Strindberg's Star (20 page)

Eberlein took the last negative from Don’s hand and placed it back in the box along with the journal. Then he continued. “The bodies of Frænkel and Strindberg were found two years later. They had fallen a hundred fifty feet down into a crack in the ice. Andrée’s corpse was never recovered, but Strindberg’s last notes suggest that he may have been murdered. The only documents that are left from the expedition are Strindberg’s travel journal and a few photographs. You have seen almost all there is to see, and it all fits in a metal box.”

“Andrée …” Don began.

His tongue didn’t really want to move, but it had to be said anyway: “Andrée’s body was found in the final camp on Kvitøya.”

“Kvitøya … ?” said Eberlein.

“Yes, Kvitøya,” said Don. “Andrée’s body was there.”

His cracked voice was stronger now.

“You must know of the discoveries on Kvitøya. The final camp, where they found the bodies, the equipment from their long hike across the ice. All of Nils Strindberg’s photographs that they’ve successfully developed, and …”

“As I said,” Eberlein interrupted, “that part of the story is tragic, and quite unnecessary now, afterward.”

He looked down at the table and began to collect the rest of the glass-encased negatives.

“The Swedes didn’t know where they should look, of course,” Eberlein continued with his head bowed, “but the German financiers were aware of the coordinates of the target area, and as early as the summer of 1899 the foundation sent out the rescue expedition that found the gondola next to the scraps of the balloon. In the sleeping cabin, on top of several blankets, were the final calculations that Strindberg and Andrée must have done before they set off toward the location of the ray. All they had to do was follow them.”

“And when they arrived?” asked Don.

Eberlein looked up.

“No hole, no ankh, no star. No Bunsen burner. Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel were found dead, as I said, thirty meters down in an ice crevice. Frænkel had been shot in the stomach. The copper cylinders containing some of the pictures I’ve shown you were still in Strindberg’s knapsack, along with his oilcloth book. Frænkel had hidden his meteorological paper in his glove. With that, they knew then about as much of this story as we know today.”

A
silence settled in the vaulted library, broken only by the quiet clinking as the glass negatives fell into place in the metal box. Then the attorney asked, “You said something about Strindberg’s fiancée, Anna Charlier?”

“A precautionary measure,” Eberlein said quietly. “A precautionary
measure that went rather too far. The financiers behind the foundation believed for a long time that it would be possible to find these ‘strangers’ who were responsible for the men’s death and get back the ankh and the star. They didn’t want any questions from the Nobel concern and the Swedes about the fate of the expedition. Moreover, by way of the conditions of the contract, they now considered themselves to be the sole owners of the ankh and the star, and all potential discoveries. Falsifying a few documents was no problem. They were familiar with Andrée’s handwriting; that’s how they created his two journals from the hike. The same with Strindberg’s shorthand notes and Frænkel’s meteorological papers. The falsified pictures from the expedition were probably the least successful; they do rather give an impression of having been staged. To divert interest from the upper northeastern latitudes, they then let the clues lead to the southwest. The selection fell on Kvitøya, east of Svalbard, an isolated place that could be prepared in peace and quiet. The final camp was built there, and finally they put out three very badly knocked-around bodies along with a series of objects they had recovered from the gondola. So that the Swedes would be able to figure out who was who among the corpses, they sewed Strindberg’s and Andrée’s monograms into the clothes. The work continued during the summer months at the turn of the century, but it wasn’t until thirty years after the trail had been laid that some walrus hunters from Ålesund happened upon the boat hook marked ‘Andrée’s Polar Exp. 1897’ that had been set out. Then the bodies were transported in a funeral procession through central Stockholm. And that was the end of that.”

“But Andrée’s family—Nils Strindberg’s Anna—they must have seen that the bodies that came home from Kvitøya in the coffin were completely different people?” Don asked.

“After thirty years there wasn’t much left to see,” said Eberlein. “Besides, the remains were cremated without an autopsy. A great scandal at that time.”

“And Anna Charlier?” Eva Strand’s voice again.

