The Silent War

by Andreas Norman

‘Do you remember who you spoke to during the evening?’

  She is afraid now, because his cold tone demonstrates how far apart they are. She was with Fredrik and his colleague, she says, they were drinking wine . . .

  Then it occurs to her that she caught sight of Jonathan Green. But there is nothing to tell; just a brief glimpse, nothing more. Her thoughts buzz while she describes the evening, which at the time had seemed so promising but is now falling apart into mute, lifeless particles.

  ‘Who else did you meet?’ he asks.

  She didn’t meet anyone else.

  His furrowed face contorts into an angry grimace. There is something about the way the tendons in his neck tense that disturbs her.

  ‘Please, Bente,’ he asks with sincerity.

  ‘But what is it you want me to say?’ she exclaims.

  He silently motions her to follow him, and she puts on her coat.

  They walk quietly down the stairs and across the promenade. The wind takes hold of their hair and clothes, gusting with ferocious force as they walk across the dunes.

  Then they reach the beach. They walk, bent forward, towards the sea. As if crouching against the wind, the houses loom behind them, watching them from their darkened windows. Out here in the wind no one else can hear them.

  ‘Stockholm doesn’t trust you.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’ve made a mess of things. Your mobile is under surveillance. Do you understand?’

  The roar of the sea grows with the breakers before sputtering and waning. Gustav looks unhappy and tired.

  ‘You have enemies. This leak has made a lot of people angry. And the fact that your mobile’s been infiltrated has made people in Stockholm wonder whether you can be trusted.’

  She says she understands, but, just there and then, it is impossible to comprehend what he is saying. Her professional life is flashing before her eyes. She has been exposed, her mobile attacked.

  ‘You trust me, surely?’ she says.

  The idea that he might not in fact be on her side is too painful to contemplate. She can’t stand the idea that the man who has been her mentor, that the person who knows her best of all in the industry, is now looking at her with such suspicion.

  ‘You can trust me,’ she shouts.

  It is as if he barely hears her, as if even the wind were against her and wants to drown her out. His expression doesn’t change. Yet it is as if something then softens in him. He nods, like he’s made up his mind.

  She follows him along the beach, feeling as if she were sinking into the sand with each step she takes. He says nothing, walks quietly ahead of her. Occasionally he stops and looks inland.

  Finally, Gustav veers towards the dunes. They sit down, out of the wind.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t know what happened to your mobile?’

  ‘Yes. I promise.’

  She truly has no idea what happened, she realises, and that makes her afraid.

  So she has become a problem. She can picture Roland Hamrén in a meeting back in Stockholm preparing the text to say that the Section has reached the end of its useful life, how Bente Jensen has taken unacceptable risks, and now this issue with the mobile phone . . . How easy it is for suspicion to poison everything.

  As if reading her thoughts, Gustav says that they are examining the procedures, and her mobile in particular. She and her family will also be undergoing checks. He shouldn’t tell her that, but he is in charge and responsible for the checks . . .

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t let me down.’

  The sea sprawls, dark and jagged. The waves heave with glowing white crests of foam before crashing onto the beach.

  They walk back towards the apartment. Walking along the beach, she can see Gustav’s eyes, and she feels some bitter relief in the fact that even he looks heavy-hearted. She doesn’t know much about Gustav’s life. The fact is, she has never thought about him as a person with a private life, but now, as he stands there in his fleece jacket, his thin hair tossed about by the wind, it is as if he has, just for a moment, become an elderly relative.

  ‘Bente,’ he says. ‘You should be aware that this might grow. And if it gets out of hand, I won’t be able to defend you.’

  She looks along the desolate promenade with the strong feeling that everything she has fought for over the years has been in vain, all the work, all the toil. She knows how they think in Stockholm: a mistake like this with her mobile is unforgivable; a mark against you like that doesn’t just go away.

  They briefly say their goodbyes. He promises to be in touch. Her last glimpse of Gustav is of him standing between the feeble circles of the illuminated promenade, watching her leave.

  On the way home, she unhappily recollects their conversation, and the more she thinks, the more she wonders why he was so frank. She anxiously tries to remember how he posed his questions, and becomes more uncertain by the minute. Would he really take a risk like that and tell her about Stockholm’s suspicions without approval from further up? The more she thinks about it, the harder she finds it not to succumb to the idea that his honesty is just a new and refined technique for persuading her to admit guilt. But what is it that she’s supposed to have done? She fantasises that the car doors won’t open, and that she will find herself trapped in this cell, rushing forward forever more.

  The next day, everything feels a bit more manageable. Of course she was careless with her mobile, she thinks, and that bothers and worries her, but over breakfast she feels sure she’ll be able to demonstrate what happened. Roland Hamrén won’t defeat her. Dear God, she isn’t a threat – she’s a resource. And Gustav is on her side; she can’t comprehend that she could ever have thought otherwise. The biggest mistake she could make now would be to lose faith in the only person who wants to help her.

  She makes up her mind to talk to Fredrik about the mobile. And the pearl earring.

