Chasing the Storm (5 page)

Breakfast was coffee and bread. Marin came in as he was finishing up, and lit a cigarette. Rygg had eaten three meals in Marin’s presence and had yet to see anything more substantial than alcohol or tobacco smoke pass his lips. “You are feeling refreshed, Torgrim? I am sorry about the rather Spartan conditions,” Marin said.

“I feel fine,” Rygg said. And he did. Perhaps it was the altitude or the long sleep and the powerful coffee. Whatever it was, he felt just fine.

“Excellent. We will take a walk. Come.”

Rygg followed Marin behind the farmhouse, along a path through deep grass, then into the trees. They walked in silence for a while, quite slowly. After a while, the trees thinned, and they were on a rocky patch from which they could look down over the landscape. Marin sat on a rock and motioned Rygg to join him. The farmhouse was a tawny U below them. There was another building a few miles to the left, and Rygg could see brown and white specks moving in a pasture. Goats? Sheep? On the horizon, something glittered, and he lifted his hand. “The Adriatic?”

“Yes. Before us is the
karst
, a country of stones. This was Venetian territory once, and along the coast are walled Venetian towns, very beautiful. Trieste is less than one hundred kilometers that way. But this is a borderland, not Slavic, not Italian. And it was, very recently, a battleground. Appropriate, I think, for our agenda.”

“Which is what, precisely?”

But Marin seemed not to have heard him. He sat in silence for a minute, smoking. Between drags he cradled the cigarette within cupped hands, like a priest holding sacred incense. Then he said, “We are entering a new world. Communism is dead. America’s power diminishes. China rises. The Arab world – Islam – is in spiritual turmoil. And in the middle of this, we are suddenly, all of us, connected much more deeply than we could have imagined just a decade ago.” He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and interlocked his fingers, tugging at them. “The Internet, cell phones, airline travel. The distance between a sailor in Estonia and a shopkeeper in Cairo is now negligible.”

“Sure.”

“This new world has also its new crime. As we saw with the September 11 attacks, crimes committed in one part of the world have enormous effect in distant places. The Internet and cell phones have made the lives of criminals easier.”

“On one hand, yes. But on another hand, it has become easier to uncover them. To watch them.”

“Exactly.” Marin stubbed out his cigarette carefully on a rock. “Something is happening in the Baltic, on the
Alpensturm
. I do not know what it is yet, but I know that it is very big, because the players are very big. I feel them maneuvering, shifting positions. If the boat contains some sort of weapons, weapons worth probably twice as much as four hundred million dollars, and they are being sold to another country – Egypt, Syria, Iran, Libya – this will create enormous problems in the future. Not only for that country, but for the countries around it – for Israel, for America, and for Russia itself. The net is too tight. If we pull on this rope, it moves a knot over there. Two men shake hands in Moscow, and a woman is shot in Hamburg.”

“So what do you want from me?”

Back at the farmhouse, Lena kept them supplied with coffee, and she had her tea while Marin brought out a map and laid it on the table. He pointed to a couple places on the map, and was about to circle them with a ballpoint, but Rygg stayed his hand. “We’ll keep it all up here,” he said, and tapped his temple.

Marin nodded. “Good,” he said. “That is what I need from you. Keep us in form.” Briefly, he outlined the mission. He took up an orange envelope from the table and spilled a dozen high-quality photographs onto the table. “This is the location,” he said. “Looking east, west, north, south.” He arranged the photographs in groups. “What do you think? Can you do it?”

Rygg studied the map and the photos. “Any backup?” he asked.

“I am afraid not. Not for this operation.”

“I’ll need an escape plan, with two alternates. You have the funds for that?”

“Of course. Sasha will arrange tickets and whatever else you need.”

“A clean laptop.”

“We have one. Sasha will prepare it.”

“Okay. Okay.” He studied the map again, and traced a line, not touching the paper. “We’ll start at the Crillon-Hapsburg,” he said. “That’s where I’d be anyway.”

