MemoRandom

by Anders de la Motte

  • • •

  “Number 2, Själagårdsgatan, Gamla stan.” Natalie put her foot down and pulled straight out into traffic, without waiting for a gap. Sarac looked behind them through the rear window but couldn’t see anyone following them.

  “He’s got some sort of consultancy business, involved in training and lectures. Website and everything. Seems to be quite a big fish.”

  She tossed her smartphone to Sarac. The background picture of the website was the same as the photograph in his inside pocket. The tightrope walker above the Thames. The high wire.

  He quickly scrolled through the text. Eugene von Katzow is a former detective lieutenant at the Intelligence Unit of the Stockholm Police Force. He currently works as an international security consultant and lecturer. Among his clients are major organizations such as OSSE, ASIS, Interpol, and the ICC.

  “I didn’t have time to read the whole thing. And there’s loads of abbreviations. OSSE and ASSE or whatever there were.” Natalie changed lanes again.

  “They’re both security organizations,” Sarac said. “One’s intergovernmental, the other’s private. The ICC is the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Look out!”

  Natalie forced her way in front of a taxi. The driver slammed on his brakes and blew his horn hard. Sarac turned around again. Apart from a few taxis, all he could see was a white van of some sort with a tatty company logo on the front. Everything looked fine.

  FIFTY

  Number 2, Själagårdsgatan was a beautiful, coral-colored, four-story seventeenth-century building with leaded windows, situated almost right in the middle of Gamla stan. It had to be one of the most beautiful residential buildings in Stockholm, and presumably also one of the most expensive.

  Traffic was banned from the narrow alleyways and the snow that had settled between the cobbles made the street treacherously slippery, but none of this seemed to bother Natalie. She steered the car in between the old buildings and stopped right in front of the door.

  Sarac sat in the car for a minute or so, studying the building. He remembered it clearly now, especially the beautiful, protruding stone porch. Pale sandstone with inlaid cherubs, and two statues on top. Roman gods again, that could hardly be a coincidence.

  “You can park up there.”

  He pointed along the narrow alley to where it widened to form a small square. Then he opened the car door before she could offer to go with him.

  For a moment he wondered about taking the bag containing the notebook and other things with him, but decided to leave it in the trunk of the car for the time being.

  Some snow had caught in the building’s doorway, leaving the door slightly ajar. He kicked it away and closed the door behind him.

  E. von Katzow lived on the fourth floor. Sarac went up the stairs and stopped in front of the oak door. He took a few deep breaths, trying to lower his heart rate. Just as he was about to ring the doorbell he heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “You could have waited,” Natalie panted. “As luck would have it, a little old lady showed up and let me in.” She winked at Sarac and for a moment he almost smiled. Instead he managed to turn the smile into an unhappy grimace. He didn’t want to drag her any further into this than he already had. He would have told her to go straight back to the car if she hadn’t already reached over and rung the doorbell.

  The bell set off a familiar buzz inside Sarac’s head and he closed his eyes for a few seconds. The door was opened by a straight-backed, desiccated little man.

  “Yeees . . .” he said. The word almost vanished into his nose.

  “Eugene von Katzow?” Natalie said.

  “Who wants to know?” the man purred.

  Natalie looked at Sarac and gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow.

  “My friend here says he knows you.”

  “I don’t think so,” the man replied curtly. “You must be confusing me with someone else.” He started to shut the door, but before it closed Natalie managed to block it with her foot.

  “Come on, David,” she hissed at Sarac. “Is this the right guy?”

  Sarac slowly shook his head. The buzzing was getting louder.

  “Excuse me, young lady, but would you be so kind as to remove your foot from the door?” The man’s voice was just as dry as before.

  Natalie gave Sarac a long look, then pulled her foot back. At the last moment Sarac raised his hand and stopped the door from closing.

  “Arthur,” he said. “Tell Eugene that David Sarac is here.” His voice sounded different, softly spoken but firm. He let go of the door and it closed. Silence fell. Sarac noticed that Natalie was staring at him, but for once he said nothing.