  She will ask him exactly when he found the phone, just as Gustav asked her, the same questions and the same method. But not yet.

  It is only now she notices that Rasmus has been whining loudly that his device needs charging, and before she is able to ask him to calm down, he waves the device around and hits the cafetière, spilling the contents all over the kitchen table and onto Daniel’s hand. When she reaches the office it feels like a breath of fresh air.

  Just after lunch, her mobile rings. She is startled, unaccustomed to the new ringtone.

  ‘Is that Madame Jensen?’ says a male voice lightly in French.

  She doesn’t understand – who is she talking to? She doesn’t want to speak French; that bloody language fits so poorly in her mouth, and she is in the middle of discussing with Mikael how they might find out more about the Brits, even though Stockholm told them to do nothing.

  ‘Your son Rasmus’s teacher,’ the light voice clarifies, and she recognises it. Something has happened, he explains. It would be good if she could come and collect her son. He sounds serious in a way that immediately makes her worried. No, he doesn’t want to say more on the phone, it would be better if she came to school as quickly as possible. They are waiting in the head’s office, he explains in a subdued tone.

  The school playground is deserted, but still vibrates with the sound of shrill cries and nimble bodies. She arrives just after breaktime and the children have disappeared into the large building.

  She had hoped to avoid these calls. This school was meant to be a fresh start for Rasmus, for them all. Here he would no longer be the troublemaker, the freak, that all the other parents talked about as someone they wanted to protect their children from. But then they had begun: the teacher’s concerned calls, and at the end of the most recent school year she had seen the other parents’ reserved expressions. There’s that boy’s mother. She told herself for a long time that it was just an adjustment, that it was difficult to change schools and join a class as a new pupil. She
should have known better.

  She hurries up the wide stairs and into an empty atrium. Her footsteps strike the stone floor, and echo between the rows of lockers. She passes doors through which voices are audible, like muffled mumbling choirs.

  There is something about schools that makes her feel like a little girl, as if these closed doors and cold corridors, with their faint odour of bleach and dust, awaken an uneasy respect in her and at the same time an intractable desire to strike back, refuse, revolt.

  Behind a door with a frosted glass window is the staff corridor. Outside the head’s office she finds Rasmus sitting on a chair by the wall.

  He looks up with a sullen expression and says, ‘Hi, Mum,’ before looking back down at his mobile. She crouches in front of him. He has a bruise next to his left eye.

  ‘Rasmus,’ she says. ‘What’s happened?’

  But her boy remains silent and stares at his mobile with morose obstinacy, as if he could shut her and every other living being away, through sheer willpower.

  When he does that, she never knows what to do. It is a sense of powerlessness that is so intense that she wants to scream at him. Although what she really wants to do is scream at everyone at this school, this stiff institution, with all its requirements that he can’t handle. Here we go again, she thinks to herself. She wishes she could simply tell him to stop fighting, stop shouting, stop being so different. Doesn’t he understand that he is ruining his life, ruining everything? She straightens herself.

  The door opens. A broad-shouldered man in an oversized jacket leans out.

  ‘Madame Jensen? Good. Come in.’

  He shakes her hand with surprising force. She recognises the head. They spoke when Rasmus changed schools, but since then she has only seen him from a distance at end-of-year assemblies.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ the head repeats. And then – in an unexpectedly harsh tone – to Rasmus: ‘You stay there.’

  As soon as she enters the office, she realises that this is something else, a new and more serious phase in their relationship. The class teacher is already there, it is apparent they have prepared for the meeting thoroughly. The head nods at a Windsor chair, then sits down. She knows how it works; she was called to similar meetings at Rasmus’s last school. It is a lonely feeling to be surrounded by people who doubt her ability as a parent.

  The head closes the door.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Yves, why don’t you tell us what happened.’

  Rasmus has been in a fight, he says, looking at the head, who nods. Then he hesitates, and appears to consider how to explain it.

  She waits. She plays the role of a mother in a drama that she senses has already been written, and knows her task right now is to wait and listen.

  It began when he heard shouting in the corridor, explains the teacher. When he went to check what was happening, three boys rushed past, chased by Rasmus. He managed to stop her son, who was very agitated. He was shouting and crying, it was hard to get through to him. But eventually he managed to get Rasmus to explain that the boys had been teasing him.

  He clears his throat.

  Rasmus was often alone at breaktimes. He often hung out on the football pitch. He had a ball he would dribble, shoot at goal, or just sit there with. On this particular morning, Rasmus had been on the football pitch as usual when three classmates had turned up. They began quarrelling. The classmates were making fun of him, according to Rasmus. They called him names. And they took his ball. He chased them. They let him catch up, only to wrestle him down, playfully. They held Rasmus down and took his shoes. Rasmus had chased them into the school in his stockinged feet. That was when the teacher had spotted them.

  ‘Those trainers mean a lot to him,’ she says quietly.

  Rasmus loves his football trainers. It had become a tradition that Fredrik would take Rasmus to a sports store and let him pick out trainers and other kit. It was an endearing ritual between father and son. Whenever Rasmus grew out of his trainers or they were worn out, he would always get a new pair straight away – whichever ones he wanted. Fredrik enjoyed being with his boy and giving him that, and she explains this. The men nod approvingly. Rasmus got a new pair of trainers from his father two weeks ago, she explains.

