After the Monsoon

by Robert Karjel

  “I was just about to say,” Grip said, “that before Ben, I slept with women, and then I lived with a man. You can choose any label you want. Cut and paste it yourself.”

  “Oh, I get it.”

  “No, Simon, you have no fucking idea.

  “Cheers,” said Grip, clinking his glass, but Stark left his drink on the table. For a moment, Stark sat lost in thought.

  “So what’s your secret?” Grip asked, after he swallowed. Stark looked up.

  “Barely been to a strip club. Not much in my life matches up to yours.”

  “Well, a bodyguard who can’t run, that story has to begin somewhere too.”

  “Right. Well, it all starts with one of those desert uniforms that every Joe Schmo around here wears. You already know I got my police ID in a box of cornflakes. So I started out as an infantryman, the ones who have to walk a hell of a lot.” Stark laughed. “At least, mine are still good enough for that,” he continued, jiggling his legs. “Two tours in Afghanistan, altogether almost a year around Mazar-e Sharif, on the plains and in the valleys. Always with the peaks of the Hindu Kush in the background. It’s beautiful there, you know. I could find my way on the roads around Sar-e Pul, Darzab, and Sheberghan without a map. I was damn good.”

  “So that cockiness of yours hasn’t changed,” Grip said, smiling.

  “No. But my hair was shorter.” Stark pulled at his bangs.

  “Go on.”

  “Right. It was often rough, but never really scary. I thought I knew how things worked. I tried to teach myself some phrases in Dari, so I’d know if the interpreter was sticking to the script or if he had his own agenda. I followed the local customs, didn’t mind eating sheep liver when the village elders invited me in, that kind of shit. On my final tour, I helped to train a new Afghan battalion. That was when northern Afghanistan went from being a quiet backwater to something very different. Bombs were exploding on the roads, but this was before people began driving around in armored vehicles. No respectable politician or general wanted to admit that everything hung in the balance. War hasn’t broken out until someone says it has.

  “With the Afghan army, most projects were hopeless. We tried to get the gunners to use their weapon sights, and to get the truck drivers to shift past first gear. Equipment was missing or lost, all the firearms had to be locked up overnight, and from one week to another, a third of the company would desert. The Swedish forces would pretend to trust them, but we were suspicious of everyone, especially the local Afghan police, those bastards who play under the table with everyone they can.

  “One time I was going to a meeting at a village police station south of Mazar-e Sharif, a little off the beaten track. You know how they always come as a surprise, the brief moments in life that are truly decisive. The ones when you get to know yourself and how you’re seen by others. Right?”

  “Maybe,” said Grip. “What happened?”

  “We had just two cars, with the dust swirling around us, yet the worst of the heat had passed after the summer. We were climbing into the mountains, through a landscape of hills and ravines. Obviously, everyone was armed, and I spent the whole time staring at the surroundings, looking for movement or places where someone could hide.

  “Just before a curve, there were shots—automatic fire. I still remember, it’s so strange, the sound of a single bullet hitting the side of the car, yet there must have been hundreds of shots fired.”

  Stark didn’t look at Grip as he talked. He’d put down his drink to concentrate, completely absorbed by his story.

  “It was an ambush, and in the first few seconds there was only confusion and screaming. We jumped out of the car and looked for protection. Trying to see the enemy, to get a glimpse of a head somewhere, and to make contact with the other car. From the screams, we realized that someone was injured, and it seemed like they were taking most of the fire up front. There were four of us in my car, all unhurt, unbelievable. We had to make a counterattack. I was panting like crazy and yelled something as the shots hit the ground in little clouds of dust all around us. Then we scrambled, and then I found myself with another guy on the other side of the road. I followed a dry streambed and went up over a crest. I had a little plan.

