was off escorting a Swedish princess in London. The better off the friends were, the less they seemed to recognize that someone actually had to earn money to pay for what Ben needed. Grip realized that some saw him as cowardly and irresponsible.

  Despite all the dinners and trips they’d shared over the years, after the funeral it all dwindled down to a few dutiful emails. It was Ben who’d b
een the social genius—the one who’d snag a case of champagne from some patron that they’d uncork at an after-party in his kitchen, the one who could get a table for eight at an impossible restaurant half an hour after he got the whim. In all that, Grip was just his lover from Stockholm. That’s what the others saw. When, after closing time at the gallery one Friday, they sat at a long table on the wide-plank floor, and Ben claimed the center of attention as they raised glasses with one of his long, subtle monologues, they didn’t perceive the true closeness. They didn’t see Grip’s comforting embraces later that night, or hear their completely open and soul-baring talks. They didn’t realize that Grip was the only one who could make the fear of dying—always lurking behind Ben’s crooked smile—fade away for a few hours.

  Grip hadn’t been back to New York since the funeral. It had been nearly a year. And no one had come to visit him in Stockholm.

  He’d become a person who defined himself by what was missing. But finally he realized there was an emptiness needing to be filled, and it occurred to him that he should do something about his loneliness. Have someone to talk to, share things with, touch. He’d been faithful to Ben through it all, when mortal illness brought another kind of closeness. But now, a year later, he was human again—yes, he could look at people and allow the thought. Ben was gay, had been all his life. But Grip had fallen in love with a certain type, that was the best way to describe how he understood himself. What mattered wasn’t whether it was a man or a woman, but that the person conveyed something both seductive and incomplete. So that, if you took a sharp look, you saw the contradictions along with the fantasies. Seemingly self-aware, yet not entirely conscious of the scent they gave off. Ben didn’t have rock-star looks, yet he could conjure up entire universes. People saw it; Grip saw it. And if they had created something together, he and Ben—it was their very own world. Others could see parts of it, even believe that they were near its center, but they’d never come close to imagining the whole.

  Grip had always liked women, and had been with several men, but he’d only ever been in love with Ben. And now, barely a year later: insomnia, the walls at home pressing in on him, the sense that he’d betrayed Ben by not keeping the old feelings alive. He detested the lies cultivated by Ben’s family in Houston, but now he began to see his own fabrications more clearly. How he’d depended on Ben for the good things in life. He saw how he’d made his own choices. That he had cut himself off, by not allowing himself to be with anyone else. This perfection that he’d had with Ben, was it really so perfect? And if it was, did the laws of nature say you could only feel this with one person, and only for a few years over a lifetime?

  These thoughts had freed Grip from grief. But he still had insomnia.

  Alone in his hotel room, late at night. Nothing to do, no one to call, not even an appointment to keep the next day. In his solitude, one thought kept turning around and around in his head: if anything happened to him here in Djibouti, if he suddenly just disappeared, who would look for him? Who would even miss him? Grip gave up on trying to fall asleep. Instead, he headed to the Kempinski’s nightclub. To take the edge off, change the scenery.

  The nightclub was on the top floor, half under the roof, the rest on terraces under the stars. He ordered a rum on the rocks, just because it felt right. A band played restrained cocktail reggae, the singer and the bass player tossing their long dreadlocks. Otherwise, hair was carefully styled at the Kempinski’s pretend-savanna, for those who wanted to hunt, using cash and credit cards as weapons. The usual predators stalked: Chinese in suits, Russians with gold chains, and high-ranking officers disguised in civilian clothes. But there was only one kind of prey. Carefully chosen women from the Horn of Africa, dressed up and available, right there in the nightclub. Bare skin and low cuts that were a world away from the hijabs of Djibouti’s mosques. The girls drew hungry glances wherever they passed. Still, the atmosphere was restrained, more Vogue than Amsterdam.

  Laughter and warm smiles, nods of recognition and little inviting waves, fruit drinks, one for her and one more for me—the Russians drank only clear liquor from small glasses. Grip had another rum, at his end of the bar.

  “Hi, I’m Nadifa.” Grip said nothing, just gave a quick smile. She understood, moved on. The band played a slow cover of “Red Red Wine.”

  The spell was broken by a handful of loud Germans on the terrace. They looked like pilots. One of them thought he knew exactly what services were offered and what they cost. A burst of raw laughter, some bargaining, a wolf whistle to one of the girls. A bouncer with a bull neck took one firmly by the elbow, and after some brief instructions, they dropped their crude slang for the proper etiquette.

  “Hi, I’m Penona.”

  Grip felt that he radiated loneliness. She put her hand on his.

  Grip stood up and walked away.

