The Last Pilgrim

by Gard Sveen

  “I can’t . . .” Waldhorst removed his hands from his face and spat a bloody clot onto the floor. “Drink . . .”

  Holt went out into the hall. “Bring some water.” The Milorg soldier looked even more scared than he had a few minutes before. The sound of things breaking could be heard down the hall, behind a closed door. “Now!” Holt shouted, to snap the young man out of his unresponsive state. “And see if you can find some gauze bandages or a handkerchief, or some damn thing like that.”

  Back in the room Holt fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He found two that weren’t soaked, lit one, and handed it to Waldhorst.

  The German tried to raise himself up on his elbow, but gave up at once. His young face contorted in pain, but not a sound escaped his lips. Holt looked around the room. There were two chairs in one corner, one of which lay on its side due to a broken leg. Holt thought he ought to talk to the Red Cross representatives in the camp but quickly rejected that idea. Should he defend a German? A Gestapo officer?

  He dragged over the chair that was still intact, pulled Peter Waldhorst up onto it, and stuck the cigarette between his lips. Waldhorst took a deep drag before he took out the cigarette with his left hand and touched two fingers to his bloody mouth. His right arm must have been dislocated or broken. Holt told himself to stop thinking about it. Waldhorst had only gotten what he deserved. He’d been given a good old-fashioned beating, and who hadn’t? The Germans had been no different. The first hours of an interrogation were nothing—if you didn’t know better, you’d almost think you’d wound up in some sort of coffee klatsch, but after a few hours of silence, they’d told Kaj Holt that his own mother wouldn’t recognize his body. “My mother’s dead,” he’d replied. That had made them as mad as rabid dogs. And now he stood here facing this young Gestapo officer, thinking what a waste it had all been. All those years, all the pain, his own meaningless survival. Holt had been tortured because a twist of fate had caused the Germans to mistake him for some other Resistance fighter. But torture wasn’t the worst of it. The worst thing was lying underneath the floor, as though in a coffin—a living corpse—unable to do anything but wait.

  “So,” said Waldhorst, tossing his half-smoked cigarette to the floor. “Why are you being so friendly to me?”

  Holt took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket again, lit a new one off Waldhorst’s, and threw the butt on the rough concrete floor.

  “As I understand it, you were in Oslo in 1940, right?”

  “If you already know that, why do you ask?”

  “I can’t find any documents confirming your presence there during that time. You worked in intelligence for the Abwehr?”

  Holt interpreted Waldhorst’s grimace as confirmation.

  “Who told you that?” Waldhorst asked.

  “A man who’s not going to live much longer,” said Holt. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I stopped worrying a long time ago,” said Waldhorst.

  “Well, if you don’t want to end up like him, I suggest you cooperate with me.”

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Then Waldhorst shut his eyes and nodded.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” said Holt, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “And I think . . . you’re the only one who can help me with . . . this thing.”

  “There’s always something a person can’t understand,” Waldhorst said softly.

  “Autumn of ’42 . . .” Holt said, maybe more to himself than to Hauptsturmführer Waldhorst. Then he had to stop because his voice failed him for a moment. He cleared his throat once, then twice, but it didn’t help.

  The two men stared at each other for what seemed an eternity.

  “Not a good autumn,” Peter Waldhorst said at last.

  Holt could see from Waldhorst’s expression that he knew what the question would be. And what the answer was. The mere thought of it was enough to make him weep. But not here, not now. What kind of a victor would he be if he started crying at the loser’s feet?

  “We had a . . . serpent at our breast that fall, a traitor . . .” Holt said. “A young man named Gudbrand Svendstuen, I’m sure you know about that . . . but I think . . .”

  He opened his mouth to ask the question, but then changed his mind.

  “You think that Svendstuen was the wrong man?” Waldhorst asked, as if reading Holt’s mind.

  Holt nodded.

  “Was he?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Then I can’t help you either,” said Holt.

