Below Zero

by Eva Hudson

  “Hi.”

  Ingrid turned. The man was in his twenties, wearing a tracksuit. Her heart released an explosion inside her chest. “Hi.”

  “You have booked a massage?” he asked.

  “No, no I have not.” Her Russian accent was holding steady.

  “You are not Mariam?”

  Ingrid’s teeth started to judder as the water on her skin evaporated. Had James forgotten to give her the script? Was there a code she was supposed to give him?

  “No. I am not.”

  “Ah!” He spotted someone over her shoulder. “I think that is my client.”

  He was just a masseur, not a black market dealer of military hardware. There were goose bumps all over Ingrid’s skin and her teeth were graduating from a judder to a chatter. She covered her scar with the towel she had been drying her hair with and walked toward a door that she presumed led to the sauna and steam rooms. It was the best way she could think of to warm up.

  There are certain things that some nations do better than others. No one, in Ingrid’s estimation, could barbecue meat quite as well as an American, not even an Australian. No nation has better cheese than France. New Zealand makes the finest Sauvignon Blanc. And no one does a sauna like the Swedes. The moment she pushed open the door it was apparent why the rest of the spa was so empty: everyone was having an earnest conversation about whether or not the Vasa Museum was worth a visit.

  “Hej,” one of the women said to Ingrid as she stepped inside.

  “Hej,” she said back and took a seat on the lower rung. A man sitting on the bench above her shuffled across to make space for her. She listened as they spoke, as ever, in English, about how much time the Australian tourists in the sauna would need to allow to see everything at the museum. Ingrid smiled: if the hotel’s guests had been Brits and Yanks, the towels would be up to their armpits and the conversation would range between non-existent and stilted.

  There were eight people in the sauna, including her. Swedish tourists, mostly, in the city to do some Christmas shopping, the Australian couple and a striking woman from Germany with long black hair, shaved eyebrows, piercings and tattoos. Ingrid wondered if she was making a Lisbeth Salander pilgrimage. She made eye contact and the German stared back. Something about the way she stared at Ingrid told her she had either found her contact, or the German woman was a little lacking in social etiquette.

  The German woman gave her a wink.

  Or, as the Brits would say, she had pulled. She couldn’t risk being remembered, so she got to her feet. “Förlåt,” she apologized. It was bad form to open the sauna door so frequently.

  A little further down the tiled corridor was the entrance to the steam room. She looked behind her to see if anyone had followed her, then pulled open the door and went in.

  The sharp menthol vapors pricked the sensitive skin beneath her nostrils as the door closed behind her. The steam was so dense it took a few moments to see that she was not alone. A pair of feet was visible on the dark granite floor. She could just make out that they belonged to a pair of hairy legs. Too hairy to be a woman. Above the noise of the steam generator she could hear the short, labored breaths of a fat man.

  She sat down. This was it. Her skin tightened, her whole body stiffened and the muscles in her throat tensed painfully. She placed her hands on the stone bench either side of her and straightened her arms, almost as if she was bracing herself. Exactly as if she was bracing herself.

  Someone tapped on the door. A short, firm knock. Whoever it was did not enter.

  The tightness in Ingrid’s throat spread upwards, creating pain in her ears. She was experiencing all the symptoms of a cold in very rapid succession. Her skin constricted like she was under pressure, a free diver exploring deep inside a dark crevice, holding her breath.

  “You may need an extra towel,” the man said. Eastern European accent, possibly Hungarian or Czech. He made a slurping noise as his corpulent flesh peeled off the tiled bench. “There is one for you here.”

  He padded over to the door and pushed it open. She could see as he walked out that he was Caucasian, balding and had a particularly hairy back. He did not look back.

  When the glass door closed behind him, Ingrid took a deep breath and instantly spluttered as the hot air rushed against the back of her throat. She gulped hard, trying to suppress the urge to cough. She swallowed again, and held a hand to her sternum, forcing the irritation to stay where it was.