  “Bingo, I was right, they weren’t expecting it. Two men, kneeling, tried to aim down at what was happening on the road, but we’d come at them from the side. There were maybe thirty meters between us. One of them yelled and tried to shoot, but had they ever learned to use their gun sights? The Afghan who was closest got off the first shot, I’ll give him that, before I got my own rifle ready and the red dot in the optics danced across his chest. He got two bullets in return, and I felt the two quick recoils. I don’t know whether the second shot hit, I just saw a twisted body lying still when I lowered my rifle and at the same time started looking for the other guy. I didn’t realize that he’d been shot by Tärnsjö, the reserve lieutenant who was with me on this side of the road. But Tärnsjö had done his part. He too had killed a man for the first time.

  “We probably should have stopped right there, when we saw a bunch of other guys running from their positions, trying to escape. But we were pumped, now that we’d had a taste of these fuckers. I fired off a few shots, and then my rifle jammed. An empty shell was stuck in the chamber, so I cocked twice to get the next bullet in place. When I looked up again, I caught a movement in the ravine, much closer to me than the men who’d fled across the hills. I got a glimpse of someone and went after him, without checking for Tärnsjö.

  “I’d gone a hundred meters when I stopped at a bend down in the ravine, where the shape disappeared. In the dry ditch, it was impossible for me to see anything ahead. I stayed close to the steep, sandy bank and tried to calm my breathing so I could listen. Then I heard cautious steps over the dry stones, and I thought they were just a little farther out than I could see. This wasn’t the sound of someone running or crawling, but exactly the sounds someone makes when he’s waiting. All I could think of was the jammed empty shell, how that had happened to me in a training exercise just a few days before. Suddenly, I didn’t trust my rifle.

  “So I let the rifle drop to the back of my belt and instead pulled my gun out of the holster on my leg. I held my breath and cocked it as quietly as I could. I heard a stone move, as if someone had the weight of his foot on it, and somewhere far behind me I heard single shots. I was amped up from the ambush we’d been in, and once you get a chance to counterattack . . . I took a few quick steps forward.

  “I can’t say I was surprised—in that situation you don’t have that kind of thought—but it wasn’t what I’d imagined. A man was waiting there, crouched on a rock. Maybe he was injured, something about his foot, or maybe he didn’t know there was someone behind him. He looked more surprised than scared, with no more than six meters between us. He held his rifle with one hand on the barrel, while I kept my gun in a two-handed grip.

  “But despite my racing pulse, and all the adrenaline, something stopped me. I thought he recognized me. The way he looked at me, when he saw my face. What the hell was that about? So I stood there, with my gun half raised in front of me. Where would he and I have . . . ? I searched through my memory, where?

  “There’d been a meeting, a week earlier, with a handful of local police chiefs and their guards. A meeting about who would do what. Whether the man looking at my gun was a chief or a guard, I didn’t remember, but he’d been there. That was it. He’d heard the plans for when and where we would go that day, and he knew we’d be alone in two cars on a bad road.

  “I was looking point-blank at a traitor, and he was just waiting, knowing that I’d figure it out. I kept approaching, and now there weren’t even three meters between us. Over the radio in one ear, I heard that the medevac helicopter was coming in for our soldier who’d gotten injured.

  “And then, he moved. Damn it, I’ve thought about it so much, how it happened when there was no distance at all between two people. I didn’t know it then, but Tärnsjö had
run along behind me, following a little ridge that gave him a good view. He saw both of us, me and the man crouching on the rock. Whether the man tried to do something with his gun maybe wasn’t that important, but Tärnsjö saw me shoot a Taliban member twice at close range and then just walk away. I had no idea what a big deal this would be. From the cars, the other men had seen the shoot-out with the first two men, but Tärnsjö had also seen this other thing. These stories travel farther than you might think.”

  “Did they give you any crap about it?” Grip asked.