  The door opened again. “Please come in, Mr. Sarac,” the little man said.

  The man Sarac had called Arthur led them down a long corridor. Thick walls, high ceiling, and a wooden floor that creaked beneath heavy, genuine antique carpets.

  The room they walked into was more modern than Natalie had been expecting. A couple of comfortable sofas, a large film screen on one of the white walls. Lots of framed photographs and pictures on the other walls. The beautiful vaulted ceiling was subtly lit, making it feel even higher than it was.

  A man in his sixties was sitting on one of the sofas. He was wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, and a pair of rectangular sunglasses covered his eyes. Beside him on the sofa, with its head resting on the blanket covering the man’s lap, lay a large, brownish-yellow dog. As they approached the dog began wagging its tail slowly.

  “Hello, Brutus,” Sarac said. The sound of his voice made the tail wag faster, but the dog didn’t bother to raise its head.

  “You’ll have to excuse us,” the man on the sofa said. Clearly this was Eugene von Katzow.

  “Both Brutus and I have a little trouble moving these days. Can Arthur get you anything? Coffee, tea?”

  “Coffee, please,” Natalie said.

  Von Katzow gestured to them to sit down.

  “You haven’t introduced your friend, David.” He nodded toward Natalie.

  “This is Natalie, she . . . she’s helping me out,” Sarac said, pulling a slight face.

  “I understand.” Von Katzow nodded. “It’s good to have helpful friends, isn’t it? I couldn’t manage without them.”

  Silence fell and Natalie took the chance to look around. Some of the pictures were actually old circus posters. He recognized the name Ringling Bros. on one of them, and Barnum & Bailey on another. They all depicted various types of balancing acts. The largest of them seemed to be for a film. She could see Britt Eklund’s name down one side. The Great Wallendas. Where had she heard that name before?

  “So, David, you found your way here in the end.” Von ­Katzow’s voice sounded more sorrowful than unfriendly.

  “I’m glad you’re back on your feet again,” he went on. “But I’m afraid your visit here is in vain.”

  “How do you mean?” Sarac said.

  Natalie couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but his voice sounded very different. Sterner, more self-confident.

  “You think I can fill in the gaps in your head. Explain what’s going on. Somewhere deep inside perhaps you would even like to think that I am in some way behind it all,” von Katzow said.

  “And would that be wrong, Eugene?”

  Von Katzow gave a wry smile.

  “What do you really think, David?”

  Sarac shrugged. “I’m not here to discuss what I think, but to find out what you know.”

  Natalie looked at Sarac, then at von Katzow. She saw that they were both smiling in similar ways. As if the trite discussion they were engaged in was actually something completely different.

  “So typical of you, David.” Von Katzow shook his head gently. “Straight to the point. Taking what you need, without any thought of the consequences. Of how your actions will affect other people.”

  Natalie saw Sarac’s smile fade slightly. Von Katzow seemed to have noticed as well, because he leaned forward.
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br />   “I’m not the person you’re looking for, David. Can we agree on that, at least? Perhaps you were hoping you’d come here and find the brains behind everything, but deep down you know that’s not the case.”

  Von Katzow threw out one of his hands.

  “I only have twenty percent of my sight left, I can’t really go out without a guide. So I amuse myself by inviting people here, people I think might need a little push in the right direction. You were one of them, David, actually one of the more intelligent of them. Among other things, you share my interest in Roman deities.”

  Von Katzow paused as his servant came in with a tray bearing two silver pots and three cups and saucers. He put the tray down on the table and withdrew discreetly.

  “I’ve met your old friend Dreyer,” Sarac said as he poured Natalie some coffee. Now it was von Katzow’s turn to look troubled.

  “He claimed that I was actually working for him. That he had recruited me to spy on you and the others up in Regional Crime. What are your thoughts about that?” Sarac picked up his coffee cup and leaned back.

