The Andalucian Friend

by Alexander Soderberg

  “I’ve said all I’ve got to say to Risto, he’s passed it on to you.… If you’ve come all the way here in the hope that we can work something else out, then your journey has been in vain.”

  Dmitry was staring with his mouth half open. Then he seemed to get bored, gestured to Gosha, and Gosha marched over to Jens and hit him over the head several times with the cudgel. Jens fell to the floor and Dmitry was there at once, kicking him. Vitaly kept the others covered with his pistol. Their beating of Jens was brutal and impulsive. Sophie didn’t want to look.

  Jens thought the kicks would stop, but they didn’t. He got a sudden feeling that he was about to die, that Dmitry was so sick that he was going to kick him to death. Jens tried to protect himself by curling up. Dmitry’s shoe kept hitting everywhere, in the head, neck, back, stomach. Then he changed tactic and began stomping on Jens’s face.

  “That’s enough!” Hector shouted out across the room.

  Dmitry stopped, looked at Hector, rather breathless now.

  “Who are you … nigger?”

  Sophie saw something flash in Hector’s eyes. Something flaring up. It wasn’t any usual sort of anger. This was something else, something beyond fury. Aron saw his condition and calmly shook his head. Even the stranger, who had been showing such restraint, looked different now.

  Dmitry grabbed hold of the battered Jens, pulled him up from the floor, and looked into his badly injured face.

  “Do you know how much I’ve been looking forward to this, your arrogant fucking attitude has been itching away at me like—”

  Dmitry couldn’t be bothered to finish the sentence and aimed a misjudged punch at the back of Jens’s head, and Jens collapsed to the floor. Gosha had pulled out a small box and was sniffing the white powder straight from his finger. He loaded a new dose, then stuck his forefinger under Dmitry’s nose. Dmitry inhaled the powder, then yelled out loud, as though he wanted to convey some sort of primitive strength to the room. He went over to Jens again, grabbed him by the collar, lifted him up, and aimed a right hook at him, putting all his strength into it. His fist hit Jens over the eye with a meaty crunch. Dmitry was panting excitedly as he straightened up from the blow, then leaned over Jens to administer a follow-up.

  “Stop it!” Sophie shouted, with tears running down her cheeks.

  Dmitry suddenly saw her. He looked happy, as though she were a gift he hadn’t been expecting. He went over to her, looked down, took hold of her chin. Leaned in close to her face.

  “Are you his whore?”

  He stank of something.

  “You’re his whore, and if you aren’t his whore … then you’re someone else’s. Because you’re definitely a whore!”

  Dmitry looked at his friends and let out a surprised laugh, as though what he’d just said had been a particularly sharp joke.

  “She’s someone else’s whore!” he repeated. Vitaly and Gosha joined in, laughing exaggeratedly.

  Dmitry still had a firm grip on her chin.

  “When that bastard on the floor over there is dead, I’m going to fuck you … and everyone can watch.”

  Hector was quivering with anger now. He was staring at the table, his breathing was heavy, and his jaw muscles were working hard. He was positively glowing with hatred, Sophie could see his aura in the corner of her eye, burning with utter fury. Aron was keeping a watchful eye on him.

  Dmitry looked affronted now, as if he couldn’t remember why he was there. He drew his pistol again, and waved it toward the table where Aron, Alfonse, and Ernst were sitting.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here? How do you know this bastard?” He pointed with the pistol toward Jens, who was still lying on the floor. No one answered. Dmitry marched over to the table and pressed the barrel against Alfonse’s head. Alfonse remained calm. Dmitry was getting impatient and took a few steps toward Hector and Sophie, aiming the gun at Sophie.

  “You, whore, talk!”

  “Put the gun down,” Hector whispered.

  Dmitry tried to imitate Hector. He failed, he couldn’t remember what Hector had just said. Instead he aimed the gun at Sophie’s head. Sophie shut her eyes.

  Jens moved slightly on the floor.

  “Dmitry …,” he spat through blood and cartilage.

  Dmitry turned around and looked down at him.

  “Yes?”

  “Risto told me no one wanted to have anything to do with you in Moscow anymore. That you keep fucking up. Over and over again,” Jens whispered.

