The Last Pilgrim

by Gard Sveen

  Lützowplatz

  Berlin, Germany

  Tommy Bergmann swore loudly as he stood in the corridor after trying to open the door three times with his cardkey.

  The lock finally clicked open on the fourth try, and he hurried over to the desk. He knelt down and first looked at the shreds of Avis papers lying on the floor. No, he muttered to himself. It’s not any of these. Then he picked up the wastebasket and dumped the contents on the bed. Before he began searching through the papers, he found Udo Fritz’s business card among the clutter on the desk.

  Where have I seen that name? he thought as he listened to the phone ringing on the other end.

  Udo Fritz answered, his voice sounding wary.

  “Gretchen,” said Bergmann as he started sorting through the papers on the bed, neatly setting aside the two-page documents of people who didn’t interest him. The old woman, he said to himself as he looked for her. How could he have overlooked that?

  “Gretchen?” said Fritz.

  “It’s a nickname, isn’t it?”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. Bergmann was slowly making his way through the pile of papers, putting aside the paperwork of a Japanese woman.

  “Yes,” replied Fritz.

  Bergmann had less than ten pages left to look through.

  “It can be a nickname for Greta . . . or Gretel,” said Fritz. “But why . . . ?”

  Bergmann turned over the last two papers lying on the bed. He stared at the photo of the woman on the German driver’s license. He could hardly contain himself as he held the paper in his hand.

  Why hadn’t he noticed her before? Maybe because her birthdate was listed as 1919 instead of 1918. Maybe because her ID stated that she was a Swedish citizen. And she had given a street in Stockholm as her home address, rather than Gustav Freytag Strasse in Berlin.

  “Shit!” he exclaimed. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

  “Bitte?” said Fritz.

  “What about Margaretha?” Bergmann said so quietly that he hardly even heard himself.

  A pause. Then Fritz said, “Yes. It could be a nickname for Margaretha.”

  Bergmann felt the hairs stand up on his arms, which were still wet.

  Even on this poor faxed copy, he could see the same look in the eyes as he’d seen in the picture of the young woman in Aftenposten, and in the photo taken at Gustav Lande’s home on Midsummer Eve in 1942.

  “Margaretha,” Bergmann murmured. He’d seen that middle name in only one place, and that was in the National Archives, in the missing-persons report from the Vinderen police station from September 1942.

  Margaretha Fredriksson was the name on the German driver’s license, which had been issued in December of last year. Only now did he see that the birthdate was the same as the one he’d seen in the missing-persons report. Only the year of birth had been changed. That was why Waldhorst took a gift and a flower to the hospital on Thursday.

  “How soon can you get here?” said Bergmann. “To the hotel?”

  “I don’t understand . . .” said Fritz.

  “I’ll explain on the way,” said Bergmann. “We’re going to the German Red Cross Clinic in Westend.”

  They got stuck in traffic along what seemed like endless, rainy boulevards. There were nothing but long lines of red taillights wherever Bergmann looked. In his hands he held the two pages from Avis, which showed that the Swedish woman Margaretha Fredriksson had been in Norway on Whitsunday.

  Udo Fritz merely nodded silently, showing only moderate interest in the story. But Bergmann thought he noticed an underlying tension in the German policeman, who swore when he stalled the engine in an intersection.

  It was dark by the time they finally reached the clinic. The rain was coming down harder, and the sky overhead was nothing but a dark-gray mass of clouds, relentlessly drowning everyone in its sorrow. Fritz dropped off Bergmann at the entrance before going to look for a parking place in front of the clinic. Bergmann stood under the canopy, looking across the parking lot. This was where Peter Waldhorst had uttered the few words that gave him all the information he needed—if only he’d realized it at the time.

  Two white-clad nurses came out of the main building behind him. They gave him a nod and a smile before they raised their umbrellas and set off into the rain.

  Fritz shook the rain off his coat and motioned toward the entrance.

  Bergmann took two more drags on his cigarette, then stubbed it out and followed.

  “Just a minute, please,” said the woman at the reception desk.

  “We’d like to speak to Margaretha Fredriksson,” Bergmann said.

  “I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over,” she said.

