A Darker Shade of Sweden (34 page)

They stepped into the huge living room and the rigidly directed performance began again. A nod here, a glass of champagne there. Twice in the same weekend was definitely too many for Stella. Shallow exchanges of pleasantries conveying nothing, meaning nothing and impossible for anyone to remember. Laughter and charming smiles but ice-cold eyes. Superficiality. Stella hated it, but she was a pro. At least tonight she had a job to do. As soon as the tenth smiling male with a forehead unlined as a baby's bottom had finished his platitudes and turned away, she pulled Ali over to an object placed on a smooth, white pedestal by one of the walls. The wall was made of glass. You could vaguely distinguish the fluttering torches on the terrace outside, but beyond them was only the impenetrable blackness of night. As she came close to the pedestal, Stella's heart beat faster. She saw an eight-inch-tall bronze statue. Its surface was black, dark with a satiny sheen, but the details were perfect. It depicted a crowned man sitting cross-legged. His right palm was raised to the viewer. His left rested on his thigh, holding a water pitcher. The almond-shaped, half-closed eyes were inlaid with silver and watched Stella kindly along his narrow nose. The statue was perfect. So beautiful that it stole her breath. She had to stop herself from grabbing it and trying to run off with it. She carefully caressed the curves of the statue and felt that there still were remnants of sand at its hollow base. Fury began to seethe in her.

“Ali, let me introduce you to Maitreya.”

“Mai . . . who?”

“The next Buddha. This is a statue made in the first decade after Christ, I'd guess. Probably dug up somewhere in Afghanistan. And very recently.”

“How do you know that?”

“It hasn't been professionally cleaned. There are still traces of sand on it, and there are scratches made by the clumsy fools who dug him up.” She slid a fingertip across a deep scratch. It was impossible for her to understand how anyone could do something like this. It was an insult to the country, to history and to the present.

Stella saw Ali stiffen and look at someone behind her. Probably the famous Peter. She put on her most simpleminded smile and slowly turned around. Behind her was a tall man with an almost unbelievably huge stomach hanging from a body that seemed to suffer under its extra weight. He was dressed in a perfectly tailored gray suit and the hand holding his champagne flute was adorned by numerous golden rings. He looked at her, or rather at her plunging neckline, in the same way a cat looks at a herring before sinking its teeth into it. Stella pushed her chest out some more. After all, that was her task tonight.

“Ali, I see you've brought a little tidbit along tonight.”

Ali gave a hearty laugh and put his arm around her waist. He seemed impressively at ease in this kind of situation, Stella noted.

“Absolutely. This is Stella, my girlfriend.”

“So nice to see you at last.” Stella held her hand out. He took it, pulled her close, and kissed her cheek instead. He smelled of liquor and expensive cologne, with a vague undertone of acrid sweat.

“I see you're admiring the statue. Are you going to bid for it, Ali?”

“It seems Stella has fallen in love, so I probably don't have a choice.”

“It's adorable. Is it Indian?” Stella chirped in her most naïve and imbecile voice.

“You might say so. This little baby is around two thousand years old. It won't be cheap.”

“Oooh, is it really that old?” Stella said with what she hoped was a surprised look and leaned closer to the statue. So at least he knew what he had, she noted.

“Oh, yes. There aren't many in this little shithole country that can compete with this collection,” Peter said, then turned to Ali. “So what happened yesterday, did you get anywhere?”

“It's beginning to come together. They wanted us to talk about the last details tonight, if that's okay with you.”

“Business on a night like this?” His eyes were suddenly hard; then he began laughing. “Why not? Tonight is all about great deals anyway, isn't it? Just remember to leave Stella with me when you abandon her for business. I'll take care of her, okay?”

Stella smiled and preened a bit while suppressing a sudden urge to throw her champagne in his face and respond with a couple of impolite words. She really appreciated the fact that normally her work didn't entail meeting a lot of people, she thought. She just wouldn't be able to handle that.

“How do you think he gets hold of things like these?” Ali asked her when Peter had walked off. Their eyes followed him as he moved away among his guests, like a good-natured absolute ruler among his subjects.

