Blood Brothers

by Rick Acker

  Bjornsen Norge was housed in a modern warehouse on an industrial section of Oslo’s waterfront, with a half floor of offices facing the street. Haugeland guided them through a wide space filled with empty cubicles to a large room at the back. Three walls were taken up by file cabinets, while the fourth held a row of cubicles. Haugeland walked over to one of them and turned on the computer that sat on a neatly organized desk. He picked up a stack of computer printouts and handed them to Noelle. “Here are last quarter’s customer-account numbers. They are in Norwegian, of course, but I can translate anything that’s not clear from the context. Einar works in our file room after school and can get you the backup for any accounts listed here.”

  “Great,” said Noelle. “One that I know I’ll want to see is Cleverlad.ru.”

  Haugeland smiled. “I thought you might.”

  “Really? Why’s that?” asked Noelle.

  “All of the orders for that customer come through our headquarters in America, which is unusual. A European customer would usually be handled from here. Also, the file documentation is . . . unusual. You will understand when you see it.” He turned to Einar. “Einar, kan du hente papirene til Cleverlad kontoen?”

  The boy nodded and took off his Real Madrid windbreaker, revealing tattoos of a cat’s face and a four of spades crudely drawn on his slender arms in bluish ink. He hung his jacket on a chair and walked out of the room.

  Elena got up quickly and followed him. “I’ll go help him with the files,” she said as she left.

  Five minutes later, Einar and Elena reappeared with two thin manila folders, which they gave to Noelle. She spent five minutes reading through them, occasionally asking Haugeland to translate something. Then she looked up and said, “Okay, where are the rest of the files for this account?”

  “There are none,” replied Haugeland with a smile.

  “None?” Noelle stared at him. “All that’s here are money-order receipts and a few e-mails. Where are the purchase orders? Where are the shipping bills?”

  Haugeland’s smile broadened. “As I said, the file is unusual. The orders simply appear by e-mail or phone call from America. I have seen no formal purchase orders, and we never ship the products. A man arrives in a truck. He gives us a money order and we give him the products.”

  “Do you have any idea why this account is handled like that?” asked Noelle.

  “I suspect that the amount of information in the customer file is kept to a minimum by intent. Whose intent I do not know, but the account is not included in the statements we send to headquarters. I have mentioned this several times, and each time I am told the omission is a mistake. But the mistake is never fixed.”

  It was Saturday morning, and David Lee sat where he usually sat on weekends, doing what he usually did in his free time. He had been up for less than two hours and he still wore the boxers and T-shirt in which he had slept. His tousled head was bent over the workbook on the kitchen table of his loft apartment. His right hand held a pencil with which he alternately scribbled on the sheets of work paper that littered the tabletop or blackened tiny ovals on an answer sheet beside the workbook. A stopwatch stared at him, ticking remorselessly as he worked.

  He finished the test and slapped the “Stop” button on the stopwatch. Fifty-three minutes, a new personal best. He checked the answer sheet against a key in the back of the workbook. Twenty-eight out of thirty right, also a new best. He pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!”

  He poured himself a fresh cup of coffee, picked up his cell phone, and hit Kim’s number on the speed dial. “Hey, Kimmy, I took another one of those immunology practice tests, and guess what?”

  “What?” asked Kim in a sleepy voice.

  “I got twenty-eight out of thirty, and it only took me fifty-three minutes!”

  “That’s great,” responded Kim with more energy. “You did pretty well on the last oncology test you took too, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right. With any luck, I’ll know both subjects cold by the time school starts. I’ll be able to nail them and then spend extra time working on my other classes.”

  “That is so cool! I knew you could turn it around. In a couple of months, you’ll be back on top and laughing about last year.”

  He glanced over at his kitchen counter, where a card of little yellow pills lay, each in its own foil-backed plastic bubble. Over half of the bubbles were crushed and empty. “Uh, yeah. Any idea whether they’ll roll over the Phase I volunteers into Phase II?”

