Stockholm, Sweden
The snow extinguishes all sound. If I close my eyes, I’m no longer in a city. The crunch under my rubber soles, wind rushing across my face. I’m on ice. Alone on a frozen lake where the sky and the snow flow into each other and become part of the same mass. If I ever allowed myself to miss anything, I’d miss the Michigan winters.
The streets here are wide, reminiscent of another time. A time of armies and parades, battlefields, banners flapping in the wind. The simplicity of it makes me sad. The city is as beautiful and solemn as a funeral. The cars keep their lights on, even now during those few confusing hours between dawn and dusk. I’m dressed too lightly, despite the blue down coat that I’ve barely worn since college.
They’re waiting for me at the US embassy. My new papers are ready. Nobody here knows who I am. Nobody knows where I’m going. But they have their instructions, and they know better than to ask. I lock my bag in a safe in the military attaché’s office and decline his friendly invitation to dinner. I can feel his interest, his curiosity. Behind every secret is another one. Behind every lie, a bigger lie.
It takes me a moment to make up my mind whether or not to ask. There is a risk, but one that I’m willing to take. This might be my only chance.
‘I need the assistance of one of your local staff,’ I say. ‘Someone who speaks Swedish and knows how the Swedish system works.’
‘Sure, absolutely,’ he says and seems genuinely happy to be able to help in some way.
He’s a decent man. A man suited for Irish pubs and the telling of war stories.
‘But, of course, we don’t have anyone with sufficiently high security clearance.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘This is purely personal. I just need help finding a friend who I believe is back in Sweden now.’
‘I understand. I think the press department has a couple of local researchers on staff. I’ll ask my secretary to make sure you get the help you need.’
I follow the route that I drew on a map in my room and memorized. Through winding alleys next to the other tourists until I’m sure my shadows have disappeared down in the subway. They say it’s easier here in Stockholm. That Helsinki is worse. Maybe that’s so.
There’s one hour left. I take a taxi from the castle and ask to be taken to Djurgården. The taxi driver doesn’t understand what I mean, so I show him on the map. This worries me. He’ll remember an American passenger. A trace. I don’t leave traces. But now it’s too late. I ask him to drop me off at the bridge. He speaks terrible English, so I have to show him again. He looks like an Arab, but I can’t change languages. Then the trace would become fluorescent. It doesn’t matter. My shadows have lost me anyway.
In the bathroom, behind the gates of the Skansen zoo, I change from my blue jacket into a beige coat. Remove my red hat. Carefully take the light yellow folder out of the briefcase and place it in a dark blue nylon backpack. I leave the briefcase, empty and without fingerprints, under a trash can in one of the stalls. Then I leave the zoo, walk down the road to the ferry. Darkness is already falling.
At three-fifteen I board the ferry. He’s standing alone near the stern. As agreed. Tinted glasses and a tan winter coat. His mustache rivals his leader’s. It’s a face worthy of a long career in the government buildings of Baghdad. I stand next to him and look down at the foam spraying from the propellers. Forgotten Christmas decorations glitter wistfully above the amusement park that we are slowly leaving behind. We have about ten minutes.
‘
Assalamu alaikum,
’ I say.
‘
Wa alaikum assalam,
’ he responds reflexively, surprised. ‘Do you speak Arabic?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘What would you like to communicate? It must be important if the Americans are sending representatives all the way to Stockholm.’
‘Satellite images from the day before yesterday. The Iranian fleet is positioned to blockade your traffic in the Persian Gulf. An artillery unit is moving into position for an attack on Baghdad.’
I look around and then hand the folder to my Iraqi contact. He nods and puts it in his briefcase without looking at it. Although we stand in the lee behind the ferry’s superstructure, the cold is clawing at our cheeks.
‘Is that all?’
The disappointment is plain on his face. No news for him. I shake my head.
‘There is one more thing. We’ve found five companies willing to sell what you want. They want to meet in Zurich in two weeks. The details are contained in the folder. I hope I don’t need to explain to you how sensitive this is?’
