Never Fuck Up: A Novel (15 page)

Niklas worked out in the apartment after his run. He was driven by routine. His philosophy: all training is built on habit, duplication, repetition. Alternating four times fifty push-ups with some leg exercises. Switching up four sets with free weights for his biceps with forty times sixty sit-ups. He sweated like a pig in an army tent. Stretched thoroughly. Wanted to keep the litheness in his muscles. Rested on the couch for fifteen minutes.

Stood back up. Time for the climax—tanto dori katas, knife warfare. Jogging was to measure himself, for conditioning and fat burning. The push-ups and the muscle exercises were necessary to maintain strength and to look decent. He’d admit it any day: vanity was his thing. But tanto dori was something else: relaxation and power. He could do it for hours. Like meditation. Forget everything else. Go into himself. Go into the movements. Go into the knife. The sweeps, the steps. The stabs.

He’d learned the technique six years ago from a couple of elite officers in a company he’d worked with in Afghanistan. Since then, he’d trained as often as he could. You needed space to do the movement sequences, it was like dancing. Couldn’t always do it when you were out in the field. But the empty apartment was made for close-combat technique.

First, be still. Heels together. Feet out at a ninety-degree angle. Arms down, in front of your gut. The knife in your right hand with the thumb resting on the flat side of the blade. Left hand in a light grip over the right hand. Head down, chin tucked in. Deep breaths through your nose. Then attack. All the muscles explode. A step forward with your right leg. Weight low. Exhale through your mouth. Air and muscles tighten your stomach. Important: no big movements—or your opponent will see right away what you’re planning on doing. Sharp cut with the knife. Twist it on the recoil.

He went through the kata with concentration.

This one took four and a half minutes. Every movement’d been practiced separately at least five hundred times. Stabs to the abdomen. Gutting techniques. Chop-chop methodology.

Originally, it was some Japanese thing. But the soldiers who taught him in Afghanistan mixed and added. The techniques of the different katas covered everything. Cramped spaces like elevators, prison cells, and toilet stalls. Techniques for combat in cars, boats, and airplanes. Unstable environments, combat in heavy vegetation, on slippery surfaces, in silence. Water techniques where the slowness of the motions created new possibilities to predict the opponent’s next move, close combat in stairwells—special blocking techniques for punches or stabs coming from diagonally above. As long as Niklas carried a knife, he never needed to be worried up close.

At the same time: worry was a healthy sign down in the sandbox. The men who stopped feeling even so much as a sting of fear in combat often lost their grip. The mercenary industry didn’t tolerate any real crazies. They were sent home. Or were eliminated.

He was happy that he’d gotten the chance. Not a lot of Swedes in the world got to fight in real combat. U.N. pussies mostly guarded refugee camps. He knew; he’d tried to be one of them.

After showering, he took two Nitrazepam. Loneliness wore him down. He needed friends. Benjamin, the dude who’d gotten him the dirty real estate hookup, was the only friend he could remember having in high school, before his time in the mountain brigade during his mandatory military service in northern Sweden, up in Arvidsjaur. Maybe Benjamin was the only buddy he’d ever had. Niklas’d seen him last week for the first time in ages. They were meeting up again today.

He popped another downer. Walked out. Toward the subway. Kept his eyes peeled for rats.

The subway car’d been subjected to a graffiti assault. Niklas closed his eyes. Tried to sleep. He thought about the screams he’d heard from the neighbors. The girl in there with the Iraqi accent must’ve gotten it bad. He hadn’t seen the guy who’d done it to her yet. But when he did, Niklas doubted he’d be able to control himself.

He was lost in thought. Human beings lived in Hobbes’s world. Niklas knew that better than anyone. You couldn’t point out who was good and who was evil. Couldn’t paint life over with some sort of morality paint. Pretend like there was right and wrong, good and evil. That was bullshit. Everyone was at war with everyone else. Someone had to go in, take control. Someone had to make sure people didn’t beat, shoot, or blow one another up. Someone had to take power. No one had the right to whine about the system without first trying to do something about it, with all their might. That’s why the mujahideen deserved to be respected. It was a war. They weren’t any worse people than the soldiers in his unit. The only difference was that his men had better weapons. So they took control.

In a way, it was the same deal with the girl in the apartment next door. Her man did his thing. She should do hers—knock him dead. Right way.

He got off the subway. They were meeting up at Mariatorget. Tivoli, a bar. To grab a beer. Niklas sat down at a table.

After a while, he showed up. Benjamin: shaved head with a beard like some old ZZ Top guy. Bull neck. Snub nose that’d probably taken quite a few hits over the years. Still had his sunglasses on. Niklas thought about what the Yanks liked to call those ugly, cheap shades: BCG—birth control glasses—you couldn’t get anywhere near a chick with those babies on. Benjamin walked with the same rocking gait he’d always had. Cocky to the max: hands in the pockets of his open jacket, swinging with every step he took.

Niklas’s first thought when he’d met Benjamin last time was that he’d seriously changed since they were kids. Back then: he was the guy who wasn’t really able to read situations. Who droned on about boring stuff—like that his mom’d accidentally dyed the white load of laundry blue—for a little too long. Who didn’t change his T-shirt after gym class. Whom the girls never glanced at, but who still sent little notes to the coolest chick in the class, writing how much he liked her and wondering if she wanted to make out sometime. He was never bullied; there was a reason for that. But he was never part of the group, either. From time to time he’d go berserk. If someone provoked him, taunted him about his hand sweat, teased him about his name, or just made up some crap about his mom. It was scary. He became like a trapped
animal. Could whip guys who were two years older than him. Pound their heads into the gravel on the soccer field, pummel them with rocks. And that’d attracted Niklas. It got better in junior high. Benjamin started taking tae kwon do instead. Four years later, he took home bronze in the Junior Nationals. Became someone worth counting on.

