Love and Other Lies

by Ben McPherson

  “Cal, what’s going on?”

  “I have to go.”

  Because there was a silver Land Cruiser, standing alone in front of a gas station.

  “Fuck,” I said, and again, “fuck.”

  “Cal, what’s going on?”

  “Tell him that, Elsa.”

  I dropped the phone onto the seat beside me, began looking for a break in the inside lane. I accelerated till I saw a gap in the wall of trucks, pulled across the lane and on to the shoulder, braking hard. Angry horns sounded. I came to a stop. To my left, an endless flow of trucks; to my right, fields and sky. I looked behind me. From here I could see only the gas station roof, red against the dark trees beyond.

  Was I sure I had seen Bror’s Land Cruiser? I sat watching the flow of traffic to my left: the endless parade of trucks driving north, and in the outside lane the occasional car.

  There, in a gap between the trucks, a silver flash. So brief that I barely saw it. I kicked the car forward on the narrow hard shoulder, pushed it up to 110. To my left, a truck driver sounded his horn, warning me off. There was a gap in front of his cab, barely large enough for my car. I swerved in. The driver sounded his horn again, flashed his lights as he braked to avoid me. “Thanks, friend,” I said under my breath, and pulled into the outside lane. Empty space, then Bror, disappearing over the brow of a hill. I pushed the car forward.

  After a minute I was on him. I sat on his tail, matching his speed, a car length behind.

  Twice he stood on his brakes, guessing perhaps that my nerves were dulled by worry and by lack of sleep. But my nerves were sharpened by the certainty of the righteous man. And so I braked when he braked, and accelerated when he accelerated, tracking him move for move.

  Twenty minutes out I knew he was heading for Garden Island. He took an exit from the highway, timed very late. I swerved out behind him and onto a lazy back road that led across endless flat fields of maize. Bror slowed. Impossible to shake me on this narrow road. I eased off the accelerator, allowing the gap to increase. We drove at a steady sixty all the way, parked next to each other on the road that led to the slipway.

  The ferry was heading toward us across the sound. On Garden Island people were disappearing up the rise. I sat watching Bror in his car. He made a telephone call. I wondered, almost casually, whether he was ordering our deaths. We were at the end of something. I knew that. Still the fear that Bror wanted me to feel was obliterated by a seething rage.

  Why was this man not in jail?

  I got out of my car, walked down to the water’s edge, waiting as the ferry moored. I turned to find Bror walking down the slipway toward me.

  Security on the mainland was light. Informal, almost. I watched Bror as the police officer patted him down. He stood patiently, watched as I was patted down in my turn. He smiled. I was not expecting the smile. It was warm and inclusive, as it had been the first time we had met. That same quality of understanding and—even now—a part of me wanted to interpret it as kindness. But I was no longer seduced by his charm. He did not wish me well. To Bror I was merely a means to an end.

  “Have they euthanized your dogs yet?” I said as we walked onto the ferry.

  He considered this. Again he smiled. “Perhaps.”

  Anyone watching us might have thought we were friends as we stood together at the bow of the ferry, facing Garden Island. Just the two of us, and the ferryman in his cab above the deck, as the man on shore cast off the rope.

  The ferry edged out into the sound.

  I turned to Bror. “You’re clever. You see the problems with what the Andersens believe.”

  “I do.”

  “You made me believe that you despised their beliefs.”

  “Any sane person does.”

  “I think the reality is worse. I think what they believe is irrelevant to you. You care about what they do. It’s the praxis of terrorism that excites you. You’re in love with the chaos and the pain.”

  “Interesting theory.” The most charming of smiles. “Impossible to prove.”

  “You can’t explain away the fertilizer on your farm,” I said.

  “And yet, that’s exactly what I had my lawyer do. We are a farm. We use fertilizer.”

  At the boat dock on Garden Island I could see Tvist. At his side was an escort of firearms officers.

