The Dying Game

by Asa Avdic

  Once I was certain my legs would bear me, I stood up, took off everything but my underwear and camisole, crawled into the little bunk, and tried to run through and memorize everything that had just happened in the room above me. But I slowly drifted away, dozing off into half sleep where I dreamed that I, or maybe Siri, was catching crayfish in a lake where I had spent a terrible summer at camp when I was little. Nour had forced me to go, and I called home crying every day until she reluctantly agreed to come pick me up. I don’t even remember if I’d actually had a bad time there; maybe it was more about a power struggle between her and me.

  When she finally agreed to come get me, it had felt like a victory, but as she stepped out of her old Trabant, her mouth set in a hard line, and I stood there on the gravel with my suitcase and a resigned camp counselor, I realized that what had appeared to be a victory might have been nothing of the sort. Even then, Nour was horrible at letting bygones be bygones. The worst part was that just when I got my way and was about to go home, camp became truly fun. I had participated in a crayfish-catching expedition on the last night before Nour came. “You should at least have one good memory of camp,” said Ivan, a camp counselor with kind hands and large brown eyes. One of the nice ones.

  We had gone down to the shore with our flashlights, the forest dark around us, and we had emptied pot after pot. Dawn was already approaching when we walked back up to the lodge on cold legs. In my current dream, I was both myself and Siri at the same time, but every time I stuck my hand in to check for crayfish, it was like the pot expanded and became infinitely huge. I felt the crayfish moving against the back of my hand, but I could never catch hold of them. I took out my flashlight and shone it in; I could see that the trap was full of black crayfish that were crawling all over one another, but as soon as I stuck my hand in they were gone again. This went on until I heard something that dragged me back to reality. It sounded like something had fallen one floor up, inside the little medical station.

  STOCKHOLM

  THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN

  MAY 2037

  IT WAS THE Chairman who came through the door of the interrogation room. She stood up hastily, at a sort of attention, and her partner did the same when she shot him a look of urgency.

  “I see you’re surprised!” The Chairman gave a big smile and waved his hand dismissively. “By all means, have a seat. Could we have a moment alone, please? Completely alone?”

  The guard nodded and left to turn off the wiretap in the room. They all sat in silence until he gave a thumbs-up through the little window in the door. The Chairman sat down across from them, in the interrogation seat.

  “It wasn’t my intention to shock you, dropping by unannounced like this. I really just want to wish you good luck, and make sure that we’re all in agreement about these interrogations.”

  The Chairman absently ran his hand over his lapels, as if to brush away invisible dust or crumbs.

  “In agreement?” She could tell that her colleague was trying to make his voice sound steady, but his voice cracked like a teenage boy’s. He cleared his throat. The Chairman looked at him kindly.

  “Nothing dramatic at all, I just want to check in to make sure we’re all on the same page as we enter the final phase of the investigation.”

  “What page are you on, Mr. Chairman?”

  She was better than he was at handling the Chairman, who had always had a slight weakness for her. They both knew this, and that she pretended she wasn’t aware. It was a practical arrangement, on her part. There were advantages. The Chairman smiled again, glad to have been handed the question he was hoping for.

  “It’s rather simple, isn’t it? After all, it seems clear that there is one person responsible for all of this. One person who hasn’t done what they should, don’t you agree?”

  This was what she had both expected and feared. Someone would be sacrificed. Of course. The Chairman swept his hand across the table as if gesturing at something only he could see.

  “I believe,” he said in a mild voice, “that this is what the investigation has shown as well, hasn’t it? That certain things had not been cleared the way they should have. That things quite simply went wrong.”

  “But . . .” He was the one to raise his voice. She nudged him with her thigh under the table and he stopped talking. The Chairman did nothing to revive this thread of conversation. And they all sat there in silence.

  “And how do you view your own role in all of this, Mr. Chairman?” she asked at last.

  The Chairman looked back at her.

  “Oh, wasn’t it obvious when you read the preliminary investigation and the initial interviews? I knew nothing!”

  Her partner gasped for breath on the chair next to hers, but she nudged him with her thigh again as a preventative measure.

  “You knew nothing?” She put slight emphasis on each syllable.

  “Nothing!” the Chairman said, sounding almost jolly. “Unfortunate, but not illegal. That’s just what happens sometimes when you are responsible for many people and many projects all at once. You can’t be aware of everything.” He looked at the two of them, his eyes wandering between them. “So. Are we in agreement?”

  She noticed that her colleague looked doubtful, but ignored this and gave a short nod.

  “Absolutely, Mr. Chairman.”

  The Chairman stood up and put out his large hand first to him and then to her. She mused that it felt like taking hold of an oar.

  “Excellent, then all that’s left is for me to wish you both good luck with today’s exercises! I look forward to reading the report later on. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some other things to attend to.”

  They rose again and he left the room. She would have liked to ask him about Anna Francis, where she was now and how she was doing, and she didn’t know whether it was good or bad that she had refrained. Probably good, since the Chairman himself hadn’t said anything. If he’d wanted her to know, he would have informed them. She had been working closely with the RAN project for long enough to know what purpose Anna Francis had served in this game, and she wondered if Anna herself had found out yet. She assumed that the task of explaining would fall to the Chairman.

