In the end, the agent had been forced to take out his pistol to get control of the interrogation.
Apparently the cleaning woman and her crew had driven right through the fence and forced the Blomgrens to provide overnight lodging. The agent couldn’t work out what had happened after that. The couple’s linguistic proficiency was so poor that it sounded like someone had tried to bite them in the throat.
Anyway, there was nothing to suggest that the Blomgrens were guilty of anything except getting in the way of the cleaning woman. The main reason for shooting them both in the forehead anyway was that he didn’t like them. But B had never taken joy in killing on such flimsy grounds. So instead he shot Mrs Blomgren’s two porcelain pigs on the hearth and explained to the couple that the same thing would happen to them if they didn’t immediately forget that he had ever been there. The pigs had cost forty kronor apiece; it was painful for the couple to see them go to pieces. But the thought of dying and therefore being permanently separated from the nearly three million kronor they had managed to save up over the years was even worse. So they nodded and made an honest promise never, ever to speak of this experience.
The agent kept working. Holger Qvist turned out to be the sole proprietor of a Holger & Holger Inc., which was listed at Fredsgatan 5. A company that had burned to the ground. Terrorists? Nah. It was clearly that blasted cleaning woman, who had hoodwinked not only the Mossad but also the National Task Force. An exceedingly irritating woman. And a worthy opponent.
Furthermore, Qvist was listed as living at an address in Blackeberg. The agent settled down to observe the apartment for three whole days. No lights were turned on or off. Through the letterbox he could see an undisturbed pile of advertising flyers. Qvist wasn’t there; he hadn’t been there since the day something had happened.
Despite the risk that he might kick up some dust, B made his way to Helicopter Taxi Inc., introduced himself as Michael Ballack, a journalist from the German magazine Stern, and asked if Mr Holger Qvist was available for an interview.
No, Qvist had quit as a result of having been rather badly assaulted a few days earlier. Surely Mr Ballack had heard of the incident?
Where was he now? Well, it was impossible to say. Perhaps he was in the Gnesta area – he did own a pillow-import company; he wasn’t in active employment there, but as far as the owner of Helicopter Taxi Inc. knew he still went down there regularly on business. And incidentally, didn’t his girlfriend still live there, too?
‘Girlfriend? Do you know what her name is, Mr Manager?’
No, the manager couldn’t say. Celestine, maybe? It was something unusual, anyway.
There turned out to be twenty-four Celestines registered in Sweden. But only one, Celestine Hedlund, had been listed at Fredsgatan 5 in Gnesta until a few days earlier.
I wonder if you were recently out driving a red Toyota Corolla with a trailer, Celestine, the agent said to himself. With Nombeko Mayeki and Holger Qvist in the back seat. And a man I don’t know by your side.
The Celestine trail soon split in four directions. She was now listed at a PO box in Stockholm. Before that, on Fredsgatan. Before that, at the home of a Gertrud Virtanen outside Norrtälje. Before that, at what was presumably her parents’ home in Gnesta. It was reasonable to assume that she would end up at one of these four addresses sooner or later.
The least interesting from a surveillance perspective was, of course, the one that had been turned into a pile of ashes. The most interesting was the PO box. And then, in descending order: her parents’ home and Gertrud Virtanen.
* * *
On questioning Celestine, Nombeko had learned that the girl had been listed as living at Sjölida for a short time. This was distressing. On the other hand, it was unlikely that the agent chasing them knew of her existence.
The South African unofficial refugee had thus far not been excessively lucky in life, from the day she was run over by a drunken engineer in Johannesburg and on. And she would never know about the lucky hand she was about to be dealt.
Because what happened was that Agent B started by watching the PO box in Stockholm for a week, and then he staked out Celestine’s parents’ house for the same amount of time. Neither was of any use.
