She paused for a moment and seemed to think.
‘And it’ll cause chaos for you too. For you, but especially for Klara Walldéen and your friend there on the phone. I know it’s not your fault, that you’re just playing the game you were forced into. And maybe this was the best outcome you could hope for. You made it a little further. But when all of this comes out, there will be no one who can protect you. The interests involved are too powerful. We can’t tolerate this type of material being leaked without consequences. Do you understand that? You will be Assange or Snowden at best. Holed up in some embassy or godforsaken country that might accept you. You will be outlaws as soon as this material is out. You’re already outlaws.’
The American’s words on the island. As soon as you have nothing to trade, you have no rights. Don’t give them what they want.
‘If it comes out,’ said Gabriella quietly.
Susan leaned forward in her chair and looked her straight in the eye.
‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, what you describe—the chaos, the consequences—would happen only if the material were to be made public, right?’
Susan nodded and looked at Gabriella, clearly puzzled.
‘Yes?’
‘But we we’re not going to make it public,’ said Gabriella. ‘Not now. We’re going to protect this information. Make sure that it’s copied far and wide so you’ll never be able to track it down. But if we find out that you’re coming after us, we’ll press the button and that information will go directly to the public. I won’t even look at the files. Nor will Klara. We don’t want to know. And we don’t want the chaos on our conscience. We want to survive. We want to leave this behind us.’
Gabriella swallowed hard, but the awful taste in her mouth remained. They had gone over it so many times with Klara already in the car down from Stockholm and again in the boat after the horrors on the island. It seemed like an incredible price: to not be able to avenge Mahmoud or to reveal those responsible for all of this. To just let them get away literally with murder. But as they saw it there was no alternative. It was probably true what Susan had said; if the information came out they would be lawless. And even worse, it would ignite Afghanistan and Iraq and who knows what else. There had been enough suffering, that was for sure. It was a staggering thought that a sixteen-year-old girl in Amsterdam was to be the guardian of information that could make half the world explode in uproar, and worse. Gabriella looked at Susan’s weary face and thought about all the thousands of secrets she must have to keep. Would she allow herself to relinquish control over this one?
‘Can you trust your friend?’ said Susan.
Gabriella shrugged.
‘I truly hope so.’
Susan nodded.
‘I don’t see that I have any choice,’ she said. ‘We don’t want this information to get out. Especially not now.’
She paused, seemed to be considering something.
‘What can I say?’ she said at last. ‘I guess we’ll have to hope your friend can be trusted. I think you’re aware of what would happen if you can’t trust her?’
She was silent. The shadow of a smile passed over her face.
‘The balance of terror,’ she said. ‘The threat of mutually assured destruction. I never expected to describe the relationship between the US and a couple of young Swedish lawyers in quite those words. But it seems times have changed.’
Susan stood up and extended her hand toward Gabriella, who hesitantly took it.
‘It really is a new era,’ said Susan.
‘We have one more condition,’ said Gabriella. ‘The American who came to the island yesterday. You have to tell Klara everything she wants to know about him.’
Susan gave her a defeated look. She suddenly looked human.
‘There’s always so much at stake,’ she said. ‘So much that we lose sight of the people. So much that they cease to have meaning.’
She took out a pen from her pocket and wrote something on a piece of paper, which she handed to Gabriella.
‘Tell her to contact me when she’s up to it. I’ll tell her. It’s the least I can do for her. It’s the least I can do for him.’
Stockholm, Sweden
George stood in the dark stairwell outside his father’s door on Rådmansgatan, hesitating. His reflection in the elevator’s mirror looked slightly less like a character in a horror movie but still far from his usual, polished self.
On the phone his old man had gone from annoyance to unexpectedly anxious concern when George called late on Christmas eve to tell him about the car accident that had prevented him from making it home for Christmas. To his surprise, George even had to convince him not to get on the next plane to Brussels to visit George in the hospital where he claimed to be recovering.