  “I don’t think they’ve decided yet. But seriously, don’t worry about it, David. You’re doing better because you’re smart, not because you’re taking some drug. You’ll do great, even after the study is over.”

  “I don’t know, Kimmy. My scores have been going up ever since I started the trial, and I can really notice the difference now that I’ve reached the peak dosage. I hardly have to think about the problems; the right answers just jump off the page at me. It’s the same when I read the textbooks too—I used to have to read the same thing three or four times to make sure I understood it. Now I can just zip through it once and it all makes sense. I also feel more alert and focused. It’s sort of like the feeling you get from a good espresso, except you don’t get all jumpy and distractible.”

  Kim laughed. “So it’s even better than coffee? That’s saying a lot, coming from you. Be careful; I don’t want you getting addicted.”

  “Hey, you know the only thing I’m addicted to is you.”

  “Aww, you’re sweet.”

  “You too. I’ve got to get going. I volunteered to take an extra shift at the hospital lab today, and I need to get ready.”

  “See? That’s the attitude that’s going to get you ahead, with or without Neurostim.”

  “Thanks, babe. I’ll call you tonight.” He hung up the phone and looked again at the card of pills on his counter.

  He walked into the bathroom to get ready for work, but his thoughts remained on the workbook and pills in the kitchen. Maybe he could stumble through his second year without more Neurostim, but that wasn’t good enough. He didn’t want to just pass his classes; he wanted to nail them. All through high school and college, he had been at or near the top of his class. Now there was a way for him to get back there.

  “No way are they cutting me out of Phase II!” he declared to the empty apartment. “No way!”

  He caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and then took a good look. He seemed strong and self-confident, almost fierce. The diligent-schoolboy look had vanished from his face and been replaced by something harder. He smiled and watched his reflection do the same. He liked this look.

  Noelle reviewed customer accounts until late afternoon, asking frequent questions of Henrik Haugeland and copying documents that looked interesting. The picture that emerged was essentially what they had suspected: the Cleverlad.ru account was clearly being handled so as to give it as low a profile as possible, but the files didn’t reveal who had decided to handle it that way. Noelle also couldn’t figure out why someone had decided to hide the account. None of the sales appeared to be illegal, and there was no fraud or bribery taking place that she could see. She had half expected to find that the drugs were being sold at suspiciously low prices, which might mean that the salesman who handled the account was taking part of the purchase price in the form of a kickback. But Cleverlad was actually paying more for the drugs than most other customers, which eliminated that theory.

  By five o’clock, Noelle was ready to call it a day. She had been getting up and taking a short walk every half hour like her obstetrician recommended, but she still felt very stiff and very pregnant. She stretched, pulled the scrunchie out of her thick brown hair, and said, “Well, I’m done for today. I still need to look at the expense-accounting files, but not tonight.”

  “I am busy tomorrow,” said Haugeland, “but I can help you on Monday after hours.”

  “That would be great.”

  “And now that we are done he
re, I will call my wife so that she knows we are coming. She looks forward very much to having you for dinner.”

  Oslo holds more than one-tenth of Norway’s population and is by far the largest and most cosmopolitan city in the country. It is nonetheless small by American standards, and Elena and Noelle were pleasantly surprised by how quickly the modern buildings and shops of downtown gave way to close-set and immaculate tile-roofed homes, usually painted red, yellow, or white. Then the houses gave way to rolling fields of bright-green pasture and golden grain. A gusting wind cast rippling shadows across the fields.

  After they had driven for about half an hour, they turned onto a gravel track in the midst of a thick pine grove. They drove through the dappled twilight of the trees for several seconds. Then the green wall of needles parted and revealed a tidy, well-kept farm. “Here we are,” announced Henrik, pointing to a rambling white farmhouse set in a south-facing nook between two round hills. A barn stood a little to the west, flanked by two smaller outbuildings.