  Bror had a look in his eye, like a dog on the hunt, expectant and keen. And as I looked toward the officers a terrible wrenching thought began to form. Because I saw now that Bror was planning the murder of Police Chief Ephraim Tvist.

  Forty-Six

  Bror stepped briskly ashore, nodded to the firearms officers, ignored Tvist, continued up the rise toward the buildings.

  “Tvist,” I said. “You have to end this.”

  Tvist watched Bror for a moment. He turned to me.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “You don’t realize the danger you’re in.”

  “I really do.”

  “He spent the night at his farmhouse.”

  “Yes.”

  I narrowed my eyes. How did he know?

  I saw him think for a moment. The tiniest of frowns. “Perhaps I can tell you this, Cal. We’ve picked up six of his followers so far,” he said. “All armed, all wearing police summer uniforms.”

  “Here?”

  “Here. Bror does not know, because we have disabled all telephone signals.”

  “That leaves two.”

  “Possibly. And if I arrest Bror before I arrest them, these men will go to ground. But on this island I have a hundred armed men and women. A hundred and eleven, in fact. And this time they are properly trained and they are primed. Bror will be arrested as soon as he attempts to leave. In the meantime we will be watching him like a hawk and noting who he speaks with. You and your family are perfectly safe.”

  “The target is you.”

  Tvist laughed. “Then I must hope my people are as effective as I believe.”

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Edvard was there at the farmhouse. He’s been feeding information to Bror.”

  Ephraim Tvist simply smiled his level smile.

  “You knew?” I said.

  “I can’t discuss procedure. But Edvard is no traitor.”

  “You suspended him.”

  “He fell under the spell of a man who promised him salvation. And when Edvard saw the harm he had done, he wanted to put that right. I reinstated him. Now . . .”

  We began to walk up the hill. There were fewer of us on Garden Island today. The survivors and the families of the deceased were outnumbered by Tvist’s men and women. There was a readiness in the air, a strange sense of anticipation.

  “So, Edvard . . .” I said.

  “A good man may do evil if the devil crosses his path. Are we not all fallible? But Edvard passed on information about today, so I’d say he has redeemed himself.”

  Those dark, dark eyes. That patient smile.

  “All right,” I said. “I accept that you’re better at this than I realized.”

  Tvist shook his head, amused. “It’s my job, Cal. Have some faith.”

  I saw them at once. Vee welcomed me with smiles and with hugs. Elsa embraced me warmly, then took a half step back, let her hands rest easily on my shoulders. I looked about me. Tvist did have the island locked down. His men and women were everywhere. And there was Bror on the far edge of the group, smiling at me across the clearing. I looked away. I would not play his games.

  “We can leave at any time, Vee,” I said.

  “I know,” said Vee. “All good.”

  Our brave little daughter, growing up fast. My best beloved Vee. Sleek and streamlined. A world away from the stick-thin child she was a few short months ago, with her knotted fists and her dark suspicious eyes.

  Tvist placed himself close to Bror. These two men, each using me to get to the other. Though I understood Tvist’s reasons now. He smiled. I nodded, glad of his presence. For as long as we were on the island we were safe.
>
  “So we’re ready?” said Elsa.

  There was a warmth in my wife’s voice I had not expected. I searched her face, looking for anger, or bitterness, but there was no edge to her words. Instead there was a glow in her ice-blue eyes that I had thought was gone, an intimacy in her gaze that I thought had been lost to me. So gentle she looked, so kind and so strong.

  “Viktoria Curtis,” said John Andersen.

  “What?” said Vee.

  The world grew quiet. John Andersen was staring very intently at Vee. The judges and the police were watching; the victims’ families; the survivors; Bror too. Only Paul Andersen was facing away.

  “About your sister,” said John Andersen.

  Paul Andersen turned toward us too, so close that I could smell the chewing tobacco on his breath. Like candy, with a dark, cancerous edge. I felt the fear in my Vee, felt her struggle as the men tried to hold her with their gaze. I reached out to her with my free arm, tried to turn her toward me. But Vee would not be turned.