  She and her colleague found themselves standing next to each other, their eyes on the door the Chairman had just walked through. She turned to him and met his gaze.

  “My God,” he said quietly, dropping heavily onto his chair.

  THE CHAIRMAN MOVED on through the corridor. As soon as he left the room, the smile vanished from his face. The two suit-clad bodyguards fell in behind him like shadows. The doors opened before him and closed behind him as if moved by invisible hands.

  “Get the car,” he said curtly to one bodyguard, who immediately veered off down the stairs, while the other waited alongside him for the elevator. The Chairman felt his suit pants squeezing a tad at the waistband, pulling a little around his thighs, and he reflected that he should start taking the stairs.

  The elevator arrived and they stepped in. The bodyguard stood ahead and to the right, while he leaned against the wall behind the man.

  THE ELEVATOR WHIZZED off in vacuumlike silence, and as they stepped out the other bodyguard was pulling the car up directly in front of the elevator doors. The bodyguard in the elevator walked up and opened the backseat door for the Chairman, who climbed in as he fleetingly wondered how long it had been since he’d opened a door himself. The bodyguard closed the door behind him and climbed into the front seat, and off they went.

  The Chairman sank down in the black leather seat. He allowed himself to gaze out the window as they drove up out of the underground parking garage, past the checkpoints, and into the city. The gray morning clouds had blown away to reveal a lovely spring day, the type you imagine when you think of springtime, but of which there are only two or three each year. The few trees left in the city center were a fresh green, with an al
most electric shimmer.

  The Chairman wasn’t a man prone to self-criticism, but this time he was cursing himself. There was certainly nothing wrong with the end result of the operation, the true end result, but he was also forced to admit that the situation had gotten out of control. He ought to have foreseen it. Too many strong wills and people acting on their own initiative. He cursed not only himself but also people in general. If only they could have stopped thinking for themselves and instead followed his instructions, it all would have been much simpler. Given the situation, he did have to accept part of the blame, at least privately. But not publicly, of course, because if this became his fault formally he would never be able to put it right. He stroked his lapels again, feeling the contours of what was in his inner pocket. There was a lot at stake, but he would work it out. It was up to him now.

  THE CAR TURNED in at a tall, square gray building. This campus used to be called Karolinska, but many years had passed since it had occurred to anyone to pay homage to King Karl XII and his Karoliner soldiers. Even hundreds of years after your death, you still risked being stripped of your regalia, the Chairman thought as the car slowly drove through the hospital grounds. First a national hero for a few centuries, then relabeled a dissident and enemy of the Union. The statue of Karl XII that had once stood in the Union Garden in the city center had been removed ages ago. The Chairman was old enough to recall the unrest in the 1990s, when the skinheads would gather there and pay tribute to the old warrior king, who had spent the entirety of his short adult life roving here and there with a huge army and picking fights. That sort of behavior, the Chairman thought, really ought not be so difficult for the Union leadership to understand. But of course he would never say so, if asked.

  The car stopped at the security checkpoint and waited for the gates to open. Once inside, they drove past the emergency entrance and over to one of the lower wings, which protruded from the side of the large, square hulk like the leg of a crab. The car stopped outside of an unmarked entrance, and with the same coordinated motions as before, the bodyguard hopped out, opened the door for the Chairman, and fell in just behind him as they walked through the door, which silently and automatically slid up and out with such force and abruptness that the Chairman almost took it in the face.

  Inside the building, the Chairman stopped to study a landscape painting in the foyer while the bodyguard approached the security window and announced their arrival. The other bodyguard had apparently been able to park the car surprisingly quickly, because he joined them after only a few minutes. An attendant soon arrived and showed the group through a number of locked doors. They walked through bright corridors with lime-green borders painted on the walls. Here and there were small conversation sets made of pale wood, with soft runners on the tabletops. Nothing here was sharp or angular, and the Chairman had the feeling of floating in a world made of butter. The attendant stopped and knocked on a door, which opened. A man with a grizzled beard peered out and was startled to find the Chairman standing outside his office.

  “Hello there,” the Chairman said heartily, “I just thought I’d pop by to see how our patient is doing. May I come in?”

  Without waiting for an invitation, he walked past the grizzled man, his stride purposeful, and the bodyguards closed the door after them so that they were alone in the room. The grizzled man looked as if he were trying to orient himself.

  “This is a bit unexpected, isn’t it . . . ? But, sure, that’s fine. Have a seat; there’s a chair over there . . .”

  The Chairman ignored his gesture toward a wooden Windsor chair in the corner of the office and instead sat down in the grizzled man’s desk chair, so the man himself ended up standing in the center of the room, at a bit of a loss at what to do with himself.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” the Chairman said, “but I thought it was about time I visited our invalid myself. I would like to have a few words with the patient, if I may?”

  The grizzled man began to shake his head before the Chairman had finished his sentence.

  “I don’t think this is a good time. The patient is heavily sedated and still in extremely poor condition.”

  The Chairman squinted at him.

  “Physically or mentally?”