  Fritz came over to stand next to Bergmann. He said something in German and placed his ID on the counter. The young woman picked it up and studied it for what seemed like a long time. A phone began ringing in the back room. As Bergmann studied her hand holding the plastic ID card, he had the inescapable feeling that he’d stood here like this before. He raised his eyes and caught sight of the Madonna lithograph on the wall behind the nurse.

  “Margaretha Agnes Fredriksson,” said Bergmann. The phone stopped ringing.

  The young woman handed back Fritz’s ID. Then her expression turned stern. She cleared her throat.

  “Mrs. Fredriksson is very ill,” she said.

  “Very ill?” said Bergmann.

  “She has cancer.”

  “Since when?”

  The young woman gave him an inquiring look.

  Fritz motioned for her to answer.

  “I can’t see why that makes any difference. Mrs. Fredriksson is very ill. And her condition was made worse by a trip she took when she should have been here undergoing treatment.”

  Fritz said something to the nurse, sounding slightly annoyed. Bergmann understood that he was ordering her to take them to see the patient at once.

  In the elevator up to the fourth floor, Bergmann had to lean against the wall. His face had lost all color, and he hardly recognized the man staring back at him in the mirror. How could he have overlooked it all? Waldhorst had held up the answer right before his eyes, but he had refused to see it.

  Why had she gone to Oslo? The Polish roofer had said there were two people in the red car. Who was with her?

  By the time the elevator doors opened onto the white corridor, Bergmann was no longer able to think clearly.

  The narrow room was almost completely dark. Only a faint reading lamp shone some light on the old woman’s face. Bergmann paused just inside the door, which had closed behind him, and studied her in silence. Next to him Udo Fritz was breathing loudly through his nose. The white blanket was moving steadily up and down, but too quickly for the gaunt old woman to be enjoying peaceful sleep. Bergmann thought that she might be the sort of person who would ask for the smallest possible dose of painkillers. Someone who wanted to spend the last days of her life on her knees. On the nightstand was a worn icon showing St. George slaying the dragon.

  He took a few steps forward. The nurse placed her hand lightly on his arm. The old woman lying in the bed appeared to be more dead than alive. The EKG machine wasn’t even hooked up, and she had only a single IV attached to her arm. Maybe she had told them that if she was about to die, there was no sense in dragging it out. Maybe this was what she wanted—to lie there with no one at her side. Her face was so sunken that it was almost beyond recognition. Bergmann recognized only one feature from the missing-persons photo from 1942, and that was her eyebrows. They were still as dark and elegant as a young woman’s, giving her face a trace of hope, suggesting that the life force hadn’t yet been extinguished.

  So we’ve come full circle, Bergmann thought as he tried to come to terms with the fact that the hunt for Agnes Gerner’s murderer had been in vain. He walked across the room to stand by the window. As he looked at the cars down below, he thought about how this whole investigation had been one coincidence after another. If Marius Kolstad hadn’t mentioned Kaj Holt�
�s name, he wouldn’t be standing in this hospital room right now. Two people close to death, neither of them allowed to take their secrets to the grave—unless of course the woman in the bed happened to die this instant.

  For what felt like several minutes, Bergmann stood there lost in his own thoughts—thoughts that ultimately had nothing to do with the old woman.

  He heard some faint sounds behind him but didn’t turn around.

  “I’d almost given up on the idea that you would find me,” said the woman from the bed.

  Bergmann still made no move to turn around.

  “Agnes Gerner,” he merely said.

  Maybe he was being overly dramatic by staring down at the parking lot outside. Maybe he hadn’t yet recovered from the shock that this was, in fact, Agnes Gerner lying in the hospital bed behind him.

  “Yes,” said the old woman, taking such a deep breath that for a moment Bergmann feared it might be her last.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, slowly turning to face her.

  The woman who was once called Agnes Gerner lay in bed under the soft glow of the reading lamp, her eyes closed.

  “There’s always something a person doesn’t understand. That’s what my husband once told me.”

  “I see.”

  “It was apparently something he’d once said to another Norwegian. A man I held in great esteem. And now . . . Sometimes I don’t understand why my life turned out the way it did.” She opened her eyes.

