The Swimmer (20 page)

He fell silent. They looked at each other. The train was approaching its maximum speed. Paris was just an hour away.

‘It’s going to work out, Moody,’ Klara said at last. ‘We’ll get through this, okay?’

He nodded and closed his eyes to hide the tears welling up inside him. Klara leaned against his shoulder. He could smell her, her shampoo, her perfume.

Afghanistan

When the camera zooms in on the red and white banner stretched across the bridge of the aircraft carrier, I leave the cheering, testosterone-fueled crowd and walk out onto the tarmac for some air. Out here the evening is mild and cool, no more than a whisper of heat in the gentle breeze. The roar of the generators mingles with the sound of the national anthem, the clatter of beer bottles, gullibility. I feel a nausea that refuses to subside. Maybe it’s something I ate. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe my body is physically reacting to what we’ve become.

I can no longer watch the president on television without anxiety, and this latest spectacle upsets me.
Mission accomplished
. Both here and in Iraq, according to the secretary of defense. It’s only been two and a half months since I held a young, overly patriotic colleague in my arms as he died out here in the dirt, in these desolate, terrible mountains. His blood in the dust, on my hands, my shirt. He liked German beer and America. Harvard Law School and soccer. His eyes burned, not with restlessness or rootlessness, but with idealism. What is it they say? Innocence is the first casualty of war? How long had he been here? A month? I don’t keep track anymore. Not of months. Not of the dead.

I hear them cheering in the mess hall. They’re celebrating the illusion of victory, a flickering, shaky hologram, a lie so poorly constructed that it’s downright insulting that we’re expected to take it seriously. But tonight, they just can’t take it anymore. After months of heightened tension this childishly simple symbolism is exactly what they need. How long until they die out here in the dirt, their unarmored jeeps blown to bits, their body parts scattered over a mile radius? What do they know about the graveyard of empires?

I sit on my haunches with my back against the corrugated metal and I take a gulp of my Corona. I’m drinking again. It’s been fifteen years since I sat with those students, the Taliban, in mountains not far from here. Fifteen years since I armed them, gave them satellite images, taught them about asymmetric warfare, promised them our friendship. Fifteen years. A whisper. A parenthesis. It’s been eighteen years since I made a promise of total destruction to a man on a ferry in a bitterly cold Stockholm. If you’re wondering why we’re so convinced they have weapons of mass destruction, it’s because they got them from us. We reap what we sow. Gravel, blood, lie after lie. We sow chaos and reap the status quo.

I see him just before he stops next to me. His white scar glowing in the evening sun. He’s pale. Porous. His gray hair cut short around his balding head. Like me, he’s dressed in a mismatched field uniform without insignia. A spy in wartime. He takes a sip of his beer and belches into his fist. He looks happy. This is his milieu, his war.

‘That’s some pretty impressive bullshit,’ he says and stretches.

A smile lurks on his lips. I don’t say anything.

‘Bush on that goddamn boat? That was some wonderful, fucking bullshit.’

He throws his empty beer bottle in a wide arc toward a Dumpster thirty feet away. It lands with a ring without crushing.

I nod, signaling vaguely that I agree.

We stand in silence for a minute before he turns toward the door of the mess hall.

‘You want another beer?’ he says over his shoulder.

I shake my head.

‘It won’t hold up,’ I say instead.

He stops and turns around. He raises his eyebrows in exaggerated or feigned surprise.

‘What? What won’t hold up?’

I don’t look at him. I just squint out the sun flashing off the windows of the dusty Jeeps.

‘You know what I mean. The interrogation policy. Our methods in the interrogation rooms. It won’t hold up.’

He turns back from the door, comes over to me again. That little smile in the corner of his mouth.

‘Even if it did pay off,’ I say, ‘the methods are too brutal. People will say anything, admit to anything. Just to stop it. You can’t trust the results.’

‘Bullshit,’ he says, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Bullshit. Do not give me that bullshit. You’ve seen the results. Intel rates have quadrupled since we started the enhanced interrogation program. We take more weapons. We know more about the leadership. More about what they’re planning.’

He steps back, eyeing me.

‘What the hell… you’re not losing your grip, are you?’

‘Losing my grip? All I’m saying is that the methods are inhumane. And don’t lead to reliable results. That’s all. We break them down, and we don’t get reliable results in exchange. All the research points to that.’