  Natalie suddenly realized what was going on. She was watching a game, a sort of verbal chess match. She remembered the psychology books in Sarac’s bookcase. They were all about influence, persuasion, getting people to do what you wanted.

  Von Katzow sat in silence for a while, idly scratching the big dog’s chin.

  “I think Jan Dreyer is saying the sort of thing he thinks will work. The sort of thing that will fit somehow into the picture you’re trying to put together.”

  Sarac put his cup down. “So you’re saying he’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Von Katzow went on stroking the dog.

  “No, you didn’t. You usually try to avoid plain speaking,” Sarac said.

  The two men were staring at each other. Neither of them said anything. They both seemed to be waiting for the other man’s next move.

  Natalie was already fed up. She needed answers, straightaway. Something she could take to Rickard that would restore his faith in her. She leaned forward and put the cup down hard enough to make it rattle.

  “What’s the big deal with the tightrope walkers?” she asked, looking at von Katzow. “That picture in David’s apartment, now all these posters?”

  Von Katzow turned toward her. His eyes were hidden by his dark glasses, which made his smile rather difficult to interpret.

  “I’ve always been interested in the circus,” he said. “When I was a child I dreamed of becoming a tightrope walker. I used to practice in the garden of our summer cottage, on a rope tied between two apple trees. But instead of a career in the ring, I managed to disappoint my parents almost as much by joining the police.” He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

  “But there are actually a lot of similarities between our work and a tightrope walker’s.” Von Katzow nodded toward Sarac. “Keeping your balance, no matter what happens. Not losing your concentration. Do you understand what I mean, Natalie?”

  “And the guy in the picture, the one walking over Tower Bridge?”

  “Karl Wallenda? He’s actually walking beside Tower Bridge, not that that diminishes his achievement.”

  Von Katzow straightened up slightly, which made the dog start to wag its tail again.

  “Karl Wallenda was the most talented tightrope walker in the world. He set up his own troupe of acrobats in the 1920s, and a lot of the records he set lasted long into our time. Karl’s specialty was extreme heights. He would walk between skyscrapers, cross bridges. He rarely used any safety equipment. In fact he actually claimed that life only existed when he was balancing on the high wire, and that everything else was just anticipation.”

  Von Katzow shook his head sadly.

  “Unfortunately that sort of hero no longer exists, my dear Natalie. Now everything is mostly about image. About being famous without actually doing anything to warrant it.” He patted the dog’s back gently. “Karl Wallenda died for his art, he fell when he was walking between two hotels in Puerto Rico in 1979. He had actually retired, he was over seventy by then. But for some reason he still decided to do it. Barely halfway across the wind caught him and he fell to his death.

  “Afterward his wife talked about having known him for over fifty years. She had seen him prepare for hundreds of different potentially fatal challenges. But this was the only time she had ever heard him talk about the risk of falling. The possibility of failure.”

  He gestured toward the wall.

  “I usually mention Karl Wallenda in my lectures. I use him as an example of how dangerous it is to allow the thought of failure to enter your head.” Von Katzow smiled again. “I hope that answers your question, Natalie?”

  “It does, but I’ve actually got another question, if that’s all right, Eugene?” Natalie waited until both men were looking at her. Then she added her loveliest smile.

  “Of course, my dear.” Von Katzow raised his cup.

  Natalie took a deep breath. She wondered whether what she was about to say was really such a good idea. But she had been lying low for several weeks now, not delivering anything that Rickard wanted. High time to take a few risks. Step out onto the wire.

  “Tell me what you know about Janus. Who is he, for instance?” she said, and smiled happily when von Katzow’s coffee caught in his throat.

  • • •

  Atif had lost the Golf for a while at Slottsbacken. He was taken by surprise when it turned left into Stortorget, and he had had to hold back. By the time he rolled into the square the Golf was gone. But as luck would have it there weren’t that many streets to choose from, and even fewer parking spaces. After cruising around Gamla stan for almost ten minutes, he found it parked illegally just six hundred feet from Stortorget.

