Lifetime (33 page)

‘Anything in particular?’

His supervisor’s tone was curt and dismissive.

‘It can wait,’ Thomas said and quietly closed the door.

For a while he just stood there in the corridor on the ninth floor, his face getting progressively hotter.

He should have known better.

Once they had made their decision, management would get in touch with him. It was not like he could force their hand by asking if they’d made up their minds yet.

Thomas still hadn’t received any feedback on the welfare project he’d been researching, but since it had been expanded in scope several times, he presumed that they were satisfied with his work. For the past three and a half years he had looked into issues of poverty, squalor, guilt, contempt and social drop-outs, trying to figure out how society could alleviate these drawbacks in spite of repeated cutbacks.

He had earned a shot at something bigger. He was qualified to take on the regional picture. As far as he could tell, the position of shaping the future development of Sweden’s different regions would go either to him or to a woman at the Federation of Swedish County Councils, and she had already spent three years working on the subject. When it came to facts and figures, she had a massive advantage, while Thomas knew the ropes here at the Association – and he was already working here, too.

An older woman from some other section appeared further down the corridor, and he quickly headed back to his office. He trembled as he sank down at his desk, the wheels of his chair squeaking as he pulled himself in closer.

His gaze fell on a diagram that was fastened with a paper clip to a sketchy assessment. To be honest, he hadn’t really completed the interim report, but it no longer bothered him. If management didn’t give him more work they would just have to accept the inconclusive analysis, and if they did, he could finish the report on the side. He gathered up the papers on his desk, deposited them in a blue folder and put it away in the bookcase behind his desk.

Thomas looked around the room: typically Scandinavian blond birch bookcases, greyish-blue textiles, a dark blue carpet on a hardwood ash floor. It could be that he wouldn’t be spending much more time here. His contract expired on 30 June, which would make Friday his last day at work.

He took a deep breath and tried to fight back the feelings of vertigo, the sensation of being sucked down into a vortex of failure. He raked his hair off his face and began to concentrate on practical issues.

There wouldn’t be much to pack.

Unless someone protested, he’d be taking his files and material. The plants on the windowsill were company property, just like the furniture, the pictures, the computers and the rest of the technical equipment. As a matter of fact, Thomas hadn’t brought in a single personal item. No crayon drawings, no postcards, no pictures of Annika or the children.

If he didn’t have his job, what did he have?

Thomas’s life had changed in every respect after that day three and a half years ago when Annika had picked him up out at his old home in Vaxholm. Going with her hadn’t been an active decision, it had simply been the easiest way out. She had offered him an escape route, and he had taken it, leaping into the great unknown just to get away.

Not heading towards anything, just leaving things behind.

It hadn’t been fair to Annika, and it definitely hadn’t been fair to Eleonor.

The thought of the other man, the one who had taken his place by his wife’s side, was unbearable.

Martin is one of the partners. Aren’t you happy for me? I’m so happy, Thomas.

Gripping the edge of the desk, he took a couple of deep breaths.

If he didn’t even have a job, then what
did
he have?

Thomas let his gaze sweep across the cemetery that he could see from the window, the churchyard of Mariakyrkan, St Mary’s: the waterlogged grounds with their rows of grey granite crosses and headstones crisscrossed by rivulets of rainwater. Self-pity made his chest ache.

This wasn’t the way his life was supposed to be.

‘Here’s your mail.’

Thomas was startled by the cheerful announcement.

‘We’re almost there,’ the mailman said enthusiastically, handing over a small bundle of mail. ‘I’ll be taking my vacation as of next week. How about you?’

‘Me too,’ Thomas said, his mouth dry as he took his mail.

The busy mailman vanished as quickly as he had appeared, leaving Thomas dazed as he regarded the pile of manila envelopes. Mechanically, he picked up his paper-knife and slit the top one open. It contained information that he’d requested from the town of Pajala way up north about its implementation of welfare benefits. The next item was an in-house newsletter encouraging everyone to join in on Friday and play boules at Humlegården. Then there was his payslip, looking the same as it had every month.

