Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  Tord Schultz looked at the white line on the glass coffee table and dried the edge of his ID card. He had used his card to chop it up, as usual. The card that he attached to the pocket of his captain’s uniform, the card that gave him access to the cockpit, the sky, the salary. The card that made him what he was. The card that—with everything else—would be taken from him if he was found out. That was why it felt right to use the ID card. There was, in all the dishonesty, something honest about it.

  They were going back to Bangkok early tomorrow morning. Two rest days at the Sukhumvit Residence. Good. It would be good now. Better than before. He hadn’t liked the arrangement when he flew from Amsterdam. Too much risk. After it had been discovered how deeply involved the South American crews were in cocaine smuggling to the Schiphol Airport, all crews, regardless of airline, risked having their hand luggage checked and being subjected to a body search. Furthermore, the arrangement had been that, on landing, he would carry the packages and keep them in his bag until later in the day, when he flew an internal flight to Bergen, Trondheim or Stavanger. Internal flights that he had to make, even if it meant he was forced to absorb delays from Amsterdam by burning up extra fuel. At Gardermoen he was on the air side all the time, of course, so there was no customs check, but occasionally he had to store the drugs in his bag for sixteen hours before he could deliver them. And deliveries had not always been without risk, either. Public parking lots. Restaurants with far too few customers. Hotels with observant receptionists.

  He rolled up a thousand-krone note he’d taken from an envelope he’d been given the last time he was here. There were specially designed plastic tubes for the purpose, but he was not that kind: He was not the heavy user she had told her divorce lawyer he was. The sly bitch maintained she wanted a divorce because she did not wish to see her children growing up with a drug-addict father and she had no interest in watching him snort away their house and home. And it had nothing to do with flight attendants—she couldn’t give a damn, had stopped worrying about that years ago; his age would take care of that. She and the lawyer had given him an ultimatum. She would take over the house, the children and the remnants of the inheritance he hadn’t squandered. Or they would report him for possession and use of cocaine. She had gathered together enough evidence for even his own lawyer to say that he would be convicted and dumped by his airline.

  It had been a simple choice. All she had allowed him to retain were the debts.

  He got to his feet and went to the window and stared out. Surely they would be here soon, wouldn’t they?

  This was quite a new arrangement. He was to take a package on an outward flight, to Bangkok. God knows why. Fish to Lofoten, as they said in Norwegian, and so on. Anyway, this was the sixth trip, and so far everything had gone without a hitch.

  There were lights in the neighboring houses, but they were so far apart. Lonely habitations, he thought. They had been officers’ quarters when Gardermoen had been a military base. Identical single-story boxes with large, bare lawns between the houses. Least possible height so that a low-flying machine wouldn’t collide. Greatest possible distance between the houses so that a fire following a crash wouldn’t spread.

  They had lived here during his compulsory national service, when he had been flying the Hercules transport planes. The kids had run between houses, visiting other children. Saturday, summer. Men around the barbecues wearing aprons and holding aperitifs. Chatter coming from the open windows, where the women were preparing salads and drinking Campari. Like a scene from The Right Stuff, his favorite film, the one with the first astronauts and the test pilot Chuck Yeager. Damned attractive, those pilots’ wives. Even though they were only Hercules pilots. They had been happy then, hadn’t they? Was that why he had returned? An unconscious urge to go back in time? Or to find out where it all went wrong, and make amends?

  He saw the car coming and automatically checked his watch. They were eighteen minutes late.

  He went to the coffee table. Breathed in twice. Then placed the rolled-up note against the lower end of the line, bent down and sniffed the powder up his nose. It stung the mucous membrane. He licked his fingertip, ran it over the remaining powder and rubbed it into his gums. It had a bitter taste. The doorbell rang.

  It was the same two Mormon guys, as always. One small, one tall, both wearing their Sunday best. But tattoos protruded from under their sleeves. It was almost comic.