But just as he was about to take on the least likely place, the one outside Norrtälje, the agent’s boss in Tel Aviv grew weary. His boss said it seemed to him that this had turned into a personal vendetta, and that the Mossad must have other, more intellectually motivated, criteria for their activities. Surely a professional atomic-bomb thief wouldn’t sit around in a Swedish forest, lying low with the bomb and everything. The agent must come home. Now. No, not very soon. Now.
PART FIVE
If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.
Winnie-the-Pooh
CHAPTER 17
On the dangers of having an exact copy of oneself
It so happened that in South Africa a man who had been deemed a terrorist was set free after twenty-seven years, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and elected president of the country.
At around the same time, much less was going on at Sjölida.
Days became weeks, which became months. Summer became autumn, which became winter and spring.
No ill-tempered agents from intelligence agencies in foreign countries showed up (one was in the Baltic Sea, at a depth of 650 feet; the other was sitting all by himself behind a desk in Tel Aviv).
Nombeko and Holger Two let themselves forget the bomb and other miseries for a while. Walks in the forest, mushroom picking, fishing in Gertrud’s rowing-boat in the bay – all of these had a restful effect.
Furthermore when warmth returned to the earth, they received permission from the old woman to revive the potato fields.
The tractor and the machinery were old-fashioned, but Nombeko had done some calculations and arrived at the conclusion that their efforts still ought to bring in a profit of 225,623 kronor per year, while at the same time making sure that One and Celestine had something to do (other than acts of stupidity). A little bit of revenue to complement the quiet life in the countryside couldn’t hurt, now that both the pillow operation and the 19.6 million gone up in flames.
It wasn’t until the first snowfall in November 1995 that Nombeko once again brought up the eternal issue of their future with her Two.
‘We have it pretty good here, don’t you think?’ she said during their slow Sunday walk together.
‘We do have it good here.’ Two nodded.
‘It’s just too bad we don’t really exist,’ Nombeko continued.
‘And that the bomb in the barn still does,’ said Two.
So they discussed the chances of permanently changing both of these situations for so long that their discussion ended up revolving instead around how many times they had discussed it before.
No matter how they looked at it, they came to the same conclusion time after time: they really couldn’t hand the bomb over to just any old Norrtälje municipal commissioner. They had to make direct contact at the top level of government.
‘Should I call the prime minister again?’ said Holger Two.
‘What would be the point?’ said Nombeko.
They had, after all, already tried three times with two different assistants and twice with one and the same marshal of the court – and they had received the same answer each time. The prime minister and the king would receive neither man nor beast. Although it was possible that the former would receive them, provided that their errand was first described in detail in a letter, something that Nombeko and Holger Two could not imagine doing.
Nombeko revived the old idea of Holger going to college in his brother’s name in order subsequently to get a job close to the prime minister.
This time, their alternative was not to stay in a condemned building until it collapsed on its own because, of course, that building no longer existed. Instead they would have
to farm potatoes at Sjölida. And no matter how pleasant that was, it didn’t make a very good life goal.
‘But you can’t finish a degree just like that,’ said Holger. ‘At least I can’t. Maybe you could. It will take a few years. Are you prepared to wait?’
No problem. Years had already gone by, and Nombeko was used to waiting. Even henceforth she could pass the time somehow. She was nowhere near finished reading the books in Norrtälje library, for example. And besides, keeping track of the scatterbrains and the old woman was a part-time job in itself. Plus, of course, there was the potato farm, which could be demanding.
‘So economics or political science,’ said Holger Two.
‘Or both,’ said Nombeko, ‘while you’re at it. I’m happy to help. I’m pretty good with numbers.’
* * *
Two finally took his entrance exams the following spring. The combination of brains and enthusiasm brought him high marks, and by the next autumn he was enrolled in both the economic and political sciences programmes at Stockholm University. His lectures occasionally coincided with one another, but then Nombeko would sneak in and take Holger’s economics spot in order to reproduce the day’s lecture that evening, nearly verbatim, with a comment here and there about how Professor Bergman or Associate Professor Järegård had got the wrong end of the stick.
