The Believer

by Joakim Zander

  “I don’t know where they are,” he says resolutely.

  It takes a few seconds before he hangs up without saying anything more. He just sits there completely silent with the phone in hand.

  “Mehdi?” Yasmine says. “What’s the deal? What’s happening?”

  “Ey, brother!” I say.

  “Talk. What’s happening?”

  “They want Yazz,” he says calmly.

  “What?”

  I don’t understand anything at all. We’re out now. You came back and rescued me. Surely there’s nothing keeping us here any longer. We’re free now. They can’t catch us.

  “What’s happening?” I say. “What is this? Yazz?”

  You turn to me again, your eyes are tired and heavy now.

  “Mehdi’s gangsters,” you say. “All that bullshit in Bergort, the riots and all that, you know? It’s a long story, but Mehdi tried to get them to scare me so I wouldn’t find you. He is loyal. An idiot, but loyal. Anyway I ended up shooting one of them in the leg.”

  You shrug, as if it’s not such a big deal.

  “And now they want to get us so we’ll shut up or for revenge, or who the fuck knows why,” you continue.

  I lean back and close my eyes.

  “You shot somebody in the leg?” I say.

  You don’t answer, just bend over to check on the two guys standing guard outside the entrance. I shake my head, hoping it will clear.

  “What’s the matter with Parisa?” I say.

  Mehdi inhales deeply and slowly lets the air out.

  “They were with her now,” he says. “I heard it in her voice. They made her call. Their way of sending a message, right?”

  I nod. We all know all about that. About messages and alliances and threats and the endless fucking futility of it all.

  “I have until tomorrow to find you,” Mehdi says.

  “What the hell are we gonna do?”

  We sit in silence for a moment.

  “I might know where to start,” you say at last.

  60. STOCKHOLM—FRIDAY, AUGUST 21–SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  IT’S EVENING BY the time they end up at Tegnérgatan 10. They’re all so tired, they’re close to collapsing. She looks at Fadi, who can hardly sit up in the backseat, and he looks transparent, even more of a ghost than before.

  They drive slowly past the address and turn up on Döbelnsgatan. It’s almost seven. Where did the afternoon go?

  “Stop there,” she says and points to a gap between two cars in the other direction.

  Mehdi does a U-turn at the next intersection, drives back, and parks his Mazda in the spot. Then he leans back in his seat with his eyes closed. The stress is eating away at him, of course. He hadn’t expected this, hadn’t anticipated that those shunos would threaten him and his family.

  Mehdi was never the brightest guy, and he’s brought most of this shit on himself through his own stupidity, but she still feels sorry for him. She feels sorry for Parisa too, despite her betrayal. She remembers how it is, or how it was, all those interlocking alliances, all the trouble it caused. And now they’re in deep water, and Yasmine is the only one who might be able to save them.

  She leans forward between the seats and looks out through the window, down Tegnérgatan. She can easily see the door at number 10.

  “There’s a hostel on Observatorielunden,” she says now, turning around toward Fadi.

  “You have to sleep, habibi. I’ll stay here.”

  “What do you mean you’ll stay here?” Mehdi says and rubs his eyes.

  “This is where he lives,” she says. “Lööw, the guy who pays those shunos at night. He’s sort of your boss, Mehdi. I’m meeting him tomorrow, but I want to keep an eye on him. You stay with Fadi and keep your phones on, OK? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  When she opens her eyes again, the street is still deserted, light gray with splashes of gold and green farther up the street near the park, and she’s shivering from cold in the morning light. Her neck and back are stiff as she straightens up in her seat, and her teeth chatter. How long has she been sleeping? Her cell phone display shows a few minutes to seven.

  Lööw got back to the apartment late yesterday, after eleven, and she initially considered surprising him. But in the end she decided to wait and follow him to their meeting at the City Library.

  She doesn’t trust him. Who knows what he’s up to?