They shook hands. Benjamin’s handshake: the hypertense grip of a bodybuilder. Was he trying to prove something?

“Hey, Benjamin. Things’re good?”

“Absolutely.”

“Any questions about me lately?”

“Actually, yeah. Cops called this morning and asked me how long you’d hung out at my place on that night last week.”

“And?”

“I said we hung out all night, watched the
Godfather
movies and stuff.”

“Thanks. Honestly, I owe you one.”

They walked over to the bar and ordered drinks. Benjamin tried to heckle Niklas for speaking such bad Swenglish. Niklas didn’t crack a smile.

He ordered a Guinness. Benjamin, a mineral water. Niklas paid for both.

“You don’t want anything else?” Niklas asked.

Benjamin shook his head. “No. I’m deffing.”

Niklas didn’t get it. Eight years in the bush, often without beer, booze, or good grub, had made him yearn for the real stuff.

They sat down.

Chatted. Niklas didn’t really understand what Benjamin did these days. Apparently he’d worked as a bouncer. Then a house painter. Then he’d been unemployed. Now something vague.

Niklas thought about his own story. The CV of his life: a few highlights—but mostly his childhood was filled with boredom, alienation, and fear. Boredom while waiting at home in the apartment every Saturday for Mom to come home from work. Alienation at school. How everyone must’ve known that something wasn’t right in Niklas Brogren’s household, but never said anything. Terror that the asshole was going to beat Mom to death. Fear of falling asleep at night, of all the nightmares, of the sound of Mom’s pleading, screams, tears. Of the rats. And then the highlights. Being drafted. The year with the mountain brigade. The adrenaline kicks before battle. The first time he’d
fought under real fire in Afghanistan. Parties with the guys in Iraq after well-executed missions.

Benjamin looked up from his chatter.

“Hello. Earth calling. Are you with me, or what?”

“No worries, I just drifted off a bit.” Niklas laughed.

“Oh yeah, where to?”

“You know, thinking about Mom and stuff.”

“Oh, okay. I can tell you something that’ll put you in a better mood. I joined a shooting club. Did I tell you that already? It’s fun as hell. Soon I’ll get my license and get to buy a twenty-two. You gotta wait for higher caliber revolvers. But maybe you don’t think that’s all that special. I bet you’ve shot up a storm, huh?”

“I guess you could say that. But we mostly practiced with guns for fun down there.”

“Cool. You can get tricked by all that stuff, right? You watch a bunch of American movies where they do all those weird grips. Holding the gun sideways in your hand like it doesn’t weigh anything.”

“Yeah, I know, that doesn’t work.”

“It doesn’t work for shit.”

“Yep. That’s Hollywood stuff. You get lousy accuracy with a grip like that. Your whole hand shakes with every shot, like on some senile fuck. It’s kind of like running. You see them do that all the time in those flicks, too. They run and shoot. But everyone who’s been around at all knows that doesn’t work.”

“You gotta practice. What kind of heat did you guys pack?”

Niklas wasn’t really supposed to talk about that stuff. He tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. “I don’t really remember. But hey, you got a girl these days?”

“How can you not remember what gun you had? Come on.”

It was a matter of honor. Some stuff you just didn’t babble about to people on the outside: the arsenal, where you’d done assignments, who the other guys in the company were—and how many people you’d killed. Even if you quit a private army, you had to stick to the rules. The vow of silence was valid until death did you part. Niklas would never leak. He wasn’t the type. Why couldn’t Benjamin just accept that?

Benjamin eyed him.

Niklas was short: “You just don’t talk about that stuff, is all.”

Benjamin’s eyes narrowed. His brow furrowed. Was he pissed off?

“Okay. I understand.
Nemas problemas
.”

Everything was cool. They chatted for a while longer. The weather was nice. Benjamin told him that he’d bought a game-bred fighting dog. He was proud of the name: Arnold. Had it practice on fenders that he hung up on the carpet rack in the inner courtyard of his building. When its jaws locked, sometimes it kept hanging on for over twenty minutes. Couldn’t let go. Helplessly humiliated by its own stubbornness.

In the middle of their chat, Niklas’s phone rang. He continued to jive with Yankee taste in music—his signal was that Taylor Hicks song.

“Hi Mom.”

“Hi. What are you doing?”

“I’m hanging out with an old friend, Benjamin. Remember him? Can I talk to you later, maybe?”

He didn’t try to hide the irritation in his voice.

“No, I have to tell you something.”

“Can we talk about it in twenty minutes?”

“Please. Listen. I think I know who they found in my basement.”

Niklas’s hair stood on end. He felt cold all over. Hoped Benjamin wouldn’t hear or understand what they were talking about. Pressed the phone harder against his ear.

“I think Claes tried to be in touch with me that day. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year. I didn’t think about it then, that’s how he is, you know. I know you never liked Classe, but he’s meant a lot to me, you know that. Anyway, he hasn’t been in touch since. Isn’t that strange? I thought of it yesterday and tried to call him. No answer. But he has so many different numbers so I don’t really know which one he uses. I tried to call a couple of his old friends. But they weren’t worried at all, said Claes is always hard to get ahold of. I even texted him. But he hasn’t gotten back to me. This is terrible, Niklas. Awful.”

“Mom, it doesn’t have to mean anything. He might be out of the country.”

“No, wouldn’t someone know that, then? And Claes usually calls back. It must’ve been him. I’m sure of it. He’s gone. Murdered. Who could’ve done something like that?”

“Mom, I’ll call you in three minutes.”

Niklas hung up. Felt like he was going to hurl. Got up. Benjamin gave him those narrowed eyes again.

“I have to go. Sorry. But this was nice. Let’s stay in touch?”

Benjamin looked surprised.