There’s another glint in his eyes now. This was what he’d been hoping for.
‘Chemicals?’ He restrains himself, but he’s interested now.
‘Think bigger.’
He nods. The distant lights of the amusement park are reflected in his glasses. I feel the vibrations under my feet.
‘We are indebted to you,’ he says at last.
I nod.
‘Don’t thank me. I’m just the messenger. And of course my political leaders will expect some form of compensation when this is all over. You can discuss that further in Zurich.’
We stand in silence. Let the thumping of the engine fill in the gap. If he’s freezing, his face—behind his glasses, his mustache, the heavy burgundy scarf tucked between the lapels of his camel hair coat—doesn’t show it.
‘As for the rest...’ he begins.
His eyes look out toward the south pier: the big red and white ferry, the city rising up behind it. Atoms of snow, compressed by the cold and as hard as grains of salt, swirl weightlessly between us. I don’t say anything, giving him the time he needs. Electricity jolts through me now, makes me crackle, makes the snow melt at first contact. The roots of revenge are electric.
‘Nobody knows anything,’ he continues. ‘Not us. Not the Syrians. Nothing.’
He turns to me and takes off his glasses. His eyes are warm, surprisingly naked.
‘Was it your family?’ he says.
I don’t say anything but I don’t look away. He knows anyway. All questions are rhetorical. But I have to see his eyes. I have to see straight into his eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he continues. ‘Really. Especially since you’ve been so helpful to us. I wish I could give a more complete answer.’
I nod now. If he’s lying, he’s a master.
‘You know it doesn’t mean anything that I don’t have any information? You know our systems are more organic than yours? Fewer documents, you know. We have shorter, how shall I put this, decision-making procedures. It’s rare for this type of information to reach anyone outside of the innermost circles of intelligence.’
I nod again. I know all about the organic. All about decision making.
‘Someone sends out a signal, someone else passes it on to a third party. There are many stages.’
‘But there are always rumors,’ I say. ‘Always.’
‘Sure,’ he says.
A nod. A smile tinged with sadness.
‘But you shouldn’t listen to rumors, right?’
‘Only if that’s all you have,’ I say.
He says nothing. His gaze is intense, straight, seemingly honest. He stands like that for a moment. The small granules of snow are dry in his mustache, his eyebrows.
‘Sometimes it’s better to just move on,’ he says at last. ‘To leave it to God.
Inshallah
. God’s will be done.’
We separate before the ferry docks. I’m already on my way out, full of doubt. Behind me, I leave the promise of death.
I don’t care about evasive maneuvers as I walk down Strandvägen toward the US embassy. They are welcome to follow me now. A locally employed woman named Louise is waiting for me at her desk in the little office she shares with another local staff member. We seem to be the only ones left in the building.
‘You’re late,’ she says and brushes the long, blond hair out of her face.
She’s around thirty years old, not beautiful, but there’s something about her seriousness that’s appealing. Her English is American, but with the singsong accent that I know all too well.
‘I have to pick up my kids.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say and mean it.
Obviously stressed, she puts a few documents down on the table in front of me.
‘Here’s the woman you were looking for,’ she says. ‘This is her death certificate. You were correct that she worked as a diplomat with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and that she seems to have died in an explosion in Damascus in 1980.’
I nod quietly and fiddle with the page, which is written in a language I don’t understand.
‘I found some articles about it in the Swedish newspapers. It seems to have been a pretty big deal here. I remember it myself, actually. It’s not often that Swedish diplomats are killed abroad. I made copies of a couple of the articles. It seems to have been an accident, a car bomb intended for someone else. They got the wrong car.’
I sit down on the pale wooden chair next to her desk. My legs suddenly feel unreliable.
‘She had a daughter,’ I say, and I can hear how empty, how flat, my voice is.
Louise nods.
‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘She had a daughter who survived, she was a few months old. It’s a strange story. Very, very strange. In all the media coverage, it states that the daughter died along with her mother in the car, but if you dig a little deeper…’
She pushes the hair away from her forehead and glances impatiently at the small watch on her slender wrist.