  She’s freezing, and there’s no way to get warm in the car. She’s wearing nothing but a black tank top and a thin bomber jacket. Her head feels scratchy from a few days of lack of sleep, and she pushes open the car door and climbs out onto the street. It’s quiet and almost impossible to imagine that a city could be this empty and deserted.

  On the passenger side there’s an old, red hat thrown on the floor. With a grimace, she tries to pull her long hair into a ponytail and pushes the cap onto her head. Not the world’s most sophisticated disguise, but it’s all she has right now.

  She slowly starts to jog up toward Tegnérlunden, just to warm up and get her body going.

  Nearly two hours later, she’s managed to procure a cup of coffee and a stale cheese sandwich from a café that isn’t supposed to open for another hour. Now she’s back in the car again, and the morning has gone from raw cold to tepid late summer, and she feels the life slowly returning to her body and limbs.

  She sends a text message to Fadi:

  Everything OK? I’ll contact you after I met Lööw, OK?

  She checks the time on her phone. 08:35. He should be heading to their meeting soon, she thinks.

  Still she almost has time to doze off again, leaning back in the driver’s seat, when she sees with half an eye someone coming out of the door at number 10 and heading toward Sveavägen. It only takes a second for her to wake up. George Lööw is dressed in stiff, skinny chinos and brown shoes. A narrow, dark blazer. Hair like yesterday, slicked back.

  While keeping her eyes glued to him, she jumps out onto the street, locks the car, and follows him down the street.

  She’s aware that she has to be more careful, even if he would hardly expect to be followed to their meeting, he knows now how she looks.

  But when he takes out his phone and presses it against his ear, she hurries up and closes the distance between them to just a few yards. The streets are almost empty; if he turned around now he’d see her. Does it matter? she thinks. It feels more important to try to hear what he’s talking about on the way to their meeting.

  It takes a moment before someone answers. Then:

  “I’m on my way now,” he says in English.

  A few cars drive by on the street, obscuring what Lööw says next. The only thing she picks up is that he repeats the words makes me uncomfortable several times. At the same time, he runs his free hand nervously through his hair. As if he really felt physically uncomfortable.

  When he finally takes the phone from his ear, and lets it drop into the pocket of his chinos, she ducks into a doorway and lets him get a good lead on her again.

  At the Stockholm School of Economics, he crosses Sveavägen, but she continues on the right side of the street. They’re almost walking side by side now, Lööw with his eyes straight ahead, and Yasmine never letting him out of sight. He looks stressed and seems to be searching for something or someone along the sidewalk while continuing to manically push his hand through his hair, as if no matter what he does, he’s not satisfied with how his slickback lies against his head.

  At McDonald’s, he slows and takes out the phone again. It’s 8:50, ten minutes to spare until their meeting. There’s a white van parked across the street from the path that leads up to the library entrance, and she slips in behind it. Through the van’s side windows, she can see him ascending the long steps to the library, alone and visible from all directions. He is all alone.

  Time passes slowly. Twenty minutes seems like a whole morning. Apparently, George Lööw feels the same, because he’s finding it hard to stand still on the other side o
f the street, and keeps alternating his gaze restlessly from his phone to the library entrance.

  Ten minutes. And then only five. The time is approaching nine-thirty, and it seems like Lööw’s restlessness has started to turn into apathy. How long will he wait before he gives up and realizes that she’s not going to show up?

  He lifts the phone to his ear again, glances toward the shadows on the side of the library. Is that where they’re hiding, whoever they are? He lifts his arms in resignation, and turns his wrist to check the time on his huge, dull gray watch. Finally, he ends the call, shrugs, and goes down to Sveavägen again. Morning traffic has started now, and for a moment she loses sight of him. She feels stiff all over from her night in the car and nearly an hour spent standing behind the white van. When she catches sight of him again, he’s halfway across Sveavägen, heading back to her side. He’s calmer now, and turns to the right, back in the direction they came from.