He talked his way slowly through the operation, working backward, growing more confident. The old thrill was coming back; he felt the blood rushing through his veins and the adrenaline pumping. He felt great. Marin questioned him on several points, and added clarification where he could. When they had the basic outline worked out, Rygg set up some situations, with Lena and Sasha and Marin playing various roles. They worked in the dining room and around the house and barn. Rygg walked around, carrying a briefcase, a newspaper, an umbrella. He sat, in a chair, on a sofa, holding a glass, and memorizing his actions, the positions of his legs and hands. What do you do naturally? What should you look out for? What weapons are within reach: a stone? A glass of water?

Afternoon came and Rygg went for a run, up into the forest. It felt great to get his muscles working again, feel the blood beat in his head. On his way back down, he saw Lena sitting with her back to a tree. Breathing hard, he plopped down next to her and looked out to the west. Through the trunks, scraps of the distant sea flashed. For a couple minutes, they just sat in silence, while his breaths eased.

“I met him at a press conference,” she said at last, still looking at the sea. Her voice was quiet. “I was nineteen only. But I was on the other side. I grew up in soft life, in big villa. My father is businessman. Was businessman. Now he is dead. He was big businessman, and he do many … things, many deals with government, about oil, about I don’t know. But then at the press conference, I see Marko. He is small, he is ugly. But he ask very interesting questions. I see that he know everything, everything about my father and his work. He is very polite. I meet him to argue, we have vodka and argue. And in one evening I turn, from my father to Marko. At the end of the evening, I think he is big, he is beautiful.”

“How did you father die?” Rygg asked.

“He was shot in his car. This is common for businessmen in Russia.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rygg …”

“Torgrim. Call me Torgrim.”

“Thank you, Torgrim. But I am not so sad about my father now. Many people died because of him. Marko is my father now. My father and my lover. I do everything for him, because he try to help. What you do together, maybe is difficult, but he try to help Russia, to help the small people in the world. He is very brave. You cannot know how brave. He has many lives, many times death comes, and he makes escape. This was not the first bullet for him.” She touched her right arm, where the bullet had gone through.

“And what’s your role, Lena?”

“My role?”

“How do you help Marko?”

“I drive. I carry letter. I tell him eat.” She laughed. “He forget to eat.”

“I’ve seen that.”

“He says that cigarettes and vodka contain vitamins enough for a Russian,” she said.

“How long have you been with him?”

“Four years only. It seem like all my life. All my life.”

“You’ve been in Russia all that time?”

“Some time in Russia. But Russia is dangerous for us, unfortunately, so sometimes we come here, to Croatia. Or to other countries in Europe.”

“Where does he get his money? Who funds all this?”

“My father,” she laughed.

“How’s that?”

“My father was rich, you cannot imagine. But if he know how we use his money … his ghost would become crazy.”

That evening Lena loaded the fireplace with wormy apple wood from the shed behind the house, and they sat on dilapidated armchairs before it, drinking vodka. Lena cradled her glass on her lap, with her feet drawn up under her. She was reading a slim hardcover. Rygg reached over and tipped the book up so he could see the cover.

“Chekhov,” she told him.

He shrugged.

“Anton Chekhov. Stories. They are like life. Better than life.”

“Better than life? I’ll have to give that a try.”

She smiled at him and returned to the book.

The next morning Rygg spent most his time with Sasha in front of the computer, going through all his accounts – LinkedIn, Facebook, bank, email – making sure that he was up to date, that he’d replied to everyone as though he’d gone to Hamburg. Sasha made him feel uncomfortable. He seemed constantly on edge, one knee jerking up and down, and he muttered to himself as his fingers flickered over the keyboard like white moths. He never looked at Rygg, keeping his gaze on the screen or the floor.

“Surely they’ll be able to trace me to here, though?” Rygg asked. “They’ll know our ISP.”

Sasha shook his head, jerking his leg more rapidly. “They can’t find Sasha, no way, man. No one can find Sasha. This computer is like the
matryoshka
– you know, the Russian dolls? All inside each other. Maybe they can break the first doll. It would take maybe one month. But inside is another doll. And this computer is the smallest doll, hidden inside all the others, man.” He laughed, displaying rotting teeth that seemed strangely at odds with his porcelain skin.

