“I’m in New York.”
“Oh, I understand.”
“But what are you doing up so early?” Milo asked.
“I always get up at six o’clock. Regardless. And start the workday at seven o’clock. So I thought I should update you on the case with the asylum seeker.”
“Oriana.”
“Exactly.”
“Tell me,” said Milo.
“Well, I’m afraid I have bad news.”
Milo leaned back in the chair. He did not need more setbacks in the investigation now.
“Tell me.”
“Well, I’ve had all the papers from UNE sent over and reviewed them. And the case processing is scandalous. With all due respect, Cavalli, it’s not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer who work in the public sector,” Lehman began.
Milo recognized the condescending tone from the courtroom when Lehman worked to tear apart every single submission of evidence to Financial Crimes and as far as possible discredit all the investigators who testified.
“The problem is simply that this girl is an undocumented asylum seeker. Do you know what that means?”
“In practice, yes, but not legally.”
“That her appeal possibilities are used up, so to speak.”
“All of them?”
“The way the case process works is that UDI makes a decision, which can then be appealed to UNE. The Immigration Appeals Board, that is, which is under the Ministry of Justice.”
“And that’s already been done?”
“Yes, the girl was assigned a public defender, poor thing. And he didn’t follow up very well. Forgot to point out case-processing errors, hasn’t observed deadlines, and so on. He gets paid the same however the case goes. If the girl gets to stay or is deported.”
“You mentioned case-processing errors?”
“Yes, it took us ten minutes to see that.”
“But isn’t it just a matter of appealing again?”
“No. She has no more appeal opportunities with UNE.”
Lehman fell silent, and Milo emptied the half-full wineglass in two big gulps.
“Damn it! It must be possible to appeal this higher up in the system? You did say they’ve made a mistake. That she has the right to residency. But isn’t there any other way to get her to stay?”
“Not unless you want to sue the Norwegian government, so I suggest you let the case be and simply—”
“Wait a minute! What did you say?”
“I said I think you should let the case be. You’ve done what you—”
“No, before that. You said ‘sue.’”
“No, I mean, since the appeal opportunities are used up, there is a theoretical opening to sue the government, through UNE.”
“On what grounds?”
“Primarily three: case-processing errors, strong humanitarian considerations, and that the decision was very unreasonable.”
“And how does Oriana’s case fit in?” asked Milo.
“Probably she satisfies all three. Even I can be moved in a weak moment by what she and her family have been through. But I would mostly advocate taking them on the formal aspects. On the case processing. Not on nonsense like human consideration.”
“And you can do that?”
Lehman snorted into the phone.
“I can take them with both arms tied behind my back and a blindfold on.”
“Do it!”
Milo felt his heart beginning to pound harder. He did not know if it was the wine, the irritation at the Forum directors, the many setbacks in the investigation or simply the testosterone that had been released by having met Kathrin.
“Listen here, Cavalli. I understand that this is important to you, but not really why. I went along with helping you, but are you aware of what a lawsuit against the government will mean? Are you aware of what it will cost?”
“Are you aware of how much money I have?”
He heard Lehman sigh.
“You’re serious, then?”
“Yes, I’m serious. And I will repeat what I said to you at the office. No one can find out that I’m financing this, but I’ll set aside what’s necessary. How much should I set aside so that you’ll be satisfied? Two million kroner? Three million?”
“Start with one million, then we’ll take it from there.”
“Okay. What is the process going forward now?”
“Well, a lawsuit will take at least a year, but we’ll get started and ask for a preliminary injunction, so that the deportation decision is frozen and she can stay in the country throughout the entire process.”
“Good! I’ll call her in a few hours and explain, and then we’ll deal with the rest when I’m back in Oslo.”
“That’s great,” Lehman replied, taking a brief dramatic pause. “You’re out of your mind, Cavalli.”
“You may be right,” Milo answered, ending the call.
A few minutes later Kathrin was back.
“Did something happen? You look so thoughtful,” she said.
“I’ve just decided to sue the Norwegian government,” he replied.
SATURDAY
30
He woke up early and stayed in bed listening to the sounds of the city: the cars honking twenty-six stories below. A truck gunning its enormous diesel engine. A siren not that far away.
His head was heavy. Due to poor sleep and good wine. Even so he felt good. Somehow or other he was satisfied with waking up alone. Satisfied that they had been content to share a taxi. Satisfied that he had simply followed her into the reception at Lotte New York Palace, kissed her and strolled through the New York night the short block from her hotel on Madison to the Waldorf on Park Avenue.
Was it his confessor’s words that had sunk in? About resisting temptation and not betraying others? It couldn’t be that, he thought. He felt no regret about the night he had spent with Anja in Oslo, and not for the hours flirting with Kathrin either. It was more a feeling that he didn’t need more last night. He knew that, in any event, he would see her again.