  “So be it,” said Waldhorst. “Maybe I’ll make it, who knows?”

  There was a pause during which neither of them spoke when the Milorg solider returned with the water and bandages.

  Holt considered his options. He’d made a mistake by coming here. And another mistake by not having anything concrete to offer Waldhorst. The truth was that the peace had been usurped by non-Norwegians, so there was really nothing he could do for a man like Waldhorst.

  “It was stupid of you to transfer to the Gestapo,” Holt said. “I hope you get to see your daughter again.”

  Waldhorst’s expression remained impassive. The dried blood covered his face like a mask. Holt had no more threats he could wield, and Waldhorst had been beaten up enough as it was. He turned on his heel and walked the few steps to the door.

  “Have you ever been to Spain?” Waldhorst asked in a low voice when Holt had put his hand on the door handle. “To the province of Galicia?”

  Holt turned around.

  Peter Waldhorst sat with his head bowed. His injured arm hung limp, while the other rested in his lap. The light from the basement window cast a long shadow from the German officer’s body across the concrete floor.

  “To a town with a famous cathedral?”

  “To Spain, Galicia, a cathedral? What are you talking about?”

  Holt shook his head. He had no idea what the man meant.

  Waldhorst raised his good arm and looked up with a sad smile on his lips, as if he felt sorry for the man facing him.

  “I’m sure you know the name of the town I’m thinking of,” said Waldhorst. “And when you remember it, you should ask yourself: Who goes to places like that, Herr Holt?”

  But Holt had already whispered the answer to himself.

  CHAPTER 2

  Friday, May 16, 2003

  Police Headquarters

  Oslo, Norway

  Tommy Bergmann had often wondered how good his judgment was. His choice to work overtime in the Criminal Division on the night of the sixteenth of May—the night before Independence Day—should have been proof enough. It was traditionally one of the shittiest days to work, so police HQ was full of rookies and guys like himself who naively believed they could save the city from perdition. Moreover, they were willing to sacrifice their already marginalized personal lives, so that people living a proper life—even a proper family life—could take full advantage of the holiday. Whenever other people talked about not having enough time, Bergmann always felt they were speaking a foreign language. After Hege left, he had more time on his hands than he would ever need. His only vacation plans—if you could even call it such—were to ride herd on a handball team of twelve-year-old girls in Göteborg for a week in July.

  Oh well, he thought, pushing open the door to the roof terrace. At least I’m not on the graveyard shift. And I can use the money. So I guess I’m not a complete idiot.

  Besides, he was sure he was going to win the swing shift’s bet regarding the cause of the first fatality on their shift. Bergmann knew that if there was an unnatural death during the swing shift, it was bound to be suicide. Monsen, who was the duty officer this evening, had wagered two hundred kroner on the same basic combination he always did: new immigrants and some sort of deadly weapon.

  Bergmann had stopped being bothered by Monsen’s infantile racism and his own inability to stop participating in these wagers. He sat down at one of the green plastic tables out on the terrace
under the awning. Life seemed better out here than in the break room. With its blue linoleum and outdated leather sofas, it made even the biggest optimist feel disillusioned. The sight of the city spread out before him gave him a strange sense of calm.

  He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and allowed the sun to warm his face for the first time in ages. For a few minutes he managed the impossible: to think of nothing at all. Only the sounds of the city filled his head. Then a tiny unconscious thought at the back of his mind disturbed his calm. Hege. Her hair, which turned almost white in the summertime, her turquoise eyes and brown skin. The salt he had licked from her body one afternoon in a cool white hotel room in a Tuscan village whose name he could no longer recall.

  That summer when everything was going to be all right again. That summer when he had told himself, and really meant it: never again.

