Riley smiles again. His teeth are tobacco yellow.
“You’re good at fighting—I’ll give you that. But otherwise you’re a bunch of Boy Scouts. All this optimism. Everything’s going so damn well. It’s fucking insufferable. But you should see your countrymen now, walking around with their heads hanging. They could use a joint. But you certainly don’t do that kind of thing, either.”
“Do you?”
Riley laughs evasively. Of course they do, but now he’s a little unsure about me.
“Do you drink beer?” he asks. I know exactly what he’s saying: Are you so much of a Muslim that you don’t touch alcohol?
“I drink plenty of beer. All kinds. But I prefer India pale ale.”
We’ve reconnected. For the rest of the trip we talk about British beers versus Belgian. Leffe Blond is a shared weakness. Riley is no nationalist, it seems, although he repeatedly refers to Belgium as “those pedophile euro supporters.”
“Those pedophile euro supporters know how to make beer. I’ll fucking give them that.”
It’s not my first time in Camp Price. I worked here as an interpreter two squads ago, along with Roshaan, who’s dead now. My job was to recruit informants from the local population. Quite a few volunteered. Double agents—that’s what they were—and before long, we were caught in a jumble of misinformation. I contacted them before I left. Sometimes a half-truth is better than none. But the cell phones were dead, and their owners probably were, too.
I’m met by the commander in chief, Hans Krenchel, a colonel who’s been here before. He’s been rushed back in as a replacement for the vanished Steffensen, and he doesn’t look too happy about the assignment. He’s had the same experience as all the others stationed as commandants out here: it hasn’t led to any promotions. Somewhere in the system, someone disapproves of their handling of the job, although none of them can figure out what they’ve done wrong. Everyone agrees that our involvement in the war makes sense, so where’s the reward? It’s unfathomable, and as time passes, no one views the position of commander in chief as an important career move; instead, they see it as a kind of forced reassignment, maybe even evidence that, for some unknown reason, they’ve fallen out of favor.
I know all the intrigue: in the service, it’s entertainment during your coffee break. Krenchel bragged a little too much about his offensives and how much destruction his men caused in a local area. We’re not doing needlepoint out here, he told Jyllands-Posten. When we pound our fists on the table, it’s with a thousand-pound bomb. His comments came right at the time when the official line was that soldiers were child-friendly educators who just happened to be armed. So his promotion failed to materialize not because he fired but because he talked too much about it.
I have no idea if he learned his lesson. “We’re trying to keep the mood up out here,” he says.
He scratches himself distractedly on his slightly bulging stomach, as if he’d rather talk about something else. I notice he hasn’t shaved in a few days. The gray stubble doesn’t suit his pale face and flabby cheeks. He’s also put on a few pounds since the last time he played commander in Helmand. He’s certainly not spending any time in the weight room.
“But it’s damn tough.”
He looks right at me as if he needs my understanding. I appreciate his openness, even though I’m somewhat surprised by it, given the situation. These aren’t exactly victories he’s reporting on—but maybe he’s just disillusioned.
“In reality, everyone here in the camp should be sent home immediately, but we can’t just replace an entire squad. If you ask me, the camp should be closed or given to the Brits. Then the boys could take a breather at Camp Bastion. Exercise their muscles. Eat well. Not think about anything. But they’ve already started thinking, damn it. And that’s never good. Thinking—you can do that shit when you get home. You’re about to meet a downcast group. We don’t go on any patrols. I can’t get them to. They’ve had their hearts ripped out, and this is the end of the line.”
“For the war?”
“No, for us. The fucking war will go on forever.”
I borrow a uniform, so I don’t stick out too much, and walk over to the mess tent with Krenchel to get something to eat. I can see what he means. The soldiers are all sitting around silently, staring into space. The Brits keep to themselves, but they also seem depressed, as if they’ve been sucked down into the Danes’ black hole.