  “Both. The physical healing process is heading in the right direction, but mentally . . .” He shook his head again. The Chairman slapped both hands on his knees.

  “Well, in that case it’s best if I speak to the patient right away, because I have good news! I think this is something that will make the patient feel much better.”

  The grizzled man didn’t seem convinced.

  “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea . . .”

  “Yes, it is. If a person can’t even have a simple conversation about good news with your patient after weeks of care, I’ll have to carefully consider sending these sorts of cases to a different unit in the future. And the subsidies with them, of course. But let’s not talk about such unfortunate matters right now. I want to see the patient!”

  The Chairman rose forcefully from his chair and buttoned the top button of his open jacket. The grizzled man appeared to be deliberating with himself, and then he gave a short nod. He picked up a set of keys and knocked on his own door from the inside. The bodyguard answered and let them out. The Chairman followed the man down the corridor. They stopped at a room, where the grizzled man knocked again, this time more cautiously. When there was no answer, he turned the key and stepped in. The room was empty apart from a bed, on which the shape of a body with its head toward the door was visible under the blanket. At the foot of the bed stood a table with a few wilted bouquets on it. The grizzled man approached the bed and gently shook the shoulder of the person lying there. He turned to the Chairman, his face showing relief.

  “The patient is sleeping. Perhaps you can come back another day?”

  “I’ll stay. Everyone wakes up eventually.”

  The grizzled man sighed deeply. “Hold on a moment,” he said, vanishing from the room and returning a minute or so later with a chair. The frame was made of a steel-like material, and the seat appeared to be covered in the same dark green linoleum as the floor. He placed it next to the bed, cracked a window, and then stood there with an uncertain expression on his face. The Chairman waved him off a bit dismissively. “This is fine. I’ll let you know when I leave. I’m sure you have other things to do.” It didn’t quite seem like the grizzled man wanted to go, but he left the room. The Chairman sat down on the chair, ran his hand across the contents of his inner pocket once more, and, forehead wrinkled, looked at the sleeping face in the bed before him.

  ISOLA

  THE PROTECTORATE OF SWEDEN

  MARCH 2037

  ANNA

  I LAY PERFECTLY still in my little bunk, listening to the sounds from the medical station, whose floor was my ceiling. A woman’s voice (Katja?) shouting, “No, no,” more steps and thuds, and then a scream. Several loud bangs, as if heavy objects were falling to the floor, and then silence. And then steps that sounded like they were leaving the room. I spent a few seconds wondering what to do, and then I made up my mind. My legs unsteady, I struggled to rise from my cot; then I stumbled through the room and up the narrow stairs, opened the hatch, and climbed into the chest freezer. If it had been difficult to get down this way, it was nearly impossible to come back up without making noise or getting stuck. At last I managed to get into a position from which I could enter the unlock code on the control panel, which was hidden along with the hatch button in what looked like a refrigeration coil. Then, as gently as I could, I cracked the lid and peered out into the room.

  It was chaos. Objects were strewn about the room as if there had been a fight. The hospital bed was overturned, and under it was Katja, who appeared lifeless. A dark red pool was expanding beneath her head at an alarming speed.

  I pushed the lid open a little farther, and when it seemed the
room was deserted I decided to take a chance. I awkwardly climbed out of the chest freezer and staggered over to Katja.

  “Katja,” I whispered. “Katja? Can you hear me?” She didn’t react.

  I placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. Still no reaction. I kneeled down in the slippery, sticky blood to try to determine whether she was breathing, but I could neither see nor hear any inhalations, and I didn’t dare try to lift her head and examine her wound while the bed was on top of her torso, pinning her to the floor, so I stood up to try to move it.

  Maybe it was because my head was still heavy with the drugs, but I was too slow. I heard steps behind me and whirled around, but I was not quick enough to see who was behind me or protect myself. The blow landed hard at my temple, and everything went black.

  HENRY

  I FOUND THE colonel down by the little strip of sand behind the house, in the spot Anna and I had visited the night before. There he stood, staring out at the water. The wind was up to at least a moderate gale, but he didn’t seem to have any trouble standing up straight. He was a large, sturdy man, but as I came closer I noticed that his shoulders were drooping.

  “See anything?” I called, so he would know I was approaching from behind. He turned around, his eyes rimmed with red, watery, and swollen. He stared emptily at me, and it struck me that he must be terribly hungover. Or else he was past that stage. Longtime alcoholics often don’t have such a bad time of it, or rather, they’re bad off most of the time.

  The colonel turned back toward the sea.

  “This is so unfortunate,” he said as I came up beside him. “She was a sweet girl.”

  Even if “sweet” wasn’t the word I would have chosen to describe Anna, it was impossible to miss the sadness in his voice. It seemed reasonable that a person like the colonel would have taken a liking to someone like Anna. Two workaholics. I wanted to say something but didn’t know what, so I just stood there silently in the gale. I shoved my hands as deep into my pockets as I could and drew my shoulders up to my ears in an attempt to shield myself from the raw cold, but it was in vain. The gray daylight and the whipping wind, full of tiny, salty drops of water, felt like sandpaper against my face.