He swung his legs out of the bed and onto the soft carpet. The phone was on the table, and he looked up Oriana’s number.
“Hello,” she answered cautiously.
“Hi, it’s Milo.”
“Oh, hi.”
He told her about the conversation with Lehman and about the problems with the appeal.
“I know that. There aren’t any more possibilities left in the system.”
“There’s one more possibility,” said Milo.
Briefly he went through the plan to sue UNE, and that he had set Lehman in motion to get a preliminary injunction.
“We’ll get your rights back, Oriana. They won’t be able to throw you out as long as the case is being processed. And when you win, you can do what you want.”
She did not reply.
“Are you there?” he asked.
“Yes.“
“Fine. This is going to take time, but I promise you that we will complete the whole process. But then I have to ask you for something too.”
He heard her breathing.
“You have to tell what you saw that evening two years ago. We have to find that out, and you have to testify,” he insisted.
“I don’t really know—”
“And you have to do it now.”
“I won’t do it on the phone anyway. And I’m not talking with that Sørensen.”
“I’ll be back in Oslo early in the week. We’ll do it then. Okay?”
“But…”
She fell silent again.
“But what is it?” asked Milo.
“Even if you manage to get a temporary injunction, I don’t have money for … a legal case can take years, and in the meantime…”
“I’m going to set aside some funds in a separate trust for the sole purpose of financing your legal case. You don’t need to worry about that. You will get to see all the papers before you give the testimony.”
“But that’s a lot of money, for sure, and I
don’t know—”
“What, Oriana? What don’t you know?”
Milo pressured her; he had no intention of letting her slip away this time. But he could hear that she was uncomfortable.
“I don’t like being in debt to a … man … who perhaps expects something in return.”
She sounded like a person who was familiar with the problem of being in a debt of gratitude. Milo thought about how dependent she had been the last few years on help from others. Help to escape, help to hide, help with papers, help with housing and jobs. And in the long series of persons there was probably someone who liked to remind her of what they had done for her.
“Oriana, I’m not going to ask for anything other than your testimony in return.”
“But why are you doing this, then?”
“Because it’s the right thing. Period.”
“Okay.”
“So do we have an agreement?”
“Yes.”
He felt relief when she said that. A feeling that the pieces were going to fall into place. In the end anyway. Then he remembered her little sister.
“Is there anything new about your sister?”
“Anything new? No, what would that be?”
“I was only wondering if you’d thought of anything else in connection with her disappearance. If I can, I’d like to help you find out what happened then.”
“Thanks. But there’s nothing new,” Oriana said.
* * *
The breakfast restaurant was half full of other jet-lagged guests, and he was shown to a table by the windows facing Lexington Avenue. A pot of coffee and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice came to the table while he visited the buffet and picked up a bowl of fresh fruit, an omelet and some slices of toast.
He browsed a little in The New York Times, and thought through the day’s tasks. First item on the program was to check his grandfather’s apartment by Central Park. Then he had arranged to meet the professor who had been a kind of mentor for Ingrid Tollefsen, and whom she had visited only a few days before she was killed.
Breakfast did him good, and his head felt better. There was still a hint of pounding in the back of his head, and he decided to walk it off when he was through with breakfast. His body said three o’clock Norwegian time; his phone only showed nine. In other words, he was in no rush to get to the apartment, and followed Park Avenue up to Fifty-ninth Street before he turned left and found the way to the southeast entrance of Central Park.
At a leisurely pace he strolled through the park and cut across toward the Upper West Side. Around him couples and singles were walking, families with and without strollers. And both bicyclists and joggers of all shapes and sizes trying to get rid of as many calories as possible.
He thought back on his first trip to New York, with his mother and father. He must have been twelve or thirteen, and he still remembered the strange feeling of both familiarity and strangeness. The feeling in the taxi to Manhattan of coming to something known. As if he’d been there before. Simply because he had seen dozens of movies from the city, and thereby immediately recognized buildings in the skyline. At the same time the city was foreign because he knew he had only barely scratched the surface of it.
He approached the exit on the west side of the park and saw the row of high-rise buildings in front of him, excited about what was waiting in one of them.
At the exit to Central Park West he stopped and checked the GPS on his phone. Five minutes later he was standing in front of the building and had no time to inspect it more closely before the doorman opened and scrutinized him.
“Mr. Cavalli, I presume,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Mike. I assumed you would come today. Patmunster called yesterday. I’ll take you up to the apartment,” he said, going in ahead of him.
The floor was marble, and in one corner a security guard was sitting behind a kind of reception counter, with a row of small TV screens in front of him.
Mike showed him into the elevator, and on the way up to the twentieth floor he told him briefly about the building and discreetly about who lived there. There was old money on every floor.
The elevator stopped gently, and they came out into a corridor with a tiled floor and soft runner.