“Afghanistan has been more or less systematically plundered of its art objects during the last decade. Items like these are being sent abroad to finance the war. If he is in direct contact with people in the country and doesn't need any go-betweens, he's probably gotten treasures like this one very cheaply.”

Ali sighed deeply. Stella took another look at the beautiful Maitreya. “The problem is that it's almost impossible to prove. A real auction house couldn't sell things like this, since we demand documentation of provenance. But how are we supposed to prove that it hasn't belonged to his family for a century? All he needs to say is that the paperwork was lost, or destroyed. Nobody can prove anything at all.”

“Disgusting. At least I'm happy that we'll soon have enough to get the bastard for other things.”

“His drug deals?” she asked.

“Yes. That's what I'm going to talk to him about later. With just a little luck he'll make me an offer. They're going to give me a job with the organization. We've beaten about the bush long enough.” Ali glanced back at Peter. So this is what scares him, she thought, and almost immediately one of the waiters came up to Ali.

“Adam wants a word in his office on the upper floor.”

“Back soon,” he said to Stella and nodded at the waiter.

“Good luck,” Stella said, squeezed his forearm slightly. He responded with a warm glance, then gave her a long, hard kiss. She responded. A little surprised, but why not, she thought.

“How about reliving some old memories later tonight, Stella?”

“Sounds fine.”

He nodded and she studied his back while he disappeared toward a large, curved staircase. When he was gone she turned to the next pedestal. She spent a long time looking at the objects for sale. The room contained a veritable general store of epochs, religions and styles, with the fact that she felt convinced that most of these things had been dug up by clumsy idiots somewhere in Afghanistan during the last few years as their only common denominator. She also studied the buyers and realized that she recognized some of them. They were accomplished collectors, knowledgeable in the history of art. She kept as far away from them as possible. The risk of any of them recognizing her as Emmanuel Rodin's daughter was small but real—and if any of them whispered something about it in the fat man's ear, the entire operation would break down. She sent Carl an angry thought. When Ali had been gone an hour, Stella began feeling restless. She went out on the terrace and took a deep breath of the painfully cold air. A waiter offered her a fur-lined blanket, and she gratefully wrapped it around her shoulders. A small group of people was outside, smoking in the flickering torchlight. The quiet was music to Stella's ears and she lowered her shoulders, trying to relax. Her cell rang in her purse. She walked farther out on the terrace to escape other guests possibly listening in, and took out her phone. The display told her that the call was from Ali's cell. She put on her wireless headset and answered.

“Ali, where the hell are you?”

The wet gurgling sound ran like a cold wave through her body.

“Ali, what's happened?” she whispered. The sound went on for a few seconds, then stopped.

Shakily, Stella replaced the phone in her purse without ending the call. She pulled her hair over her ear to hide her headset and went back inside. Without seeming to hurry she wove through the crowd. Behind her relaxed smile she could feel her heart beat hard and fast. She climbed the stair to the second floor without being challenged. The house was enormous. Carefully she opened the doors to a few rooms just enough to glance in. One of them held an intimately occupied couple, but she saw no signs of Ali. Just as she was going to round a corner she heard footsteps. She opened the door closest to her, silently slid in and closed it behind her while praying to the beautiful Maitreya downstairs that nobody had seen the door move. She held her breath and heard them clearly as they walked past.

“Take the body out with the kitchen garbage when the ­party's over. Just let it be until then.”

When they were gone, Stella waited for two minutes before returning to the hallway. She still seemed to hear weak, rasping breaths through the headset. She must find him. Before it was too late. She continued in the direction the two men had come from and stopped when she saw a small, almost black mark on the floor outside one of the closed doors. Blood. Almost certainly, and put there by someone's shoe. She opened the door very slowly. The dark inside was impenetrable. As soon as the opening was wide enough for her to slip through she slid in, closing the door behind her. She turned on the light. A twisted body lay on the floor. Ali, a large, open wound in the middle of his chest. Blood had formed a pool on the floor around him. Stella went down on her knees beside him, feeling the sting of vomit in the back of her throat. She felt his neck, but there was no need. His eyes were staring blindly at the ceiling. Probably she had just imagined those last breathing sounds from her phone. Stella closed the call and carefully took Ali's iPhone from his hand. She put on the long, black gloves she had worn when they arrived, stretched her hand under his body and felt along his waist, underneath his jacket. Warm blood enveloped her hand. There it was. His gun. She pulled it out, took off her bloody glove and used it to wipe off the gun. She might need it before the evening was over. With a last look at Ali, Stella rose and went over to the window. Standing in darkness, she looked out into the black night. Inside she was cold and hard. She had no time to feel. Later, not now. She saw the fluttering flames of the torches on the terrace below. At last she drew a deep breath, took out her cell and phoned Carl. He answered almost immediately.