In reality, he’d been sitting in an apartment in Vasastan, barely a fifteen-minute walk from his family’s home. That’s where they’d taken them, first by helicopter from the archipelago and then under police escort, after Gabriella’s assurance that she’d managed to negotiate some kind of bizarre deal.
He’d realized he was never going to find out what all of this was really about. Klara and Gabriella had been careful about what they said. It involved a computer. Films. The US government. That was all he managed to piece together. Truth be told, he didn’t want to know. Some guy from Säpo had even apologized to him for what happened. A terrible mistake. Never tell anyone about what you’ve been through. He didn’t say what would happen if he actually did tell someone. A vague, unspoken threat.
But it didn’t matter. There was no risk that he’d tell anyone about it. All he wanted was to forget. Something that insomnia and his few hours of nightmarish sleep hadn’t really allowed him to do yet. Everywhere he looked he saw Kirsten’s battered face. Any sudden noise sounded like a gunshot.
He pressed the doorbell. Within a few seconds the door was thrown open. His old man stood there with outstretched arms.
‘George!’ he said. ‘The prodigal son!’
He embraced George in a way he never had before, or at least as far as George could remember. At last the old man pushed him away to inspect him closely.
‘Oh my God!’ he said. ‘You look absolutely terrible! Come in and I’ll get you a tall Armagnac. Are you allowed to drink? They didn’t put you on any pills that don’t mix well, did they? Anyway, forget that, you need a drink. Ellen! Pour a stiff one for George here! I’ve never seen anyone more in need of a drink!’
His old man led him into the living room where the whole family sat gathered in clusters on the sofas—as usual during the holidays. The storybook tree, with its burning candles, was in the corner where it always stood. The overladen dessert table groaned, and a fire was burning with an intensity that George worried might be too much for the fireplace.
Big brothers and brothers-in-law gathered around him to inspect his wounds, pretending to punch him in the stomach, teasing him for being useless at driving, asking about what had happened to the Audi. Ellen pressed a plate of Boxing Day turkey on him with all the trimmings.
Finally he sunk down into a sofa with a plate of cheese and a glass of port beside him. His extended family had left or retreated to the other rooms. He felt full and warm, drowsy for the first time since the terrible night of the twenty-third. It had been barely three days since he’d assaulted Kirsten and fled to the island by boat. Three days since he shot two men.
And this Christmas stuff. All this comfort and familiarity. Everything he used to loathe. Suddenly, he was defenseless against it. Suddenly it felt like sinking into a warm bath after being so very, very cold. He sat back and allowed himself to enjoy the feeling of peace and security.
‘Are you asleep?’
George looked up and saw his father’s wife Ellen standing in the doorway in her bathrobe. The fire had died down but was still burning faintly, enveloping the room in a soft, warm glow.
‘Nah,’ said George.
His tongue, sweet from the port, was sticking against the dry roof of his mouth. He scrambled up into a sitting position. He had actually fallen asleep.
‘We told you we’re waiting until tomorrow to give you your presents, so you can recover a little,’ said Ellen. ‘But a package arrived for you by courier yesterday. I thought you might want to see what it was.’
She held a square package from DHL toward him. She radiated curiosity. George reached out and took the large padded pouch. He ripped off the packaging. Inside it was a box, slightly smaller than a shoe box and completely square. His heart pounded, and he suddenly felt dizzy with fear.
‘Thank you, Ellen,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look at this later.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You do as you like.’
She retreated from the living room, clearly disappointed.
George put the package in front of him on the coffee table and stared at it. It had arrived yesterday. After everything was over. Wild fantasies flashed through his exhausted brain. It was a bomb. They were all going to be blown to bits so they couldn’t ever disclose what they knew.
But the package wasn’t particularly heavy. If it were a bomb, it couldn’t be very powerful. Didn’t they have better ways to kill people than with mail bombs, anyway?
Eventually curiosity won over fear. With one decisive movement he lifted the package and ripped open the protective plastic.
Inside there was a cherrywood box. A silver label on the front. George felt his pulse increasing, not with fear but with anticipation
.
Officine Panerai
was written on the label. He opened the box reverentially.