‘If you dig a little deeper, you find her in the public records. Klara Walldéen. I have a friend at the Foreign Ministry, who did a quick check.’
She flips impatiently through her papers.
‘There’s no record, oddly enough. But, according to rumor, if you’d believe in rumors, she was found wrapped in a blanket at the Swedish embassy in Damascus on the day the bomb exploded. The whole thing was hushed up, of course. After the bomb and everything. I guess they were afraid that something would happen to her.’
Electricity jolts through me, through my bloodstream.
‘What happened to her?’ I say.
‘She lives with her grandparents in the Östergötland archipelago on… Let me see… Yes, here it is. On a little island called Aspöja.’
Brussels, Belgium
Klara took a deep breath and turned her face toward the blue floral wallpaper, fighting the temptation to bury her nose into the fold of Cyril’s neck as he lay in her bed just a few inches away, naked and drowsy. Despite their nudity, despite having explored every inch of his body with her mouth and her hands over the last few months, such a gesture would be disconcertingly intimate, surprisingly tender.
Their relationship was not tender. Passionate, absolutely. She felt a spark when Cyril came within a certain radius of her, a world-shattering sexual charge that she had never felt before, but suspected, without wanting to explore any further, that it had something to do with his inaccessibility. How many times in the last few months had she woken at dawn to see Cyril half-dressed and halfway out the door of her bedroom? How many times had she woken up from the creaking of the stairs down to the living room? How many times had Cyril cancelled their meetings, which were already too few and far between, because he was stuck in an airport, a meeting, a dinner?
And how many nights had they even spent together? Twenty, maybe? Fifteen? Barely. Cyril, like most Members of the European Parliament, was only in Brussels a few days a week. The rest of the time he was either traveling or at home, connecting with the voters of his Parisian constituency.
When they’d started seeing each other a couple of months ago that had suited Klara perfectly. She hadn’t wanted more. Cyril was exciting. Intelligent. And the charge between them was transformative. It made her weak and unstable, alternately inferior and dominant. And she could tell it affected him too. His tight grip on her arms, her neck. His fingers in her hair as he pressed her down against the mattress and entered her from behind. She could still taste him on her lips, in her mouth. This was passion, wonderful, burning desire. But it wasn’t tenderness, not real intimacy. And it had been unexpectedly liberating. No demands, no history, just brief, intoxicating moments outside of time.
So it surprised her when Cyril turned over and looked at her for a long time without saying anything. His gaze was dark, and slightly ironic. She met his eyes hesitantly, suddenly embarrassed, and shared the silence.
‘Why don’t you have any pictures of your family?’ he said. ‘I’ve been here several times a week over the last few months, and I still don’t know anything about you. Well, I know a few things about you.’
He pulled the covers up over his hips, as if suddenly becoming aware of his own nakedness.
‘We talk about the parliament, the world. Food. But I know almost nothing about
you
. Your family. Your home. And it struck me, you don’t have any pictures of them either. Expats always have pictures of their family on display. But not you. Why not?’
His voice, the gentle French accent, the American vocabulary. Had he studied in the United States? She turned her eyes away from him and lay on her back, staring straight up at the sloping ceiling above her bed, concentrating on her breathing.
She didn’t feel ready for this. Not ready to break their unspoken pact, their casual agreement. At the same time, she wanted nothing more than to reveal her background and history to Cyril piece by piece, while he did the same. But she needed time to get used to the idea. It couldn’t happen like this, without warning, without time to adjust.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I guess I’m not that into pictures.’
She swung her feet down onto the cool wooden floor and sat up, with her back to Cyril.
‘That’s bullshit!’ he said. ‘Everybody needs pictures of their family.’
Couldn’t he just wait a little, let her get used to the idea? Let her catch her breath and catch up with him.
‘Can’t you tell me something about yourself? Do you have siblings? What do your parents do? Anything.’
She turned toward him. Allowed her eyes to show a gleam of irritation.