He turned right, passed two streets, and then turned right again, heading around the block to come at the café from the west. He walked along the canal. Two policemen were standing on the steps below the sign. Their heads were down and they looked as though they were conferring about something. Jaunty, he told himself. A little bit hurried. You’re just a goofy tourist, you have no idea what’s going on. Head slightly down, he moved toward the policemen and started up the steps. “Halt!” one of the policemen said, but he kept plowing ahead until he felt a hand on his shoulder swing him around. “Wo mochten Sie hin? Dies ist ein Tatort.”
“What?” he looked up, glancing from one policeman to the other. They were both large and blond. The one who had grabbed his shoulder wore a gold stud in his left ear.
“Hat es eine Schießerei wurden. Sie konnen nicht hinein gehen.”
“What’s up?” he said in his cleanest English accent. “I just forgot something.”
“There has been a crimen.”
“What?”
“A crimen. A gun shooting.”
“Shit! When did that happen? I was just here.”
“Five minutes ago it happened.”
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Who was it?” Don’t overplay it, he told himself.
The policeman shrugged. “He was Russian. Probably drugs.”
“Is he okay?”
“He is dead.”
“Well, look, I just forgot my cigarettes. They’re on the bar. Marlboro’s.”
“I am sorry.”
“Look, they’re right there, I can just …” He took the next step.
“You must another buy.”
“With your German taxes? It was a brand new package. Four fucking euros right out the window and I didn’t even get to finish one smoke. I’m on my way back to England. Don’t have the time to buy another package now. You know what cigarettes cost in England?”
Rygg did his best to look upset.
The policeman laughed and said something to his companion. Then he shrugged and pushed open the door to the café. “Walther … Werf mir mal die Zigaretten zu.”
Yuri’s body lay slumped against the bar. His head was propped on the brass foot-railing, and one arm was tucked beneath him. A barstool had fallen beside him, and an empty glass lay at his foot. His forehead was gone. In its place was red pulp. Blood filled his eye sockets and slicked his hair to his neck, but his mustache was unsullied, still combed down across his mended harelip. Rygg had a sudden vision of the palm grove south of Cairo, the body of his friend with the shattered head, the gashes of light through the trees.
A suited man holding a gun reached along the bar and picked up the cigarette packet between thumb and forefinger. He tossed it through the door and the earringed policeman caught it and handed it to Rygg. “Thanks, man,” Rygg said. “Saved me my taxi fare.” And his grin, suddenly, was not acted. He stuffed the pack in his shirt pocket and strolled off along the canal.
This is the dangerous part, he told himself. If they’re watching, they know you now. This is where they come and get you. Just get some kind of cover, stay away from open spaces and always leave yourself an escape and you’ll be fine.
He ducked into the first alley and immediately started running, trying to put as much distance between him and the café as he could. It felt good to run – he could feel the adrenalin pumping into his limbs. He tried swinging the briefcase, but it was too awkward, so he tucked it under an arm. At the end of the alley he swung right and flattened himself against the wall.
Through the surf of his blood, he thought he heard a distant shout and the clickety-clack of footsteps. “Løp!” he said aloud. “Move!” He had, he knew, at most five seconds to get under cover. Across the street was a newsstand. Dodging through traffic, eliciting one trumpet blare from a blue VW, he slid behind the flimsy wall of magazines and pulled the startled vendor down by the elbow. “Someone’s trying to kill me,” he said.
“Wass?” The newsvendor was an elderly man with a gray beaked cap out of the 1940s. He looked annoyed, and tried to pull away. Rygg kept a grip on his arm. “Stay here,” he said. With his other hand he pointed a two-finger gun at his temple, then pointed toward the street.
“Nein, nein, ich … nicht …” the vendor gabbled, and Rygg put a palm over his mouth. He could feel the wet lips working against his skin.