“Ali is dead. Shot,” she said straight out.

“What? What are you saying?”

“What the hell have you put us up to?” she asked. “I want to know it all. Right now.”

“We'll be there as soon as possible.”

“No. Hell no. We have no evidence of anything. You'll never be able to prove a damned thing. We'll never get either Ali's killers or the damned fools who are plundering Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan? What's that got to do with anything?”

Stella gave an exasperated sigh.

“The antiques they're selling here tonight are invaluable art treasures from Afghanistan, dug up by assholes whose only thought is to get money to wage war. I'll get you evidence.” She spoke quickly but with exaggerated clarity.

“It's too dangerous.”

“You have to trust me. I know what has to be done. I want a backup force in place at a quarter past midnight. Not a second earlier or later. Okay?”

“Stella . . .”

“Did you understand me?”

“Yes. Okay. But . . .”

Stella heard footsteps in the hallway outside and ended the call. She stood immobile, breathing slowly. There was nowhere to hide in the room. The steps faded. Stella felt a rush of relief. She weighed Ali's gun in her hand and pulled out the magazine. It was fully loaded. Good. She wondered where to hide the gun. It was true that she did have large breasts, but nowhere near large enough for her to be able to hide a nine-millimeter pistol in her bra. On the other hand she wore enormous, flesh-colored “tummytuck” panties under the wide skirt of her 1950s dress. She slid the gun up inside her panties and carefully checked that it would stay there. It did. ­Peter's cell phone she put in the inner compartment of her purse, along with her bloodstained gloves. She put on more lipstick and straightened her shoulders, then crouched down beside Ali's body for the last time. Stroked his cheek. He looked very calm. She remembered his bubbling, ringing laugh. His special way of twisting his fingers in her hair to kiss her neck.

“I promise to find the bastard who did it,” she whispered to him. Not only that, she would personally make sure that he regretted what he had done. Then she stood up, straightened her dress and went back down to the party, without looking back. Gladly accepted a new glass of champagne and sat down on a bar stool. Carefully, so that the gun wouldn't fall to the floor. She took out Ali's cell and sent the identical text to the last five numbers he had spoken to. “I know,” she wrote. Then she let her eyes roam, trying to find someone just receiving a text message. She looked for a long time but saw no one. She resent her message. Peter was in the middle of the room, a giggling girl on his arm. Stella studied him, her anger carefully hidden. Instead she hoped to look vaguely admiring. He was at the top of her list of suspects. She looked searchingly at him. He was large, boisterous and extremely pushy, particularly towards the female guests. He behaved as if he owned the place. That made Stella suspicious. Hold on, now, she thought. If he really did own the place he wouldn't have felt the need to behave as he did. Of course, the house might actually be his. But someone else was more powerful. Who?

Stella sipped her champagne, carefully weighing everyone in the room, one by one. At last she found him. A thin man of average height, light-skinned, with black hair and dark eyes. He was absolutely calm and relaxed. Polite but without the least interest in impressing anyone. He reminded Stella of her black tomcat, Sherlock. He, too, acted just that way: friendly, relaxed and condescending, as if he owned the world. In this case it might well be true. Both the dark-eyed one and the gray-haired man he was talking to turned toward her and looked at her. The dark-eyed man raised his glass to her in a silent toast. She returned the gesture and simultaneously recognized the gray-haired man. He was an art collector. One of Rodin's regular customers. Her cover was blown. Hell!