  He rode the elevator down, still restless. There was a piano bar behind glass walls by the pool. Quieter, lighter, no bad-ass bouncer, just a lonely old bartender and the woman at the piano. There was no heat in the air, and no hotel guests with moist, wandering eyes. “Moon River.” Grip sat down and ordered a beer but left it untouched. He felt invisible and had a moment of peace, listening to the murmuring and the music. The buzz in his head died down, as all his thoughts flowed together, out and away.

  The woman at the piano smiled. Not a fake nightclub smile, but just because their eyes had met. Nothing more. He was still invisible, and the calm reigned. His gaze caught little impressions—the way someone lifted his glass, a well-groomed beard, a hand gesture—but always returned to the piano. She wore her hair in a high ponytail, with a hint of something European, though she looked mostly Horn of Africa. Sometimes she let slip a few notes from a classical piece, while she decided on the next song. Sometimes she sang too. Although some guests sat by the piano, a few leaned forward to make requests. Red dress, bare shoulders, nothing more revealed than that.

  After breakfast the next day, Grip went down to the harbor. From a distance he watched the HMS Sveaborg cast off and pull away. Already, the helicopter rose from the deck and shrank to a dot, drawn to something urgent beyond the horizon. For almost two weeks the Sveaborg would be out at sea, searching and boarding suspicious vessels in the hunt for pirates, before she came back again. Grip stood there and let the cannons, cranes, masts, and rafts merge until they became just the gray silhouette of a warship. Barely two weeks. Tick, tock.

  Again, Grip saw a taxi with a blue flag in the traffic behind him as he left the port. He’d seen the flag parked outside the Kempinski earlier that morning. He took an extra turn in the road along the bay, went through a few roundabouts, came back in the opposite lane. No flag. Enough to convince him that the taxi with the blue flag wasn’t following him. It was just a phantom, and he’d enough of those already. He continued on as planned to the Hotel Mirage.

  Radovanović was sitting on the bed, the sun hot despite the closed curtains, and on the table sat another meal that only fed the flies. The French military police pointed to some papers and left the room.

  It was a short, handwritten confession. Grip sat down on a chair. In blue ink, he absolved Ghermat of guilt and took responsibility for everything himself. But he gave no details, in his broken Swedish. He had the handwriting of a child. Ernst Grip should have pressed him to make the picture clearer—exactly where, exactly when, exactly how—but hesitated. The man on the bed was broken, his eyes redder every time Grip glared at him. Why push him? An accidental discharge wasn’t murder, it was an accident.

  “What will happen to Abdoul Ghermat now?” Radovanović said quietly.

  “I don’t even know if he’s alive,” said Grip sincerely. His own feelings of guilt took hold. He was getting impatient; why was he wasting his time here? “Please eat” was what came out, as his thoughts headed off in other directions—to the useful idiots and Hansson.

  “Eat!” Grip took the papers and left. The two Frenchmen looked unshaven, posted on the walkway outside. “Make
sure you take care of him for a few more days,” Grip told them. “Then it will be over.”

  On an impulse, Grip drove to the jail, showed his ID card, pointed to his passport, signed the page, spat out the formulas, but wasn’t admitted. “Ghermat?” Wall of silence. As if they didn’t understand a word he said; as if they had no idea that a man was being held behind the whitewashed walls.

  “Is Abdoul Ghermat still alive?” The answer was a wave that told him to get lost, while the other hand held tighter to the smooth-worn automatic rifle.

  The sun stood at its zenith. The khat stalls had opened along the main routes, while street life everywhere else dwindled in the heat. Grip drove to the French base, out to the loading zone for transport planes. He found the all-white barracks where MovCon did its work in the daytime, opened the door without knocking, and stepped inside. An air-conditioned sanctuary. An island in a world of heat, exhaustion, and sand.

  There they sat, the four who were left. The original MovCon had shrunk, now that there was one dead and one kidnapped. The room had two beat-up couches around a table, packing lists, schedules and orders taped to the walls, a small desk, stacks of bottled water.

  “I’d love some water,” said Grip, walking up to the little fridge. He got not a word in reply, only four pairs of eyes following him. Two and two, they sat on the couches, looking to kill an afternoon.

  Grip drank a few sips. “Ah . . .” He rolled the fogged-up bottle against his forehead. Straightened up. “Yeah yeah, Radovanović.” A sip. “He’s confessed now, says it was an accidental discharge from his own gun that got Slunga.”

  To three of the dead lieutenant’s former colleagues, this obviously came as a surprise. Two of them glanced at Hansson. Fritzell, the powerfully built one, leaned forward. “That sounds weird.” He was puzzled, didn’t understand at all, and was about to ask something when Hansson jumped in.