Holger One and Celestine helped with the potatoes and regularly went to Stockholm to attend meetings of the Stockholm Anarchists’ Union. This was something Two and Nombeko had agreed to, as long as they promised not to take part in any public events. Moreover, the Anarchists’ Union was anarchical enough not to have a list of members. One and Celestine could be just as anonymous as the situation warranted.
Both of them enjoyed socializing with like-minded people; the Stockholm anarchists disapproved of everything.
Capitalism must be crushed, along with most of the other -isms. Socialism. And Marxism, to the extent they could find it. Fascism and Darwinism, of course (they were considered to be the same thing). Cubism, on the other hand, could be allowed to remain, as long as it wasn’t fenced in by any rules.
Furthermore, the king must also go. Some members of the group suggested that anyone who wanted to could be king, but this brought protest, not least from Holger. Wasn’t one king bad enough?
And would you believe it? When Holger spoke, the group listened. Just as they did when Celestine told them that she had been faithful to the self-invented ‘Tear All This Shit Down’ Party for her entire adult life.
Holger and Celestine had found their way home.
* * *
Nombeko thought that as long as she was going to be a potato farmer, she might as well do it right. She and Gertrud got on well. Even though the old woman grumbled about the name of the business, she really had nothing against Nombeko’s choice to register Countess Virtanen Inc. in her name.
Together they set about buying up the land surrounding their potato fields to increase their planting. Gertrud knew exactly which former farmer was oldest and most worn-out. She biked over to see him with an apple cake and a Thermos of coffee, and the farmer’s field changed hands even before their second cup. At this, Nombeko requested an assessment of the newly purchased land, and then she drew in an imaginary house and added two zeroes on the appraisal form.
Thus Countess Virtanen Inc. was able to borrow nearly 10 million kronor against a field valued at 130 thousand. Nombeko and Gertrud used the borrowed money to purchase more land with the help of more apple cakes and Thermoses of coffee. After two years, Gertrud was the biggest producer of potatoes in the area by acreage, but her debts exceeded current sales by at least five times.
They still had to get under way with the actual harvest. Thanks to Nombeko’s loan design, the business had no monetary problems; there were problems, however, with the machinery, which was both small and outdated.
In order to deal with this, she put Gertrud behind the wheel for a trip to the city of Västerås and Pontus Widén Machinery Inc. She let the old woman do the talking with the seller.
‘Hello there, I’m Gertrud Virtanen from Norrtälje, and I have a potato patch to potter around in. I pick and sell them as best I can.’
‘I see,’ said the salesman, wondering what he could possibly have to do with this old lady Virtanen’s potato patch. None of his machines cost less than 800,000 kronor.
‘It seems that you sell potato machinery of all sorts here. Is that right?’ said Gertrud.
The salesman felt that this might turn into an unnecessarily long conversation; it was best to nip it in the bud as soon as possible.
‘Yes, I have de-stoners; four-, six- and eight-row planters; four-row mounders; and one- and two-row harvesters. You would receive a special price if you were to purchase all of them for your potato patch, ma’am.’
‘A special price? How nice. How much would that be?’
‘Four point nine million,’ the salesman said nastily.
Gertrud counted on her fingers as the salesman lost patience.
‘Now listen here, Mrs Virtanen, I really don’t have time to—’
‘I’ll take two of each,’ said Gertrud. ‘When can they be delivered?’
* * *
Both a lot and not much at all happened during the following six years. Out in the world, Pakistan joined the exclusive club of nuclear nations, because it needed protection from neighbouring India, which had joined the club twenty-four years earlier as protection against Pakistan. The relationship between the two countries was just what one would expect.
Things were calmer in the nuclear nation of Sweden.