I’m placed at a table with a group of Danish officers flown in as reinforcements. They’re all veterans of the war, experienced men who’ve been in battle and were able to handle it, but they weren’t prepared for this. I can see it in their eyes. They exude confusion, as if they’ve caught a virus but haven’t received the diagnosis yet.
Krenchel asks if I’ve discovered anything.
I shake my head. “I’ve only just begun,” I say. “I know as little as you do.” That’s not completely true. I know what Halim told me, but it’s just a lead.
“What about back in Denmark?” asks an officer named Thomsen, a large, heavy guy with a closely trimmed beard and mustache and a crew cut that lets his white scalp shine through.
I brief them about what we know so far about Schrøder, which is way too much and nothing at all. Names that all lead to the same address: Dead-End Street.
They stare at me. “It sounds like a goddamn crime novel,” says Thomsen.
“It’s more than that. I compare it to a video game.” I describe Schrøder’s background in the gaming industry. “He developed a game that never went into production. The story line is almost identical to what he did out here. A military camp is isolated from the rest of the world, and one of the few soldiers who speak the locals’ language turns out to be a traitor. Some of the soldiers are lured into an ambush; others go out for revenge and then disappear. Of course there’s a lot more shooting than we do out here. At first there are dead Afghans everywhere, and then dead NATO soldiers. But that’s the only difference. You know the rest of the story.”
“Why didn’t the game go into production?”
“There wasn’t any market for it. The line between good and evil was too unclear. Too many obscure intrigues and not enough shooting episodes, maybe not by our standards but according to the players.”
“Well, I think the line between good and evil is clear enough out here.” Thomsen exhales through his nose into his trimmed mustache.
“You mean that what he couldn’t make happen on the screen he came here to do in reality?” asks Krenchel.
“Or maybe the game was just prep for him, a dress rehearsal, so to speak. When he first got the idea, it couldn’t have been his alone. An entire team of people in a firm sit around brainstorming, going over every imaginable scenario. Trust me—these game designers are experts. You could use some of them here when planning your offensives.”
“If that’s the case, we must have some idea about his motives. What does he want? What happens in the game? How does it end?”
“The game stops exactly here, where we are right now. They didn’t get any further.”
I enjoy being with the soldiers. There’s never any awkwardness because of my skin color, none of that hesitation in their voices, as if my presence necessitates a certain tone that can be either slightly insinuating or excessively considerate. Both of which I find unbearable. Here, the tone is always straightforward. We’re men who have a job to do, and we’re sitting here because we’ve proven that we’re good at what we do. Period.
“Yes, but what the hell are his motives? What does he want? He’s playing with us.” As Krenchel looks at me, I can almost feel his desperation.
“What if that’s all he’s doing—playing?”
“No, it’s too far out. He must have some fucking reason. Is he a crazy convert or what? Is he on their side?”
“We’ve looked into that, but there’s nothing that indicates it. We’ve asked around everywhere we have reliable contacts.” I lean in and look around at the men. Except for
Krenchel, who’s in his fifties, the rest are in their mid-thirties or early forties.
“If you were all about twenty years younger, you wouldn’t find it so unlikely that he’s just playing.”
Krenchel flinches a bit, as if I’ve criticized him or said something blatantly insulting. “Yes, well, we aren’t, are we,” he says. “We’re the age we are.”
Thomsen runs a hand through his hair. “I know what you mean. When I see how they behave out here”—he nods at the soldiers hanging around by the tables in the mess tent—“I start to think that they barely know what planet they’re on. They spend a lot of time in front of the screen, and as far as I can see, they can’t tell the difference between these computer games and what we’re doing out here. Men in uniform shooting away at guys in flip-flops with dish towels on their heads. The only thing missing are the boring pauses. Try talking to them about their homeland, the Danish people, or democracy. It doesn’t mean shit to them. Promise them some points—and they’re ready for anything.”
“All right, all right,” says Krenchel soothingly. “Don’t get started now, Thomsen. These young people are okay.”