  But when they had returned home, he had beat her up again. He’d simply whacked her two, three, four times. He no longer remembered why. Undoubtedly she’d said something, something that made him snap, as only she could, making him feel small with just a few words. It happened only once, only one single time after he’d promised to stop. But it was one time too many. No, it was several times too many. He couldn’t recall how many times. He didn’t want to remember anything about what he’d done to her. He only wanted to remember that he mustn’t ever fall in love with another woman who was so much better looking than he was. As Hege was.

  “Goddamn you, Tommy Bergmann,” he muttered.

  The red double door to his left slammed shut.

  He didn’t open his eyes.

  The familiar voice of an old bastard, hoarse from smoking: Dramstad from the Robbery Division, who had nothing better to do on weekends than waste his life down here at HQ.

  “Some fucking amazing weather, isn’t it?” said Dramstad, who according to scuttlebutt managed to live up to his name most days in the week—the man did like his drams.

  Bergmann grunted in reply and cursed himself for having thought about Hege.

  “Yep, it’s some weather, all right,” Dramstad muttered to himself. No, Bergmann thought, opening his eyes wide, letting in a bit too much of the sharp sunlight. This is suicide weather. But he didn’t say a word. He let old Dramstad stand there thinking the weather was just fine.

  Bergmann had just returned to his office to finish up a couple of old reports that miraculously quiet evening when Monsen’s number appeared on the display on his cell phone.

  Monsen cleared his throat. His voice was almost hesitant when he said his name, and Bergmann was reasonably sure he was going to win the modest pot from the bet.

  A few hundred-krone bills would come in handy, he thought as he swung his legs down from his desk, his gaze fixed on one of the high-rises up on Enerhaugen.

  “Some students have found a bunch of old bones.”

  There was a pause. Bergmann felt a frown crease his face.

  “A ways into the Nordmarka forest,” said Monsen, naming the region in Oslo’s north end popular with residents for hiking and skiing.

  “What sort of bones?” Bergmann asked.

  He straightened up and put his left hand over his ear to block out the city noise coming in the open window.

  “Well, human ones, of course,” said Monsen.

  “Human bones? You sure it wasn’t some old mutt they found?”

  Monsen snorted and Bergmann could hear him lighting a smoke at the other end of the line. He took his time. Bergmann could imagine him, maybe running his finger between his collar and his fat neck with the cigarette dangling from his lip.

  “It would have to have been a damned big dog,” said Monsen. “No, they’re pretty sure they’re human bones.”

  “Don’t tell me they’re medical students.”

  “Bingo,” said Monsen. “Four of them, even. You’re going to have to go up there.”

  Bergmann closed his eyes.

  He didn’t want to go back into the woods. He’d seen a dead body in a forest in 1988, and that had almost done him in.

  But they’re old bones, he thought, grabbing his car keys from the desk. I should be able to handle a few old bones.

  CHAPTER 3

  Tuesday, May 29, 1945

  Restaurant at the Hotel Cecil

  Stockholm, Sweden

  Kaj Holt fixed his gaze on a couple of young girls strolling along the sidewalk on the other side of the street. They stopped to look in a milliner’s shop window. One of them pointed at something, and the other, a stunning brunette, laughed and put her hand to her mouth. Holt imagined the scent of cheap perfume, maybe lily of the valley, enveloping her. Her hands looked delicate and small, and for a few seconds he envisioned them gripped hard around his naked back. Perhaps she could have given him something to live for, dragged him back to the real world. But what would a girl like that want with a man like him?

  He looked away, directing his attention back to Håkan Nordenstam across the table from him. He nodded from time to time, but otherwise let his Swedish lunch partner ramble on. Something about an Englishman they had investigated during the war. An utterly innocuous case, one of no consequence, which he had clearly brought up just to avoid talking about the important things, the dangerous things, such as the fact that German intelligence operatives had managed to make it over the border just a few days before everything fell apart for the Germans. Nordenstam seemed to be afraid that Holt might ask him the obvious question: Where were they now? Had anyone here helped them? Put them on a ship to Portugal or Spain or even farther afield, to countries whose names he scarcely knew?