  She waits a moment and continues to look up at the library. And sure enough, down the stairs they come. Two of them, one after the other, not side by side, but it’s obvious that they belong together. She squints to see better. These are no typical gangsters, but they’ve got straight backs and a wide stance. Indifferent eyes peer out over the street. One of them has a hat on and looks almost Swedish. Whatever. It’s clear they were George’s backup. A Volvo stops at the curb, and the two guys jump into the backseat.

  She exhales; Lööw is alone now. She feels the reassuring weight of the gun against her back. Quietly, she jogs after his back and his bobbing lion’s mane. Now she’s ready for a meeting.

  61. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  SHE WAITS IN a doorway just thirty feet farther down Sveavägen while Lööw goes into the espresso bar Sosta. It takes only a few minutes before he’s back out on the street again with a small cup in hand. He finds a skinny ray of sunshine to stand in and leans back against a wall. A cup in one hand, scrolling on his phone with the other, a tight expression on his face.

  She scouts up and down the street for a glimpse of the dudes from the library or the Volvo they disappeared into. Nothing. Fuck it. It’s make-or-break time.

  Quietly, she goes toward the café, and soon she’s beside Lööw without him even looking up from his phone.

  “I have a gun under this jacket,” she says calmly, staring straight at him while she discreetly lifts her bomber jacket to prove what she says is true.

  He jumps and spills the little tiny coffee cup onto the sleeve of his blue blazer.

  “What? What the hell!” he says, and takes a step away from her.

  “Don’t move,” she hisses. “Put the fucking cup on the table and follow me.”

  He looks tense but obeys and they walk side by side away from the small terrace.

  “You don’t need to do this,” he tries. “We had a meeting planned an hour ago. You never showed up.”

  When she turns around and looks at him, his gaze is roving around the traffic, toward the Stockholm School of Economics and up into the sky. He’s blinking so frequently she thinks he might be going into an epileptic seizure.

  “I saw your gorillas, asshole,” she says. “So we’re doing it like this.”

  She leads him across the street back toward the City Library.

  At the foot of Observatory Hill is a small deserted playground where she signals to Lööw to sit on a bench. Then she stands in front of him, forcing him to meet her eyes.

  “Do you think I’m so fucking stupid that I’d walk straight into your dumbass trap?” she says. “Give me a little credit, dork.”

  He leans back on the bench and shifts his eyes.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” he mumbles. “What did you want, anyway? Who are you?”

  He meets her gaze for a moment before glancing out over the swings and jungle gyms again.

  “I don’t give a shit about you,” she says quietly. “I don’t care about whatever you’re up to in Bergort, don’t give a damn about whatever Stirling Security is. Do you understand? But somehow, my brother and I have become involved in this. And you’re gonna make sure we get uninvolved. I don’t know what you’re doing, but the gorillas need to leave us alone. Do you understand?”

  He slowly shakes his head.

  “I . . .” he begins but breaks off and runs his hand nervously through his hair again.

  “I have no control over this,” he says. “There are very powerful forces in play. More powerful than you can imagine.”

  “The Russian you met with at Stirling Security yesterday?” she says. “What’s Stirling Security? Who are they?”

  Lööw turns toward her and looks her in the eye again, his gaze calmer now.

  “I can’t talk about it. It’s in their interest to make sure the riots in Bergort continue. That’s all I can say. They’re behind some of it. For example, that symbol? The star and fist? Have you seen it?”

  Yasmine nods.

  “Everyone has seen it.”

  “They created it. Stirling Security. They made it, and I gave it to the guys who are coordinating the riots. But believe me when I say that I can’t tell you more than that right now.”

  “The Russian then? Why is he driving around in a fucking diplomatic car?”

  Lööw shakes his head.

  “He’s basically the head of Stirling Security,” he says. “But I’m begging you not to poke around any more right now. There is a lot at stake.”

  “What’s your role in all this?”