  “Look down, love,” I said.

  “I won’t,” said Vee.

  From across the clearing I felt the smile curling across Bror’s lips. I saw the cruelty in him now, though he was a cleverer man than the brothers, better at disguising his true self.

  “Your sister sends warm wishes,” said Paul Andersen, enjoying the moment.

  “We hope one day you will join us,” said John.

  “My sister is dead to me,” said Vee.

  Elsa stepped in front of our daughter, eyes blazing, facing the men. Any trace of gentleness was gone from her. She would strike them down if she could, I thought to myself.

  The birdlike judge stepped forward. “John Andersen; Paul Andersen: you will address all remarks to me; most particularly you are not to address minors. Is this understood?”

  The Andersen brothers said nothing.

  “Is this understood?”

  The men nodded. Bror turned away, unable to disguise his smile. I saw now the pleasure he took in our pain, and something in me wanted him dead.

  “Let’s go home,” I said. “They have nothing for us.”

  “No, Dad,” said Vee.

  “Come on.”

  “Dad, it was always going to be like this.”

  I caught Elsa’s eye. She nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “All right.”

  The men had prepared a statement. It was long and dissociative, full of diversions and paranoia: all Arabs, and Jews, and Marxist Cabals. It contained no new information, except that they wished to be known by new Nordic names. Mjölnir and Torshammer. They demanded that the court recognize these names, which seemed unlikely. Hard to believe that two such childish men could inflict so much damage on a country. Unlikely that they could have done it without Bror’s help. Or Licia’s.

  We broke for lunch at eleven. The men were led away.

  “I used to think this was the last place where Licia was happy,” said Elsa. “I would imagine her waking up on the grass by the boat dock, and looking out across the water. It gave me some sort of peace, you know, thinking that for a time on this island Licia was at peace. But she was already lost.”

  Through the gap in the trees I saw a table and two chairs. John and Paul Andersen were looking out across the lake.

  “Sitting there, eating and drinking like normal people,” said Vee. “Unbelievable.”

  To the left the armed guard: three policewomen on stools, keeping watch. Paul Andersen wiped his mouth on a napkin. He took out a small tin, opened it, formed a lump of tobacco into a rough cube, and inserted it between his upper lip and his gum.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is unbelievable.”

  There was something obscene about the men at their picnic table, looking out across the fjord, wiping their mouths on their napkins, joking with their guards. As if nothing, to them, had consequence. As if this were just another day and theirs were just another family.

  “Vee,” said Elsa. “I want to speak with your father.”

  Vee hesitated, but she could see Elsa meant it, and she sloped off toward the lunch line. Bror was watching our daughter too, though he was careful to keep his distance.

  “When this is done,” said Elsa, “please help her to forgive me.”

  “She does forgive you.”

  This surprised Elsa. She laughed. “For what?”

  “For bringing us to this country. You couldn’t know what that would mean. None of us could.”

  “You’re a good man, Cal, but you really haven’t understood. Not yet.”

  Vee was smiling at us from the lunch line.

  Elsa turned to me. “I need you to understand that I will forgive you, Cal,” she said. “Though it will cost me.”

  “Forgive me for what?”

  “For the women. In the bars.”

  “What women in bars?”

  “Did you think I didn’t know?”

  She was smiling as if nothing were wrong. Still, the accusation stung.

  “Elsa, nothing has ever happened.”

  “It will. For you, there will be a new life with one of these women. But I will forgive you, in time, because the man I married is a good man.”

  “Elsa,” I said. “Please.”

  Her eyes were clouded with tears. “Perhaps in time you will forgive me too.”

  I took a step toward her. “Elsa, what have you done?”

  For a moment I thought she would step toward me too, that she would let me take her in my arms. But she stood where she was.

  She swallowed hard. She wiped her eyes with the pad of her right hand. “You’re a good man, Cal Curtis. I love you with all my heart. But you still haven’t understood.”

  “Then help me understand.”

  “We are going to spend some time apart.”

