The Andalucian Friend: A Novel

by Alexander Soderberg

  The Vietnamese captain hadn’t held back with him. Broken nose, broken ribs, but he could live with that. He didn’t blame the captain—after all, he had shot and killed his helmsman in front of him. He had been forced to make an example of him, because at the very moment shots started to ring out he knew the captain had broken his agreement with Hanke’s people. The helmsman was the punishment, and he hadn’t hesitated for a second.

  Mikhail seldom felt any resentment toward people who beat him up or fired at him, they were just doing the same as him. He’d taken part in serious wars against both Afghans and Chechens; he’d been pinned down under heavy fire, on the very edge of what the human psyche could stand. He’d seen friends get shot, blown to pieces, burnt up. And he for his part had done the same to the enemy, but his actions had never been about anger or vengeance. Maybe that was why he had survived.

  He had already had this attitude toward his life and his way of treating people when he started work for Ralph Hanke. The same attitude no matter whether he was shooting and killing someone on Ralph’s orders, beating someone up, or going to Stockholm and driving into Adalberto Guzman’s son.

  He never reflected on whether he’d done the right or wrong thing, his years as an active frontline soldier in bloody and meaningless wars had given him an awareness that things like right or wrong didn’t actually exist in this world at all. All that did exist were consequences, and if you were aware of these, then life could rumble on in something like a manageable fashion.

  He stopped the car at a shopping mall. People stared at the big, bloodstained man as he limped through the shops. He bought all that he needed, bandages, Band-Aids, cotton balls, antiseptic, and the strongest painkillers he could find. The shop smelled nice, a mixture of pharmacy and perfume counter. He paid for his goods and the pretty, white-clad woman at the counter avoided looking him in the eye.

  Mikhail drove to a roadside bar, went into the bathroom, and patched himself up as best he could, then swallowed four painkillers.

  He sat at a table at the far end of the restaurant and washed down his food with three glasses of beer. Then he stretched, feeling his joints crack, and noted that his whole body was still aching like hell.

  While he waited for the bill he checked his GPS receiver. He had attached a transmitter to one of Guzman’s crates of cocaine in the hold of the ship. The screen said there was no signal, so they were probably still out at sea.

  Mikhail got a room in a roadside motel, clean sheets in hideous colors that smelled of way too much fabric softener. He took all his clothes off and examined himself in the mirror, looking at the blue bruises on his upper body, rolling his shoulders and clicking his neck into place. His body told its own very clear story: a mass of scars, four bullet wounds, shrapnel injuries. The scars were evenly spread over his body, some inflicted by direct force, others by accident, but every injury to his body had a strong memory attached to it. Some of these memories he would prefer to have avoided, but that wasn’t how it worked; he was obliged to carry them with him the whole time. Whenever he looked at his body he couldn’t help seeing the sort of person he really was.

  His cell phone rang. Mikhail crossed the carpet and picked it up from the bedside table. Roland on the other end, asking what the options were.

  “We’ve got a transmitter to follow, but that’s all.”

  “Ralph’s angry.”

  “Isn’t he usually?”

  “You have to strike back, if only to avenge your dead colleagues.”

  Mikhail understood that Roland was trying to play on his emotions, but he didn’t have any feelings of that sort. Mikhail didn’t give a fuck if his colleagues were dead, they were both wrecks, and their deaths probably came as a release for them.

  “I’ll see what I can do. Are you sending anyone?”

  “You’ll manage fine on your own.”

  Mikhail looked at himself in the big mirror, stretched his neck to the right, and something slid into place in his shoulder with a click. “OK, but be more specific.”

  Mikhail could hear Roland clicking his mouse, he was evidently online.

  “Ralph’s mad as a hornet, just do something, anything; he won’t sleep until they’ve understood that they’ve lost, you know what he’s like.”

  Mikhail didn’t answer, just clicked to end the call.