The next envelope was thicker, glossier. He turned it over. It had been sent on from the city of Vaxholm. The upper left-hand corner displayed a large logotype, IG, followed by a row of Asian characters and the words in English:

Institute for Global Economics.

He hefted the letter in his hand, assessing its thickness: more than a centimetre.

This wasn’t anything he had ordered.

With a single flick Thomas tore open the envelope with his finger, not bothering to use the paperknife. A folder in English landed on his desk.

The International Next-Generation Leaders’ Forum was established by the Institute for Global Economics and the Korea Foundation with the main purpose of providing an opportunity for international next-generation leaders to meet their counterparts from all over the world to get acquainted with each other for their future cooperation . . .

He leafed through a few more pages.

Facing New Challenges – Luncheon Address at the 4th International Next-Generation Leaders’ Forum, Seoul, South Korea.

What the . . .?

Then he found the cover letter.

Dear Mr Samuelsson
, he read. He quickly skimmed through the rest of it.

The Institute was extremely honoured to invite him to represent Sweden and attend the Fourth International Next-Generation Leaders’ Forum, in Seoul, South Korea, during the period 2 September through 12 September this year. The forum would be attended by a delegate from each of the sixteen western countries that had been chosen, along with sixteen prominent young South Koreans. The Institute and the Korea Foundation would sponsor the trip, paying for room and board, seminars, field trips and tours of model factories. Unfortunately, the deadline was pressing and he was requested to reply no later than Tuesday, 26 June.

Thomas lowered the letter. Was this some kind of joke?

Quickly, he leafed through the rest of the papers and found a handwritten missive at the bottom of the stack.

Of course.

Kim Sung-Yoon, the forward from his old team back in Åkersberga. Sung-Yoon, the son of the South Korean ambassador, played ice hockey. Thomas, the captain of the team, had made sure that he was included as one of the guys.

Thomas stared at the spidery letters.

Holy smoke.
Kim Sung-Yoon, he’d totally forgotten him.

But the Korean had obviously remembered
him.

Dropping the letter on the desk, Thomas looked out over the cemetery and thought back to the old days: Sung-Yoon, a short and cheerful guy whose eyes almost disappeared when he laughed. They had spent a lot of time together for a year or so. Thomas had been the one to get Sung-Yoon drunk for the very first time. Naturally, the ambassador had been furious, and he had forbidden Thomas to associate with his son, a command that the young men had ignored.

When his father’s diplomatic career was over, the Kim family had returned to South Korea. Sung-Yoon got a job with the organization that had arranged the Olympics in Seoul back in 1988. He and Thomas had lost touch seven or eight years ago.

Thomas picked up the letter again, reading the impressively correct Swedish.

It seemed that nowadays Sung-Yoon was an undersecretary of state at the Department of Sports and Athletics in Seoul. He was the one who had proposed Thomas as Sweden’s representative at the Fourth International Next-Generation Leader’s Forum.

Sung-Yoon would be attending the symposium himself, as one of the sixteen South Korean delegates, and he hoped that they would be able to get together and talk about old times.

Thomas turned the letter over. The paper was blank on the other side. He glanced through the rest of the papers: suggested flight routes, a preliminary agenda for the ten-day stay in Seoul, a description of the dress code for the different events – business attire for meetings, casual dress for tours, no jeans at Panmunjon. A tour of the Hyundai and Samsung plants, and a trip to the tunnels under the demilitarised zone at the Thirty-eighth Parallel, meetings with the Korean president, lunch with the Secretary of the Treasury, dinner with the Defence Secretary, lectures by several professors and a Nobel Prize-winner.

This can’t be happening
, Thomas thought and realized that he needed some air.

He got up, grabbed his lunch vouchers and made a getaway. When the door to his section supervisor’s office opened, Thomas was waiting for the elevator. The three bosses left the room. His supervisor caught sight of him and stopped short, no longer laughing along with the others.

‘There you are,’ the man boomed. ‘What did you want to discuss?’