By that afternoon, Rygg was teaching Marin the basics of Krav Maga, so he could use him as a practice opponent, when Sasha opened the window of his room and peered out. His face was paper white against the dark interior. He said something to Marin, and Rygg caught the word ‘
Alpensturm
.’

“Come,” Marin said. They went inside, and Rygg sat on the bed while Marin peered at the computer screen. He talked with Sasha for a while, then turned to Marin.

“It seems that our ship has reappeared.”

“Where is it?”

“It was off the coast of England, two days ago. The operator heard its call signal. The
Alpensturm
disappeared on April 7th. But now it seems to have reappeared, for a few hours, at any rate. It went past the Dover cliffs on the 24th. Yesterday.”

“So it’s out of the Baltic and is headed south. But to where?”

The remainder of the afternoon was spent in detailed preparation, going over maps and code words, again and again. He got Marin to test him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to just take a map?” Marin said at one point.

Rygg shook his head. “Everything memorized. Safer. Another thing – tell Sasha to use the computer as little as possible.”

“Sasha is very good. The best.”

“All hackers have big heads. They think they can’t be broken. He may be very good, but somewhere on the other side is someone better. So I prefer all communication in person. No one can hack my brain.” He tapped his forehead twice.

Marin had prepared a briefcase for Rygg. It contained papers, a laptop, a few CDs and a memory stick. He had Rygg look through the papers. Many were identical to ones he’d just been going over in Oslo.

Rygg looked through it, and nodded in admiration. The laptop contained his spreadsheets, documents, music, photos of his daughter. “You’ve done your homework,” he said.

Marin shrugged and jerked a thumb to the back room. “Sasha,” he said. “There are no walls for Sasha. We could look into your company and take what we needed.”

Marin placed the laptop and papers inside the briefcase and snapped it shut. “Now, this briefcase is like a normal briefcase, but it has two small differences. First, look here.” He turned the case upside down and peeled back the leather from the bottom. He pried at the corner of the case, and a little door slid back, revealing a slot. “In here,” Marin said, “you will place whatever the contact gives you. Maybe documents, maybe a disc. But for now, it contains an envelope with ten thousand dollars. This envelope you will give to the contact upon receipt of the information.” He slid the door into place again, then covered it with the leather and tamped it down flat. “And look.” Turning the case upright again, he peeled back the leather of the handle. In a recess in the metal, a knife lay. Its blue steel glinted. “You will never have to use this, I hope,” Marin said. “But it is there. To be safe.” He opened the briefcase again, flipped open the folder, and took out several scraps of paper. They had been roughly ripped from newspapers and magazines. Marin spread them out, and Rygg leaned over them, thinking they must contain background information. The articles were on oil reserves in the North Atlantic. Marin chose one of the clippings. “You will keep these together,” he said. “But this one is special. You see, it has the picture of the iceberg? This is the one you will give to the contact. He has the other half of the page. He will ensure that the two halves match exactly.”

Rygg nodded. Marin placed the clipping with the others. “Which article?” he asked Rygg.

“Iceberg.”

“Good. How do you feel?”

“Ready.”

Lena drove him back to Zagreb. Marin and Sasha had waved goodbye, standing on the steps of the farmhouse like a family in a picture. Rygg had the briefcase on his lap, running his fingers across the handle. The knife lay under the textured leather, like a scorpion under a rock.

“You are nervous?” Lena asked as they wound up into the forest.

“Sure,” he said.

“That is good. It is good to be nervous. It keep you awake.”

“I guess so.” One moment he was walking to a bar in Hamburg, the next he was driving through a forest in Croatia with a knife hidden in his fucking briefcase handle. He turned to Lena. “How did I end up here?” he asked.

“This is the question I ask every morning. How? I could be in a nice dacha in Peredelkino, you know, with my book, with nice samovar, with my nice cat, my nice handsome man. Tall man with big muscles. But I am with short man, he smell like cigarette, I have to give him antibiotic injection in his buttock because he is shot, always we are running, always there is danger.” She laughed. “But if you give me one million dollar I can’t go to my dacha. I will stay with Marko Marin. Why? Because he is alive.” She pressed her fingers together at her heart, burst them open like a blossom in front of her face. “Alive.”