‘So you think Pankhurst took Larson with him to Tehran?’
‘What do I know? When he left Stockholm, he must’ve had some destination.’
Her body is thrust against the door as the car goes into a tight bend. She looks out again.
‘Where are we going, actually?’
‘Nowhere. Wherever you want.’
The car stops at the lights and Markus falls silent.
Ester looks out again. A bus stop. She makes eye contact with a man waiting on the bench. He starts to stare. She turns back to Markus.
‘Gary Larson’s established in ANCIB after the war,’ he says. ‘That means Larson had worked for them for a while before. You don’t get into American intelligence services from nowhere. In fact, there’s only one explanation. The route into the NSA must’ve gone through Pankhurst and the SIS. A few years later – ten years later in fact – in fifty-three, Larson’s name pops up again, in Iran. When the Shah regained power from Mohammed Mossadegh in a coup.’
The car brakes behind a bus pulling into a bus stop outside a kindergarten. A girl hangs from a wire fence with one hand, sucking the mitten on her other.
‘Gary Larson was sent to Iran just before the coup in fifty-three. And I don’t think he would’ve been if he hadn’t been there before.’
Ester doesn’t disagree. Gerhard could well have been in Tehran in forty-three with the Brits and ten years later with the Americans. What Markus is saying has an internal logic, as always. Actually she doesn’t know anyone better at digging into classified information than Markus Rebowitz. He has honed this talent ever since the end of the Second World War.
‘Gary Larson was in Tehran when Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalised the British oil wells. Gary Larson was on the staff of Faziollah Zadehi when he had Mossadegh arrested on the orders of Shah Mohammed Reza.’
Ester leans back. Feeling she needs time to digest this, work out what it means. She takes a deep breath. Lifts her head and looks Markus in the eye: ‘Could Larson know that someone has been snooping into his background?’
Markus shakes his head, brusquely and confidently. ‘As I said, he isn’t there anymore. Anyway, Gary Larson’s never held a high-ranking position. He’s a foot soldier. A useful man with a repertoire of dirty tricks for tight spots. You know the kind.’
They drive in silence until Ester breaks it. ‘Come on, Markus. You don’t pick me up for no reason.’
Markus takes a deep breath. ‘Someone’s whispered in my ear that seven or eight years ago he started on a different staff, once again as muscle. In poor countries. Larson’s had an American diplomatic passport and smarmed around receptions attended by corrupt politicians with the right influence: Guatemala City, Buenos Aires and Caracas. This group used every means available to convince rotten politicians that their nation should take out loans from the World Bank, and that their country needed cash for children’s education and hospitals and so on for old people. When they got the loans it was through private investment banks in America. The building contracts went to American companies. They were for big national projects, not just schools, hospitals and roads, but also power stations, dams and factories. We’re talking enormous sums here. The point is that the business idea behind the projects is that the countries are too poor ever to be able to pay back the loans.’
So what, thinks Ester, who has become impatient. Expensive loans to poor countries is just a modern variant of Marshall Aid. ‘Markus, you’re no politician. Nor am I. I’m not interested in how poor countries vote the way they do in the UN.’ She looks outside again and discovers they are going up Bygdøy allé towards Gimle cinema. ‘Ask David to turn right,’ she says. ‘If I’m being driven it may as well be all the way home.’
Markus presses the button under the glass partition, talks into the microphone and asks David to drive to the top of Thomas Heftyes gate and park somewhere.
To her he says: ‘This has something to do with why he was given the boot. Gary Larson has been a loose cannon, driven by drinking and gambling. He has no possessions, and he has a huge gambling debt. He had something like thirteen or fourteen serious disciplinary charges on his record before he capped it all in Las Vegas about a year ago. The evening had started quite normally. Gary Larson lost big sums of money, borrowed more and lost them, too. He wasn’t allowed to carry on playing and was thrown out. In the middle of the night he was supposed to have lowered himself from a veranda, naked, his body covered in camouflage paint, with a bayonet between his teeth, like some kind of crazy pirate. He kicked in a window in the casino director’s apartment and attacked the poor man and his lover. Almost killing both of them. The man was skewered to the bed, bleeding to death, but the lady escaped into the corridor and screamed for help. Gary Larson knocked the living daylights out of four security guards before he was cuffed. He was driven to rehab in a straitjacket. Apparently he dried out there, but was discharged under a cloud. And his decline has been precipitous.’
The driver goes past her entrance at first, carries on to the crossroads, does a U-turn and pulls in by the kerb. Ester doesn’t move. ‘What’s he been living off since, then?’
‘Freelancing.’
‘Which means?’
‘I’d hazard a guess at private security companies. That’s usually where they end up, those who don’t have a musical career to fall back on.’
She is quiet. Markus has never been especially funny even when he tries to be.
‘His speciality’s always been jobs with knives.’
They look into each other’s eyes, and Markus’s are now enquiring, tense and serious. ‘Silent killing,’ he says.
‘Is he married?’ she asks.
‘I hope you realise this man is no Sunday-school teacher, Ester.’
‘I asked if he has any family.’
‘Apparently he has a floozy in Mexico.’
