“That’s OK.”
He stroked her hair. He was shy and reserved by nature, but tonight he wanted to pretend, if only for a short while. So he went along with it. He was Leo. Or rather, he no longer denied it. He packed his guitar in its case and suggested they go for a drink somewhere quieter.
They walked down Pestalozzistrasse. He had to be careful what he said; every word was a potential trap. Sometimes he thought she had found him out. At others, he thought she was playing along too. Was she not looking critically at his suit and shoes? His clothes, which until recently had seemed elegant, now felt cheap and ill-fitting. Was she toying with him? And yet she had known that he was Swedish. These days almost no-one knew about his origins.
They went into a small bar along the street and ordered margaritas. He let her talk and that gave him some clues. He still did not know her name, and he dared not ask. But she was apparently running—or helping to run—a pharmaceutical fund at Deutsche Bank.
“Can you imagine what a step-up that is, after all the crappy jobs Ivar gave me?”
He made a note of Ivar, Ivar who might have been called Ögren, as in Alfred Ögren Securities, where the woman had been working until recently, and where there was also someone named Malin Frode whom she regarded as a rival.
“I heard that you and Malin have been seeing a bit of each other?” she said.
He answered: “Not really. In fact not at all.”
He gave evasive answers to almost every question, although he was quite open about how he came to be playing with Klaus Ganz. Through contacts, he said. He’d been recommended by Till Brönner and Chet Harold.
“I played with them in New York. Klaus took a chance on me.”
The truth was, it was no gamble for any jazz band to hire him. He knew that much at least about his talents.
“But the guitar, Leo? You’re incredible. You must have been playing for years. When did you start?”
“In my teens,” he said.
“I thought only the grand piano and violin were good enough for Viveka.”
“I played on the sly.”
“The piano must have been useful, though. I recognized the harmonies when you played your solo, not that I’m an expert. But I remember hearing you at Thomas and Irene’s. It was the same feeling. The same vibe.”
The same feeling on a piano? What on earth did she mean? He wanted to ask, to have more clues. But he did not dare. He mostly kept quiet or simply smiled and nodded. Occasionally he would make a harmless remark, or tell her about something he had read somewhere. Such as—he had no idea how this came up—that the sleeper shark can live to the age of four hundred years, because it exists in slow motion.
“That’s dreary,” she said.
“And loooong,” he said in a protracted drawl, and that made her laugh. It did not take much to make her laugh, and he became more and more confident. He even dared to answer a question about where he thought the market was heading “now that valuations are so full and with interest rates low.”
“Up,” he said. “Or down.”
She found that funny too, and he felt he was discovering something new: that he enjoyed playing a role, that it added something to his personality and helped him to enter a world which had until now been closed to him, a world of money and opportunity. It may have been the drinks. It may have been the way she was looking at him. He talked and talked and was pleased with what emerged.
More than anything, he was glad to be seen with her. He loved her refinement, which was impossible to describe and was so much more than just clothes, jewelry and shoes. It came out in small expressions and gestures: her slight lisp, her ease in talking to the barman. Her poise seemed to give him status. He looked at her hips and legs and breasts and knew he wanted her. He kissed her in the middle of a sentence. He was more forward than he would ever have been as Dan Brody. Outside the bar he pressed his groin against her.
At her hotel—the Adlon Kempinski next to the Brandenburg Gate—he took her hard and confidently. He was no longer an inhibited lover. She said wonderful things about him afterwards, and he said wonderful things about her too. He felt happy—happy like a fraudster who has pulled off a scam, but happy all the same. Maybe also a little bit in love, not only with her but with his new self too. He couldn’t sleep. He wanted to Google the names she had given him, to try to understand. But he resisted the temptation. He wanted to experience that on his own. He thought of sneaking off at first light, but she looked so lovely in her sleep, clean and clear, as if she were a superior being even in her dreams. She had a red mark on her shoulder. He liked every little blemish.
Just before 6:00 a.m. he wrapped his arms around her, whispered a thank-you in her ear, and said that he had to go. To a meeting. She mumbled that she understood and gave him her business card. Her name was Julia Damberg. He promised to call “soon, very soon.” He dressed, took his guitar and left the hotel.
He started looking up Alfred Ögren Securities on his mobile during the taxi ride back to his own hotel. The C.E.O. of the company was indeed Ivar Ögren. He really did look like a dickhead. A smug creep with double chins and small, watery eyes. But that was immaterial. Right underneath his picture was one of Leo Mannheimer, head of research and partner…
He could not believe it. It was insane. It was his picture. The man in the photograph was so like him that it made his head spin. He took off his seatbelt and leaned forward to catch a glimpse of his own face in the rear-view mirror.
That only made things worse. He smiled exactly like Alfred Ögren’s head of research. He recognized the folds around the mouth and the furrows in the forehead and also the nose, curly hair, everything, even the posture, although the man in the picture was better groomed. The suit was certainly in a different class.
