But at least she was alive, and free – after a fashion.
I tried hard not to enjoy my six minutes of fame. I was paraded on Israel’s radio stations, telling my carefully rehearsed story and taking great pains to point out that I’d uncovered the nest of Nazi spies on my own, without any help from MOSSAD. The country applauded me warily, sceptically. I was offered the freedom of three towns, and there was even talk of planting a tree in my honour somewhere. The accolades and praise continued to trickle in for the next two months, and then I think someone at MOSSAD got a little jealous. It was just small hints at first, leaks to newspapers suggesting that the secret service may have helped in breaking the insidious ring of Nazis, as they called it. Then a few more leaks, suggesting that I had been accompanied by MOSSAD officers during my investigation.
Many in the government said that the secret service was simply trying to take credit for the hard work, determination and diligence of a near-illiterate foreigner. They should be ashamed of themselves. Why hadn’t they discovered this? Why was so much funding diverted to fools who couldn’t even find spies under their own roof?
For shame, the newspapers said.
On the day that Tel Aviv’s main heavyweight published an article calling for MOSSAD’s disbandment, Jesper Bergström came to my hotel.
‘Pack your things,’ he said and started throwing the contents of my closet onto the bed. ‘You’re leaving the country.’
‘When?’
‘Today. Now.’
‘I’m supposed to appear on a radio show.’
‘It’s cancelled. Here’s your new passport.’
I took it from him. The exit visa was already stamped.
‘Seems the plan to distance ourselves from this operation has blown up in our faces.’
‘Are you in trouble?’ I said hopefully.
‘No more than usual. Your popularity is not sitting well at the top. Best you leave before the less intelligent and more excitable members of our esteemed organisation decide to deal with you somewhat less secretively.’
I was ready to go in ten minutes.
* * *
He took me to the airport and waited with me until my flight was ready to board.
‘No private jet?’ I asked.
‘I thought it better to put you on a flight with other passengers. It’s slightly less likely to suffer a mid-air mishap with other Israelis on board.’
‘Good thinking,’ I said weakly.
‘Besides which, our budget has been cut.’ He looked at me sourly as though it were my fault.
They announced that my flight was boarding, so he picked up my bag full of books and handed it to me. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be you,’ he said. ‘We were going to use Klein.’ Another sour look. ‘But for the most part you played this very well, very professionally. Thank you.’ He gave me a small plastic card with a phone number etched into it. ‘In case you should ever need my help.’
I couldn’t imagine a universe in which I’d ever want to see this man again, let alone seek his help.
He shook my hand, and then as a strained afterthought, he pecked my left cheek. ‘Safe journey. Stay out of trouble.’ He cleared his throat and then he left, making his way through the crowds as though wading through water.
Chapter 65
Before takeoff, the pilot left his hiding place to shake my hand. He said I’d done a great service to his country and that Israel would never forget it. The stewardesses followed; a handshake, a few words of gratitude and then a kiss on both cheeks.
The flight was delayed so that every one of the one-hundred-and-fifty-three passengers could form a line to shake my hand. I made the best job I could of signing autographs; a readable signature was still something I had to work on.
We finally left the runway an hour-and-a-half later than planned, the passengers content, and me with an aching wrist, feeling a complete fraud.
I tried to sleep once we left Israel’s fortified air space, but guilt had taken hold, so I just sat in my seat listening to the thrum of the engines. Night came and brought with it an almost violent restlessness. I took Silje’s diary from my bag and began to read it through. MOSSAD had let me keep it though they’d taken everything else I’d gathered concerning the Occupation and the Iscariot experiment. I imagined they weren’t bothered with the ramblings of a young mountain woman living the last year of her life.
I realised why I couldn’t sleep. I was out of Israel; I’d slipped free of MOSSAD’s yoke. I could think for myself without pressure or preconception or what Bergström laughingly called ‘guidance’.
I had met the great Freya Dorfmann and I’d realised that she held nothing but a profound and reluctant love for Silje Ohnstad. And no matter what the Nazis had done to her, that love would never allow her to harm Silje, or Fólkvangr.
I couldn’t sleep because I knew it wasn’t her.
And my father? He’d sacrificed everything – his future, his wife, his daughter – so he could honour the memory of a woman who’d died thirty years before.
I couldn’t sleep because I knew it wasn’t him.
So I pored through Silje’s diary again, one year during the war.
Her last year.
And it was only when she wrote about the funeral of Jonas Kleppe I realised that it wasn’t a love triangle at all.
It was actually a square.
Chapter 66
The plane landed in a rainstorm. The wind lashed black water across the window in opaque horizontal sheets. I should have been terrified.
Instead I was just numb.
Instead I wished I’d just left well enough alone.
I said goodbye to my inflight fan club and went through passport control on the fake documents Bergström had given me.
I left the airport without going through baggage reclaim. I’d brought two suitcases back from Israel, the sum total of everything I owned.
I should have cared more. I didn’t. I didn’t care about anything. I should have let everything stay dead in Israel.
The rain soaked through my clothes while I waited for a taxi. I closed my eyes and clamped my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. She would have lashed out at me for this. Keep your eyes open, Brigit! Danger can come from anywhere at anytime! You have to be aware of everything around you!
