The Swede (26 page)

T
HE LONG, LONESOME CORRIDORS OF
the security police. Grip was in Stockholm, inside with the Boss. Not the highest-ranking one, not his direct superior either, but the old man. His room had always been smaller than the other managers’, but he at least had a rug and leather chairs. There were standards.

“Okay, so it all boiled down to nothing,” said the Boss. “Just a case of unsolved identity?”

“Yes,” said Grip.

“They figure it out?”

“No, he died.”

“And it took you almost four weeks?”

“American bureaucracy, their usual incompetence.”

“You questioned him?”

“A few times.”

“He spoke Swedish?”

Grip didn’t answer directly. He leaned back and forth.

“With an accent maybe?” suggested the Boss.

Grip shrugged. The Boss nodded.

Four weeks had disappeared. Not a single paper filing on the matter, not even an ink dot at the end. All that existed was a handwritten note on the Boss’s desk with Grip’s estimates of his own expenses. No locations, no dates, no receipts, just: “Food,” “Lodging,” and the vague item “Other.” The Boss had glanced at the
paper and then set it aside. The amounts would be added as tax-free expenses on his next month’s pay slip. Nothing about Diego Garcia, nothing about New York, nothing about the security police reimbursing him for two bottles of tear gas and a very sharp awl.

The Boss sat. Grip stood with his hands in his pockets and looked out the window.

“I’d like to have you back,” said the Boss, “full-time. I need—”

“I don’t want anything to do with Americans for a while.”

The Boss laughed, like a cough. “It’s true. The world is about the Americans, you run into them.”

“Exactly.

“But you like this—the travel, the independence. Being able to disappear. I need people who can do that.”

“Forget it.”

“Back to the bodyguards, then?”

Grip nodded.

“What a damned dead end.” Some squeaky metal part resisted when the Boss leaned back in his chair. “Overtime, earphone, and practicing two-shot series down at the shooting range, year in and year out?”

“It suits me.”

“For now?”

Grip said nothing, continued looking out.

The Boss threw himself farther back in his chair. “So where are you packing your suits off to next?”

“One of the girls is going down to the Riviera.”

“Babysitting for a princess. And why always the Riviera? What do they do down there?”

“You already know.”

“You laugh at royal attendants’ bad jokes, order a taxi for them in the evenings, and shove intrusive photographers in the chest.”

“It suits me.”

“My ass. You hate it, but it’s about the vacation time. I get it—you can come and go.”

Grip stood silent for a moment. “I can avoid the Americans,” he said then.

“Yes, I guess that’s true. When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow. The state jet from Bromma.”

“Shit, for a princess to get a tan.”

“There’s also the opening of an exhibition.” Grip watched a bird outside the window.

“And then two weeks on water skis.”

“Sure.”

“Water-skiing, for Christ’s sake, Grip.”

“I’m just a bodyguard.” The bird disappeared. Grip turned around. “As I said”—he made an apologetic gesture with his hand—“I went where they wanted, but the man in the cell died.”

“Died, yes,” said the Boss, giving up, letting his cheeks collapse, like a dog’s.

Grip nodded and disappeared into the hallway.

E
ARLY SUMMER SUN.
T
HE SKY
as intensely blue as a gas flame. Grip walked back home, after a detour to Södermalm at the southern end of town. Went to the Stockholm City Library at Medborgarplatsen, where a librarian had helped him track down a newspaper. He’d called a few days before; she was an old acquaintance. Once he was standing there, she said he might as well keep it, so now he carried it with him, the
Kansas City Star
—she’d ordered all the past week’s issues, but there was just one day that Grip wanted. He walked up Götgatspuckeln, came out at Slussen for the view of the water, the green copper church spires, the medieval facades. Along Stadsgårdskajen sat the season’s first cruise ship. The white giant was anchored some distance out, and harbor boats shuttled back and forth, ferrying the masses to Old Town. Grip paused, then decided to take the same path, following the walkway down the stairs to Kornhamnstorg square. Once the Slussen traffic was behind him, he opened the paper and folded it in half so he could hold it one-handed.

Then walked and read.