  Dmitry looked out across the room, then down at Jens again.

  “What?”

  “There’s a type of person who can’t do anything, who’s incompetent, ignorant, talentless, no talent whatsoever, who tries to make up for all his failures by constantly committing more, which makes him a permanent loser. You’re that sort of person, Dmitry, and everybody knows it.”

  Jens smiled through his pain.

  “Everybody but you, Dmitry. Even your own mother. Your whore of a mother! Your whore mother, Dmitry. The woman who fucked every single bastard in your retarded home village. Even she knows it!”

  Jens laughed, knew his speech had given Sophie a reprieve. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough, but what could he do? His only hope was that Aron or someone else was armed and would start shooting. But that didn’t seem to be happening.

  Jens saw Dmitry turn his gun toward him; he looked straight into the dark barrel, wondering for a moment where the bullet would hit him, if it would hurt, how long it would take before he died. If he was going to see Grandpa Esben. If they’d start arguing the way they always did whenever they met.

  Dmitry’s finger was squeezing the trigger when someone cleared their throat over by the door. The Russian turned around. He saw two men, one big bastard and a thin-haired, sinewy guy with his right arm in a sling. They were holding guns, and were standing just inside the restaurant. For a moment it looked like things were going to stay like that, as if everything was going to freeze at that precise moment, as if God had pressed the Pause button. But He hadn’t.

  Hector realized what was about to happen. He threw himself at Sophie and tackled her. At that moment there was a coordinated thunderous noise as Mikhail and Klaus opened fire with their weapons. Gosha and Vitaly were riddled with bullets where they stood. Blood, fragments of bone, and homemade Eastern Bloc smack flew through the restaurant.

  Sophie hit the floor with Hector’s weight on top of her. She saw Jens lying battered some distance away. She saw the two dead men hit the ground, their limbs limp, bodies shot to hell. She saw Dmitry, who still hadn’t figured out what was happening. She saw Jens make a last, adrenaline-fueled effort and grab Dmitry’s arm, drag him down, and disarm him in the same movement. Saw how Jens grabbed Dmitry by the hair, pulled him close, and let him look into his eyes before he systematically smashed his nose, eyes, and teeth with an explosion of rock-hard blows. Where Jens got the strength from she had no idea. But it was there. And nothing could make him abstain from his righteous revenge. Dmitry was gurgling, begging for mercy, swallowing his shattered teeth. Sophie turned toward the table. The gunpowder and drugs had formed a mist in the room. She saw Aron Geisler get up, aiming a revolver at Mikhail and Klaus. Sophie and Jens saw what was happening and cried out simultaneously.

  “No, Aron!”

  Now things got confused.

  Mikhail and Klaus turned their guns toward Aron.

  “They’re not here for you!” she shouted.

  Aron, his gun aimed at the men, didn’t seem to listen. He fired two shots. Mikhail and Klaus, their guns outstretched, fired at the same time. There was terrible noise. Aron had taken cover behind a pillar. The bullets struck it, sending up plumes of plaster.

  “We’re not here for you,” Mikhail yelled.

  Aron stuck out his gun and fired two shots blind. The bullets smashed into the wall behind Mikhail and Klaus. Sophie shouted, Jens shouted, Aron fired again.

  “I could shoot Hector Guzman here and now! Look, we’re
putting our guns down!” Mikhail called.

  He and Klaus put their weapons down on the floor. Aron waited a moment, looked out twice from behind the pillar. When he saw the men prove that they were unarmed he stepped out with his revolver aimed at Mikhail.

  “Why are you here?”

  Mikhail nodded toward Jens, who, his face badly beaten, had his arm around Dmitry’s neck and was in the process of strangling him. Aron kept his gun pointed at Mikhail.

  “Explain.”

  “I can explain,” Sophie said.

  Another shot rang out through the room. There was total confusion, shouting, and yelling between Mikhail, Aron, Klaus, and Hector. Hasse was down on one knee in the doorway, Anders behind him. Mikhail recognized the men from the hospital. He grabbed his pistol from the floor and was about to fire when Hasse and Anders managed to take cover behind the outside wall.