  Bergmann stayed by the window, leaning on the sill, his gaze fixed on the icon beside her. St. George, driving his spear into the dragon’s mouth, was supposed to protect those whose faith was weak. Wasn’t that how it went?

  “Who killed the three people in Nordmarka?” said Bergmann. “Who killed Cecilia?”

  Agnes closed her eyes again.

  He opened his mouth to repeat the question.

  “Maybe that’s why I’m refusing to die,” she said in a low voice, the words barely audible. “Nothing good awaits me on the other side.”

  Her breathing grew fainter.

  Bergmann shook his head. He didn’t understand.

  “Nothing good?”

  Agnes raised her hand, grimacing at the effort. The nurse briskly went over to the bed to hand her a glass of water from the bureau. She drank from the glass like a child, with water running down her neck. The nurse tried to wipe if off, but Agnes gently pushed her away.

  “Do you think Cecilia’s waiting for me there? I haven’t slept in years. Am I still human after what I’ve done?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Agnes took a breath before she whispered a few words that Bergmann never thought he would hear. He felt as though the linoleum floor might buckle under his feet. That’s impossible, he thought. Not this woman.

  “What was I supposed to do? Leave her out there in the woods? Believe me, it’s something I think about every single day and every night. That I should have let her live . . .”

  No one in the room said a word.

  Unaware of what he was doing, Bergmann sank into a chair next to Agnes’s bed. After a moment she placed her hand on his, as if wanting to console him.

  “Why did you go to Oslo?” he asked quietly.

  The nurse motioned for them to leave, pointing at the door, but Bergmann ignored her.

  “I wanted to see him again. One last time.”

  Bergmann shook his head.

  “The Pilgrim?”

  She beckoned him closer. Bergmann leaned forward, past the smooth face of St. George, toward the dragon’s head pierced by the spear.

  “I went there to kill the Pilgrim,” Agnes whispered in his ear. For a moment he thought she smelled as she must have back then, that she was as beautiful as in the photographs. She put her hand on the back of his neck. It felt both soft and cold.

  “It was his fault. All of this was his fault. Do you understand? That was why I had to kill him.”

  With great effort Agnes repeated what she’d said, this time in German. Then she seemed to faint and fell back on her pillow.

  Bergmann studied the dying woman. It would do no good to ask her who had been with her.

  Udo Fritz was having a quiet but intense conversation with the nurse, who uttered a horrified gasp. Bergmann guessed they were talking about arranging for a police guard. He moved his gaze to the saint on the gilded piece of wood. St. George, Sankt Göran in Swedish. The dragon slayer. Then he took Agnes’s hand and squeezed it before reaching up to touch her cheek. As if he, of all people, was in a position to grant anyone forgiveness.

  Bergmann stood up and placed his hand on Fritz’s shoulder.

  “Take me to Waldhorst,” he said.

  CHAPTER 76

  Tuesday, June 24, 2003

  Gustav Freytag Strasse

  Berlin, Germany

  The large entryway of the house was filled with the strong scent of fresh flowers. A dozen bouquets of tulips had been placed in crystal vases on the antique sideboards along the walls and on the two massive mahogany bureaus that stood on either side of the double doors leading to the living room.

  Udo Fritz stood in the middle of the marble floor. Tommy Bergmann looked at the vases of dark-red flowers. All of them were exactly alike, so they must have come from the same florist.

  Someone pressed down the handle on the door to the living room. Bergmann expected to see the old face of Peter Waldhorst, but it was the Turkish maid coming back. She said something in a low voice to Fritz. He nodded to Bergmann, who had no choice but to follow the two of them through the dimly lit house.

  Bergmann and Fritz paused just inside the veranda door. A candle was burning next to the photograph of Gustav Lande and his first wife.

  Waldhorst was sitting in a chair out on the veranda. He was staring out at the black waters of Hundekehle Lake, the rain coming down in torrents. On the horizon a plane with its landing lights on was heading for Tegel.

  “So. Agnes Gerner,” said Bergmann.

  “I must say you took your time, Mr. Bergmann,” said Waldhorst without turning around.