  They handed him the package. Half a kilo in one long sausage that would just fit inside the metal plate around the retractable handle of the carry-on bag. He was to remove the package after they had landed at Suvarnabhumi Airport and put it under the blanket at the back of the pilots’ locker in the cockpit. And that was the last he would see of it; the rest would probably be sorted out by the ground crew.

  When Mr. Big and Mr. Small had presented the opportunity to take packages to Bangkok, it had sounded like lunacy. After all, there was not a country in the world where the street price of dope was higher than in Oslo, so why export? He hadn’t probed—he knew he wouldn’t get an answer, and that was fine. But he had pointed out that smuggling heroin to Thailand carried a sentence of death if caught, so he wanted better payment.

  They had laughed. First the little one. Then the big one. And Tord had wondered if maybe shorter nerve channels produced quicker reactions. Maybe that was why they made fighter-jet cockpits so low, to exclude tall, slow pilots.

  The little one explained to Tord in his harsh, Russian-sounding English that it was not heroin, it was something quite new, so new that there wasn’t even a law banning it yet. But when Tord asked why they had to smuggle a legal substance they had laughed even louder and told him to shut up and answer yes or no.

  Tord Schultz had answered yes as another thought announced its presence. What would the consequences be if he said no?

  That was six trips ago.

  Tord Schultz studied the package. A couple of times he had considered smearing soap over the condoms and freezer bags they used, but he had been told that sniffer dogs could distinguish smells and were not fooled so easily. The trick was to make sure the plastic bag was fully sealed.

  He waited. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” said Mr. Small. “Yesterday’s delivery …”

  He slipped his hand inside his jacket with an evil grin. Or perhaps it wasn’t evil—perhaps it was Eastern-bloc humor. Tord felt like punching him, blowing unfiltered cigarette smoke into his face, spitting twelve-year-old whiskey in his eye. Western-bloc humor. Instead he mumbled a thank-you and took the envelope. It felt thin between his fingertips. They had to be big notes.

  Afterward he stood by the window again and watched the car disappear into the darkness, heard the sound being drowned out by a Boeing 737. Maybe a 600. Next generation, anyway. Throatier and higher-pitched than the old classics. He saw his reflection in the window.

  Yes, he had taken their coin. And he would continue to take it. Take everything life threw in his face. For he was not Don Draper. He was not Chuck Yeager and not Neil Armstrong. He was Tord Schultz. A long-spined pilot with debts. And a cocaine problem. He ought to …

  His thoughts were drowned out by the next plane.

  Goddamn church bells! Can’t you see them, Dad, my so-called next of kin all standing over my coffin? Crying crocodile tears, moaning: “Gusto, why couldn’t you just learn to be like us?” Well, you fucking self-righteous hypocrites, I couldn’t! I couldn’t be like my foster mother, a dense, spoiled airhead, going on about how wonderful everything is, as long as you read the right book, listen to the right guru, eat the right fricking herbs. And whenever anyone burst her bubble, she always played the same card: “But look at the world we’ve created—war, injustice, people who don’t live in harmony with themselves.” Three things, babe. One: War, injustice and disharmony are normal. Two: You’re the least harmonious of everyone in our disgusting little family. You wanted only the love you couldn’t have, and you didn’t g
ive a shit about the love you were given. Sorry, Rolf, Stein and Irene, but she had eyes only for me. Which makes point three all the more hilarious: I never loved you, babe, however much you thought you deserved it. I called you Mom because it made life simpler for me. When I did what I did it was because you let me. Because that’s the way I am.