  Unfortunately it was too narrow for him to squeeze the van in without blocking the whole of the street. So he parked the van around the corner, stuck one of his barbed-wire clusters to one of the Golf’s front tires, and took up position in a doorway that offered a good view. All he had to do now was wait.

  • • •

  “The fact is,” von Katzow said when he had recovered, “that I don’t know who Janus is. And the reason is very simple.” He cleared his throat.

  “You never told me, David.” Von Katzow turned to Sarac, who was still staring at Natalie. “We met here on a number of occasions, but mostly it was just me telling you things. About how everything had started, how we organized what the handlers did, our routines, rules. Various things we had learned over the years. The impossibility of fighting a linear war against an asymmetrical enemy. The importance of thinking outside the box.”

  The old man sighed.

  “But you were almost as interested in the chaos that broke out later, when Dreyer and his internal investigators started their witch hunt. When we came close to destroying ourselves.”

  Natalie didn’t really know what von Katzow was talking about but decided not to say anything.

  “That was why you left. To save the department. Everything you’d built up,” Sarac said, reluctantly taking his eyes off Natalie.

  Von Katzow nodded slowly, suddenly looking rather tired. He leaned back on the sofa.

  “What I know, David, is that we sent you on a course in the USA. I say we, because even though I no longer had any official standing, I was still able to pull a few strings on the other side of the Atlantic. Shortly after you came back you started talking about a secret project that you called Janus. You asked me for help with the initial funding. I helped you with that, and showed you the Janus symbol that I remembered from a book I’d read. But you didn’t tell me anything else, and naturally I didn’t ask. Now, in hindsight, I’m extremely glad about that.”

  Brutus suddenly sat up on the sofa, sniffing and pricking his ears.

  “He does that sometimes. Arthur says that Brutus can hear ghosts. Lost souls.” Von Katzow stroked the dog’s back. “Hardly surprising, really, seeing as we’re in Själagårdsgatan, named after a charitable i
nstitution that cared for the souls of the poor.” Von Katzow waited for the animal to lie down again before he went on.

  “David, I’m afraid you’re not the only one of my former adepts who’s trying to get hold of Janus.”

  “Molnar,” Sarac said.

  Von Katzow nodded. “Peter’s one of them, but there are others. I’ve tried to make it clear that I’m neutral in this matter. Peter sees me as his mentor. For that reason I asked him to keep me out of it as much as possible. Partly because I don’t actually know anything that can help you, and partly because I don’t want to risk any misunderstandings. You see, David . . .”

  He nudged Brutus aside and leaned forward across the table.

  “The people who want to get at Janus are prepared to do whatever it takes to find him. Nothing is off-limits.” He turned his head to face Natalie. “I think I’ve said enough. Come with me, my dear, and I’ll show you a picture of David here, when he was younger and happier.”

  Von Katzow stood up and invited Natalie to go with him over to one wall bearing a row of framed photographs.

  “He’s there somewhere. I’m afraid I can’t see well enough to be able to point him out to you.”

  Natalie looked at the photos. They were all of different groups of people lined up in front of the camera. There were foreign flags in a couple of the pictures, whereas others seemed to have been taken somewhere inside the apartment. In the white border beneath the photographs the names and titles of the participants were listed. Most of them seemed to be police officers or prosecutors.

  The photograph that von Katzow was pointing at seemed to have been taken abroad, seeing as the participants were flanked by the flags of both the EU and UN. She ran her finger along the row of faces without finding Sarac. Suddenly she stopped at one who seemed familiar. A blond, well-built man with a broad smile. She looked down and read his name. She stiffened when she saw that it was a different name than the one he had said to her.

  “That’s me.” Sarac pointed at the next photograph. His voice sounded cold. Natalie straightened up quickly, smiled, and tried to make out that she hadn’t seen anything. As soon as she met his gaze she realized that she’d failed.