“The whole operation was excessive, of course,” said Eberlein. “Why would it have mattered if the bodies had never been recovered? It was unnecessary, quite simply. And for Anna Charlier’s part, she never stopped mourning for Nils Strindberg. Fifty years later, her heart was buried in a silver keepsake box at his side, in the memorial park at Norra Begravningsplatsen. The fact that her heart is lying there all alone has always struck me as awful. May I … ?”

Eberlein started to fold up the large drawing of the spheres. The glue crackled as the paper strained over Nils Strindberg’s drawing of the northern hemisphere.

“After making Svalbard a secret, the German businessmen continued their investigations. With time, of course, their pace became slower and slower, and the foundation became more of an archive, the keeper of a secret, a historical mystery, still looking for answers.”

He placed the folded-up sheet in the metal box, and there were two snaps as the pins of the lid closed. And the table was once again empty.

“Today, the founders are dead, naturally, but the mission of the foundation remains, and the contract that was once signed with Strindberg and Andrée is still considered to be valid. And you can understand that Erik Hall’s discoveries have engendered great expectations. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that my employer in Germany is prepared to go to great lengths to become enlightened in this matter.”

“You want Strindberg’s navigational instrument back,” Don said. Eberlein smiled.

“The foundation wants what belongs to it back. What it paid for once upon a time.”

The yellow-gray eyes behind the nonreflective glasses.

“You, Don Titelman, happen by chance to be the last link to Erik Hall, to the ankh, the document, and the other object he seems to have found … perhaps a star?”

Don squirmed in his chair, and he felt his hand go down to the postcard inside the lining of his jacket.

“You must be interested in becoming enlightened too, aren’t you?” said Eberlein. “The ankh is gone … trouble with the police. Maybe we can be of help. If it’s a question of money …”

Eberlein’s voice thinned out as, in his mind, Don saw the double doors open, saw himself walking down the spiral staircase, out through the bright parlors, past the oil paintings, the gilded mirror, the front door of the villa. Then he opened his eyes:

“It strikes me, now that you mention it, that Erik Hall may have mentioned something about a star …”

Then Don’s eyes fastened on Eberlein’s smiling mouth. The lips slightly too red, and astonishingly gray teeth.

“Something about a star, yes,” Don continued, “there were so many different versions.”

Eva Strand turned to him.

“You shouldn’t …”

“Yes, and not just a star, incidentally,” Don said. “Actually, Erik Hall also talked about a document that he found down there. It was such a modest discovery that I hardly remembered it. A few lines on a letter, or maybe it was some sort of card.” Then he looked into Eberlein’s eyes … the expensive suit, arrogant German upper class.

“Did he tell you what the lines contained?” Eberlein asked tonelessly.

“Well, it’s a little hard to remember … the contents were so incoherent, like a code, almost,” said Don.

“A code?”

“Yes, or maybe a poem. There was a year among the words, and the name of a place.”

“So what can you remember?”

“I …” Don began.

“Yes?”

“It depends on how you look at it, but perhaps you could say that I can remember a total of four words, a place name, and a year. Hygiene-Institut der Waffen-SS, the concentration camp Ravensbrück, 1942.”

T
he wall-to-wall carpet stretched into a dark rectangle around the table with the closed metal box, and when Don let his eyes slide up to the library ceiling in the silent room, he thought the book spines at the top must be almost fifteen feet up.

If he could only find some way to blast himself past those last eight inches of old turn-of-the-century insulation and the outermost layer of roof tiles, he would be able to see out over the open night sky, maybe even glimpse the tower of Seglora Church.

One potential aid in an attempt to break out might be the brass ladder on wheels, which stood at an angle a few yards from the shrunken form of the Toad, but somehow the ladder seemed far too slanted. Besides, it would be impossible to climb up the wall, Don realized, because the rows of bookshelves had quite obviously begun to lean inward, and it was as though the whole room were closing in on him.

Eberlein was grinding his jaw in the light of the glass lamps, and the movement spread up toward his temples, where the German’s thin skin expanded as though from a rapid pulse.

Then there was a scrape as the Toad suddenly got up from his stool over by the brass ladder.