  Rolf. At least you told me not to call you Dad. You really tried to love me. But you couldn’t ignore nature; you realized you loved your own flesh and blood more: Stein and Irene. When I told other people you were “my foster parents” I could see the wounded expression in Mom’s eyes. And the hatred in yours. Not because “foster parents” hit a sore spot, but because I wounded the woman you, incomprehensibly, loved. I think you were honest enough to see yourself as I saw you: a person who at some point in your life, drunk on your own idealism, thought you could raise another man’s son but soon realized that you came up short. The monthly sum they paid you for living expenses didn’t cover the real cost. Then you discovered that I was a cuckoo in the nest. That I ate everything. Everything you loved. Everyone you loved. Rolf, you should have realized earlier and kicked me out! You were the first to catch me stealing. At first it was only a hundred kroner. I denied it. Said Mom gave it to me. “Isn’t that right, Mom? You gave it to me.” And Mom nodded after some hesitation, with tears in her eyes, said she must have forgotten. The next time it was a thousand. From your desk drawer. Money meant for our vacation, you said. “The only vacation I want is from you,” I answered. And then you slapped me for the first time. And it triggered something in you, because you kept on hitting. I was already bigger than you, but I’ve never been able to fight. Not like that, not with fists and muscles. I fought another way. But you kept hitting me, with a clenched fist now. And I knew why. You wanted to destroy my face. Take away my power. But the woman I called Mom intervened. So you said it. The word. Thief. True enough. But it meant I would have to crush you, little man.

  Stein. The silent big brother. The first to recognize the cuckoo, but smart enough to keep his distance. The smart lone wolf who upped and left for a university town as far away as possible and as soon as he could. Who tried to persuade Irene, his dear little sister, to join him. He thought that she could finish school in fricking Trondheim, that it would do her good to get away from Oslo. But Mom put a stop to it. She knew nothing, of course. Didn’t want to know.

  Irene. Lovely, freckled, fragile Irene. You were too good for this world. You were everything I wasn’t. And yet you loved me. Would you have loved me if you’d known? Would you have loved me if you’d known I was screwing your mother from when I was fifteen? Screwing your red-wine-soaked, whimpering mother, taking her from behind against the bathroom door or the cellar door or the kitchen door while whispering “Mom” in her ear because it made both her and me hot. She gave me money, she covered for me, she said she only wanted to borrow me until she was old and ugly and I met a nice, sweet girl. And when I answered, “But, Mom, you are old and ugly,” she laughed it off and begged for more.

  I still had bruises from my foster father’s punches and kicks the day I called him at work and told him to come home at three—there was something important I had to tell him. I left the front door ajar so she wouldn’t hear him come in. And I talked dirty to drown out his footsteps, said the sweet nothings she liked to hear.

  Through the reflection in the kitchen window, I saw him standing in the doorway.

  He moved out the next day. Irene and Stein were told that Mom and Dad hadn’t been getting along for a while and had decided to separate. Irene was broken-hearted. Stein was still in Trondheim, and he answered with a text: SAD. WHERE WOULD U LIKE ME TO GO 4 XMAS?

  Irene cried and cried. She loved me. Of course she came after me. The Thief.

  The church bells ring for the fifth time. Crying and sniffling from the pews. Cocaine, a huge amount of cash. Rent a pad in the West End, register it in the name of some junkie who you pay off with a shot, and start selling in small quantities by stairways or gates. Ratchet up the price as they begin to feel secure; coke folk pay anything for security. Get on your feet, get out, cut down on dope, become somebody. Don’t die in a squat like a goddamn loser. The priest coughs. “We are here to commemorate Gusto Hanssen.”

  A voice from far back: “Th-th-thief.”

  Tutu’s tribe sitting there in biker jackets and bandanas. And even farther back: the whimpering of a dog. Rufus. Good, loyal Rufus. You came back? Or am I already gone?

  TORD SCHULTZ PLACED his Samsonite bag on the conveyor belt winding its way into the X-ray machine beside the smiling security official.

  “I don’t understand why you let them give you such a schedule,” the flight attendant said. “Bangkok twice a week.”

  “I asked them to,” Tord said, passing through the metal detector. Someone in the union had proposed that the crews should go on strike against having to be exposed to radiation several times a day. American research had shown that proportionally more pilots and cabin crew members died of cancer than the rest of the population. But the agitators had said nothing about the average life expectancy also being higher. Air crew members died of cancer because there was very little else to die of. They lived the safest lives in the world. The most boring lives in the world.