Thomas squared his shoulders, felt in a jacket pocket for something that wasn’t there and spoke in a calmly informative tone of voice:

‘All I needed was some information, really,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ve been invited to represent Sweden at an international forum for leadership in Seoul this fall so I’ll be out of town for the first two weeks of September. I realize that this may have no bearing on your plans for the autumn, but I wanted you to know.’

The entire group had come to a halt. All eyes were on him.

‘A leadership forum? What does it involve?’

Thomas’s boss had lost his jovial look. His mouth was slack.

‘The Fourth International Next-Generation Leaders’ Forum,’ Thomas said. ‘It’s arranged by the Institute for Global Economics and the Korea Foundation. Are you familiar with them?’

The elevator bell dinged and the doors opened smoothly. Thomas got in.

‘Anyone going down?’ he asked the supervisors.

They all shook their heads and Thomas raised his right hand in a farewell gesture as the doors closed. When the cage started to descend he leaned his head back against the wall.

Holy smoke
, he thought again.
I’ll be damned.

The heap of black plastic garbage bags practically reached the ceiling, blocking the entrance to the editing room like a sandbagged firing trench.

‘Are you in here somewhere?’ Annika asked in a low voice, trying to find a chink to peek through.

The response was a groan from the other side of the heap.

‘Go around to the right. There’s a passage behind the monitor rack,’ Anne Snapphane said.

Annika left her jacket and her bag in the doorway, then picked her way over cables and electrical cords. The air in the room was characteristic of editing rooms, crackling with dryness, and the wall-to-wall carpeting was charged with so much static electricity that her hair stood on end. The atmosphere was dusty and greyish. The screens and energy-conserving bulbs gave off a blue, flickering light.

‘What’s this?’ Annika asked, waving in the direction of the bags.

‘It’s the material from the show, the stuff that was impounded. Isn’t this dandy? The police gave it to us like this, in one hell of a mess.’

Annika looked down into the half-full bag at Anne’s feet. Videotapes of different formats were mixed up with printouts of schedules and other junk.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Catalogue the stuff, categorize it and file it. I’ve got to make a note of the time codes of each tape, so we can start editing the show, and we’re in a tearing hurry, too. It won’t be made official until tomorrow, but we’re going to start airing the shows on Saturday, just as originally planned.’

‘Michelle hasn’t even been buried yet,’ Annika exclaimed.

‘Tell that to the Big Boss in London,’ Anne Snapphane said. She pressed the eject button of the portable editing console by her knees, removed the tape with her right hand and put in a new one a second later with her left. While the machine was busy loading the tape, Anne filled out an adhesive label, slapped it on the recently ejected tape and stored it in a box. A moment later the screen started to flicker and Michelle Carlsson appeared on the monitor screen in front of them.

Both women went rigid, struck by the definition of the image. The dead woman was standing there, tense, ready to go, apparently listening to something in her earpiece.

‘No, I’d like to put the anarchists on first,’ she said into her body mike, talking to someone in the control room, answering a question that was probably stored on some other tape in some other bag.

The woman didn’t move from the spot while a makeup artist came into the frame and closely inspected her appearance. Michelle didn’t notice her, she was listening so intently to the voice in her ear.

‘The anarchists first, then the Nazi – I want a close-up, shot from the left, so that the swastika on her cheek fills the screen.’

The make-up artist dabbed at the woman’s forehead with a huge pink puff, picked up a brush, filled in an eyebrow and then backed away.

‘Okay,’ Michelle Carlsson said and nodded, mouthing a thank-you to the make-up artist. Then she waved, adjusted her earpiece, turned forty-five degrees and gazed into the camera with vacant eyes.

Annika studied those eyes, the blank look, and felt her chest constrict. There was no joy in their depths, no satisfaction, no presence in the moment, only despair and a crushing sense of obligation.

Then Michelle Carlsson nodded again, took a step back and turned on her inner light.

The transformation was immediate, fantastic and dramatic. The woman’s face changed: her eyes came alive, gleaming and sparkling, and a sense of warmth reached out through the screen, embracing Annika and Anne like a hug, making them smile.