  When she had recovered, Ingrid stood up slowly and crossed over to where the fat man had been sitting. She bent down so she could see the stone surface of the bench through the steam and her hand stretched out in search of the towel. Her feet slipped a little on the wet floor and she fell against the bench, breaking her fall with her extended arm.

  Ingrid could feel her pulse in her ears as she touched a folded towel. She patted it. There was definitely something inside it. She lifted a corner of the towel.

  “Don’t do that.”

  Ingrid gasped. Someone else was in there.

  7

  The steam swirled and Ingrid caught a glimpse of a woman, sitting like Buddha, observing her.

  “You wait,” she said. “Five minutes. Then you can leave.” An Australian accent.

  “OK,” Ingrid said, her voice unusually tentative.

  “Don’t speak.”

  Ingrid peered through the steam, trying to make out who she was. She desperately wanted a sip of water for her scratchy throat. There had been a fountain in the corridor outside, but she swallowed, trying to lubricate her itch with saliva.

  “And don’t look at me.” The woman was sitting next to the steam outlet where visibility was at its worst.

  Ingrid turned to face forward and shuffled backwards so her spine was touching the stone wall of the steam chamber and lifted her feet off the ground. She tucked them under her knees and sat cross-legged. Her right hand stayed firmly planted on the folded towel.

  “Don’t touch it, you understand?”

  How was it that the woman could see Ingrid more clearly than she could see her? Ingrid had been in enough negotiations to know complete capitulation was foolish. The opposing party needed to respect you, to value you.

  “I am checking that everything is in order.” Ingrid spoke slowly and deliberately.

  “I told you not to speak.”

  “So you did.” That was it. She had done enough to make the woman see she wasn’t some dumb mule to be pushed around. Ingrid defied the instructions and kept her hand on the towel, her palm pressed against the hard shapes within its folds. Ingrid exhaled deeply, creating eddies in the steam. The woman did not stir, did not make a sound. Whichever organization she worked for, she had no doubt been hired for her ability to be invisible on stake-outs, to observe without being seen. Special obs, Ingrid joked to herself.

  No one entered the steam room. Someone had to be acting as a security guard, guiding unsuspecting tourists back to the pool area. Ingrid wiped the moisture—was it water or sweat?—out of her eyes and noticed how smooth her skin felt. How ironic that while she was doing the government’s dirty work, her pores were getting cleansed. She used her towel to dab the drips falling between her breasts and saw that a vein in her chest was pulsing fast. She was so hot she thought she might faint.

  The two women sat in silence for several minutes and Ingrid tuned in to the sound of the steam generator, finding its rhythmic whirr oddly comforting. Her thoughts drifted to her old apartment in DC, where her bedroom window had been above the extractor fans of the store below, and how she had loved those hot sticky nights with the window open, the gentle burr guiding her toward sleep.

  “The person you’re looking for,” the woman said, “is Magnus Jonsson. You hear that? Magnus Jonsson.”

  So now she was allowed to speak. “Yes.”

  “Repeat it back to me.”

  Ingrid swallowed, trying to lubricate her dry throat. “Magnus Jonsson.”

  “Good.”

  The woman g
ot to her feet in one swift, sharp movement. Ingrid instinctively leaned forward, pressing down with her hands, ready to lever herself up.

  “I told you not to move.”

  “You also told me not to speak.”

  The woman reached down and grabbed Ingrid’s wrist.

  “What the—” Ingrid tried to stand up, but her feet slipped beneath her. She twisted a shoulder into the woman’s torso, hoping to barge her to the ground, but the Australian had both hands firmly around Ingrid’s left wrist. There was a clunking noise, the sound of something snapping shut. The woman let go but Ingrid could still feel her grasp. She raised her hand to her face and saw she was now wearing a thick plastic bracelet. “You’re tracking me?”

  The woman stayed standing.

  “It’s a little insurance policy.”