  “No, no, not at all. On the contrary, people were talking around me, but I didn’t notice a thing. There was a strange sort of admiration. Afghanistan, you know, for a while there was fighting everywhere, but there were still very few who’d actually done the deed. People are preoccupied with the question: what’s it like to actually kill someone? Do I have it in me? But no one asked how I felt. Maybe they asked about the duel on the ridge but not about the shots in the ditch. I guess they felt there was something cold in me, something calculating. In the story they told, there was nothing about the man making a move, because Tärnsjö never saw it. To him, I just shot and walked away. If they’d asked me, I would have said that the Afghan expected those two shots. He reached for his gun to get it over with. But as I said, no one asked.”

  It was as if Stark had just come out of that ravine when he looked up at Grip. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  Grip shrugged.

  “I won’t go on about it,” Stark continued, “but it’s liberating. Because then you no longer have to wonder.”

  “And your legs?”

  Stark looked down at them. “They’re still shit.”

  “It feels like something’s missing here.”

  “Right. But everything is connected, an Afghan in the ravine and my legs, my fucking legs. A month after the firefight, I was a passenger in a convoy on Ring Road 5. We’d just come out of Sheberghan when the jeep I was in shuddered.

  “I don’t remember much from the rest of the day, only little pieces. No, it wasn’t a remote-triggered roadside bomb, it was a rocket-propelled grenade that slammed right into the side of the truck. I got shrapnel from the grenade in my calves, but the guy sitting next to me lost everything below the knees. And that’s why I was sent home a month early.

  “It didn’t take long before I could walk fine again, but the problem is running. See for yourself.” He pulled up one pant leg. His calf looked as if it had been attacked by a tiger. “I can take strides, and it doesn’t hurt, but I can’t get up to speed. Something in there never healed, but the doctors can’t find anything wrong. ‘Of course you’ll go back to work,’ everyone said. And for the first time in my life, people looked at me with pity. It’s not like the strange admiration you get for the shots you fired, talked about behind your back. It’s right in your face.

  “And then, one day just before Christmas, I found myself in the cobblestone courtyard of the Army Museum in Östermalm. The snow was really coming down, and everyone in my unit had come home from Afghanistan and gathered for the medal ceremony. Do you know what one of those is like? It’s all pomp and circumstance, and yet you know, at the same time, that somehow you’re being covered up in a certain way. A few stood in little clusters of families, but many had come alone, and there were some military trumpeters assigned to ceremony duty. It wasn’t just that the air was chilly—something about the atmosphere felt wrong. A minister gave a short speech, the usual stuff passed around from one speechwriter to another. He couldn’t even pronounce the places we’d been to. He said he was proud of what we’d done, but what the hell did he know about what we did or didn’t do?

  “Someone had gotten the idea that the injured vets should stand together. So I ended up next to the guy who, the last time we’d been together, had been totally functional, sitting next to me in the jeep. Who was on the right side of whom was as random now as it had been in the convoy. But I was standing, and he was sitting in his wheelchair.

  “It took forever to hand out the medals, but finally the generals came over to our unit. They said a few words to each of us, as we stood at attention, the ones who could, and saluted as the medals were pinned on our chests. Sure, there’s a little pride in that, but it’s nothing so special. And for my part, it was mixed with something else, in their eyes. Not toward me, but toward the man in the wheelchair beside me in the snow, with the blanket over what was missing below the knees. It’s difficult to explain. I had as hard a time not staring as anyone else. It was like we were all embarrassed, and some of that shame came from my hearing— ‘Of course you’ll go back to work . . . ,’ said with the best intentions.

  “So when it was time for the next round of defense cutbacks, and those who wanted to were allowed to apply for the police force, it was a no-brainer. I wanted out.

  “The qualifying rounds for the police weren’t really a problem, between the written exam and the interviews. But then there was the day we had to show up in tracksuits, at the indoor gym in Bosön. Bench presses, pull-ups, push-ups—no sweat. The problem was doing three kilometers on the track, under the time limit. I was like one of those girls who’d cut herself with razor blades, and I hid my calves in running tights that whole day. When it was my turn, I gave it all I had, you can’t even imagine the pain, but I was still on the wrong side of the line.