  “Police!” Hasse Berglund shouted, panic in his voice.

  There was silence, then Hasse and Anders Ask showed themselves again.

  “Police!” Hasse repeated.

  “Hector! We had an agreement!” Anders called.

  Aron looked at Hector. Their eyes met, Hector shook his head. Aron nodded that he understood, he raised his pistol and locked it onto Anders. Mikhail and Klaus were aiming straight at Hasse’s forehead. Jens had grabbed Dmitry’s pistol and was lying on his back with the gun in his hands, aiming down the barrel. The trajectory would pass between Mikhail and Klaus.

  “I’ve got a perfect shot at the pig’s heart,” he said gruffly to Aron.

  Six pistols aimed at bodies and heads. Hasse’s was the first hand to start shaking.

  “Drop your weapons,” he said, his voice sounding thinner this time.

  “No. Come inside and put your guns down. There are four of us, two of you.… Figure out for yourselves how this is going to end,” Aron said.

  Anders tried to salvage the situation.

  “We’ll back away. Leave you alone …”

  “If you back away we’ll fire.”

  Aron was firm in both voice and grip.

  Sophie followed all this from her position on the floor, with Hector still on top of her. Jens was exhausted, he was bleeding heavily. She couldn’t understand how he was managing to lie there with his gun pointed at the policemen.

  Aron pulled the hammer back on his revolver instead of repeating himself.

  Hasse put his gun down and slid it across the floor into the room, then crept in on all fours. All the guns were now aiming at Anders. He stared for a moment at all the barrels gaping at him, smiled slightly as he gave up a fleeting thought, then put his pistol on the ground and stepped into the restaurant.

  The status quo had been restored. Jens realized Aron was never going to lower his gun first.

  “Mikhail,” he warned.

  Mikhail understood, put his gun down again, followed by Klaus. Sophie felt Hector get off her, saw his exhilaration at the hatred flowing out of him as he approached Dmitry, who was lying unconscious on the floor. He grabbed one of the Russian’s arms. Alfonse Ramirez went up behind him, grabbed Dmitry’s legs, and they disappeared into the kitchen with the man, as if the only thing that mattered there and then was hitting back, sating the desire for vengeance.

  Aron was shoving Anders and Hasse ahead of him toward the kitchen and back office.

  Sophie had sat herself up and met Anders’s and Hasse’s gaze as they passed her. She went over to Jens, laying his head in her lap. He was in a bad way. The muscles and bones in his face were shattered, he was missing several teeth, and probably had several more broken bones in his body. When he breathed there was a hissing sound.

  She was emotionally drained, felt like throwing up, wanted to get away from there, wanted to get away from herself, away from everything. Sophie sat there in the devastated restaurant stroking Jens’s hair, and looked on as Klaus and Mikhail picked up their guns from the floor. Saw the bodies of the Russians in their unnatural positions. Ernst Lundwall, pale and scared, hurriedly leaving the restaurant with a briefcase in one hand and a laptop under his arm. She saw Albert’s accident in front of her, she saw him lying in his hospital bed—unconscious, alone, broken. Her thoughts were spinning as she fought to hold on to any sort of sense, possibly it was the hand stroking Jens’s hair that stopped her from losing her grip. Back and forth, the same movement the whole time. She concentrated on his hair beneath the palm of her hand. He was warm. She closed her eyes, trying to focus only on what she was doing, not think about the room or what had just happened. Back and forth with her hand, gently stroking Jens’s hair, slowly …

  Suddenly Mikhail was sitting beside her, examining Jens.

  “We’re going now,” he said quietly.

  Jens said nothing, his ravaged face just looked back at Mikhail.

  Mikhail turned to Sophie, maybe he saw how scared she was. He had nothing to say that could help, and instead just stood up and walked toward the door. Klaus came over to her, said something in ragged English that she understood to mean that he owed her, that she had saved his life twice and that he didn’t understand why. He tried to say this several different ways, but failed. Instead he picked up a pen, leaned on a table, wrote something on a napkin, and gave it to her. Sophie looked at the napkin, read Klaus Köhler and a phone number. She looked into his eyes. Klaus turned away and followed Mikhail, who had now left the restaurant.