  The war, Kaj Holt thought. It had been less than a month since the liberation, and he still awoke each morning thinking that the war was still on. He still carried a cyanide capsule in his jacket pocket, the little Colt Llama in a garter around his calf beneath his wide trouser legs, and a silencer in his coat pocket, in case he ever woke up to the sound of boots at his door. Yes, he thought. This war will never end. As he carefully wiped his mouth with the napkin—real linen—he recalled how during the war he had always felt guilty when he was here at the Cecil, in this beautiful city. He had been overwhelmed by those damned feelings of guilt every time he had made it across the border to Stockholm, where he was given new orders and enjoyed a couple of weeks’ R & R. Because he knew that when he went back across the border, he’d be met with the news that yet another of his best friends had been killed. He felt guilty because he’d survived the longest years in Norway’s history. Some people said that the greatest honor in war was to survive, but now, a few weeks after the liberation, Holt thought that such talk sounded false. There was only one honor in war, and that was to die, the way so many had died. They had all been better human beings than he was, with real lives to return to. But here he sat, the survivor. And what had he used his freedom for but to leave everything behind, including his wife and child?

  Did I really just leave? he wondered. He stared distractedly at his own hand. A big scar ran across it—almost white among the stiff black hairs—and he was suddenly unable to remember how he had gotten it. For a few seconds he felt as though nothing bad had happened, not the war, nothing at all. Then the thought of Agnes struck him like a bolt of lightning. So young, far too young. If only he’d been able to save Agnes, the war would at least have had a scrap of meaning. And it was all his fault. To think that he could have been so infinitely blind, so boundlessly naïve.

  Holt’s musings were interrupted by Nordenstam’s voice, and the Swede’s hand gripped his arm lightly.

  “What is it?” he said, leaning across the table. “Kaj. Look at me.”

  “Waldhorst,” said Holt.

  “Peter Waldhorst?” Nordenstam said in a low voice.

  Holt nodded, more to himself than in answer to the question. He should have responded to the fact that Nordenstam clearly knew who Peter Waldhorst was, but he didn’t bother. He was no longer surprised at all the information the Swedes had acquired.

  Holt
averted his gaze and turned to look out the window at the brunette again. She was strolling happy and carefree down the street, arm in arm with her girlfriend. Nordenstam took a cigarette from the silver case he always carried in his inside pocket, tapped it lightly on the lid, and lit it. Holt watched him surreptitiously. Nordenstam was a true friend of Norway, far more so than his superior at the Swedish military intelligence organization, the C-Bureau, whom he was going to meet tomorrow. For an instant Holt wished that he himself were Swedish. How much easier it would be to carry on after the war, raising a few pigs in the forest or some such thing.

  Nordenstam held out the open cigarette case to Holt.

  “Peter Waldhorst . . . what about him?” he asked as he lit Holt’s cigarette.

  “Oh, nothing really. He’s locked up in Jørstadmoen. I paid him a visit and he . . . asked me a question.”

  For a second Holt thought he might have revealed too much. But no, there was no reason to hold back. Nordenstam would understand, if anyone would. And how could I have known? Holt thought. How could anyone have known, or even have suspected?

  Nordenstam blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. The sound of the piano across the room competed with the constant stream of voices around them.

  “He asked you a question?” he said.

  Holt didn’t reply. He just stared at Nordenstam’s classic features, noting the hint of boyish optimism in his eyes, a look that suggested he was utterly unaffected by the innate evil in people. He had a sudden impulse to smash his handsome face with a sledgehammer, just to watch it dissolve into a mess of bone, blood, and brain matter, and then to dump the pulverized man on his wife’s doorstep, so that she would understand what had taken place on the other side of the border.

  Holt shook off the grotesque thought as a wave of nausea rose up in his throat. One of these days, he was going to lose his grip on reality for good.

  “Isn’t the food coming soon?” he said absently, as if they had never started this conversation.