I can see the commander in chief springing to life: he’s loyal to his people.
I talk to the soldiers, and they definitely have something to say about Schrøder. The rage they feel colors all their words, so I can’t take anything at face value. He had a charismatic personality. He was sociable and amiable and chatted often with people in the mess tent. Everyone knew him, but few were able to get close, aside from those in his platoon. One of the soldiers stares ahead thoughtfully. “Obviously not close enough.”
They bring me what Schrøder left behind. There’s no sign of any personal life that might tell us something, although there are a few books about Afghanistan, which is highly unusual. No one here wants to be bothered reading about the country they’re fighting in, but Schrøder does. Still, that shouldn’t come as any surprise. He’s clearly done much more than just read about it.
7
Adam stumbles. A dog walks right in front of him, and in the stupor he’s fallen into, he doesn’t see it before he’s about to trip. The Afghan behind him kicks the dog and yells a warning. The kick has no effect on the large, heavy dog, which doesn’t even try to dodge it. Instead, the black lips glide back, revealing two rows of sharp, shiny teeth. The Afghan raises his hand threateningly, and when the dog responds by growling, he kicks gravel at its head. The bushy head shakes and the dog snorts. Its tail has been cropped. A fighting dog.
They’ve been traveling for two days now. Guards directed all of them through the open square and then ordered them to leave the bazaar. There were dead all over the streets, and several buildings had holes from grenades and destroyed facades. Outside the settlement, a caravan of nomads was waiting for them. Adam has no idea if they’d been in the bazaar the whole time, if they took part in the battles that played out in the streets, or if they just arrived. The soldiers are headed for an unknown destination, surrounded by nomads who are ignoring their very existence.
The caravan travels on foot. The women carry small children on their backs or astride their hips, and a few old men and women sit high atop the calmly progressing camels. Schrøder, surrounded by a watchful group of armed men, walks in the middle of the caravan. He still hasn’t said a word to them, and it’s impossible to get near him.
They move halfway up the mountainside and then quickly down into the valley floor, where the sun never shines. The vegetation is sparse—they have yet to see a tree. Right now they’re in a desert area, although the mountains feel even closer. Everywhere they look, some mountain chain blocks their view with its large rocky masses, either sand colored or a brownish red, but always barren, with no other growth than some prickly, low-lying thicket. The mountains reach out into the desert rubble, as if they once belonged to a larger massif that solidified in the middle of a volcanic meltdown.
None of the nomads is wearing any brightly colored clothes, nor are there any small mirrors sewn into their kirtles or shoulder bags that might reflect the sun, making them visible from a long distance. The landscape is a thousand shades of gray and brown, and so are they. Perhaps the women’s clothing is colorful beneath the outer layers, but it looks as if they’re all in camouflage. The camels, the harnesses, the saddles, their suntanned faces and leathery skin, their dusty clothes, the children with their dirty cheeks and sand in their nostrils. It’s not just the landscape they’re merging into—it’s the war.
Camels can go where trucks can’t. The terrain has to be really rough to hold them back, and if the roadsides are speckled with bombs, they can easily shift direction.
The captured soldiers are scattered around. They all have patus pulled over their heads, so their pale faces and light hair can’t be seen from the air. Although they can look at each other, they can’t speak. Viktor tries to maneuver them into a group, but the guards shove them away from each other. Adam has a red mark on his forehead where the butt of a Kalashnikov struck him.
He’s walking a little behind Hannah. What is she thinking? She’s the most betrayed of them all, and he’s the only one who knows it. She’s the type you can’t feel sorry for if you ever want to get close to her. Still, she needs him. He can feel it. To protect her from Schrøder? He tried that, but he bungled it. It was his fault that it all went wrong. Jealousy made him act like an idiot when he mocked her with all that psychobabble about her father.