Back in his hotel room, Dan kept Googling. He lost track of time and swore and shook his head. He was beside himself. They were devastatingly alike, only the context was different. Leo Mannheimer belonged to another world, another order. He was light-years away from Dan, and yet not. It was incomprehensible. Most shattering of all was the music. Dan found an old recording from the Stockholm Concert Hall. Leo was probably twenty, perhaps twenty-one, and he looked tense and solemn. The auditorium was full; it was a semi-official performance in which Leo was a guest artist.
In those days no-one would have mistaken the one for the other. Dan was a long-haired bohemian in jeans and sweatshirts, while Leo was already the well-turned-out young man in the Alfred Ögren portrait, just a bit younger, with the same hairstyle and a similar tailor-made suit. Only the tie was missing. But none of that mattered.
When Dan saw the video, his eyes filled with tears. He cried not only because he realized that he had an identical twin, but also for the whole of his lonely life—his childhood on the farm, Sten’s beatings and his bullying demands, the work in the fields, the guitar smashed against the jetty, and his escape and journey to Boston and the first months of destitution. He cried for what he had never known and for everything he had had to do without. But most of all he cried for what he was hearing. In the end he took out his guitar and played along—fifteen years later and a world away.
It was not only the melancholy piece—apparently composed by Leo himself—but also the melodic base and harmony. Leo played with the same three-tone arpeggios as Dan did at the time. Just like Dan, he used diminished chords without the flattened fifth, or the minor seventh without the flat ninth as most of the others did, and he often landed on the seventh tone in the Dorian minor scale.
Dan had believed himself to be unique when he came across Django and found his own path, so remote from all the rock and pop and hip-hop his generation was absorbed in. But now there was a guy in Stockholm, someone who looked exactly like him, who had found the same harmonies and scales in an entirely different kind of world. It was impossible to fathom, and there was so much else bubbling to the surface—longing and hope, maybe love, but above all, sheer wonder. He had a brother.
And that brot
her had grown up with a wealthy family in Stockholm. It was not only extraordinary, it was also deeply unjust. As he recalled later, the anger and the rage set in early, like a pounding force in the midst of everything else. At the time, Dan could not know how this had come about. But he thought about the Stockholm people with their tests, their questions and films. Had they known?
Of course they had. He smashed a glass against the wall. Then he looked up Hilda von Kanterborg’s number. It was only mid-morning, but Hilda did not sound sober and that annoyed him.
“It’s Daniel Brolin,” he said. “Do you remember me?”
“What did you say your name was?” she slurred.
“Daniel Brolin.”
He could hear laboured breathing on the other end of the line and also, he was not sure, he thought he could detect fear.
“Dear Daniel,” she said. “Of course. How are you? We were so worried when we didn’t hear from you.”
“Did you know I had an identical twin? Did you?”
His voice broke. There was silence on the line. Then she poured something into a glass. He understood that she must have known—that this was the whole reason behind the visits to the farm and her strange words: “We’re supposed to study, not to intervene.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Still she did not answer, and he repeated his question, more aggressively this time.
“I wasn’t allowed to,” she managed to whisper. “I had signed confidentiality agreements.”
“So some bits of paper were more important than my life?”
“It was wrong, Daniel. Plain wrong! I’m no longer part of the authority. They kicked me out. They didn’t like me making objections.”
“So it was some fucking authority.”
His mind was spinning. He had no idea what he was saying. He only remembered her question.
“Have you and Leo found each other?”
Then he lost it completely. It was a while before he realized why. It was the natural tone in which she had referred to him and Leo, as if it was an old, familiar notion to her. For him it was earth-shattering.
“Does he know about this?”
“Leo?”
“Yes, Leo!”
“I don’t think so, Daniel. I can’t say any more. I really can’t. I’ve already said too much.”
“Too much? I called you in the middle of a crisis, when I had nothing, and what did you say then? Not one word. You let me grow up without knowing the most important thing in my life. You’ve robbed me…”
He struggled for words, but found nothing which would do his feelings justice.
“I’m sorry, Daniel, I’m sorry,” she stammered.
He yelled abuse at her, then hung up. He ordered some beer. A whole load of beer. He had to get his nerves under control, because already then it was clear to him that he must get in touch with Leo. But how? Should he write, call? Simply show up? Leo Mannheimer was different, rich and probably happier and much more sophisticated, and perhaps—Hilda had hinted at the possibility—Leo already knew about him and had chosen not to get in touch. Perhaps he was ashamed of his poor, downtrodden twin brother.
Dan went back to the Alfred Ögren home page and looked again at the picture of Leo. Did those eyes betray a hint of insecurity? That was a small boost. Perhaps Leo was not so cocky, after all. He remembered how easy it had been to talk to Julia the night before, and he lapsed into dreams and implausible hopes. He could feel his anger ebbing away and the tears welling up again.
What should he do? He Googled himself, looking for recordings of his own performances. He came across something from six months earlier, when he had just cut his hair and was sitting in a jazz club in San Francisco, playing the solo from Sinatra’s “All the Things You Are” and using the same sort of melodic base that Leo had at the Stockholm Concert Hall. He set up the recording as an attachment and wrote a long e-mail:
Dear Leo, Dear Twin Brother,
My name is Dan Brody and I’m a jazz guitarist. I was completely unaware of your existence until this morning, and I feel so emotional and shaken that I can hardly write.
