Friedman cleared her throat. “I know what you’re thinking. We invite you here and treat you like this. Not the best way to make friends, right?” She glanced at Grip. He shrugged. Thought he’d played a part.
“It’s my fault,” she continued. “This thing was my idea.”
“No kidding,” he replied, making an effort to say something. He felt tired, his thoughts chased around among the melancholy guitar chords.
The song ended, a truck horn blasted somewhere nearby, and he felt a pang of annoyance at what she’d said.
“I could be wrong,” he went on in a low voice, as if not expecting to be heard, “but I do think you should brief me, give me a clue about why I’m here. Of course”—the old record kept rasping—“if you prefer to treat me like something the cat dragged in, go ahead. I’d just like to take a shower and eat once in a while.”
“How about we start with food?”
“If that’s the agenda.”
“Korean?”
Grip shrugged. She turned off at the next exit.
The fizz of the beer revived his brain. There were only a few tables in the cramped family restaurant, but Friedman seemed to know the place. Grip chose at random from the speckled menu, getting a couple of small pancakes with scallions, and what he hoped was some kind of beef with noodles. Friedman didn’t even look at the menu, but ordered from memory. When the food arrived, she maneuvered her chopsticks quickly, pecking like a bird.
“My mother is from Hawaii,” she said.
Grip didn’t understand what that was intended to explain—her eyes, the chopsticks? “Hawaii,” he repeated. Sure, he knew how to use chopsticks, but not the way she did.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked, while stirring a bowl with some sort of sauce.
Grip looked at her for a moment before replying: “In a small town.”
“But now you live in?”
“Stockholm.”
Friedman tore a bite from one of his pancakes, sitting on the platter between them.
“You’ve probably figured it out by now, but I’ll say it anyway. I work for the FBI.” She smiled professionally. “Maybe that doesn’t tell you very much.”
Grip didn’t respond. He picked up something that looked like a little burned leaf and moved it to the side with the tips of his chopsticks.
“Yes, it’s true that we asked you to come here. I need your help with something, but I didn’t want you to be influenced until I asked the first question. It’s just my way of avoiding preconceptions. So we can start with clean sheets, if you know what I mean?”
“I already know that your mother is from Hawaii,” said Grip.
“She is. From the tiny island of Lanai. She lost the tip of her pinkie in a childhood accident, and she hates boat rides. But you still don’t know what I’m working on, or why you’re here.”
“When do you plan to ask the first question?”
“In a couple of days.”
“Is this about Topeka?”
“Our discussion of Topeka will come later.”
“A couple days. What should I do in the meantime?”
“You said all you needed was to eat, sleep, and shower, right? First we’ll pay for this, and then we’ll fly to California.”
CHAPTER 6
Thailand, January 4, 2005
ONE NIGHT, THAT WAS ALL N. meant to stay.
His life had been shattered, and the more he began to remember, the clearer it became that he’d reached the end. According to the authorities’ lists, he was missing, and so he would remain. It was while passing through a nameless village that he’d seen the sign: WEEJAY’S FAMILY HOTEL AND BAR. An arrow pointed the way. Under it, on a board hanging from strings, a hand-painted addition: WEEJAY SURVIVED—WE’RE OPEN. N. turned off the paved road and followed the arrow into the green forest, down toward the sea.
The sign said 200 meters, but after more than a kilometer, he still hadn’t found the place. Impossible that he’d made a wrong turn, not with only one trail, a strip of patchy grass lined by two hard ruts. On either side rose towering trunks and impenetrable thickets. It was like a tunnel, and only when he looked straight up could he see the sky past the treetops. He walked on. The forest was silent. No birds singing, not even a breeze.
Eventually the red earth grew sandy under his feet, and he saw where the green tunnel suddenly ended. In the light, a striped umbrella.
And then the beach.
He made his way to a bar under a big palm-leaf roof and asked for the reception. The bartender instantly served up a tall glass of juice, indicating that it was on the house.
“You found the place okay?” asked the man. Hoping to make up for the lie about the distance. N. shrugged and drank, his thirst intense.
“Room?” asked the man.