  Bergmann ignored Fritz’s inquiring expression and went out onto the veranda. Waldhorst motioned toward the other chairs. Bergmann cautiously took a seat two chairs away, looking at the old man in profile. A big wool blanket was covering Waldhorst’s legs, and he was holding an extinguished cigar. On the table beside him was a tall, empty glass.

  “She doesn’t even want me to be with her anymore,” said Waldhorst. “She’s taken to her bed to die.”

  No one spoke for a moment.

  “I understood the minute I saw that my brother’s knife was missing,” Waldhorst said at last. “I knew it would end like this. I knew it.”

  He brushed off the ash from the blanket and fumbled on the table for a box of matches. He murmured something in German, and Fritz proceeded to sit down next to Bergmann.

  Waldhorst’s face looked pale as a ghost in the light from the match flame. He puffed on his cigar, making the orange glow pulse against Bergmann’s retinas. It took a few seconds for his eyesight to return.

  “What did you know?” Bergmann asked.

  Waldhorst puffed on his cigar, and for a moment it looked as if he were lost to the world.

  “When I came down to the kitchen in the morning and saw that the discovery of the three bodies was on the front page of Aftenposten, I knew that she would end up going to Norway.”

  Another pause. Then he said, “She told me that she killed Carl Oscar Krogh for everyone. For herself, for Cecilia, for Kaj Holt, for Vera Holt. For everyone who died because of him.”

  “Was she in contact with—”

  “Vera Holt? Yes,” said Waldhorst. “A couple of times, in the past few years. God, how Agnes hated that man. I tried to tell her that’s what happens in war, that you have to expect betrayals, but . . . She fooled me. I thought she’d come to terms with what happened.” He rubbed his face, then sighed heavily and gave a resigned laugh. “‘The Pilgrim got me in the end,
’ she said when she came home on Sunday evening. And well, you know . . . she won’t last much longer.”

  Bergmann lit a cigarette. Fritz sat motionless next to him. Both stared at the horizon. Another plane emerged from the clouds and slowly descended toward the city.

  “How . . .” Bergmann began but then stopped. He didn’t know what to ask.

  Again all three men lapsed into silence.

  “She came to the door,” Waldhorst said finally. He nodded to himself several times, looked down at his cigar, let it burn out.

  “She rang the doorbell,” he corrected himself. “It was such a lovely apartment, you know, Mr. Bergmann. Quite lovely. At the top of Bygdøy Allé, right across from Frogner Church . . .” He let the words die away. “I opened the door without saying a word.”

  Bergmann waited.

  “And there she stood, right before me. Tears were running down her face, and she was holding a gun.”

  Waldhorst fixed his eyes on Bergmann and gestured with the burned-out cigar.

  “An angel. She was like an angel.”

  “Why? Why did she come to you?”

  “She knew that I’d had her surrounded long ago. She wanted me to have her arrested. All she wanted was to die,” said Waldhorst. “She had killed a child. A child that she loved.”

  “What did you do?” asked Bergmann.

  “I convinced her that I could get her out of Norway. That her own death wasn’t going to bring Cecilia back to life. I went over and took the gun out of her hand. A gun made by the Brits. I’d never seen any like it.”

  “And?”

  “Then I took the engagement ring off her finger and stuck it in my pocket. She told me where the two bodies were. All I had to do was follow the main path until I came to the logging area on the left-hand side. A good flashlight was all that was needed to find the place. I took the keys to Gustav Lande’s car and drove to Torshov, where one of my informants lived. A lonely and embittered little devil of a man from up north somewhere. Someone I knew nobody would miss, at least not until the war was over. It took us an hour to dig a grave in the woods, in utter darkness and a hell of a downpour. First we threw in the poor child. Then the maid. She had been working for me, but I was the only one who knew that. At least she took to her death an engagement ring from Gustav Lande. Then I pulled out Agnes’s Welrod and shot the poor informant in the head. He never even knew what happened. He never saw me point the gun at him. He was leaning on the shovel, staring down at the two bodies. And he was crying. ‘Just a child,’ he said. ‘That poor little girl.’ When he said it again, I pulled the trigger and rolled him down into the grave. I drove the car back to town, parked it on Madserud Allé, and then walked back to my apartment, where she was waiting.”