On his way to the table, he avoided looking directly at Eva and Don, and when he reached it, he immediately bent down and whispered something to Eberlein.

It was impossible to hear what the Toad was saying, but from the harsh melody, Don understood that the words were in German. Eberlein looked straight ahead while he listened, with his eyes directed at a point far behind Don, over toward the locked double doors.

When the Toad had stopped speaking, Eberlein nodded quietly. Then he got up and straightened the glossy fabric of his suit pants. He said, “I must make a phone call.”

But the smile that followed this time was weak and didn’t extend to his eyes. The German’s face, which had been so illuminated during the long story, was once again pale gray and rigid.

A
fter the doors had closed behind Eberlein, the Toad sat down across from them at the table. Eva Strand had already begun to collect her papers, and now she placed them in her purse along with her pen.

When her hand came up again, she was holding a red cell phone. She looked questioningly at the Toad, but he just shrugged his shoulders. After a few seconds, the screen of the phone had woken up, and the attorney quickly dialed a number. While waiting for the call to go through, she fixed her eyes on Don.

Then he saw her forehead wrinkle; she looked down at the phone, another attempt, dialing more slowly this time. There were no signal bars alongside the numbers. The Toad’s bulging eyes widened slightly.

“You have a landline in the house, I assume?” Eva said.

At first there was no reaction, but when Don repeated the question in German, the Toad shook his massive head.

D
on watched as she made yet another attempt, but then his thoughts began to slip away. The amphetamine seemed to have fried a crack into his memory, and where the pictures had earlier been so clear, everything was cloudy and distorted now.

The photographs he’d once seen from the final camp on Kvitøya—Strindberg’s buried body under the mound of stones, Andrée’s logbook, the skeletal remains of Knut Frænkel—were now double-exposed against Eberlein’s glass-encased negatives.

He let out a dry cough, a laugh that he managed to smother as it issued from his throat, as he thought of the sketched spheres, the ray above the northern hemisphere, and Eberlein’s careful movements with his cotton-clad fingers. It was like finding himself in a hall of broken mirrors, and to get out of there Don did what seemed easiest: opened his shoulder bag and took out six milligrams of Xanax.

H
e had just screwed the lid back onto the bottle when there was a click from the lock behind him, and the double doors once again let in light.

Eberlein was back.

“You can’t have had much luck,” Eva said as the German approached the table.

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“Your assistant claims there’s no landline. And it’s not possible to make a call in here.”

She showed him her cell phone.

“No, that’s true,” said Eberlein. “It must have to do with the bugging protection; there’s some sort of jamming station in the house, from what I understand. As I said, this villa belongs to the German embassy these days, and they do have their special rules.”

The attorney put her cell phone into her handbag and pushed her chair back.

“Telephone or no, it’s time for us to go, if you don’t have any further questions. I truly hope that we have reached the end of this strange excursion.”

She directed these last words to the thin-haired Säpo man and his colleague, who had by now also come into the library.

“I’m afraid that’s not what is going to happen,” said Eberlein. He
placed his hand on Don’s shoulder once again and pressed it lightly. “Even if I would personally like to trust what you said about Ravensbrück, it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression in Germany. They’re talking about giving you a choice. A choice that I would prefer to discuss privately with you.”

“I don’t understand,” said Eva Strand.

But Eberlein had already given the signal to the men from Säpo, and the thin-haired one now came up alongside her and grasped her arm.

At first it seemed that the attorney intended to refuse, but then she gave up and stood with surprising difficulty. Her joints seemed completely stiff; the high-buttoned blouse was wrinkled; blue veins wound under her pale nylon stockings.

Eberlein held up her coat.

“It will only take a few minutes,” he said.

Eva took her coat without answering, placed her handbag over her shoulder, and looked at Don for a long time.

“Whatever he says,” she said, “we’ll soon be back in Falun.”

W
hen the double doors had closed behind Eva and the two men from Säpo, Eberlein sat down on the chair next to Don’s. A scent of cologne, that heavy aroma, and a gaze that was impossible to avoid. The hand that the German placed on his knee was narrow, thin at the wrist, as though it belonged to a woman.