  “Love, whatever this is, we can talk it out.”

  Before she turned, she gave the slightest shake of her head. Then she left me standing, alone and forlorn.

  And all the while Bror stood watching us, his arms folded, smiling.

  Forty-Seven

  When I rejoined the group I could not see Elsa.

  “Cal Curtis,” said Paul Andersen. “Ask me a question.”

  I looked at him.

  “Anything you like,” he said.

  The judges were standing in a huddle farther down the path. I could not see Tvist. Without him, his officers seemed unsure as to how to act.

  I looked Paul Andersen in the eye. I could feel his cruelty, could feel the sheer terrifying energy of the man. But I would not be cowed.

  “I have no questions,” I said.

  “Ask my brother.”

  “No questions,” I said. “Not one.”

  This surprised him. He looked about him, then drew himself up to his full height. “We are knights. One day we shall return to battle. This is no metaphor.”

  He was studying my reaction. He had prepared these words. He wanted the journalists around us to quote him, in English.

  “Good for you,” I said, as if to a child. I looked away.

  That’s when I saw Elsa. She was on one knee by the rocks that led down to the fjord, her body facing away. She stood slowly, turning as she did, leaving her gray bag at the side of the path. Now she was walking swiftly, knees slightly bent, eyes fixed ahead.

  At first no one reacted. A few stragglers sat on white chairs at white tables, finishing their waffles and their coffee. As Elsa reached the Andersens she said something I did not hear. The brothers turned to face her. Paul Andersen began to stand. John Andersen too. Still the scene was calm. Elsa’s stride was purposeful, measured.

  I called her name.

  Her eyes met mine but would not settle on me. She replied in whispered words that I did not hear. Beside me a policeman got to his feet. At the food tent people turned to watch.

  The brothers stood, arms folded across their chests. Elsa raised her right hand. I saw something dark and metallic.

  Elsa’s left hand braced across her right
.

  “STOP.”

  A policewoman shouldered her weapon. Two more officers began to stand. The policeman beside me reached for his pistol.

  Elsa assumed a stance.

  I saw Tvist pulling Vee toward him, trying to turn her, to shield her from whatever was coming, but Vee struggled in his arms.

  The first gunshot. Paralyzingly loud. The shock of it rooted me to the ground.

  In Tvist’s arms Vee froze, eyes wide. My own eyes flicked toward Elsa, her hands locked around the pistol, then to the rifle in the policewoman’s arms.

  Not a blade of grass moved.

  I seemed to hear Vee inhale, then pause, then inhale. Tvist’s hands clasped her shoulders. Around us everyone was upright. Everything was rigid; every muscle aquiver. My jaw was locked tight, braced for the second shot.

  That same paralyzing intensity.

  Elsa’s body barely reacted.

  The gunshot whipcracked across the fjord, reflected off the hills beyond.

  Vee screamed.

  “Mum!”

  I was running across the clearing toward my wife.

  Elsa stood, hands raised high, fingers clenched around the pistol.

  The Andersen brothers stared back at her, blank-faced.

  Vee broke free from Tvist and stood, frozen, watching her mother.

  Then the sinews in Elsa’s body seem to loosen. Paul Andersen took a step toward her.

  “Throw down your gun.” The policewoman, her rifle inches from Elsa’s chest.

  “Dad,” said Vee. “Dad, help her.”

  I was almost at Elsa’s side.

  A policeman stepped in front of me. “You will stay where you are.”

  “Dad, we have to—”

  “Viktoria.” Tvist stepped forward, tried to guide Vee away. Again she broke free.

  “All of you,” shouted a uniformed policeman. “Stay where you are.”

  Paul Andersen took another step toward Elsa.

  “Drop your gun.” The policewoman again.

  Only now did I see the blood pooling red on Paul Andersen’s white shirt. Only now did I see the tremoring of his hand as he reached to stanch the flow. Only now did I see the smoke that wisped from the barrel of Elsa’s Glock 17.