  He took a shower and then called an escort agency. He ordered a big girl, not too young, not too skinny, one who could speak decent Russian. The woman arrived, she was from Albania, very short, with knee-high white boots, a pink top, wide hips, exactly to his taste. She introduced herself as Mona Lisa, which he didn’t like, and he asked if he could call her something else, maybe Lucy?

  Mikhail and Lucy lay in bed, sharing a bottle of Genever and watching a Dutch talk show. He began to like her as they lay there laughing at the fact that neither of them could understand a word of what was being said on the television.

  “Can you stay the night?”

  She reached for her cell in her sparkly gold handbag and called someone, then read out Mikhail’s credit card number to the person on the other end.

  That night he slept with his head on her chest, holding her like a child holding its mother. At four o’clock in the morning his alarm went off. He sat up and rubbed the tiredness from his eyes. The pain was still there, it would be for a while yet. He turned around; Lucy was snoring quietly.

  He switched on the GPS receiver, got up, and went into the bathroom. There he rinsed his face with cold water, washing himself as best he could in the little washbasin. When he emerged again the transmitter was active. He looked at the map. The boxes were in western Jutland.

  Mikhail got dressed and left a big tip for Lucy on the bedside table.

  He closed the door gently behind him, got in the rental car, and headed out onto the highway, disappearing into the early-morning mist.

  The little half-timbered house with its thatched roof lay isolated and surrounded by a mass of trees a hundred yards or so from the old main road. He turned the car onto a pitted gravel track that led through an avenue of trees, with wheat fields behind the trees on both sides. The sun was shining in that golden color that Jens remembered from summers here when he was small—gold, orange, and green all at the same time.

  After getting off the ship the previous night, he had headed up the coast of Jutland in the fishing boat that Thierry had arrived in. They had moored in an isolated inlet and unloaded their cargo under cover of darkness. Three cars had been waiting for them there, one of them allocated to Jens, and he had driven off quickly.

  He parked the car in front of the house but didn’t get out at once. It was a beautiful morning, the birds were singing, the dew was drying up as the temperature rose. A door surrounded by climbing roses opened and an old lady with white hair and an apron smiled broadly at Jens. He smiled back at the almost absurdly picturesque image, then opened the car door and got out.

  They hugged, and she kept hold of him.

  “Fancy, you coming and surprising me like this … how lovely!”

  Grandma Vibeke made tea for them both, serving it in the same old chipped blue china that she always used. He looked at her. She was old, unbelievably old, but her age never seemed to slip into that stage when old people got tired and introverted. He hoped she would be able to leave this earthly life with the same attitude she had always had, that she would be permitted to die in this house.

  He looked around the kitchen, picking up a photograph from the mantelpiece: Grandpa Esben with his drooping mustache, wide-brimmed hat, and a rifle on a leather strap over his shoulder.

  “I could stare at this picture all day. I used to think it looked like he was standing out on the savannah, out on the veldt. On his way to hunt elephants or poachers. But he wasn’t, he was standing on a new-mown wheat field outside this house ready to hunt rabbits.”

  Vibeke nodded.

  “He was a grand man.”

  Jens stared at the photograph. “But we didn’t
get on that well, did we, Grandpa and me?”

  He put the photograph on the table and sat down.

  “I don’t know, he used to say you knew no boundaries. And for your part you always said he was crazy and should keep out of things. You always ended up arguing for one reason or another.”

  Jens smiled at the memory, but there was something serious about his relationship with his grandfather. He had never understood why they always argued.

  She came over with the teapot and filled their cups.

  “Every summer when you arrived you used to get along fine to start with. You would go hunting with Esben, or go fishing down at the river, as if you were testing out your relationship. Then after a few days you’d stop spending time together, you always found something of your own to do, and Esben kept himself to himself.”

  She sat down.

  “One year, I think you were fourteen, you went into town to go shopping. There was a gang of boys on mopeds, a few years older than you.… They picked a fight with you. You came home with a black eye and Esben blamed you for something you hadn’t done, he’d made up his mind that you were at fault. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  Jens remembered. Vibeke drank her tea.