“Sorry, old man,” he said. Peering through a gap between two motorcycling magazines, he saw a woman in a business suit stride out of the alley. She was blonde and carried a purse, and he had a moment’s relief: just some Fraulein heading to lunch. But she stepped sideways and stood beside the wall, in almost the same place he had stopped, and her hand was in her purse. He didn’t think she was looking for lipstick. Her face was white, her mouth a scarlet gash, and for a moment he remembered Lena. Had she ever done anything like this? Everything was very bright and clear in the Hamburg sunshine. The cars seemed to waft by at a walking pace. The woman looked slowly from side to side, then up at the windows in the building behind him. Then she walked off, deliberately, to the left. What would you do if you were her? He immediately knew that she’d look around. Hold still, he told himself. But he was unprepared for the suddenness of her swivel. She scanned the street slowly.
The old man kicked out and Rygg was thrust against the magazine rack. He managed to catch one of the wire struts before the rack toppled, but he knew she’d seen the movement. Ripping open the leather covering on the handle of the briefcase, he pried out the knife and held the blade to the old man’s throat. “Normal,” he murmured, praying it was one of the German words that were close to English or Norwegian. The old man kicked. “Sit still. Sitt stille, for faen,” he added in Norwegian, wishing he’d paid attention in his junior high German class. He released the man’s mouth and prodded his skimpy loins. The old guy tottered upright and began arranging newspapers with palsied hands. The lead article in one of the papers, Rygg saw, like a fever dream in which all his obsessions and paranoia swarmed, was about the Alpensturm. There was the photograph of the ship, with its thick antennae, the deck cluttered with containers. Peering between Stern and Die Spiegel, Rygg saw the woman actually in the street, a couple feet from the curb, looking toward the rack. For half a minute or so, she watched the old man arranging his newspapers, then turned and stalked off. She wore flat-heeled shoes, almost like ballet slippers. There was a sudden hot stink, and Rygg’s right knee was wet with urine. The old guy had pissed his pants. Pressing the knife back into the recess in the handle, he shoved a fifty-euro note into the rack in front of the old man’s face. He waited until a trio of portly businessmen strolled past, deep in conversation, and walked a pace behind them, in the direction the woman had gone. At the next street, he turned right and caught the first taxi that went by.
He took a circuitous route back to the hotel, crisscrossing Hasselbrookstrasse three times in three different taxis, before finally walking toward it from the back. But the lobby was empty, and the concierge, polite as ever, informed him that no one had left a message or asked about him. He leaned back in the elevator and allowed his image in the mirror the smallest grin. You’re all right, he told himself. You’ve done it. It’s all over. And tomorrow, back to Zagreb, back to Lena and Marin and the farmhouse.
Inside the room, he went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. But looking up at the mirror, he froze. The deodorant can. He’d placed the toothbrush and toothpaste at a forty-five degree angle to the mirror, like he’d always done. But he had a habit with circular objects of placing the logo facing away. So he’d deliberately turned the logo on the deodorant can toward the mirror, he was sure of it. He thought back. Yes, even this morning, he’d used it and turned the logo to the mirror. He remembered reading it backward: EXA. But now it was facing him. He felt as if someone had run a finger lightly up the back of his neck.
Leaving the lights off, he quickly went through the drawers, and the clothes in the wardrobe. He couldn’t be sure, but he had a sense
that the hangers were spaced a little bit farther apart. Okay, he thought. Okay. Move.
He stuffed a couple shirts into the briefcase, patted his pocket to make sure the cigarette packet was still there, and left the room. He used the stairs and kept going, past the lobby, down to the sub-ground floor, where there was a car park. He peered out across the rows of BMWs and Mercedes, then stepped into the shadows. After a moment, he returned to the glass doors at the base of the stairwell, where there was a phone attached to the wall. The message said in English, German, and French that it only called within the hotel. He picked up the receiver and dialed zero for the reception. After a moment, the concierge answered.
“Rygg from 431. I need a taxi in the car park, as soon as possible.”
“Yes sir.”
“And listen.”
“Sir?”