  “You want to fly that much?”

  “I’m a pilot. I like flying,” Tord lied, taking down his bag, extending the handle and walking away.

  She was alongside him in seconds, the clack of her heels on Gardermoen’s gray antique foncé marble floor almost drowning out the buzz of voices under the vaulted wooden beams and steel. Unfortunately, it did not drown out her whispered question.

  “Is that because she left you, Tord? Is it because you have too much time on your hands and nothing to fill it with? Is it because you don’t want to sit at home—”

  “It’s because I need the overtime,” he interrupted. At least that was not an outright lie.

  “Because I know exactly what it’s like. I got divorced last winter, as you know.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Tord, who didn’t even know she had been married. He shot her a swift glance. Fifty? Wondered what she looked like in the morning without makeup and the fake tan. A faded flight attendant with a faded flight attendant dream. He was pretty sure he had never screwed her. Not face-on, anyway. Whose stock joke had that been? One of the old pilots. One of the whiskey-on-the-rocks, blue-eyed fighter pilots. One of those who managed to retire before their status crashed. He accelerated as they turned in to the corridor that led to the flight crew center. She was out of breath, but still kept up with him. But if he maintained this speed she might not have enough air to speak.

  “Erm, Tord, since we’ve got a layover in Bangkok perhaps we could …”

  He yawned aloud. And felt no more than that she had been offended. He was still a bit groggy from the night before—there had been some more vodka and powder after the Mormons had gone. Not that he had ingested so much he would have failed a Breathalyzer test, of course, but enough for him to dread the fight against sleep for the eleven hours in the air.

  “Look!” she exclaimed in the idiotic glissando tone that women use when they want to say something is absolutely, inconceivably, heartrendingly sweet.

  And he did look. It was coming toward them. A small, light-haired, long-eared dog with sad eyes and an enthusiastically wagging tail. A springer spaniel. It was being led by a woman with matching blond hair, big drop earrings, a universally apologetic half-smile and gentle brown eyes.

  “Isn’t he a dear?” she purred beside him.

  “Mm,” Tord said in a gravelly voice.

  The dog stuck its snout into the groin of the pilot in front of them, and passed on. The pilot turned around with a raised eyebrow and a crooked smile, as if to suggest a boyish, cheeky expression. But Tord was unable to continue that line of thought. He was unable to continue any line of thought except his own.

  The dog was wearing a yellow vest. The same type of vest the woman with
the drop earrings was wearing. On which was written CUSTOMS.

  It came closer, and was only fifteen feet from them now.

  It shouldn’t be a problem. Couldn’t be a problem. The drugs were packed in condoms with a double layer of freezer bags on the outside. Not so much as a molecule of odor could escape. So just smile. Relax and smile. Not too much, not too little. Tord turned to the chattering voice beside him, as though the words that were issuing forth demanded deep concentration.

  “Excuse me.”

  They had passed the dog, and Tord kept walking.

  “Excuse me!” The voice was sharper.

  Tord looked ahead. The door to the flight crew center was less than thirty feet away. Safety. Ten paces. Home and dry.

  “Excuse me, sir!”

  Seven paces.

  “I think she means you, Tord.”

  “What?” Tord stopped. Had to stop. Looked back with what he hoped did not appear to be feigned surprise. The woman in the yellow vest was coming toward them.

  “The dog picked you out.”

  “Did it?” Tord looked down at the dog. How? he was thinking.

  The dog looked back, wagging its tail wildly, as though Tord were its new playmate.

  How? Double layer of freezer bags and condoms. How?

  “That means we have to check you. Could you come with us, please.”

  The gentleness was still there in her brown eyes, but there was no question mark behind her words. And at that moment he realized how. He almost fingered the ID card on his chest.

  The cocaine.

  He had forgotten to wipe down the card after chopping up the last line. That had to be it.