  “The day before you were due to go home you set off into town on your own, found out where the boys were, and gave all four of them broken noses. You were positively glowing when you got back, but you didn’t say anything. I only found out about it after you’d gone, one of the mothers came ’round and wanted an apology.”

  Vibeke smiled.

  “Esben was always worried about you, said you never backed down even when you knew it was all over.”

  “No, I probably didn’t.”

  “What about now?”

  He thought for a moment. “I probably still don’t.”

  They ate dinner out in the garden, at an old wooden table in the arbor. Jens and Vibeke sat up late talking; he didn’t want to go to bed, wished he could have stayed longer.

  “Thanks for coming, you’re a good boy.”

  Jens looked at her, drained his glass of wine, and put it back on the table. “I used to be so eager to get here every summer, and it always felt so empty, having to go home again.… It was the same each year. You’re the only person who knows me, Grandma.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Tears of old age, containing neither sorrow nor disappointment.

  That night Jens lay awake in bed for hours just staring at the ceiling. The bed was as deep as a bathtub. He tried to remember the nights he spent in that same bed as a child. The memories came as emotions, good emotions. He slept flat on his back for the first time in a very long time.

  His dream was sweeping him closer to the abyss. He was alone, unable to get away. There was a layer of darkness covering everything. He tried to shout but no sound came out. Lack of oxygen to his head brought him back to consciousness. He opened his eyes.

  On the edge of the bed, with one hand around his neck and the other holding a pistol, its barrel resting against his chin, sat Mikhail, staring at him. The look in the man’s eyes was empty but curious, as if he were trying to read something from Jens’s eyes. Mikhail’s battered face was made worse by the white light of the moon illuminating the room, the look of a pallid, sick person.

  His deep voice said, “Car keys.”

  Jens tried to think. “In my pants pocket.”

  Mikhail turned around and checked the pants that were hanging over a chair. He turned back toward Jens and struck him on the head with the butt of the pistol. There was an unlikely metallic echo, and Jens fell into empty unconsciousness.

  The lawnmower was making its way through the grass. It was heavy and Sophie was sweating in the heat. The little motor that was supposed to drive the front wheels was broken, she’d ordered a new one but it had never arrived. Maybe it was just as well, seeing as she had no idea how to install it.

  Since her meeting with Gunilla she hadn’t stopped thinking. She had gone for walks, bike rides, runs, trying to find some peace of mind. She had tried writing in the evenings when she was alone, she had looked inside herself—thinking, reasoning, evaluating.

  Anger had been a constant, that had been there from the start, in the question Gunilla had put to her. Or perhaps not in the question itself but in the reply that she hadn’t been able to avoid, angry because she had known all along what it would be. A yes, there was no other choice open to her. She was a nurse. A police officer had contacted her, asking for help.

  Sophie cut the grass in straight lines; now there was just a thin line of taller grass running from one end of the garden to the other, and she aimed the lawnmower at it and let it cut the tops off the blades of grass.

  When she was finished she let go and the dead-man’s handle automatically switched the engine off. The lawnmower clicked quietly in the heat, her hands were warm and red from the vibration—and somewhere deep inside her ears was a high-pitched squeaking. She glanced at her work, the lawn looked symmetrical.

  Sophie poured herself a glass of iced water from a jug in the fridge, and her cell buzzed anxiously on the counter and the screen lit up. She stopped drinking, took several deep breaths, trying to slow her pulse rate.

  UNKNOWN NUMBER it said on the display. She clicked to open the message.

  Thanks for your message. Have been busy. Meet up? Best, H.

  She had sent a text to his cell the day before, after wondering what to write. In the end she had kept it brief: Thanks for the party.