“If anyone asks for me, I’m at a restaurant in the Binnenalster. I’ll be back at eleven or so.”
“Yes sir. The taxi will be with you shortly, sir.”
‘Shortly’ in Hamburg meant precisely forty-five seconds. The concierge must have sent down one of the taxis from the front of the hotel.
“Binnenalster,” Rygg told the driver. He slid down in the seat until they were well away from the hotel, then sat up. “Go slow,” he said. He took the laptop out of the briefcase and opened it. He clicked the “Connect to” button, and it showed half a dozen networks. “Slower,” he told the driver. The networks were all password protected, but as they drove past a café, a new one popped up. It was open. “Okay, pull over here, but keep the car running,” Rygg said. He opened the browser and Googled “Kunsthalle Hamburg,” as agreed with Sasha. He flipped through the pages of images until he found the stone dragon. He clicked on it. Up came a page on the museum site. It was actually hosted by the museum, Sasha had told him. He’d hacked into the site and modified it slightly. At the bottom of the page, Rygg clicked an image of a Chinese urn, and up came a page with a little form. It was done like one of the surveys you found on some sites, with buttons beside four options to click on. How did you enjoy your visit? the question read. And the options: Optimal. No worries. Mediocre. I’m never coming back. He clicked the button beside “I’m never coming back” and immediately shut down the computer.
“Okay,” he told the driver. “Hauptbahnhof.”
“Binnenalster?”
“No, I changed my mind. Hauptbahnhof train station, all right?”
During the long, rocking trip to Vienna, he read the first story of a paperback Chekhov he’d bought at the station. The story, though it had been written a century and more before, and took place in another country, seemed to be about him: ordinary people blundering through life. What else have I missed, in the fog of the last twenty years? he wondered. Every couple pages, he tapped the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, like a tic. The pack itself seemed like a growth on his chest, heavy and warm. A tumor. He’d let Marin open it up.
He thought he’d sleep, but his mind was still jumping around. He could feel the weariness like a black weight in his chest, but every time he closed his eyes, the image of Yuri’s shattered face was before him, and then vivid moments as he hid behind the magazine rack. Once he dozed off and woke almost at once, clutching the briefcase. He looked out of the window at the passing lights. After a while he ordered coffee and drank it slowly.
Chapter 7
Debriefing
April 28
The train pulled into the Westbahnhof station in Vienna at dawn. It was foggy, and he didn’t recognize Lena among the figures on the platform until he stepped out. Then she came forward. She was wearing a gray sweater and a blue skirt, and seemed improbably beautiful. Droplets of dew spangled her hair. She tossed her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “Well done,” she whispered, and he felt that this time her greeting was genuine.
“I’m happy to see you,” he laughed. “So what do we do from here?”
“I have the car outside.”
“You drove up?”
“I left as soon as Sasha got the message. I arrived only half an hour before.”
“You must be tired.”
“And you.”
“I’ve decided that I’m never going to sleep again.”
She waited until they were in the car and moving through the quiet morning streets, past houses like confections of sugar, to ask whether he’d received the information. He patted his pocket. “Right here,” he said. “Or at least, I hope it is. I haven’t even looked inside. Could be just a fucking pack of cigarettes.”
“Marko will be happy one way or another,” she said, and they laughed together. “So did you use the knife?” she asked, looking at him with a twinkle.
“I took it out at one point,” he said, and involuntarily brushed his hand against his trouser leg as he remembered the old man’s lips trembling beneath his palm.
“Why did you take the knife?”
And then he was telling her the whole story, starting with the walk to the first meeting with Yuri. It felt great to be telling it, moving the story outside of his chest, looking at it from a bit of a distance. It was good having someone to talk to.
She laughed when he described the woman in the mirrored bank window, and again when he told her how Yuri had ladled up the aalsuppe. But she grew serious when he related the events around the Café Mendelssohn, and put her hand on his arm. Her fingers were cool and slender.