I opened my eyes and there was an old man standing next to me, holding an umbrella over my head.
‘Thank you.’
He just nodded and lit a pipe.
I wondered what had happened to all the taxis.
‘You’re something of a hero these days,’ he said suddenly. ‘Been following your adventures on the radio.’
‘I’m not really a hero.’
‘You exposed all that business in Israel and cleared your family name. What’s not heroic about that?’
‘I had a lot of help’ – in throwing an innocent woman to MOSSAD’s wolves. A blind, innocent woman.
When the taxi finally arrived, the old man opened the door for me and shielded me from the rain until I was inside. He raised his hat and closed the door.
‘Where to?’ the driver clipped. He looked at me through the mirror, his eyes growing steadily wider.
‘Ohnstad Memorial Hospital,’ I said, the first time I’d been able to say its name out loud.
* * *
I was a different person by the time the taxi swung into the hospital car park. The driver hadn’t said a single word to me and when I tried to pay him he refused.
‘It’s on me,’ he said.
I asked him why and he just shrugged. ‘Because.’
I thanked him and shut the door. He skidded on the wet asphalt in his haste to get away. There was a sticker on the back of the taxi, a swastika cleaved in two with a knife: the Friends of Fólkvangr. I guessed my family wouldn’t be hearing from them anymore.
A few people stopped to say hello and shake my hand when I signed the day book. They said I was courageous to take on the whole Israeli government like that.
A nurse asked me if my father was coming home.
‘He should,’ she said, and the doctor standing next to her agreed. ‘He should come home and he should be pardoned.’
‘Yes, the King himself should pardon him,’ one of the orderlies said. A few others joined them; doctors, nurses, visitors and patients. They spoke warmly, apologetically, and with each kind word the cloud over me grew darker.
I made my excuses and freed myself from the circle, just catching the lift before the doors closed. I made my way to the fifth floor where there was another unwelcome surprise waiting for me.
It wasn’t much, but it was more than I deserved. A banner over the reception area that read, Welcome Home, Brigit!
There was a huge ring cake standing on a low table close to the floor. It was so tall it would have left almond paste on the ceiling if they’d put it on the reception desk.
The doctors and nurses clapped and cheered, and I felt my cheeks burning.
Dagrun stood near the nurses’ station watching me in that disquieting, intense way that she sometimes does. She’d changed. Her hair had gone from grey to white in a few short months, but she’d had it cut into a very business-like bob. She was wearing a dress I’d not seen before, a Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe that was cut surprisingly high above the knee. Not quite a minidress, but quite daring for Dagrun, and she was wearing makeup. I wondered if it was for me.
She’d lost weight too; enough for me to notice, anyway.
‘Definitely not a diet,’ she said, handing me a Coke bottle. ‘I can’t eat properly when I’m stressed, and I’ve been pretty fucking stressed since you left.’
And still swearing, My God.
‘I was worried.’ She looked around to make sure no one else was watching us; the staff and patients were enjoying the unscheduled break and seemed to have forgotten I was there.
Dagrun struggled for something to say. ‘You still travel light.’
‘Sorry?’
‘No suitcases.’
‘I left them at the airport.’
‘I’ll call reclaim, have them brought to the apartment.’
She searched my eyes for a sign: joy, revulsion… ‘If that’s okay. I mean if you have somewhere else to stay…’
‘No, your place is fine. Thank you.’
‘You can stay for as long as you want,’ she said. ‘Just don’t trash the place.’
I tried to smile.
‘Sorry. Bad joke. Not used to humour.’
‘You’ll learn.’
‘I hope so.’
She held my hand, forgetting we weren’t alone.
‘How’s Monica?’
And for a moment she’d forgotten she was a doctor. My hand fell back to my side.
‘She’s doing far better than we expected. She’s responding to treatment, eating well, but, Brigit, please don’t get your hopes up. The prognosis hasn’t changed.’
‘She’s doing okay though, yes?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, she’s doing fine. I’m sorry about all this; I should have taken you to see her straight away. I just wanted to—’
‘I know. It’s all right.’
She rubbed the back of her neck and murmured something about professional conduct. ‘You unsettle me,’ she said. ‘You always have.’
We left the party and walked the corridor towards my mother’s room. I could almost hear her thinking.
‘I’m not young, Brigit,’ she began, ‘I’m not that pretty and I’m not exactly svelte.’
I said I wasn’t sure what ‘svelte’ meant.
‘I’m overweight and I’m not good with people. I can be intense, bad-tempered and sometimes I say things that a minute later I wish I could take back. I scream at night and sometimes I can’t bear being touched. I’ve been getting help with that, but I don’t think I’ll get much better. I really don’t have anything to offer you except—’
‘We should talk about this later,’ I said.
She looked to the floor. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Any of it.’
‘No, I’m happy you did.’ I pressed my mouth against hers. ‘We’ll talk later.’
‘Dinner,’ she said, her face glowing. ‘I’ll cook. Or you can.’
‘We’ll both cook.’ I eased open the door to Monica’s room.
‘Call me.’