N. saw keys in a drawer. He nodded.
“Your name?”
N. didn’t even hesitate. He gave the name from the hospital, rooting in his bag until he found the passport to confirm it.
The bartender, hardly looking, scribbled something on paper and held out a key. “Just follow the trail,” he said, pointing.
The hand-painted sign in the village, the tunnel through the rain forest, the lie about his name—all that had been more than a week ago. N. told himself that sleep had kept him there. He was surprised that he slept so well at Weejay’s. As if nothing disrupted his thoughts. The dark night hours slipped by, dreamless. He passed the days in a pleasant haze, like the few other guests, under the shelter of the palm roof. Just sat in the shade and watched, a stone’s throw away from the waves. Soon he stopped counting the days. The money in the canvas bag seemed never to run out. He could afford to wait.
Weejay’s was built in a protected cove. “If the wave hits again, we’re safe here. We always come out okay at Weejay’s,” said the boy who served him breakfast on the second morning. “Not even the cat drowned.” A few days later the bartender suggested that he dive in, but N. pointed to the dirty bandages on his arms and around his knees, and the man apologized. Another day, a couple tried to get their daughter to swim. She screamed and fought when, laughing, they carried her into the water. N., unable to watch, walked until he couldn’t hear the screams.
Still, it wasn’t often that the dark thoughts came, that images of The Missing Ones washed over him. The two faces of his children. He tried to shut them out.
What did he have left to look back on? Not much. His girls, of course . . . But the common thread was lost. A hell of a lot of years seemed to have simply slipped away. What really matters in life? Good deeds? Wasn’t there some act that made a difference? Anything?
There were images, but they seemed diffuse, or as if they belonged to somebody else: a summer cabin, dinners for two, a boat on a trailer. Like scenes from a promotional video for suburban life. He never fit in there, and frankly, he hated it. When do you start to live? Can you decide? What if you actually took an idea and ran with it, all the way to the end—had he ever done such a thing? He knew too little about himself, and it felt like he really didn’t want to know. All he had was the memory of his girls. He longed only for them, and somehow he had to do them justice before his time was up. At Weejay’s in the evening, he learned to kill the hour before bed with whisky, to the rim of his toothbrush glass.
The only world he knew now was the one under the palm-leaf roof. Here, with the sand floor and the scattered plastic chairs. The oversize bar, which doubled as reception desk and office, stood in one corner, a South Seas cliché of bamboo and mirrors. After sunset every night, long strings of LED lights flashed white, red, and green, as if a Christmas tree had crashed into the bottles and mirrors. Two blue-green insect lamps hissed, hanging like stoplights at either end of the bar. Beyond the palm-covered bar, Weejay’s consisted of a dozen bungalows, a few sun-bleached wooden chairs, a palm grove with hammocks, and two pedal boats, chained. There was no other sign of civilization, anywhere.
Early in his stay, N. made an acquaintance, a t
all Czech wearing large glasses with heavy black frames. They spent the afternoons together, had a few beers. In the morning, as N. came out of his bungalow for breakfast, he often found the Czech coming back from his beach run, dragging odds and ends: the hook from a rusty anchor, bleached animal bones, a diver’s knife without a sheath, one blue flipper. Other times the Czech swam out in the sea until he became a dot and then returned, snorting, from the waves. When N. asked about his occupation, he said that he traveled. Every night before dinner the Czech stared at Weejay’s laminated menu as if he’d never seen it before. He read, muttered in frustration, then ordered whatever N. told him to. He introduced himself as Vladislav Pilk.
One evening as they sat eating, Vladislav asked, “Were you there?”
N. tried to look uncomprehending.
“The wave, did you make it, in the tsunami?”
“Yes . . .” N. nodded.