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, Reza Khan was led into the execution chamber at Lansing Correctional Facility. The condemned prisoner initially wore the same absent expression that reporters observed during his trial. It should be noted that
Khan’s emotions were very difficult to read, given that his face bore scars from the severe gunshot wound he suffered in connection with his arrest. He always maintained that his head injuries were responsible for his controversial loss of memory.

Khan was transferred three days ago from death row in El Dorado prison to a secluded cell at Lansing. Authorities having failed to locate any family members, in recent days Khan met only with his lawyer. His last meal consisted of fried chicken.

When the curtain between Khan and the witnesses was drawn, Khan was already strapped to the table, with a needle and tubes attached to both inner arms. The table had been raised, and Khan seemed unprepared to see the assembled faces. Warden Richard Hickock read out the judgment, and only then did Khan become more alert. After Hickock read the judgment, Khan replied sarcastically: “It is hardly a surprise to anyone here that I am going to die.” The warden, maintaining his composure, asked if Khan had any last words. Khan replied coolly: “What would you like me to do, cry ‘Allah akbar’? No, you must find something original.”

There followed a few moments of confusion, when the warden’s assistants tried to lower the bunk again but had problems with a latch. While they tried to remove the pin, Khan squinted out at the witnesses on their chairs and focused on one face. Someone described him as smiling, others argued that it was more an expression of surprise, when Reza Khan said: “Now I recognize you,” whereupon the pin came out, and the table dropped down.

Grip turned onto Västerlånggatan. An outdoor spectacle he usually avoided in summer: kids with ice cream, Japanese guides,
Viking horns, cameras, and dense flocks that were a pickpocket’s paradise. He was heading for the corner at Storkyrkobrinken, dodged two American cruise ladies in broad hats whose sneakers inched along, found a new path through the crowd, and looked down at the paper again.

The first syringe lulls the condemned man, the second and third paralyze the lungs and stop the heart. Khan was anesthetized quickly, but before lapsing into unconsciousness, he mumbled something heard as “Fairy” by a few witnesses. This he repeated a few times. Khan was declared dead by the prison physician ten minutes later. No movement or sign of discomfort could be discerned in the process. One of those present claimed to see some twitching in one hand, another described it as “killing a dog.” Reza Khan’s remains will be cremated within the next few days and spread to the winds in an unknown location.

Outside the prison, the execution was celebrated by Christian groups formerly accused of the acts for which Khan was convicted. With the release of Charles-Ray Turnbull and tonight’s execution, it appears that these congregations’ reputations have been restored. “Wrath of God, Wrath of God,” chanted a group calling itself the Southern Baptist Conference, when the hearse left the prison.

As previously reported by this newspaper, several analysts believe that the arcane acts of Reza Khan and his group indicate that religious war is now a permanent fixture of American life. When Kansas Republican senator Barbara Freeman heard the news of Khan’s execution, she stated: “This is the first terrorist who has received his just punishment since September 11.”

Grip stopped. In the corner at Storkyrkobrinken, people gathered around a small table. Four Lithuanians, but only the one in the dirty black hat and neck bandanna caught your attention. He stood behind the table, he with the nimble movements. Already last summer, the police had intervened after someone called, even taken them into the station. But they’d had been obliged to release all four again. “People give us their money, we do not take it, never. We are not thieves.”

Three cups on a table—which one hid the ball?
Tchuff, tchuff, tchuff
, the cups shuffled around with the lightning movements of his hands.

Grip had heard they were back this summer. Had to go see them. Stood at the corner opposite, a few steps away from the crowd.

“Put down a tventy, double back if you get right,” the man said with an accent in several languages to the audience. The guy in the hat behind the table, and three of his own in the crowd. A note on the table—
tchuff, tchuff, tchuff
. A slight push from behind, or a loud comment at the right moment, enough to distract the bettor’s attention: small movements here, bigger gestures there, they even invented little arguments. When the bidding was slow, the three played themselves—
tchuff, tchuff, tchuff
. At those times, it was possible to keep up. Then you thought you could see.

“Amazing,” said an American voice when the ball rolled out of the cup in the middle. A short Japanese man raised a hundred in the air and put it down. A real bidder. The tempo changed.
Tchuff, tchuff, tchuff
.