  The vein in Ingrid’s chest pulsed harder. She grabbed the bracelet with her right hand and tried to push it over her fist. Even with the steam and the sweat, there was no way it would slide off. It was black, about an inch wide and tight. Furious, she slammed her wrist against the wall but the only damage she did was to herself.

  “You want it off, you make the drop.”

  Ingrid was indignant. “Why wouldn’t I make the drop?”

  “We just need to be sure.” The woman’s ankles were visible beneath the steam. Her skin was light brown and she had a faded tattoo of a Chinese pictogram on her ankle. The ink was at least twenty years old: the woman was older than she sounded.

  Ingrid’s breathing was deep and painful as the hot steam reached the bottom of her lungs. “So who takes this off?”

  The woman stood perfectly still and her body above the knee remained wreathed in steam. “When we receive confirmation we can unlock it remotely.”

  “And if you don’t receive confirmation?”

  The woman sighed heavily. “Then we come and find you.” The menace in her voice was steel-coated. She took a step toward the glass door. “You need to stay in here for another minute before you can leave.” She pulled the door open and Ingrid watched as she stepped out into the corridor where she was briefly visible. Petite, slim, short jet-black hair with a towel around her neck and nowhere else.

  The door clunked shut and Ingrid fell against the hot stone wall. She wanted to scream. She wanted to punch something. Was this standard practice? Was this how black operations really worked? All need-to-know and obscured in steam? She had questions she wanted to ask, answers she needed to get. Who the hell was Magnus Jonsson?

  Her jaw tightened and her insides churned like wet washing in a drum. Out of nowhere she remembered she hadn’t booked her bike into the garage. A flash of the case files on her desk popped into her head. It was as if her brain could not process what was happening and wanted to go to somewhere safer, somewhere familiar and mundane.

  Had it been a minute?

  Ingrid stood up, planted her feet hip-width apart, straightened her back and focused her eyes on the end of her nose. She had to get a grip. She breathed in slowly, then out. In, then out. Expanding her chest, and letting it constrict again. Ujjayi breath. When she felt calm enough, she carefully picked up the folded towel, tucked it close against her side with her elbow and walked over to the glass door. She reached for the handle and stepped out into the empty corridor.

  8

  There was no sign of the Australian woman in the locker room, so Ingrid dressed, dried her hair and made good use of the lotions and potions the hotel provided. When she was ready to leave, she looked at the folded towel lying on the wooden slatted bench next to her tattered Russell Athletic backpack. She scanned the room: three women. She tried to guess what their reactions would be if she simply lifted the towel, complete with contents, into her bag. It was too risky. Even if there was only a one per cent chance that someone would call her a thief, it would be followed by a one hundred per cent chance that someone would check her bag. She was going to have to leave the towel.

  She angled herself so that her body shielded the towel from the line of sight of two of the women. A third would be able to see what she was doing in the mirror. That was fine. It wasn’t as if the women would recognize what she was handling. Unless, of course, they too were connected to the operatives she had encountered in the steam room. Ingrid checked her paranoia, and reminded herself of all the witness interviews she had carried out where members of the public had seen nothing and heard less, despite being yards away from a crime in progress. People don’t care. People don’t notice.

  Gingerly, she unfolded the towel. Lying between the middle layers were three cylindrical objects, like clear cigar cases or Perspex test tubes. Each one was six inches long and a little over an inch in diameter.

  She stared down at them. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. Maybe something with a Hazchem warning and safety seals, but inside the cases were what looked like computer circuit boards. Long thin circuit boards. She unballed her spare pair of socks and slid the tubes inside them, hoping an extra couple of layers of protection would prevent damage, then quickly placed them inside her backpack. She pulled on her jacket, which briefly snagged on the tagging bracelet, and left the locker room without making eye contact with the other women. Instead of leaving by the lobby, Ingrid navigated to the rear of the hotel and left by a side door, pulling on her hat as the freezing air hit her pampered skin.