“You put your life in danger. We will not forget this, Torgrim,” and he felt as though a giant sunflower had suddenly sprouted beneath his ribs.
Despite his assertion that he’d never sleep again, he dropped off while they were still in Austria, and woke up when they were past Zagreb.
“I must be very boring,” Lena laughed. “I stop twice, for tea and for toilet, and you do not wake up.”
“You’re anything but boring, Lena. I was just very tired, I guess.”
He told her he’d read the Chekhov stories on the train and they talked about those for a while. “I am so happy you like,” she said. “Chekhov for me, and Tolstoy, is like, is like the air. I must have.”
“I need to read Tolstoy,” he told her.
When they pulled up to the farmhouse, Marin came running out, with Sasha shuffling behind him. Marin embraced Rygg, exclaiming relief at seeing him. Sasha stood to one side grinning feebly, plucking at a bitten thumbnail. It felt like a homecoming, and he had to remind himself that he’d known these people for less than a week. Before they’d even gone inside, Rygg took the pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and handed it over.
“Torgrim,” Marin said, holding out both hands and making a little ceremony of accepting the packet. “Come inside. Let’s hear your story. If you are not too tired.”
“I could use a coffee.”
“Coffee we have.”
“And maybe a finger of Løiten Linie.”
So they went inside. They sat on the mismatched chairs before the fireplace, and drank coffee and aquavit, while he told the story once more. Marin listened intently, making him go over certain portions again and again. In particular, he grilled him about the first conversation with Yuri. He asked four times about the contents of the hold of the Alpensturm, each time phrasing the question slightly differently. He also seemed interested in the woman Rygg had seen near the Café Mendelssohn, and made him describe her clothes and her hair. Finally he nodded slowly.
“You have gone above and beyond, Torgrim,” he said. “Sasha will put the rest of the money into your bank account today. And you can keep the extra money that should have gone to Yuri. As a bonus.”
“I don’t want it,” Rygg said. “I don’t want any of it, but especially not Yuri’s money. Keep it.” He was suddenly angry. “Use it to figure out what’s happening, to catch these bastards.”
Marin nodded, then stood up. “Come,” he said. “Let us see what Yuri acquired for us.”
They went into the back room, where Sasha was deep into one of his games. On the screen,
a creature with a lizard tail, burdened by a colossal flamethrower, scampered around a parking lot. Marin sat on the bed and set the cigarette pack beside him. He opened it and dumped out the cigarettes, then pulled up the gold paper. Holding the pack to the light, he peered into it. Then he ripped it carefully along the seams. At the base of the pack was a small square tablet, taped to the card. Gingerly, Marin peeled away the tape. He handed the tablet to Sasha, saying something in Russian. Sasha looked at it and nodded. He rummaged in a cardboard box under the computer table and brought forth a digital camera trailing a tendril of wire. Snapping open a side panel on the camera, he clicked out a card and placed Yuri’s card inside, then closed the panel. He plugged the camera into the computer, and a loading bar popped up, saying it was adding images. There were twenty-one altogether.
“Yuri said he only took two pictures,” Rygg said.
Sasha brought up another window, and started clicking through images. The first two were murky black squares. These were followed by eighteen pictures of a plump, unsmiling, black-haired woman in various states of undress. She glared at the camera as she pulled aside her purple panties or squeezed her enormous mottled breasts together. “That must be Yuri’s Turkish whore with the big ass,” Rygg commented, shaking his head.
In the last picture, Yuri stood with his arm around a dark-haired boy who looked to be in his late teens. The boy was smiling, but Yuri’s lips were firmly clamped together, hiding his harelip. Behind them was a ship: the yellow railings and clustered antennas of the Alpensturm.
“Okay,” said Marin, as Sasha returned to the first two images. “These are what Yuri has provided for us.”
“Sorry,” said Rygg. “I guess they didn’t take.” The pictures were almost entirely black, with little glimmers of paler color here and there.
Chasing the Storm Page 7