A
t the baths. In Gramercy. Grip had remained for a moment beneath the steps after Shauna left. By the time he’d climbed up and was heading for the locker room, he’d already put it all behind him. Topeka,
Mary, N., everything had fallen away. Or so he believed. He came to a halt when the thought struck him, and Shauna had already disappeared. He mumbled as he took a few hesitant steps, then turned and walked back. Out to the pool and past the colonnade.

The women’s locker room. A little profile of a naked woman on the door. He assumed that they were alone, went inside.

An empty corridor. Farther down he heard water running, moved closer, saw no one but realized she was showering. A door stood wide open in the aisle in front of him, a linen closet. He would just make sure it was her, didn’t want to scare anyone, risk making someone upset. One step inside, only to see without being seen through the gap, so he could call out—then put on a towel and come back out again.

The idea that struck him came from his last meeting with N. inside the cell, when N. was so tired and absent, almost confused. That was what he wanted to ask her about.

Grip looked straight into the women’s shower room. She was only a few yards away, standing alone with her back to him, her bathing suit lying on a marble bench behind. Nude and almost on tiptoe, she reached around and rinsed out the hair that lay slicked down like a tail at her neck and along her back. White tile and marble, her dark hair. Strong and beautiful.

Like a goddess.

The water streamed, and Grip was hidden, her whole figure framed by the gap.

The nightly interrogations of N. at the end, the FBI’s questions about Adderloy, New York, whatever else—it wasn’t Shauna who asked the questions. She had people who did it for her, Grip realized that even then. The last time he sat opposite N., he’d murmured, “She came in,” but Grip thought it had something to do
with traumatic memories from the tsunami. But of course: at the last moment Shauna herself went in, and after that N. had given up. What had they talked about? That was what Grip wanted to ask.

But.

Naturally. She hadn’t said anything at all, she had simply appeared in his cell.

N.’s exhausted gaze, like a prayer to die. And Grip had seen his chance, the powdered malaria pills that filled the pen.

The images flowed by, like movie clips. One of N.’s small figures drawn in the newspaper: a cat’s narrow eyes. The water poured down in the shower. “Who was it that told us to shoot the pelicans?”

It wasn’t only her dark hair that broke up the white of the shower room. The swimsuit was gone; everything about her was exposed. Everything. She was facing away from him, but a pair of eyes looked straight at Grip behind the door. Precisely above her lower back. It was as if the water trickling down her body made it arch. The tail was black and raised to lash, the eyes narrow and gleaming.

T
he door to the linen closet shut again with a bang. The woman in the shower looked hastily over her shoulder, smiled when she met the maid’s gaze, and then turned up the flow again.

A new stack of towels was being brought out to the pool. The maid carried them under one arm, and when she came out the door to the colonnade, she saw the back of a man walking away from her.

“We’re closing now.”

He didn’t answer. A towel around his hips, a toned back.

“Is everything all right?” There was something about his step.

He didn’t answer. A moment of light in the gloom, when the door to the men’s locker room opened. And the man disappeared.

The feeling of malaise lingered. The maid stood for a moment before she continued away with her stack.

A
mazing.” The Japanese man at the corner at Storkyrkobrinken was five hundred Swedish crowns poorer. The American woman’s husband had lost that and then some. A nudge, a well-timed sneeze, a round of bets in between that someone else had won.

“Just because you’ve exposed the trick doesn’t mean they’ve committed a crime,” said the lawyers who appeared when the Lithuanians were in custody the summer before. “Magic always has an explanation.”
Tchuff, tchuff, tchuff
. “People love to be fooled.”

A
puzzled curse, the ball that rolled from under the wrong cup. The Americans walked away.

Grip looked down at the newspaper. Read again: “Someone described him as smiling when Reza Khan said: ‘Now I recognize you.’” At the end of the article, the names of all those present were listed. Grip seethed: Topeka’s chief of police, a judge, Khan’s lawyer, a few family members of the bank victims, some journalists, and then from the FBI—Grip nodded—Shauna Friedman.

Tchuff, tchuff, tchuff.

Grip read again: “. . . he mumbled something heard as ‘Fairy.’”

The cups stopped on the table; a hand from the audience about to point hesitated. Grip reeled off quietly: “Fairy, fairy, fairy.”

The cup was lifted. Grip stretched and corrected himself. “Mary . . . Mary . . . Mary.”