  “And here’s the thing. Earlier in the day, I’d said hello to Tärnsjö, the reserve lieutenant from Affe, who as a civilian happened to have joined the police. He was there interviewing some of the other applicants. I didn’t think about it then. When the tryouts were over, and it was time for us to receive the news a week later, I sat alone with a man from the commission. My application lay open on top of the table, with the results from Bosön.

  “‘Forty-eight seconds too slow,’ said the police officer. He could have woken me up in the middle of the night, and I would have spat out the number. I knew exactly how many seconds over I’d finished.

  “‘Thank you,’ I replied, ‘I understand.’

  “‘I don’t think you do. Sit down.’ He liked putting on his little show. ‘I think you have other things that we might need.’ And with a stroke of the pen, he cut my time by two minutes. He showed me the new time, looking serious, and then he said: ‘I heard . . . heard you’re a good shot, and that you don’t think twice.’ The police officer was much older, a classic bully, but damn if there wasn’t a look of admiration in his eyes. It was only then I realized Tärnsjö hadn’t just seen me in the ravine but also told his version of the incident. The stories had spread.”

  “There are different rules sometimes, for those who’ve killed,” said Grip, who’d just put a few pieces of the puzzle into place.

  “Yeah, I understand that someone wanted me. But why this silly drama, crossing out my time on the page?”

  “Not just anyone, the Boss wanted you. Those stories, as you call them, had probably reached him too. He’s always looking for risk-takers.”

  “Still, they could have just mailed me a letter saying I’d been accepted.”

  “No, no—they let you trade two shots in a ditch for two minutes off your time. This way, you’re in debt to them, that’s the whole point, and you know exactly why they wanted you.”

  “I know I’m drunk, but killing changes everything in a human being.”

  “No, it doesn’t, it’s everything around you that changes,” said Grip, who didn’t like it when people oversimplified. “How long did you say you were on the job before they asked you to apply for a different division?”

  “Not even a year. Then I went over to you at Säpo and the bodyguard detachment. ‘Plenty of overtime, and a dark suit for the royals,’ they said.” Stark laughed.

  But something was making him uncomfortable.

  “During an interview for the bodyguards, that ravine came up again,” Stark said. “‘What happened to the Taliban guy?’ he asked me while I was sitting there, trying to look tough and make it sound as if
he’d done the same thing many times himself.”

  “Come on,” Grip said, “how many Swedes do you think have shot someone at close range, without a moment’s hesitation? Most who have are probably inmates at Hall, not officers in Säpo. And who wouldn’t want to have a man like that among his bodyguards, even if he can’t run like a gazelle?”

  26

  The HMS Sveaborg had come into port at nine in the morning, and an hour later, Mickels was at the front desk of the Kempinski calling Grip. When he came down, the MP looked both freshly showered and authoritative. Grip had a nasty hangover from his night with Stark, one he felt behind his eyes and tasted in his mouth.

  “The captain would like to see you before lunch.”

  Grip popped two pieces of mint gum into his mouth and went down to the port in Mickels’s car.

  The captain’s cabin again: wood paneling and coats of arms. The long mahogany table where they’d dined that first night was now bare and gleaming, as if it sat in the boardroom of a bank. At one end, Grip saw a stack of documents. There sat the captain, and, behind him as usual, the feline first officer, too impatient to sit still. Mickels also came in, closing the door behind him.

  It was like being called into the principal’s office at a boys’ school.

  “We have a few irregularities we need to clear up,” the captain began unceremoniously.

  Grip gazed out through a porthole at the view over the bow, as if he weren’t the one being addressed. “Yes . . . ?” he said, after an excessively long pause.

  “The legal staff has issued an opinion. The situation is untenable.”

  Grip looked uncomprehending. The captain pulled out a page, and the first officer couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

  “It’s a matter of jurisdiction. We are Swedish soldiers and sailors here, governed by Swedish laws and regulations. You cannot just come in and arrest people. The legal staff is adamant about this.”