  They parked and went inside, where they were greeted by two women. They were about the right age for a mother and daughter, but looked nothing alike. The older woman was short and plump. She had a grandmotherly air and honey-blonde hair that was fading to white. The younger woman was tall, rail-thin, black-haired, and had broad, almost Asian, cheekbones. Henrik introduced the older woman as his wife, Sigrid, and the younger as their daughter, Katrine.

  After introductions and a few minutes of small talk, they all sat down around a large, well-used dining-room table. There were six of them, but the table could easily have held double that number. The Norwegians all recited a traditional Norwegian grace, which was sung rather than spoken, before passing around dishes of vegetables, potatoes, and meat cakes. “Like Swedish meatballs, except Norwegian and therefore better,” explained Henrik with a wink.

  Neither Einar nor Katrine spoke much English, and they were clearly relieved to be excused when the meal moved to the coffee-and-conversation phase. “I don’t mean to pry, but how did you come to adopt a Russian son?” Elena asked when there was a lull in the conversation.

  Henrik looked at her in surprise. “I don’t recall mentioning that he was Russian or adopted. How did you know?”

  “I’m Russian and an FBI agent,” she explained, “so I recognized the tattoos on his arms. When we were out getting documents, I tried talking to him in Russian. He told me that you and Sigrid came to his orphanage four years ago and adopted him.”

  “Unfortunately, there are many children in the orphanages with prison-gang tattoos,” said Henrik. “A lot of people won’t give them a chance.”

  “Prison-gang tattoos?” asked Noelle.

  Sigrid nodded. “Einar lived in Russia until he was twelve, and spent most of that time on the street or in a child-labor colony.”

  “In Russia, they send juvenile, um, offenders to labor colonies,” Elena explained to Noelle. “They’re really rough places; they make American reform schools, even the bad ones, look like summer camp. Kids in labor colonies pretty much have to join gangs if they want to survive.” She turned to Sigrid. “So, he’s sixteen now?”

  “Yes, though he is small for his age,” said Sigrid. “I think it is probably from bad nutrition. I do not think he ever ate enough before he came to Norway. He and his mother were homeless or living in single rooms for as long as he can remember. She died when he was eight, and he had to feed himself after that.”

  “How awful!” exclaimed Noelle. “Didn’t the police pick him up and take him to a shelter or something?”

  The Haugelands shook their heads. “He hid from the police,” said Henrik. “He survived by doing jobs for street criminals. He would be a lookout during drug deals, for example.”

  Elena sighed. “Pretty typical, as I’m guessing both of you know.”

  “Seriously?” asked Noelle.

  The Haugelands nodded and Elena said, “There are a lot of kids like that in Russia these days. No one really knows exactly how many, but there are probably at least a million homeless children in the country. They lose parents to AIDS, drugs, alcohol, violence, or some combination of them. Or they’re just abandoned because their parents can’t take care of them anymore or don’t want to. You see these kids in pretty much all the big cities; little ones begging and older ones selling themselves or standing around in groups. You can’t get too close to them or they’ll swarm you, asking for money and trying to steal your purse or wallet, especially if they think you’re a rich foreigner. It just breaks my heart every time I go back, but there’s not much I can do except give money to children’s charities. It’s great that you were actually willing to take in one of them and give him a chance at a new life. How is Einar adapting to life here?”

  “It has been hard for him,” conceded Sigrid. “Especially when he first came. He could not go to normal school, because he had no education and did not speak Norwegian. He stole from stores and from us because that was the only way he knew. He fought. He beat up one boy so badly that the boy went to the hospital. The boy was bigger than Einar and had . . . had . . .” She turned to her husband. “Mobbet ham?”

  “Bullied him,” supplied Henrik.

  “Yes, bullied him,” continued Sigrid, “so the judge did not put Einar in jail. But the police arrested him four times for different crimes. That was a difficult time for him and for us, but he does much better now.”