  They found the shoes round the back of the school building, the teacher continues. He had also rounded up the boys who had taken them, and forced all three of them to apologise to Rasmus. Then he had thought the matter was settled. But at lunchtime, the conflict had continued. The teacher wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but two girls said they had seen Rasmus hit one of the boys who had stolen his shoes with a stick. They had fetched a teacher who then stopped Rasmus.

  A dejected silence lies between them. The head sighs.

  ‘Naturally, the boy is in shock,’ says the head. ‘He’ll need four stitches.’

  They look at her lingeringly. She understands that they are expecting some sort of acknowledgement of guilt, and a desire for penance. Your son, say their expressions, what’s wrong with him? But she isn’t willing to say that her son is abnormal; never. She loves him more than they ever will.

  She looks them in the eye and says she is sorry for what has happened.

  ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  She senses immediately that it isn’t enough, not even close. They want an apology that moves her. But she has no plans to be teary, she won’t play along in their charade of crime and punishment.

  ‘The boy’s parents are going to report the matter to the police,’ the head explains. ‘This is a challenging situation for the whole school.’

  So her son is guilty. What about his mirthful torturers? Saying nothing, she looks at the head, and the teacher, and reflects that they understand nothing at all about Rasmus. Why can’t they see his pain and loneliness? He loves his trainers. He was defending them.

  The head nods as if he has reached a conclusion.

  ‘It’s not certain that Rasmus can remain here,’ he says, quickly adding that he understands this must be difficult to hear. But is it not surely for the best that they cut to the chase?

  The class teacher nods in agreement. Given that conflicts can also occur after school, he says, when pupils are on their way home, he would prefer that Rasmus is picked up after school.

  She nods.

  On the way home, Rasmus sits with his back to her, looking silently out of the passenger-door window. He is withdrawn in a way that gives her the peculiar sensation that he has virtually left his body. She looks at his trainers; they are muddy.

  ‘Have they teased you before?’

  Rasmus says nothing.

  There’s no point. He won’t answer now, she knows that. She notices how he withdraws deep inside himself. She usually thinks that it is as if he has discovered a gap in reality through which he squeezes and disappears. Left behind is his body, immovable and impregnable.

  9

  Jonathan runs calmly through Pimlico. A grey dawn sky arches above the city. He zig-zags between early-rising Londoners on their way to work.

  Hercules is finally coming to life. He is breathing more easily, in a way he hasn’t been able to since the leak. Waiting at a red light, he ends up in a group of around ten strangers and reflects that he is protecting these people through his work. Through Hercules, he will help to make his city and the entire United Kingdom safer. It’s wonderful to be in London, he belongs in the city. Frances is here, his future is here.

  When he reaches the riverside, he continues up onto Vauxhall Bridge. On the other side of the river looms MI6’s headquarters. In the early morning light, the sandy-yellow, fortress-like building looks unreal. There is a peculiar irony in Her Majesty’s most secret activities being housed in a building that mostly resembles a large and ugly cinema.

  His life is so closely linked to Vauxhall Cross, he thinks to himself. This place governs his life and his dreams, the b
oundaries for his ambitions being drawn up in its offices. Every sentence he has formulated down the years in his reports is archived in its subterranean vaults. All the details of agents he has recruited, all the operations he has executed, all the secrets he has uncovered, are now stored within its walls where they will remain forever.

  He turns and bounces down the stairs with light steps onto the riverside path.

  He hears steps behind him and looks over his shoulder. He can see Robert. He shouts good morning and waits for him. Then they continue along the river past Battersea Park.

  Robert is soon gasping. Jonathan is overcome by the temptation to tease his friend, and raises the tempo, enjoying Robert’s strained puffing and panting. Simply to mark that he is not exerting himself anywhere near as much, he says between breaths that he has got up to speed on the rebels. It seems completely appropriate to use their agent, Vermeer, as an intermediary in their initial contact.

  Robert groans. They have always been in tough and honest competition with each other. Robert would only get annoyed if Jonathan ran slowly, out of kindness. After three miles he further ups the pace, and notices that his friend can’t keep up. He pulls away, rushing forth alone along the river for a few minutes, and all he can hear is his own sharp breathing. Rays of sunshine cut across the roofs of buildings, as if providing a victory greeting to him alone.

  He slows down. After a long while, Robert catches up with him and stops dead, his face bright red.

  Jonathan laughs.

  ‘How are you doing, Robert?’

  He moves a little on the spot to avoid getting stiff. There and then, he is stronger than his friend, more alive, less dying. He pats Robert sportingly on the shoulder. Then he stands with his legs wide apart and stretches.

  ‘It’s good that you don’t want to use the House,’ he says. ‘I think we can carry out the operation just as well without it.’

  Robert grimaces.

  ‘Of course we’re going to use the House,’ he says, breathing hard.

  Jonathan pauses in his exercises.