A Panerai 360 M Luminor lay on a deep blue velvet cushion inside. The jet-black watch face. The soft yellow, luminous numbers. The simple, minimalist design. The pale leather strap with its rough seams. George had to blink to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. What could the watch have cost? $50,000? More? If you could even find one anymore. It had been produced in a limited edition of three hundred.
When George was able to breathe normally again, he noticed an envelope on the velvet beside the watch. He opened it up and pulled out a folded piece of paper. The handwritten note was in English:
George,
Just a token of our appreciation. All’s well that ends well. We expect to see you in the office no later than January 3.
The letter was signed by Appleby. George closed the lid of the box with a snap and leaned back on the couch with his eyes closed. Merchant & Taylor. Appleby. Everything he’d been through. Everything they’d allowed him to go through. It was inconceivable that he would go back to the office on the Square de Meeûs. Out of the question.
Slowly, he sat up on the couch again. He leaned over and cracked open the lid of the box. Through the small gap he could see that it was all there. The certificate of authenticity. The extra wristbands. Tiny tools in a small bag. He opened the lid cautiously and reached out to touch the almost invisible glass of the face.
He slowly extricated the watch from the velvet and held it up in the faint glow of the dying fire. He turned and twisted it around. Studying the screws and the inscription on the back.
He had to try it on, just as a test. The soft leather and the cold, pitch-black steel of the casing against his skin. The perfectly balanced weight. It fit around his wrist as if it were made for him, only him.
He couldn’t help the smile that spread over his lips. The heat radiating through his body. The pride. Wasn’t he worth this kind of life, now more than ever?
Washington, DC, USA
Klara leaned her head against the dirty window of the taxi. Arvo Pärt played through her earbuds. ‘Spiegel im Spiegel’. For a while after Christmas, she’d spent most of her time in her bed at her grandparents’, listening to this play on repeat twenty, thirty, forty times a day. Staring up at the ceiling, leaving her room only to poke at her food or go to the bathroom. She’d taken the SIM card out of her phone to avoid calls from Gabriella or any of her casual friends from Brussels. Officially burnt-out and on sick leave.
She’d lost track of how many days she lay like that. Maybe a couple of days. Maybe a week. Just the music and Grandma’s and Grandpa’s worried faces.
In the end, it hadn’t been possible to keep Gabriella away, of course. One day she was just sitting on the edge of Klara’s bed. A little more anxious than usual. A little older. Ignoring both Klara’s protests and her anemic fury, Gabriella managed to get her out of bed.
After forcing her into warm clothes, she had guided her down the stairs, out through the door, and down to the boat where Grandpa, Grandma, and Bosse were already waiting. And then they returned to Smugglers Rock. To take back the archipelago, as Grandpa put it. To expunge the horror. To reclaim their own memories.
They’d only stayed for the afternoon. There were no reminders left of that terrible night. No blood. No bodies. No bullet holes. Nothing. It was just a small, snowy, rocky islet in the middle of the sea. Bosse got the gas stove going and boiled them some coffee. They hardly spoke.
But after that, things became a little easier. Mostly thanks to Gabriella, who took care of all the practical details. Contacting Eva-Karin Boman, presenting herself as Klara’s lawyer, and handing over Klara’s resignation after she made sure Eva-Karin gave Klara a year of severance pay. Gabriella was tough. Much tougher than Klara. Gabriella had been back at work before New Year’s Eve. As a new partner. The youngest one in the firm. Perhaps the youngest in Sweden.
After Klara left her bed, she did her best to stay on her feet. At first she did little things around the house. Cooking with Grandma. Going out on the boat with Grandpa.
After a week, she put on some city clothes and hitched a ride into town with Bosse. She’d started with Söderköping, so as not to be completely overwhelmed by civilization. Bought some paperbacks and ate a pizza on Skönbergagatan. Walked around in the winter landscape, letting the complete normality of it present itself. In the evening, she took the bus to the movies in Norrköping by herself. A worthless comedy. But it made her feel alive again, almost.