“Me too.” Vladislav emptied the beer glass and called for another one. “Damn stupid question, obviously you made it.” He snorted. “Well, shit. I was on a bus heading north, packed with people. And then, you know . . . someone screamed and the whole thing was pushed over sideways and we were floating. Floating at first, that is, but soon water started gushing in. There was one way out, through the open window, but everyone was fighting—bam, crash, pushing and pulling—total chaos. What to do? I grabbed my backpack and held myself down in the seat with my hands and feet. Then when the time came, three fast ones . . .” He breathed in and out quickly and took a deep breath. “Thinking it was the right thing, to sit there as long as possible. That I could take it. Until the water reached the top. It was black in there, with stuff floating around, and someone kicked me in the face. I mean, the ultimate. When you can’t take it any longer, you know, Christ how your chest gets tight, you want to get that air.” He laughed and bared his teeth. “Then I let go of my seat and found my way to the window, felt my way. Wall, wall, wall . . . and then a hole. I swam out and kept swimming until I reached the surface. Like a damn flash flood in springtime up there, not another soul. Only me. Backpack and glasses intact.” He laughed again.
Then he grew serious and looked straight at N. “It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever experienced. Don’t you agree? Incredible . . . unmatched.” He snorted and drew his fists to his chest. “Couldn’t sleep a wink for nights afterward, what a high.” He exhaled. “Feels like you could take on everything, do anything. No?”
N. made a vague gesture.
“Another beer?” said Vladislav. “Or dessert?”
The next day N. watched Vladislav throwing pebbles at a palm tree. He stood more than fifty yards away, firing stone after stone. The hits sounded hollow. He didn’t miss once.
In the same palm grove N. sometimes saw a leg dangling from a hammock. From his view at his table in the shade, he guessed it belonged to a woman. The rest of the body hidden by the fabric of the hammock. He thought he’d seen her around the place. Long black hair and smoky eyes. She kept to herself in the shade, reading. If you met her eye, she smiled.
When N. came down for dinner one evening, she had suddenly appeared at Vladislav’s table. He looked around for another table when Vladislav called, “Come, come and sit down. This is . . .”
“Mary. Still Mary,” she said, resigned.
“And here we have Mary,” Vladislav said loudly as he pulled over a chair for N.
Mary was American. She worse a sleeveless black cotton dress and white tennis shoes.
“I saw her reading, that’s how we met,” said Vladislav cryptically. He picked up the menu. “Do they have anything with potatoes?”
“No,” said N. as he sat down. “Still no potatoes.”
“Doesn’t it ever change?”
“No, never changes. Don’t have, won’t have. Get the prawns.”
“How silly,” said Mary, laughing for a moment.
Mary didn’t drink the table water, pushed the vegetables to one side, and ate only her steak. During dinner Vladislav entertained them with wild stories from some trip to Senegal. A stream of jokes and anecdotes, his loud laughter, and, behind their table, the strange play of blinking lights at the bar.
N. flinched when fingertips touched his arm. He was tired, and two beers with dinner had made him retreat into his own world. Vladislav was leaning back in his chair, talking to someone at a nearby table. The fingers were Mary’s. She touched one of the long scars, where you could still see the stitches.
“I’m sorry,” she said when N. winced, though without embarrassment. She kept her hand on his forearm. “How’s it healing?”
“Fine, I guess,” he said, pulling his arm away and rubbing back and forth over the scar.
“Isn’t it time to get those stitches taken out?”
“Maybe. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“It’s not good to let them go too long.”
“Irish,” said Vladislav, leaning forward over the table. “Shall we end with one?” He’d gotten a taste of Weejay’s Irish coffee a few nights back.
“It’s too hot out,” said Mary.
N. looked at the clock. “Just whisky for me.”
“They can throw in a few ice cubes, if you’d like,” Vladislav said to Mary.
“Right—ice, Nescafé, and condensed milk!” She said it with genuine disgust. Vladislav dismissed her with a shrug.
She didn’t talk much more that night. Given the odd atmosphere, N. didn’t expect to see her at their table again, but she showed up the very next day. Same black dress, same white shoes, took her seat royally without even asking. Vladislav, needing his audience and already starting in with his stories, gave her a warm grin. And so it went: he wrestled with the menu, she left her vegetables untouched and ate only meat, and N. longed for the anesthesia of his last glass of whisky.
Three souls at the same table, night after night.