  Now she wasn’t sure about replying, her fingers hovered above the buttons. The car horn sounded anxiously outside, interrupting her thoughts. Albert was sitting in the front seat, and she glanced at the clock on the wall and realized that she had lost track of the time. She put the phone in her pocket. Albert blew the horn again, and she called out angrily that he’d have to be patient. She would have to go as she was, scruffy, all sweaty in her jeans, gardening boots, and washed-out sweater. On the way out she managed to pull her hair up and grab her handbag.

  Albert was sitting beside her in the car wearing a green tennis shirt, white shorts, white tennis shoes, holding a tennis racket in a case on his lap. The air-conditioning wasn’t working. Sophie had the window open. The heat outside had a cooling effect once they were going faster. They didn’t talk, Albert was always quiet before a match. A mixture of nerves and concentration.

  She headed straight over the roundabout by the main square in Djursholm, drove up past the castle and down the little hill beside the water tower. She turned off into the garage in front of the red and utterly tasteless tennis hall.

  “You don’t have to come in.” He opened the door, saying this more out of politeness than anger.

  She didn’t answer, just took the key out of the ignition and got out of the car. They went in together, Albert a few steps ahead.

  There were matches under way on the courts inside the hall. Albert found some friends sitting in a group a short distance away and went over to join them. They fell into amused conversation. She liked his friends, they were always laughing when they were together. Sophie found a spare seat and sat down to watch the match in front of her. The ball moved back and forth between the two girls who were playing, she thought they were pretty good. The match kept up an even pace as Sophie’s thoughts drifted off. She pulled out her cell and reread Hector’s message, her finger hovering above the Reply button. Albert’s name and that of another boy were called out over the loudspeaker. She put the phone back in her bag and discovered that she was smiling as she watched Albert step onto the court. His walk was confident, and he looked relaxed as he shook hands with the umpire, then focused as he threw the ball in the air and hit the first serve of the match.

  Albert won one of his matches and went through to the semifinals, due to be held at the outdoor courts over by the castle. People began to get up and leave the hall. She went with the flow out to the garage, and saw Albert looking for her in the crowd. He indicated that he was goin
g to go ahead with his friends.

  In the garage she got stuck with another mom, who was going on about a collection for a teacher at Albert’s school. Sophie avoided another mother who was renowned for thinking that every child apart from her own daughter was heading in the wrong direction in life. She pretended not to see the red-wine club, a gaggle of over-the-hill women who had once been attractive. Slender legs, bulging stomachs, expensive makeup, and an easy social manner at first acquaintance but with whom just minutes later the conversation slid onto other people’s faults and shortcomings.

  She got in behind the wheel, feeling no connection to any of the people she had just encountered. She asked herself why she chose to live among these peculiar people who never ceased to amaze her.

  She drove the car toward the castle. Without quite knowing why she took out her cell, found Hector’s message again, and wrote Whenever.

  Mikhail had driven south from Jutland, across the unmanned border into Germany.

  When he arrived in Munich he parked the car in the garage of one of the empty villas that Hanke owned.

  The villa was on a sleepy, middle-class road where all the houses looked the same—brick-built, heavy doors. He guessed he had about ninety pounds of cocaine in the trunk of the car. In spite of the intermezzo on the boat he was pleased with the way things had turned out, and he knew that Ralph would be too. They had got the last word and, thanks to Mikhail’s last-minute intervention, some of the cocaine as well, just as Ralph wanted.

  He reversed into the garage and closed the door.

  The boxes, two of them, wooden, were sitting on top of each other. He pulled one out, found his transmitter, pulled it off the box, and put it in his pocket. He pulled the other box out and opened it with a crowbar, pushed the wooden lid off, and found a load of sawdust. Mikhail brushed it aside and put his hand in, and found the butt of a machine gun. He pulled it out and recognized the model, a Steyr AUG. He evaluated it quickly. Relatively unused, good condition. Mikhail found another nine of the same model, recently greased and with their bolts in place. He broke open the other box and under the sawdust he found eight brand-new Heckler & Koch MP7s and two MP5s.