One and Celestine were satisfied with being dissatisfied. Every week they put in great effort for the proper cause. No demonstrations, but plenty of things in secret. They sprayed anarchist slogans on as many public-toilet doors as they could; they surreptitiously put up flyers at institutions and museums. Their main political message was that politics were shit, but Holger also made sure that the king got his share.
Along with their political anti-involvement, Holger and Celestine carried out their chores on the potato farm with a certain amount of competence. Thus they drew a limited income, and they did need money. Markers, spray bottles and flyers were not free.
Nombeko tried to keep an eye on the two loons, but she was careful not to worry Two. Even without her help, he was a clever, industrious and happy student. Seeing Holger so content made her feel the same way.
It was also interesting to watch Gertrud liven up after what one could say had essentially been a life lost. She had, after all, got pregnant at eighteen, thanks to her first and last encounter with a pig and his lukewarm spiked Loranga. A single mother, even more solitary after her own mother died of cancer and after her father, Tapio, got his fingers caught in Norrtälje’s first cashpoint one winter night in 1971 and wasn’t found until the next day, long after he had frozen to death.
Potato farmer, mother and grandmother. She had seen absolutely nothing of the world. But she had allowed herself to dream of how things might have been, if only her own grandmother, the noble Anastasia Arapova, hadn’t been so unchristian as to send Tapio to Helsinki so that she could devote her life to God.
But that was all gone. Nombeko understood why Gertrud was careful not to look too closely into her father’s history. The risk was, of course, that there would be nothing left. Except for the potato farm.
In any case, the return of her grandchild and the presence of Nombeko had awakened something in the old woman. She was sometimes radiant during their dinners together, which she made herself for the most part. She would cut a chicken’s head off and make herself a casserole. Or she would set out nets to make baked pike with horseradish. Once she even shot a pheasant in the garden with her father Tapio’s moose-hunting rifle, and was surprised when the rifle worked. And that she hit the target. It worked so well, in fact, that all that was left of the pheasant was a few stray feathers.
The world went on revolving around its sun at the
constant speed and with the inconstant temper it always had. Nombeko read about big things and small, small things and big. And she felt a certain amount of intellectual stimulation as she delivered the news every evening at dinner. Among the events that occurred over the years was that Boris Yeltsin announced his retirement. In Sweden, the Russian president had become most famous for the state visit on which he was so blotto that he demanded that the country, which had no coal power plants, must close all its coal power plants.
An exciting follow-up to this event was the many ups and downs when the most developed country in the world made such a mess of its own presidential election that it took several weeks for the Supreme Court to decide 5–4 that the candidate with the most votes had lost. With this, George W. Bush became the president of the United States, while Al Gore was reduced to an environmental agitator to whom not even the anarchists in Stockholm paid much attention. Incidentally, Bush later invaded Iraq in order to eliminate all the weapons Saddam Hussein didn’t have.
Among the more marginal news items was the one about how a former bodybuilder from Austria became the governor of California. Nombeko felt a twinge in her heart when she saw a picture of him in the paper, standing there with his wife and four children, smiling into the camera with white teeth. She thought that it must be an unjust world when certain people received an excess of certain things, while others got nothing. And she didn’t even know, then, that the governor in question had managed to procure a fifth child in collaboration with his own housekeeper.
All in all, it was still a hopeful and relatively happy time at Sjölida, while the rest of the world behaved as it always had.
And while the bomb sat where it was.
* * *
In the spring of 2004, life looked brighter than it had at perhaps any time before. Holger had almost attained his goal in political science, while at the same time he was about to complete a doctorate in economics. What had soon turned into an entire dissertation had started out as self-therapy in Two’s head. It was hard to bear the thought that, with the bomb, every single day he risked being partly responsible for the destruction of half a region and an entire nation. To deal with this, he had started to look at another side of the issue, and had realized that, from a strictly economic perspective, Sweden and the world would rise from the ashes. Thus the dissertation The Atom Bomb as Growth Factor: Dynamic Benefits of a Nuclear Catastrophe.
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden Page 26