She doesn’t think it suits Markus to be vulgar. ‘A floozy?’
‘She’s said to have made a living as a prostitute in Mexico City. He’s lived there, with her, in between freelancing. He’s still got gambling debts, quite a lot of them.’
Ester lifts her shopping bag and puts it on her lap. ‘What this boils down to is…’ She draws breath. ‘What you’re actually saying is that the Gary Larson who landed at Fornebu airport is a man looking for money.’
Markus shakes his head. ‘I’m trying to tell you he’s dangerous, Ester. So far that’s the most important thing I’ve read.’
She opens the door and gets out of the car. Turns back to the open door.
‘Did you hear?’ Markus says. ‘Gary Larson’s a dangerous man.’
‘We’ve been here before. You tell me the world’s a dangerous place, and I say I’ll watch out. This is where you want me, isn’t it.’
She closes the door. The car glides away from the pavement. She sees the back of Markus’s head through the rear window. The kippah doesn’t move. He doesn’t turn round.
She waits until the car has reached the end of Bygdøy allé. Only then does she go inside.
Oslo, August 2015
1
No ‘Hi’.
No ‘Good morning, darling’. Just a stiff stare at the crossword. So Robert is jealous again. Turid looks from Robert’s grumpy profile to the family photo hanging above the telephone shelf. Erik, Grete and her. Against a sun-drenched wall on the mountain farm one Easter, when knee-length breeches were the order of the day, and you ate oranges and Kvikklunsj chocolate bars in the sun. Peik is there too. Gazing up at them and smiling the way a Gordon Setter should. All four of them look happy. Turid loves the photo.
But now she needs a cup of coffee to avoid getting a headache. Fortunately there is some in the machine. At that moment she remembers that the telephone rang while she was in the bathroom. Two observations this morning: a telephone conversation; Robert’s sulky silence. Turid understands what has happened, but carries on regardless and goes to the Moccamaster, which is still half full. Fetches a mug from the
cupboard. Her favourite is from the sixties: a Norwegian Figgjo Flint model. A Turi design CLUPEA. A short mug decorated with upright blue fish and yellow flowers. The coffee is too strong. The black colour has taken on an unhealthy-looking brown tint. Robert always makes the coffee too strong. Everything is a little too much with Robert. Too caring, too possessive of the car, the mountain cabin and her.
Turid takes the milk from the fridge, pours some into her mug and stands with her back to him, looking out of the window and trying to hatch a plan to deal with the impending outburst. She doesn’t understand how Robert can be bothered to build up such great charges of negative energy. After all, they are both getting on. She is seventy-three and Robert is sixty-nine. It is at least thirty years since Turid had her last fling. It is thirty-five years since she wanted to divorce Robert and move in with Hans Grabbe. It will soon be more than fifty years since she met Hans for the first time. She and Hans used to have sex in the university reading room. Turid smiles at the thought. The first time they forgot that the caretaker did rounds and switched off the lights at night. When the door opened and they heard his footsteps crossing the floor, they tried as best they could not to make a sound. And her with Hans’s organ in her mouth. As soon as the light went out he came.
Turid faces Robert. ‘It was Hans who rang, wasn’t it.’
He is taken aback. She sees that she has floored him. He nods.
‘I asked him to do a job for me. That’s why,’ she says.
‘Job? Hans Grabbe’s a pensioner, like you.’
She takes the mug of coffee with her onto the terrace, adjusts the garden chair and sits down. The neighbours’ children are jumping on the trampoline on the other side of the fence. This is what she loves best. The sound of children in the summer. Their Philippino au pair calls the children from her sunbed.
Robert comes out with the crossword magazine under his arm. He sits beside her. His face is redder than usual, unhealthily so. It might be just the contrast with his white hair, but she believes it is more likely to be blood pressure.
‘What kind of job?’
‘I want him to secure an item for me that I thought had disappeared fifty years ago – more, maybe. A bracelet.’
‘It must be quite a bracelet. He charges several thousand kroner an hour.’
‘Don’t cross bridges before you come to them, Robert. Hans owes me some favours.’
She leans back with her eyes closed, listening to the children on the trampoline again. Enjoying the sun warming her forehead and cheeks.
‘Hans still thinks he’s God’s gift to the world,’ Robert says, his intonation several degrees lighter than a few minutes before.
‘Hans Grabbe’s one of those tenacious lawyers who can never have enough of the circus,’ she says, her eyes still closed. ‘Even though his sons have taken over, he still tries to have some input.’
‘Grabbe’s a good name for a lawyer. I’ll give him that.’
Turid has heard this remark probably a hundred times.
‘Grabber,’ Robert says, chuckling. ‘Grabbing hands.’
Before he can go into his full routine, she takes the phone from her pocket and taps in Hans’s number.
She mouths: ‘I’m calling him.’
‘Sounded as if he was on the beach,’ Robert says.
She turns her back on him. ‘It’s me, Hans. Turid.’
‘What a husband you’ve got,’ he says. ‘What did you give him for breakfast? Lemons?’