“There are only two apartments on this floor,” said Mike, going over to a door without a nameplate. He took out his bunch of keys and unlocked it. “So. I’ll let you look around in peace. But if there’s anything, just press 0 on the house phone.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
Milo went in and closed the door behind him. He felt his heart pounding. What was he going to find out about grandfather Antonio?
He went down a broad hallway and looked into bedrooms and guestrooms on both sides before he came into a large kitchen. Milo immediately recognized the Italian furnishings. He went farther into the living room with sliding doors out to an imposing terrace. His gaze glided from the massive dining table to the walls that were covered with paintings and graphic prints.
He went over to the glass door and opened it. The terrace floor had the same tiles as the house on Sardinia, and it struck Milo how familiar and foreign the whole thing seemed at once. Just like New York itself. He had no problems picturing his grandfather padding about in this apartment. Impeccably dressed in a classic suit, lamb’s wool sweater and tie.
Milo went over to the edge of the veranda and looked down at Central Park.
“I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed.
The view was magnificent. The park was stretched out below, and he could see the lakes and over to the Central Park Zoo and the Metropolitan Museum.
He went in again, past dining rooms and a library.
It was in the last bedroom he found what he was looking for.
On the nightstand was a framed photograph of his grandfather. On the wall a crucifix was hanging, and on the bed was a shoebox with a pair of worn, ankle-length boots on top.
He looked at the picture of his grandfather, which must have been taken sometime in the 1970s.
Solemnly he picked up the boots and studied them. They were black, worn, and very old. The soles were completely worn-out, and in several places they had come loose from the uppers. The tag that indicated the size had been scraped away long ago, and the laces were broken. But it was easy to see that they had belonged to a man.
Milo immediately understood that they had once been his grandfather’s, but wondered why in the world they were here, in an enormous apartment on the finest street in New York?
At the same time there was something familiar about them. As if he had seen them before. Or was it something his grandfather had said once?
He set them on the floor and opened the lid of the shoebox. It contained postcards and pictures. He picked up a postcard from Rome, with a picture of St. Peter’s Square.
He recognized his grandfather’s handwriting, but not his language. The text was in simple English. A language he did not know his grandfather had mastered.
Rome, 3/7 1963
Cara Brenda,
We made a choice, and I stand by it. But my feelings are not gone. They are strong.
Antonio
Another postcard was from Sardinia.
Sardinia, 7/31 1975
Cara Brenda,
I miss us.
I’m coming in September.
Antonio
And so it continued. Sporadic cards with simple declarations of love. No exaggerated use of adjectives, simply a statement of facts. And Milo could imagine his grandfather writing them with a concentrated expression and slow hand movements.
But had he really done that while his family was around? After grandmother Francesca had made dinner, after the conversation around the table, perhaps he had quarreled with Maria, or they had laughed. And afterward had he gone up to his office and written to a woman on the other side of the Atlantic?
Milo continued browsing through the bundle, and spread out a handwritten letter. The content
gave Milo the shivers.
Milan, September 2, 1977
Cara Brenda
I still can’t come this month. You have perhaps heard about the national tragedy that has struck us here in Italy. So many dead young men. So meaningless.
But when this military vessel sank earlier in the spring, it would turn out that our family is affected in a very special way. This means that I cannot leave here before this particular situation is under control.
The rest of the letter was about how he missed her and hoped to see her soon.
Milo read the first part over again. The year made him certain that this referred to the same shipwreck that both Benedetti and Sunniva had talked so vaguely about.
But how had this affected the Cavalli family? What kind of family secret had Milo so obviously been shielded from all these years?
He decided to ask Corrado, but his eyes were drawn to the shoebox, where he saw more photographs. On one of them he saw his grandfather together with Brenda, with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Probably taken on the boat on its way out to Ellis Island.
He remembered how respectfully his grandfather talked about the many people who had emigrated to the United States.
“They went from the known to the unknown, and never looked back. That takes courage!”
Milo caught sight of an old black-and-white photo he recognized. He had seen the same one on his grandfather’s writing desk.
The picture showed three boys smiling at the camera with their arms around each other’s shoulders. All had dark pants folded up at the ankles, and you could see that the belts were tightened to the innermost hole to get them to stay up. The shirts were off-white, the sleeves rolled up.
These were clothes to grow into, and the boys radiated poverty. But their laughter and smiles radiated energy.
He knew it was his grandfather standing in the middle, and that he was eleven or twelve years old when it was taken. That is, sometime in the 1920s.
The place was Sicily, and suddenly Milo recognized the footwear. His grandfather had on the same boots that were now on the floor in the apartment.
Milo picked up the boots again.
They were unmistakably adult size, and on the photograph he saw how the skinny legs of his grandfather disappeared down into them and that they were many sizes too big.
The Oslo Conspiracy Page 20