  She headed toward Norrmalm, the commercial center of the city, and kept an eye out for a branch of Wayne’s or some other anonymous place where she could plug in the Nokia and send a message. Having been so hot inside the steam room, Stockholm felt five degrees cooler than it had an hour before. Ingrid buried her chin in her scarf and picked up speed.

  It took a couple of blocks for her to notice that there wasn’t any traffic on the streets. Her head had been so full of circuit boards and evading CCTV that she hadn’t even tuned in to the constant police sirens. Up ahead she could see uniformed officers taping off the street. The last thing she needed was to get caught up in whatever was going on, so she turned back toward the harbor, breaking into a trot to escape.

  By the time she had reached the water’s edge she could hear the rotors of a helicopter getting closer and crowds of people, tourists mostly, were being ushered along the waterfront away from the National Museum. Some looked confused, others fearful.

  “What’s happening?” Ingrid asked a couple of women as they hurried past. “What’s going on?”

  They spoke so quickly Ingrid couldn’t work out exactly what they had said but she was absolutely sure they had used the word ‘bomb’. Really? In Stockholm? She was about to dismiss what they’d told her, but then she remembered something Anna had put on Facebook, something that hadn’t made the international press: a man had tried to blow himself up on one of the city’s main shopping streets. His bomb hadn’t detonated, but if it had, hundreds could have been killed.

  Ingrid hadn’t heard an explosion. Even inside the steam room she would have felt something, surely? Despite the fear on everyone’s faces, she decided the road closures were just a precaution. Some tourist at the museum would have left their lunch box unattended.

  She carried on walking. It didn’t matter what was happening down by the museum, so long as she didn’t get caught up in it. Not only did she have a ferry to catch in a little over four hours’ time, but she didn’t want the contents of her backpack to be examined by anyone manning a cordon. She pressed westwards, away from the museum, as more and more police vehicles arrived with their sirens blaring.

  When she reached Strömbron bridge she made the decision to head south and take lunch on the island of Gamla Stan. The old town. Away from the roadblocks and the uniformed officers. Anna had posted something about a café somewhere nearby. Ingrid conjured up a photo of a perfectly poached egg sitting on top of an English muffin, garnished with pickles and rösti. It was just what she needed.

  Crossing the bridge gave Ingrid a good view of the city and its shorelines of solid merchant buildings fringed with ch
ains of moored boats. It had to be one of the most romantic capital cities in the world. A cluster of islands linked by a matrix of bridges and walkways. She remembered how green it was in summer, how she’d swum in the harbor, diving off wooden jetties and drinking beers with Anna and her friends. It was no less beautiful in winter: the gray light and dusting of snow made the place monochrome and cinematic. She glanced across at the Riksdag, the parliament building, and gave Anna a little wave.

  Although Ingrid hadn’t been to Stockholm for over a decade it hadn’t really changed, and she quickly navigated her way onto Gamla Stan’s waterfront. She couldn’t recall the name of the café Anna had posted about, but she remembered it was by the docks and its name was vaguely political. Possibly even Soviet. Republik. That was it.

  The noise of the sirens was amplified by the water. Ingrid looked across the canal at the National Museum. There was no smoke, no gaping hole. They are probably just using it for practice, making sure their terrorism protocols are fit for purpose. It would be over soon. The ferries would run just fine. She’d get out of Stockholm, no problem.

  Ingrid found Republik on the ground floor of an old merchant building that would have been the headquarters of a shipping company in the days when Sweden had an empire. She walked up to the door and pushed it open. It was only when she was inside that she realized she had made a terrible mistake. This was Anna’s favorite café. This was a dumb idea. Of all the places where she might conceivably bump into the only person in Stockholm who could recognize her, this was it.

  The door slammed shut behind her.

  9

  There was a line of people ordering take-out and several more seated at tables. Ingrid kept the scarf over her face as she scanned the place, making absolutely sure that her cousin, or third cousin, or second cousin several times removed—they had never worked it out precisely—wasn’t there.