Turid leans back in her chair again. There are seagull cries in the background. Robert is probably right. Hans is in Sørland. Turid smiles at her husband. ‘Robert makes breakfast here. Do you have some good news for me?’
‘Well, I have some news anyway. The auction itself can’t be stopped. But there’s a possibility regarding the bracelet. I’ve talked to the legal titleholder. He doesn’t live in Norway and has no connection with the country. No family, nothing. But he allowed me to explain the case on the phone. And he was intrigued. Even if he doesn’t buy your version of events. The problem is that this might take some time. As I said, he doesn’t live in Norway.’
‘Why doesn’t he buy what you call my version of events?’
‘Are you Jewish, Turid?’
‘No, you know I’m not.’
‘There’s something Jewish about the bracelet. That’s why he finds it hard to believe what you’re saying.’
‘Who is he and where does he live?’
‘The guy lives in Jerusalem. His name’s Jonatan Azolay. Does that ring a bell?’
‘Not at all.’
‘That’s strange.’
‘Why?’
‘He knows you.’
Turid is dumbstruck.
‘That was why he became amenable. But we didn’t talk for that long. He’s a hard-working businessman. But we’ve agreed to talk. I’ll follow this up.’
‘Hans!’
‘This is all I have for the moment. I’ll get back to you.’
Turid says goodbye and puts her phone on the table. Meets Robert’s gaze.
‘Was I right?’ Robert asks, smiles and sips at his coffee. ‘Was he on the beach?’
Turid absent-mindedly studies her husband. ‘Yes, he was,’ she says. ‘He was on the beach.’ Turid leans back again. Jonatan Azolay? The name doesn’t mean a thing to her.
Oslo, November 1967
1
‘The university portico is among the finest examples of classicism in Oslo. Apart from the Royal Palace, the Stock Exchange and the Supreme Court, perhaps. The best feature of this building is the way the architect Christian Heinrich Grosch uses the two wings to complete the homage to Roman architecture.’
The man is wearing a white shirt and a bow tie. He is speaking to two Japanese-looking men with glasses. Each is holding an umbrella and both watch Ester as she crosses the square towards Domus Academica.
At the top of the staircase a caretaker in a blue smock is sweeping up cigarette ends with a brush and pan. Ester asks him where she can find the MA law students. He points to the central building. Ester goes back down the stairs. Nods to the two Japanese-looking gentlemen, who nod back enthusiastically. She crosses the university square and goes through the portico. Chooses the green door to the left at the back. Walks in. The smell of the toilets hits her. She turns left and carries on down the corridor to the student cloakroom. Behind the counter is an elderly white-haired lady attending to something behind her. She turns. Comes to the counter and asks how she can help. Ester asks the cloakroom lady if she knows a law student called Turid Heggen.
The lady says she thinks so. ‘Blonde, isn’t she? Tall, attractive?’
Ester nods.
The lady says she can ask about Turid in the reading room, if Ester doesn’t mind waiting. She points to a wooden chair beside the cloakroom counter.
Ester sits down.
A few moments go by before a woman comes down the stairs and walks towards Ester. She looks unbelievably like Åse. The same narrow chin. The same full lips. Two green eyes under pronounced eyebrows, like the outstretched wings of a big bird. Ester is moved and gets to her feet. Turid is wearing faded jeans and a green military jacket. She doesn’t seem to bother with make-up. Her thick hair is parted in the middle and woven into one large plait on her shoulder. Had it not been for the contemporary clothing, she could have been Åse.
Ester dries an eye with her glove and says: ‘You probably think I’m being silly, but you’re the spitting image of your mum.’
Turid regards her with bemusement.
‘Sorry,’ Ester says, reaching out a hand. ‘My name’s Ester. I knew Åse well, from when we were small children.’
They stand taking each other in. Ester wonders if Åse’s daughter will react to being addressed so informally. Deciding to continue in the same vein, she says: ‘Can I invite you to eat something?’ She points to the swing doors of the basement café and leads the way.
She asks Turid to find them a table while she goes t
o the counter. She takes a tray and remembers she didn’t ask Turid what she wanted. Can’t be helped. Ester is nervous and doesn’t want to appear clumsy. She takes two Danish pastries and two Cokes.
She spots Turid sitting at the back by the window, at one of the long tables. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘But the coffee looks dreadful and I was a bit thirsty.’
Turid says a Coke is fine.
The pastries have been freshly made and are very crispy. Bits flake off and both try to eat with a certain dignity, but they end up grinning at each other.
Ester puts the rest of hers down on her plate, wipes her fingers on the serviette and tells Turid she got to know Åse when she was very young. ‘My family spent their holidays in a mountain cabin in Valdres, not far from where your mother lived. We became good friends and stuck together. And we did the same during the war, when she lived in Oslo.’
Ester tells her she was a courier for the resistance movement in the war and collected illegal newspapers from Åse’s flat. ‘You were just a baby.’ Ester says that she fled to Sweden a few days before Åse died.
‘I never knew my mother,’ says Turid. ‘But I still love hearing people talk about her.’
Ester says she was about to flee to Sweden in the clothes she was standing up in. She had no other possessions.
The Courier Page 28