‘I will.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
I closed the door behind me and waited until I couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore. Then I pressed my head against the back of the door and began to cry. Monica gave me exactly one minute.
‘So you’re back.’
I turned and saw Dagrun’s idea of ‘doing well’.
She looked greyer than ever, like the colour of stone. Her bones showed through flesh that had worn to the thinness of tissue paper. Tubes and feeds snaked in and out of her, and there was the smell I remembered from before: chlorine and decay.
I’d hoped she’d be stronger.
‘You don’t have a kiss for me?’
I watched her, feeling my heart pounding in my throat. Then I walked around to the other side of the bed and leaned in close. She turned her cheek towards the ceiling. I pressed my lips to her ear and whispered.
‘I know it was you.’
Then I drew away so I could see her eyes.
‘Fólkvangr,’ I said. ‘I know it was you.’
She swallowed and waited. Her breathing deepened, her lips curled into a snarl. She entered flight mode and her eyes began hunting for an escape route. There was none; she’d be wired to this hospital until the day she died. When she realised she was going nowhere, she slowly calmed down. I stood and waited.
‘I saw you on television,’ she said airily, ‘telling the world it was Freya Dorfmann. Are you now telling the world you lied, Brigit?’
And still so very clever…
‘There were four of you,’ I said. ‘Freya, Erik, Silje – and you. I didn’t see it because I’ve only ever known you as Monica. Monica Fossen, my mother. But before you were her you were Karoline Vennerød, and before that you were Hilde Eriksen, and before her you were Ruth Bondevik, Mabrit Strøm, Lisbeth Brenna.
‘And before you tried to bury her with all the others you pretended to be, you were Lisbeth Fehn.’
Monica’s eyes hardened.
‘You betrayed your home, just to break her.’
She swallowed and wrung the sheets in her hands, wondering if there was anything of us she could salvage. There wasn’t, which only left the truth.
‘You have no idea what she was like,’ she whispered. ‘She was a bitch, a childish, self-centred narcissist. She treated your father like something she’d found under her shoe – and he always went back to her. Time and again she’d betray him and time again he’d return and beg for more.
‘Even after he found her fucking that Jew; even after I married him; even when I thought “Finally! At last! He’s mine!” she was still there, over my shoulder whenever he looked away from me, on his lips when he slept. He would have gone back to her again, Brigit. He would have gone back to a life of betrayal and misery.’
‘So you thought the answer was a betrayal of your own. God, all those people…’
‘I saved him!’
‘Are you even sorry?’
She turned that look on me, the same unblinking eyes that drilled into my being when I said I was tired of running. Listen to me, Brigit. This is how it is. This is how it will always be. But if you want to leave me, then fine. I’m a survivor; I thought I’d raised one too.
‘Brigit, listen to me. I did it for him. For us.’
She put her head back and closed her eyes. I was trembling. Every inch of me rattled and shook.
‘If you tell Bergström, he’ll kill me.’
‘Yes.’
‘And is that what you want? You want that animal to butcher your own mother?’
He’d do that. I knew he would.
‘Is that what you want?’
‘No, of course I don’t.’
She exhaled and smiled. ‘Good.’
She beckoned for me to come back to her. I stayed rooted to the floor. Her hands dropped down to the bed.
‘We’ll forget all this nonsense, Brigit. We have our traitor: Freya Dorfmann. We’ll leave it at that.’
I blinked, and then I nodded.
‘And perhaps you’re right. Maybe it’s time to stop running.’
I said ‘Yes’ without even thinking.
‘God knows I don’t want to spend what little time I have chasing around this fucking country. I’ll leave the hospital. We’ll get a little flat someplace near the dock.’
‘I don’t like the docks.’
She laughed. ‘Fine, wherever you want.’
And that was it. She’d absolved herself of blame, of guilt. We could have a normal life now.
‘Come on. Lie next to me.’ She opened her arms.
And so I went to her, knocking over a vase on the way. Her eyes followed it to the floor, where it shattered, while I took a cushion from the chair without missing my stride. By the time she realised the vase was a distraction, I was on top of her, my knees on her shoulders, pinning her to the bed. I pushed the cushion over her face and pressed it in close about her ears, with the weight of my body on top of it.
Bergström told me that when you’ve decided to kill someone then don’t dwell on it. Don’t think about it. Don’t question whether or not you are doing the right thing. Don’t try to convince yourself there must be some other way.
Don’t think about it, he’d said, not until the moment arrives. And then…
Commitment. Remind yourself of the righteousness in what you’re doing. Celebrate the sacrifice you are making of yourself; the piece of your soul you give in order that justice be done.
I wept and pressed down harder. Monica struggled. Her arms flailed, her fingernails scored lines in my wrists. I pressed harder and felt her right shoulder pop from its socket.
But she was still struggling.
‘Mother, please… just stop.’
I counted softly to myself. One, two, three, four…
If the treatment and the illness hadn’t weakened her then I don’t think I could have held on. She lashed out with her legs, trying to throw me to the floor. I just thought of Bergström and how many times he’d done this with his mind clear of everything except the righteousness of his action.
The Quisling Orchid Page 55