I don’t want to bother you or cause you any inconvenience. I’m not asking for anything, not even a reply. I only want to say: knowing you exist, and knowing that you play the same kind of music as I do, will remain the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
I have no idea if you’re interested in my life, in the way that I’m burning with desire to hear about yours. But I want to tell you all the same. Did you ever meet our father? He was a good-for-nothing and a drunk, but he was exceptionally musical. Our mother died giving birth to us. I never found out much about it…
Dan wrote twenty-two pages. But he never sent them. He didn’t have the nerve. Instead he rang Klaus Ganz and told him there had been a death in the family. Then he booked a flight to Stockholm for the following morning.
It was the first time in eighteen years that he had set foot in Sweden. A cold, piercing wind was blowing. It was snowing. As always at that time in December, the Nobel Prize celebrations were under way. In the streets, the Christmas lights had been switched on, and he looked around in wonder. Stockholm was the great city of his distant childhood memories. He was nervous and feverish, but he was also as eagerly expectant as a little boy. Yet it would still be five days before he mustered the courage to take action. Until then, he lived as Leo Mannheimer’s invisible shadow, his stalker.
CHAPTER 15
June 21
Bashir Kazi’s beard was long and untidy. He wore khaki trousers and a multipocket vest. His arms were thick and muscular. In purely physical terms, he was impressive, but he was slumped on the leather sofa watching television, and having appraised Salander with a condescending look, he ignored her. With any luck he would be high. She pretended to lurch sideways, steadied herself and took a slug from her hip flask. Bashir smirked and said to Khalil, “Who’s this whore you’ve dragged home?”
“I’ve never seen her before. She was just standing outside. She said something about a film we had to see. Get her out of here!”
Khalil was frightened of her, it was obvious, but he was more frightened of his brother. That should serve her purpose. She put her bag with the laptop on a chest of drawers by the door.
“And who are you, little girl?” Bashir said.
“No-one special,” she said. This did not provoke much of a reaction, but Bashir did at least get to his feet and yawn, presumably to show how bored he was of girls being fresh with him.
“Why did you move back to this part of town?” he said to Khalil. “There’s nothing but hookers and crazies here.”
Salander looked around. It was a single-room apartment with a small kitchen, sparsely furnished. Apart from the sofa and chest of drawers, there was a loft bed and a low table. Clothes were strewn everywhere. A hockey stick was propped against the wall next to the chest.
“That’s a pretty sweeping generalization,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“That’s a rather broad generalization, Bashir, wouldn’t you say?”
“How come you know my name?”
“I’m just out of prison. Your buddy Benito says hi.”
It was a shot in the dark. Or not. She was fairly sure they were in touch with each other, and she saw a spark of recognition in Bashir’s watery eyes.
“What’s she got to say?”
“It’s actually a video clip. Do you want to see?”
“Depends.”
“I think you’ll enjoy it.” She took out her mobile and fiddled about as if trying to switch it on, but in fact she keyed in some commands and connected to the infrastructure run by Hacker Republic. She took a step forward and looked Bashir in the eye.
“Benito likes to do her friends favours, as you know. But there are a few things that need to be discussed.”
“Such as?”
“It’s a prison, and that in itself presents a problem. Oh, by the way, it was pretty c
lever of you to get a knife into the secure unit. Congratulations.”
“Get to the point.”
“The point is Faria.”
“What about her?”
“How could you have treated her so badly? You behaved like pigs.”
Bashir looked stunned.
“What the hell are you saying?”
“Pigs. Creeps. Bastards. There are many different ways of putting it, all understatements in the circumstances. Don’t you think you should be punished?”
Salander had expected a reaction, but she had underestimated how violent it would be, the sudden burst of fury after the initial confusion. Without a second’s warning Bashir punched her hard, right on the chin. She only just managed to keep her balance, while the rest of her was focused on holding her mobile steady down by her right hip, the screen directed at his face.
“You seem upset,” she said.
“Damn fucking right I am!”
Bashir threw another punch and this time too she staggered, but made no effort to defend herself, she didn’t even raise her hand. Bashir was staring at her, a combination of rage and astonishment in his eyes. Salander tasted blood. She took a chance.
“Was it really such a good idea to murder Jamal?” she said.
Bashir hit her again and this time it was harder to stay upright. She felt groggy and shook her head, hoping it would clear her vision, and then she caught sight of Khalil’s terrified eyes. Would he attack her too? She could not be sure; it was hard to read him. But more likely he would stay out of it. There was something pathetic about his scrawny figure.
“Not a good idea after all?” she said, and looked at Bashir as provocatively as she could.
He lost control, just as she had hoped.
“You have no idea what a fucking brilliant idea it was, you slut.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He made a whore of Faria,” Bashir screamed. “A whore! They dishonoured all of us.”
Another blow to the head and Salander fumbled to keep hold of her mobile.
“So Faria has to die too, doesn’t she?” she stammered.
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye Page 22