CHAPTER 7
Government Jet N5071l
Night of April 26, 2008
SOMETHING ABOUT SHAUNA FRIEDMAN’S NO-NONSENSE personality convinced Grip to go along with her. If she wanted to hand him the puzzle piece by piece, fine, he could live with that. Sooner or later he’d find out what she actually wanted him for.
In the Cadillac they drove out of New York to a little airport, where a Gulfstream waited with crew. VIP atmosphere, private hangar, people in nice suits. The cabin of the small jet had two sections, and Grip heard voices in the rear as he boarded. A man greeted Friedman on his way to the back; otherwise Grip saw no one else during the flight. Grip and Shauna Friedman sat down in the saggy leather club seats, the color of sand. Facing each other by the windows, they drank sodas they’d taken from a cooler before takeoff, made polite conversation, and looked out. The weather was clear, and even though they were flying west—chasing a perpetual sunset—eventually the lights of midwestern towns appeared below them. When the last red stripe of twilight melted away, they had been in the air for nearly three hours. Friedman declined the sandwich offered by a crew member, then moved to the next seat so she could stretch her legs and fell asleep.
Grip nibbled a tuna sandwich made with too much mayonnaise. The cabin lights were switched off. Below him he saw small towns, their scattered clusters of lights, and after a while he could even pick out individual cars as they headed here and there. Lazily, he tried to imagine what people down there were doing, where they were going—was it an early or late evening for them? He had lost track of time. The topography was impossible to read in the darkness; he could see the lights of a bridge but not the water below it.
Engines humming, air-conditioning cooling: with his mind on low, his gaze turned inward.
“All the pineapple you wanted,” Friedman had said, “as much and any time.” Since they couldn’t talk shop during the flight, they had to talk about themselves. Pineapple—it was Friedman who brought up childhood memories. Summers she’d spent with her grandmother on Lanai, the small Hawaiian island that was mostly pineapple plantation. A fruit c
ompany owned the land and everyone working there, and it was strictly forbidden to take the fruit, but kids always knew where to steal them. “You get tired of the taste though, really fast.” Grip saw the painting from her office before him, the village of faded wood. By the middle of summer she’d always had enough of the island, and longed to get away. “I guess I haven’t eaten pineapple since.”
On her hand was a single gold ring with colored stones. She mentioned having relatives in San Francisco. Grip tried to put it together, the double-sided identity. Jews were easy enough to recognize—Friedman—and so were the Japanese—the grandma on that pineapple island, her almond eyes. She liked to talk about her parents. Grip was certain that she was an only child and that her parents had waited years before having her. Certainly there was some family money, but not in excess. She had gone to Williams, a private college in western Massachusetts. Nothing came free—her own words—and her father had been there before her. She joked about the fact that she’d played lacrosse.
Grip looked at her sleeping face. She was careful, her makeup almost invisible. Just a line above each eye. Her eyebrows made two distinct arcs on her bare forehead. She’d put her half-long hair in a clip behind her neck, but a few strands had come loose and fallen across her cheek. For a man who shared her bed, it would have been an irresistible sight.
Grip had noticed that her eyes never wavered. A self-assured look oblivious to whatever else was going on around her. This fit a pattern; she’d used her chopsticks the same way, with a kind of total self-confidence. She was the type who received help as soon as she walked into a store. The type who corrected others, and who never needed anyone to repeat what had just been said. The type who made men feel more insecure the more they fell for her.
That was not, however, Grip’s predicament. While she slept, his gaze did not travel to her breasts or her lips. The beast in him did not stir. Instead, he thought about the puzzle: Newark, Topeka, a flight to California. What bothered him was that Shauna Friedman had told him too much about herself. A bit too much detail. Those descriptions of her grandmother’s kitchen or of some rabbi in Los Angeles were not just friendly—they created a bond between them. It was nicely done. Her chattiness forced him to talk. The FBI had a folder on him, but she wanted more. That was it, right? The question she would eventually ask, she wouldn’t address to a stranger. Yet that folder he had seen, it bothered him. On the flight, he had spoken about trivialities that could not possibly be in there. What had she gained from that?
The Swede: A Novel Page 3