  Hector came out of the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, bloody fists, and staring eyes. He looked at the chaos in the room, then at Sophie sitting on the floor with Jens’s head in her lap. He was different, somehow charged. Charged with two thousand volts. Something was burning inside him, something he couldn’t control. His eyes stopped on Sophie, but she got the feeling that he couldn’t see her. Hector was about to say something when the stranger came out of the kitchen. Freshly washed and tidied up, he kissed Hector on the cheeks. They exchanged a few rapid words in Spanish. He walked toward the exit, smiling at Sophie as he passed her, then disappeared out past the broken door. Hector went back into the kitchen.

  She hadn’t told him what she had come here to say. Now Anders Ask was in there, along with Hasse Berglund. The men who had run down her son, the men who had tried to murder her …

  Sophie laid Jens’s head gently on the floor, got up, and walked out through the kitchen, passing Dmitry. He was sitting dead on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, his head lolling back. She could see a carving knife sticking out of his heart, one eye was hanging out, and there were several quarts of blood in a big puddle under the chair.

  “Hector Guzman!” she heard Anders’s voice say from inside the office.

  She stopped, the door was ajar. She saw Anders sitting tied to the radiator beside the desk, Hasse alongside him. She could see Aron working at a computer. Sophie leaned forward and saw Hector, bare-chested, wiping his hands on a damp towel, his bloody shirt in a heap on the floor.

  “We’re supposed to supervise the transfer …,” Anders said.

  Hector didn’t answer.

  Anders was struggling against his losing position.

  “Shall we begin?” he said.

  Sophie was trying to understand.

  Hector opened a desk drawer, took out a new shirt, and tore the cellophane off it.

  “It looks to me as if you’re tied to a radiator,” he said, starting to recover from the two thousand volts now.

  “Just let us go, and we can finish off what you agreed with Gunilla, then we’ll leave.”

  Gunilla? Sophie thought that nothing would ever surprise her again.

  Hector waved his hand in the direction of the restaurant.

  “Things have changed. There’ll be no transfer for you, which I dare say you will understand after this.” He unfolded the shirt with a shake.

  “OK. We’ll just go, we haven’t seen anything,” Anders said in a vain attempt to open up some sort of bargaining. Hector didn’t bother responding to his suggestion. He pulled the shirt on.

>   “Don’t be stupid now, Hector Guzman!”

  Anders’s words sounded angry. Aron stopped what he was doing on the computer and turned toward Anders. Hector stopped.

  “Sorry?” he whispered.

  Anders didn’t seem to care.

  “We can help you here … if you let us go. We can do the transaction together, we’ll take the witnesses and leave the restaurant, and you’re free.”

  Hector buttoned the shirt and looked up.

  “Free?” he said in a toneless voice.

  “Yes, free.”

  “You’re a very strange man. Do you assume that everyone is as stupid as you are?”

  Anders was about to reply when Hector held up his hand. Then he finished buttoning the shirt, with his chin on his chest.

  “Be quiet,” he said.

  But Anders the terrier wasn’t finished.

  “Let us take the witnesses and leave, that’s all I ask.”

  Sophie held her breath.

  “Who?”

  “The witnesses.”

  “What witnesses?”

  “The woman, Sophie, and the man, her friend. They’ve got nothing to do with this.”

  Hector looked at Anders.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.”

  Sophie heard a noise and turned around. Carlos Fuentes was standing there, staring at her. He looked small, marginalized, bowed somehow. She shook her head slowly to tell him to be quiet, not to give her away. Carlos’s eyes were cold. He walked off.

  She was sitting beside Jens again when she heard noises behind her. Hector and Aron came out. Hector in the fresh shirt, a jacket, and carrying a briefcase in his hand.

  “Sophie?”

  He was almost whispering.

  “You have to come with me,” he said.

  “What for?”

  He didn’t have time for the question.

  “The police will be here any minute, the ones in the office saw you.”

  She was seeing a different side of him again, he was emotionally shut off.

  “Jens?” she asked

  “Aron will help him.”

  “Where are we going?”