  “He also had nightmares,” added Henrik. “Sometimes he woke up screaming. Other times, we would find him standing in the hall in the dark, sweating and shaking.”

  “He was sleepwalking?” asked Elena.

  “Yes,” replied Henrik. “He would wake when we touched him or spoke to him. One of us would stay with him until he could sleep again. Sometimes it would take an hour or more.”

  “But it is two years since the last time,” said Sigrid with a touch of pride. “He is now in normal school and has good marks and friends. He also changed his name from Ivan to Einar to be more Norwegian.” She paused and smiled at Henrik. “He studies to be an accountant like his father.”

  “He studies math and says he will become an accountant,” corrected Henrik. “Time will tell whether he actually does. Not everyone has the charisma and magnetism to make a good accountant.”

  Elena laughed. Noelle turned and raised her eyebrows. “Why is that funny?”

  “Oh, because he obviously has lots of charisma and magnetism,” responded Elena. “He’s a remarkable young man. I was picturing him as a future rock star, but that’s pretty close to being an accountant.”

  The other three laughed. “You are right about Einar—he is remarkable,” said Sigrid. “We are very proud of him.”

  “You should be,” said Elena. “It’s wonderful to hear about one of these street kids actually turning his life around. A lot of them wind up as unclaimed bodies in the morgue before they turn eighteen, and most of the rest are in prison. And I’m really impressed that you were willing to stick with him through the hard times. I’ve seen the flyers for some of these Russian adoption agencies. For some reason, none of them mention kids who are like Einar must have been like when you adopted him. They all have these glowing descriptions of perfect little angels with no problems. I’ll bet Einar was something of a surprise for you.”

  The Haugelands both smiled. “No, he is our eighth adopted child,” Sigrid said. “We always picked older children who have trouble, because no one else will take them. We adopted Katrine when she was eleven. She was a prostitute and alcoholic. Now she helps us here and goes to university.”

  “One of our boys is a policeman,” added Henrik, “and another is an automobile mechanic. One of our girls is a children’s doctor, and the other stays at home with her three children.”

  “And the . . .” began Noelle. She paused with her mouth open for a heartbeat. “Do you have plans to adopt any more children?”

  “Einar will be our last,” answered Henrik. “In fact, the orphanage made a special excepti
on to their rules so we could adopt him. They require younger parents, which we understand.

  “To answer the question that you were too polite to ask, the other two children are no longer alive. The first boy we adopted died in a car crash. The car was stolen and the police were chasing him.

  “Our second child, a girl, was a heroin addict. She was in a program here and she did well, but she left home after finishing secondary school and moved to Bergen on the west coast of Norway. She had no family or support group to help her there, and she began taking drugs again. We knew nothing until one night the hospital called to say she was in a coma. By the time we got there, she was dead.”

  Elena stared at him. “So you adopted eight of these kids—six after the first two died.” She shook her head in awe. “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. You two must be real saints. That is way beyond the call of duty.”

  “But it is well within the call of love,” responded Henrik. “Love does call, you know. He calls us to do what we cannot do alone. He asks us to give without counting the cost, to walk through the furnace, to love the unlovable. He asks everything of us, and he has the right to expect it.”

  Elena was as silent and still as stone, but Noelle nodded. “Because he gave everything for us.”

  “Exactly,” said Henrik with a smile. “We love because he first loved us. Sigrid and I could not have children, but we loved children very much and we knew we were called to be parents. There were long waits to adopt Norwegian children, so we went to a place where there was no wait, where if we did not adopt the children, no one would. We traveled to Russia and found that even there many people wanted to adopt the babies and small children with no problems. But the older children, especially the ones with disabilities or who have been in a labor colony, most of them are never adopted. They live at the orphanage for a few years and watch the babies and toddlers find parents while they are passed over. Then they are too old for the orphanage, and they go back to the streets.”