He realized too late that what they had was the start of a friendship. He rarely opens up to anyone, yet he managed to get someone else to open up, which made him ready to, as well. He’s attracted to Hannah, but it didn’t start with her body. It was something else, something he can’t quite name. He understands friendship between men—the camaraderie in the military is necessary for survival. But between men and women? He doesn’t understand love’s rules at all, if there even are any. How can two people talk so easily, open up the way he and Hannah did, and then not want to get closer? He’ll make do with a friendship if he can’t have anything else; he’s resigned himself to that. Life has never spoiled him, so that’s the way it will have to be. He only wants to be near her.
Attacking the qalat in Sangin, interrogating Massoud, trusting Sara, taking those three women hostage—Hannah was behind all of it, and Adam didn’t approve of any of it. He became enraged when he saw Andreas’s recordings of the massacre. He wanted the same thing as Hannah, but suddenly he found himself standing in a blood-soaked courtyard full of men, women, and children—none of whom were Schrøder. Is that the price for nailing him? Unintended consequences? Uncertainty builds within him; he senses that revenge has its own irresistible logic that takes everything with it, including his own moral compass. Schrøder is like shrapnel in his soul, and the hunt has only added more pieces of it. Where will it all end?
The question haunts him; that’s why he needs to speak with Hannah.
She’s a ways ahead of him. Now and then, she turns around and they make eye contact. It cheers him up every time.
The fight dog is still trotting along beside him. At times it gets so close that it seems as if it wants to rub up against his leg. Then it moves off again, yet it keeps pace the entire time.
The Afghans take a hard line with their pets. They’d never dream of holding them close or burying their noses in their fur. Nor would the children. They have work animals, not pets. He remembers it from Greenland. The Eskimos were like that with their sled dogs.
A sled dog runs halfway around the earth, twenty thousand kilometers, before it’s finished, but it doesn’t have an entire lifetime to do it in. After five years, the dog’s done, not because it’s worn out—it’s still has plenty of life in it—but any less than the top of its game won’t cut it if they’re going to survive together, people and animals, in the icy wastes. So the animals have to die. He was the one who shot the dogs when the time came. He would take them out into a deserted field. The dogs never suspected anything. It became
his claim to fame. He had that kind of calm within him.
The guide dog was three and a half when he arrived, and as a deployment lasts two years, elementary mathematics dictates that sooner or later someone will have to shoot it. The dog had been named two teams earlier. His full name was Frederik Brøndum Sivertsen, his middle name inspired by the bottle of aquavit they drank to celebrate the christening. But they only ever called him Crown Prince.
Crown Prince was white with black spots; he had thick fur, a wide head like a bear’s, and a thoughtful expression. He was the team’s hardest worker, always in front, even in the deepest snow when difficult conditions forced them to abandon the usual fan formation and harness the dogs in pairs or in one long row.
Adam shot Crown Prince.
They walked together across the snow on a beautiful day filled with bright skies and ice crystals glimmering back at the sun. Crown Prince sniffed around, momentarily free of his shackles. He looked up expectantly at Adam, keen on living as always. And then—bang!
Was he close to Crown Prince?
He never scratched the dog’s stomach or felt his heavy head in his lap. He stitched up his wounds once after he got too close to a musk ox. He beat the team with a rubber hose when they got their harnesses tangled and panicked—even Crown Prince was flipping out. He ran next to the team until he almost blacked out from exhaustion, coaxing the dogs on when they were about to give up because of brackish ice and painful pads. When he saw those eyes brighten and the dog’s muscles tense up in renewed effort, then he knew they were close to each other.
As he crawls into his sleeping bag that night, he sees the fighting dog standing there, its bushy fur shining in the moonlight. Those wolf eyes glinting. It lies down next to him and rests its head on its crossed front paws. The dog’s heavy breathing reveals that it has immediately fallen asleep. Sleep comes quickly to Adam, too. Waking up in the middle of the night, he sees the dog’s black silhouette against the starry night sky. The air is still, and Adam slips back easily into the arms of sleep.
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