  “I do whatever they ask me to. Stirling Security is my client.”

  He looks pleadingly at her.

  “But not everything is what it seems,” he says. “I agree, this is all crazy. But you have to understand I’ve already said too much. This is very fucking complicated.”

  He stops and collects himself.

  “I have a meeting in about a half hour,” he pleads. “A meeting that has to do with Stirling Security. If I don’t show up . . .”

  “Then what?” Yasmine says.

  He just shakes his head.

  “You have to let me go,” he says. “You don’t understand, I can’t miss this meeting. It’s just not possible.”

  “I don’t give a shit about your fucking meeting. Your only chance is if you get us out of this mess. We don’t have a fucking thing to do with this.”

  “I understand. I really do. Believe me, I’ll do what I can, okay?”

  It takes less than ten minutes to walk down Sveavägen to the Stirling Security office.

  “But you realize that you can’t follow me up, right?” he says nervously, stopping outside a café.

  “I’ll wait here,” she says. “And if you try to trick me or ambush me or play me . . .”

  She lets the words hang in the air and sees how Lööw cautiously holds up his hands, before turning around and disappearing toward a woman in her fifties who’s waiting at the front door. They’ve just gone inside when Yasmine feels her phone buzzing in her pocket. She moves into the shadow of the building and takes it out. It’s a message containing a video. She takes out an earpiece and puts it into her ear, and when she clicks on the video she feels herself falling, her world splitting apart and collapsing around her.

  62. STOCKHOLM—SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015

  I WAKE UP TO Mehdi standing in the doorway. He looks worn-out, as if he hasn’t slept at all. His breathing whistles and hisses as he leans his two hundred pounds against the doorframe of our little room at the hostel. The sun is shining in through a gap in the blinds.

  “Shoo, Mehdi,” I say and sit up. “Where the hell you been, brother?”

  He closes his eyes and breathes rapidly—the two flights up have apparently knocked him out completely.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he mumbles. “Took a walk.”

  He looks stressed and fiddles with his phone.

  “I get it,” I say and pull my T-shirt over my head, stand up, and grab my jeans.

  “This is tough shit.”

  I get hold of m
y phone next to the bed and see a message from Yasmine. She’ll call after her meeting with Lööw. I text quickly:

  All good. Talk later.

  and stand up.

  “Yazz is smart, brother,” I say. “You know she’ll fix this? She fixes everything.”

  Mehdi shrugs and goes to the window, raises the blinds, and looks out onto the street. His hands tremble as he turns back with wandering eyes, his lungs wheezing—the stress seems to be eating him from the inside.

  “Come on,” he says. “I can’t stay here any longer. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  Vasastan is warm and sun drenched despite the fact it’s not even half past nine, summer is apparently making its last stand, and despite all our problems, which I don’t fully understand, I feel calmer now than I have since I can’t remember when.

  Yazz is back.

  It was not my fault that the brothers were murdered. Or not only my fault.

  The guilt is not mine, not wholly mine. For a moment I feel almost free. I can’t even remember dreaming about blown-off legs and white lights in the night.

  “Have you talked to Parisa?” I say after we’ve each bought a coffee and are headed to where we left the car parked yesterday.

  Mehdi has his eyes on his cell phone and seems distracted and shaky. It pisses me off that he’s so absent, and I stop and throw my arms open.

  “Ey, brother!” I say. “We’re gonna fix this, OK? Are you texting with Parisa now? How is she?”

  He looks up at me and throws his half-drunk coffee in a trash can.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Sorry, it’s fine. She’s worried, that’s all.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “About what? About this?”

  His eyes look everywhere except at me.

  “Um, yes? What else?”

  I’ve never seen him like this before. Not even when we were little. It feels like last week—when he was all macho with his talk about riots and chaos—was a thousand years ago.

  “They seem to have managed without you tonight anyway,” I say, pointing to a headline in large black letters: