The Swimmer

by Joakim Zander

  The anchor paused and the camera zoomed out to include Eva-Karin.

  ‘Klara Walldéen has been working for you for several years, Eva-Karin. Why do you think she’s gone into hiding?’

  Now, the camera zoomed in on Eva-Karin’s face.

  ‘I really don’t know, Anders. You’d think the normal reaction for anyone who’s been through what Klara seems to have been through would be to voluntarily seek out the police. When you consider the fact that she chose not to, and has even gone into hiding, well, it’s not surprising that questions arise.’

  ‘What kind of questions do you mean?’

  ‘Questions regarding her dealings with convicted terrorists, for example. Of course, this isn’t something I’ve ever had the occasion to discuss with Klara. Her role in my office has been as a secretary…’

  Klara stood up from the couch. She was shaking.

  ‘Convicted terrorists! Secretary!’ she screamed in Swedish. ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  It was obvious the news anchor was thinking the same thing.

  ‘The Swede who was shot wasn’t a convicted terrorist, as far as we know.’

  ‘As far as we know,’ Eva-Karin said. ‘And we don’t know what kind of network he was a part of or what Klara’s connection has been to all of this. All I can say is that if she doesn’t have anything to hide, I urge her to seek out the French police immediately.’

  Klara switched off the TV and threw the remote control across the room. The batteries scattered across the dark floor in every direction. She hadn’t expected much of her boss, but that she would actively go to a news station in order to smear her was a bit much even for Eva-Karin.

  Blitzie seemed totally indifferent to Klara’s outburst and had sat down in front of the computer without Klara noticing.

  ‘Fuck,’ she muttered as her hands traveled over the keys. ‘This fucking code will take weeks to crack.’

  Klara felt something warm and large growing inside her. A burning tension across her temples and behind her eyes. Like when she was little and was suddenly overwhelmed by an injustice or sadness. She bent her head back, trying to take control of the impending crying jag. It would take several weeks to find the code. How would she manage to stay hidden for weeks? Mahmoud’s wide-open eyes, the blood, the photo of Cyril’s family, and the shadows running through the falling snow outside the store in Paris—all of it was spinning in front of her. Everything ran through her like a violent river. She couldn’t take more, couldn’t bear more. She sobbed loudly. The tears ran hot and heavy down her cheeks.

  But then she felt Blitzie’s bony little finger stroking the back of her hand. Klara forced herself to look at her through a blurry filter of tears. Blitzie looked so small. So worried.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she said. ‘Please. I think I have an idea. But it’s complicated.’

  55

  December 23, 2013

  Stockholm and Arkösund, Sweden

  Gabriella shivered and pulled her hat down farther over her ears. She hopped in place to keep warm. When that didn’t help, she pulled out a pack of Benson & Hedges and a matchbook from her pocket. It took three matches for her to get the cigarette lit. She was out of practice. It had been a long time since she’d smoked in the morning. Actually she’d never really been much of a smoker. Only now and then with Klara and Mahmoud during exam weeks or in pubs in London. But under the current circumstances it seemed appropriate. She took a few quick puffs and let her eyes wander over the city.

  Even after dark, the view from the Katarina Elevator was exceptional. Stockholm glistened in the early morning, through the chimney smoke and snow crystals. The traffic had already started piling up. She could hear the muffled rumble of it beneath her. The metro tracks looked like Christmas lights as trains rushed back and forth between the islands of Södermalm and Gamla Stan. Even though she only lived a few kilometers away and could almost see her office down on Skeppsbron from where she stood now, she rarely came up here. It felt like the Katarina Elevator was for tourists. Or teenagers. Or alcoholics. Anyone except her. She turned and looked back toward the footbridge. No one there. She was completely alone. It was five minutes until eight in the morning.

  Five minutes left. It had been almost twenty-four hours since she’d received the message at princephillipmitchell777@gmail.com, the address Klara had asked her to set up. Prince Phillip Mitchell’s ‘I’m So Happy’. How many times had they listened to Klara’s scratched single? The Holy Grail of soul that Klara had found at the bottom of a crate of discs on Vaksala Square during their first term at Uppsala. She’d only paid ten kronor for it. In an online auction you’d pay well over a thousand kronor if you were even lucky enough to find it. Klara only needed to tell Gabriella to create a new Gmail address using the name of the singer of the world’s very best song followed by three sevens for Gabriella to know exactly what she meant. And if someone had been listening to their conversation, no one would ever know what Klara was referring to.

  The message she’d received from an anonymous Hotmail address hadn’t been signed and had consisted of detailed instructions on how Gabriella should ride subways and taxis around half the city before she made her way to the Katarina Elevator. How she should constantly check to make sure she wasn’t being followed. How she should be there at exactly 8:00 a.m.

  Which was exactly what time it was now, Gabriella realized when she glanced at her watch. And at that very moment she heard the elevator bounce into place and the doors opening. When she turned toward it, her anticipation increased. But instead of Klara, she saw a slim teenager in baggy clothes, a baseball cap, and a hoody under a way too big, black jacket. A skater, maybe. Gabriella sighed and turned back toward the railing. As if it were the most natural thing in the world to stand 125 feet above Stockholm, on an early morning the day before Christmas eve, admiring the view.

  ‘Wow, either you’re mad at me or my disguise is a lot better than I’d hoped,’ the skater said.

  Gabriella spun around and looked straight into Klara’s bright blue eyes, peeping out beneath a black cap with mit printed across the forehead. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her cheeks seemed sunken. Her face was gray in the darkness, her lips colorless. A small, pained smile flashed across her face.

  ‘Klara!’

  Gabriella had to stop herself from shouting it out. She enfolded Klara in a hug. Their jackets rustled against each other. Klara’s cheek was ice-cold.

  ‘Klara, Klara,’ whispered Gabriella.

  It was all she could get out. Everything she might possibly say felt irrelevant. Instead she held Klara close and as hard as she could, as if wanting them to become the same person for a moment. Klara’s tears wet both their cheeks. Finally, they let go of each other. Klara made a futile attempt to dry her tears, but they didn’t seem to want to stop flowing.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a couple of very long days.’

  Gabriella stroked her cheek.

  ‘What happened to your hair?’ she said. ‘You look like k.d. lang.’

  Klara looked up at her and laughed. Just once, then the dam burst and it was impossible to tell if she was crying or laughing.

  ‘k.d. lang?’ she said, the tears still running down her cheeks. ‘Is that the best you can come up with? k.d. lang! Does anyone even remember her? Canada’s National Lesbian. My God.’

  Gabriella laughed too.

  ‘Yeah, but in a good way,’ she said.

  ‘In a good way? How? Can you look like her in a good way?’

  Their laughter subsided and they looked around, suddenly becoming aware of where they were.

  ‘You followed my instructions?’ Klara said.

  Gabriella nodded.

  ‘Your spy instructions. Of course. I’ve been riding all over town since six o’clock this morning.’

  Klara looked around again; a hunted, deeply uneasy look had returned to her eyes.

  ‘Let’s hope we’re alone,’ she said. ‘Did you get a
hold of a car?’

  Gabriella nodded.

  ‘Borrowed one from a colleague yesterday. He thinks I’m going to IKEA. I can keep it over the Christmas holidays.’

  ‘And you’ve taken the battery out of your cell phone?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve gone through all my clothes in search of a transmitter or whatever it was you called it in your e-mail.’

  Klara nodded.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go down again.’

  Södermalm was still deserted as they crossed Slussen toward Hornsgatan, where Gabriella had parked her borrowed Saab. Gabriella took Klara’s hand and pulled her closer. There was so much to talk about, so much to try to understand, so much incomprehensible grief to share. So many important questions. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask them. Not yet.

  ‘How did you get here?’ she said instead.

  ‘Bus,’ Klara said. ‘It certainly took long enough.’

  ‘And where did you get a hold of those skateboarder clothes?’

  Klara looked back over her shoulder, her eyes searching the street.

  ‘A long story. A teenage hacker in Amsterdam gave them to me. I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll tell you everything, as soon as we get in the car.’

  A thin layer of frost had already settled over the windshield of the black car. Gabriella didn’t bother to scrape it off. The wipers would take care of it. With one touch of a button, she unlocked the car, which responded by flashing its lights.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Klara said. ‘I know where we’re going. And you’ll be busy listening to me.’

  It took them two and a half hours to reach Arkösund.

  Klara had driven calmly and talked almost incessantly. About Mahmoud. About every terrible thing. The tears had fallen silently down her cheeks, but she’d refused to let Gabriella take over the wheel. It was as if she needed the distraction, the concentration of driving. It was so unreal. So nightmarish. Mahmoud’s murder. Cyril, that two-faced rat. The hunt and the computer. Blitzie’s far-fetched plan.

  ‘So you don’t know what’s on the computer?’ Gabriella said at last. ‘We don’t even know why all this is happening?’

  Klara shook her head silently.

  ‘And our only way of finding out is through a plan hatched by a stoned, sixteen-year-old hacker in Amsterdam?’

  Klara nodded again and smiled a hopeless little smile.

  ‘But she’s really freaking smart,’ she said. ‘Blitzie is a really freaking smart, stoned, sixteen-year-old hacker, okay?’

  Gabriella smiled back.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll admit we don’t have much else going for us. Maybe we could work something out with that Bronzelius guy from Säpo?’

  Klara giggled, shaking her head.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ she said. ‘We really don’t have that much going for us, do we?’

  Finally Klara parked the car in a parking lot in a small village Gabriella assumed was Arkösund. Farther down the road she could make out a dock and beyond that black cliffs and sea. The engine stopped. Klara took the key out and gave it to Gabriella.

  ‘We’re here,’ she said. ‘Arkösund.’

  They sat in silence for a second, quietly watching the snow blow ever more furiously against the windshield. It was still melting where it landed, but not for long. Soon it would start piling up.

  ‘Seriously,’ Klara said. ‘I understand if you want to go back now. I can’t ask you to stay out here with me, when I don’t even know what I’m doing. And it’s Christmas, after all.’

  Gabriella looked at Klara as if she hadn’t really heard or understood what she’d said. Then she shook her head.

  ‘What are you talking about? Going back? Now? Stop it.’

  Gabriella opened the door and stepped out into the cold. The large snowflakes landed on her face, her hair. She bent down and looked expectantly toward Klara, who was still in the car.

  ‘Come on. Here we go. Where are we meeting your old friend?’

  Klara followed her out into the winter darkness. She pointed down toward the marina.

  ‘Down there. In fifteen minutes. Or in twelve minutes to be precise.’

  ‘Twelve minutes? That’s very precise,’ Gabriella said.

  ‘At eleven o’clock on the dot. He’ll bounce onto the pier and stay just a few minutes. If we’re not there he’ll come back at six o’clock tonight.’

  Klara threw the laptop bag over her shoulder and pointed down toward the harbor.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll run down to the harbor. I’m freezing to death.’

  It took less than five minutes to reach the deserted marina. An icy wind swept in from the sea, and Klara led them into the shelter of a darkened gas station. They shivered and flapped their arms for warmth.

  ‘Just a few more minutes,’ Klara said.

  ‘You seem to have complete confidence in Bosse,’ Gabriella said.

  She remembered that Klara had talked about him before. The boy Klara had grown up with on islands far out at sea, going to and from school with him from first to ninth grade. But everything about Klara’s childhood had always seemed so foreign to Gabriella, so exotic. Taking boats and hovercrafts to school, hunting and fishing. Romantic and sepia toned, an orphan fairy tale. So different from Gabriella’s own secure and completely ordinary childhood in an upscale Stockholm suburb. Klara didn’t talk that often about the archipelago. It was what it was. But Gabriella knew that no matter how single-mindedly Klara struggled to get away, something was always calling her back. Maybe even more so since she’d moved to Brussels.

  Suddenly from across the bay came a muffled chugging sound, a deep heartbeat, a bass line.

  ‘Get ready,’ Klara said. ‘He’s only a few minutes away.’

  56

  December 23, 2013

  Arkösund, Sweden

  George took a bite of bread covered with aged Herrgård cheese and tried to at least enjoy having access to the ingredients of his favorite breakfast. Kirsten had taken him along to a grocery store yesterday in some musty little one-horse town called Östra Husby. He assumed they wanted him to do the talking so as not to draw attention to themselves. Americans were unusual out here in the boonies, especially at this time of year. In the car on the ride there he’d daydreamed about just grabbing the first fucking farmer he saw and telling him to call the police. But Kirsten seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. When he parked the car, his heart racing, escape plans like oxygen bubbling through his veins, she calmly placed her hand on his elbow.

  ‘I like you, George,’ she said.

  She looked sincere. Wasn’t there something kind of hot about her after all?

  ‘But no fucking ideas now. Don’t doubt for a second that I’ll shoot you in the back if you try something.’

  She’d lifted the edge of her lined jacket and he’d glimpsed a large, gray automatic pistol in her waistband. George’s heart had skipped a beat. The idea of her potential fuckability had vanished along with any thoughts of escape. She was a murderer. He shouldn’t forget that. Instead he’d concentrated on freshly squeezed orange juice, bread, and Herrgård cheese. Cheez Doodles. Beer. Frozen pizzas and hash browns.

  He shivered in the tastefully decorated, modern country kitchen. No matter how high he turned up the heat, the villa remained ice-cold. The coffee had already cooled in his cup, and one of the Americans had drunk the rest of the pot he’d put on when he woke up. To be precise, he didn’t actually wake up; he’d barely slept at all. His anxiety and bad conscience were growing like a cancer inside him. He stood up and stretched his stiff limbs. If they would just leave him alone for a minute, he’d smash a window and run. Fuck Reiper’s cheap blackmail. Fuck all the crimes he’d committed. Fuck the fact that they might shoot him in the back. Fuck it all. He’d just run away in his socks. But in the room upstairs where he slept, they’d put padlocks on the window, and Josh or someone else always slept in the other bed. And even down here the windows were locked. The front
door was bolted. Always someone nearby. They were professionals. No doubt about it.

  All he could do was go back into the living room. Turn on the Xbox that they’d set up to pass the time and play a few more rounds of Halo 4 or Modern Warfare 3. Just empty his mind. No thinking about the past, no thinking about the future. Just push down the buttons on the control and give his virtual enemy a taste of his angst.

  He’d just sat down at the console and clicked past the first menu in Halo, when he heard Kirsten, who had the morning shift at the binoculars on the front porch, raise her voice.

  ‘Code Orange,’ she said in a loud, restrained tone into her Bluetooth headset, which everyone besides George was equipped with. ‘I repeat: Code Orange. Identification seventy per cent. Suspected target plus one embarking a small vessel at the pier. Take your positions.’

  She’d barely finished her call before the house exploded with life. The stairs rumbled as Reiper’s men threw themselves into the hall, most of them already dressed for combat. In the hall they pulled on their black Gore-Tex jumpsuits and winter boots. George got up and walked slowly out toward Kirsten on the porch. She was leaning over the binoculars and reporting continuously into her headset.

  ‘The vessel landed and is already backing away from the dock. Two targets embarked onto the bow and seem to have hit the deck. The vessel is a small fishing boat. Approximately eighty horsepower. Estimated maximum speed of twenty knots. A person in the wheelhouse. No visible weapons. Standby for bearing and course.’

  At first George didn’t notice that Reiper had crept out onto the porch through the other door and was pulling on a thick, black jumpsuit. He already had a black knit hat rolled down over his slush gray eyebrows.

  ‘You’re not a hundred per cent that was Walldéen?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Not a hundred,’ Kirsten said, without looking up from the binoculars.

  The front door slammed. Through the front porch glass George saw two black-clad men with duffel bags jogging across the grass down toward the dock that belonged to the house. The small covered motorboat that had been moored there since they moved into the house had already rumbled to a start.