‘Research,’ he sputters. ‘What fucking research? Do you have a Ph.D. in interrogation techniques or something? We’re in the middle of a goddamn war, if you haven’t noticed. No matter what the president says on TV. War, okay? Eat or be eaten. If you can’t handle it, get on a plane and go back to Langley where you can be discussing the latest
New York Times
editorial around the watercooler by tomorrow morning. But out here, it’s what works that matters. And what we do works. It’s as simple as that.’

‘But it doesn’t fucking work!’

I don’t mean to raise my voice, but his reptilian eyes, his thirst for blood, it triggers my fury. His kind have the upper hand now. Car batteries and electrodes. Everything has changed since Kurdistan.

My colleague says nothing. He just eyes me closely. So I continue. Kicking the sand, the empathy draining from my eyes. We stare at each other. The sound of the TV and the voices from inside the mess hall. The smell of fried food and a dry spring. He turns away first.

‘It’s time for you to rotate home,’ he says. ‘Your time in the field is past its due date, when you’re not able to make the hard decisions anymore. Best you pack your bags.’

I say nothing, just continue looking at him calmly.

‘You know that, right?’

He takes a step closer. He’s up in my face. His breath smells like beer and dust and tobacco.

‘You always were a little cunt,’ he hisses. ‘I knew that back in Iraq. I knew you were a little, fucking cunt. You better make sure you get a spot on the next rotation home from Kabul. You’re done here.’

He spits in the dirt, turns around, and goes back into the mess hall without turning around. Is this how it ends?

Stockholm, Sweden

Gabriella climbed out of the taxi in front of Albert & Jack’s Bakery and Deli on Skeppsbron, right next door to the law firm Lindblad and Wiman. Halfway up the three steps to the café, she changed her mind. It was past three, she still hadn’t had lunch, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. Her nagging unease overrode all other bodily functions.

Mahmoud, she thought. What’s going on?

Bronzelius had asked her to contact him if Mahmoud reached out to her. It might make things easier, he said. Säpo, the Swedish Security Service, was convinced it was all a misunderstanding. Mahmoud would probably just need to turn himself in and explain what happened. The whole thing could probably be resolved informally.

Gabriella sighed. She didn’t know what to believe. But it was definitely a relief that Säpo thought he was innocent.

Wet December snow fell into her thick, red hair as she walked the few steps to Lindblad and Wiman’s entrance. Dark clouds hung over Djurgården and the Stockholm harbor. It had been a merciless December so far.

She sat down with a sigh in front of her computer and started answering the e-mails she hadn’t had time to look through in detail on her BlackBerry in the taxi on her way back from court. But she couldn’t focus, so she leaned back in her chair instead. Her tall windows looked out onto a red eighteenth-century house on the other side of Ferkens Gränd, a narrow side street.

She picked up her phone and tried calling Mahmoud, as she’d tried a dozen times already. When she couldn’t reach him, she called Klara again, but her phone was also turned off.

Shit. What was going on?

‘Why did I end up on the phone with a Cardigan from Säpo on my already nonexistent lunch break today?’

Gabriella winced and looked up from her computer. Hans Wiman was standing in the doorway. His intelligent, gray eyes, famous from countless televised press conferences and Swedish TV morning shows, were fastened on Gabriella. ‘Cardigan’ was his infamous nickname for anyone belonging to a profession where a suit was not required work attire.

Wiman always wore a suit. Zegna or Armani. Even on Saturdays, as Gabriella had observed during the many weekends she’d spent in the office working on a case.

The first sign that your career at Lindblad and Wiman was nearing its end was if Wiman was heard describing you as a Cardigan. After that it was just a matter of weeks or months until you were told you weren’t ‘partner material’. You weren’t fired, they had more tact than that, but it meant it was time to start thinking about Plan B.

‘Säpo?’ Gabriella said.

She wasn’t prepared for this. She made a quick calculation. If the Security Service had talked to Wiman, he probably already knew she was acquainted with the wanted ‘terrorist’ or ‘elite soldier’—depending on which tabloid you read—Mahmoud Shammosh. Might as well put her cards on the table.

‘Regarding Mahmoud Shammosh?’ she said.

‘Regarding you, Gabriella,’ Wiman said. He continued to hold her gaze, his red tie glaring in the gloom.

‘Me?’

She swallowed. If there was anything that could jeopardize a career, surely becoming the focus of a Säpo investigation must be it?

Wiman nodded. He seemed to enjoy watching her squirm. Was this a test?

‘A Mr Bronzelius, if I remember correctly. He mentioned he’d been looking for you at court?’

Gabriella cleared her throat. Why did she feel guilty? She hadn’t done anything wrong.

‘That’s correct. He found me at the courthouse this morning and interviewed me about a friend of mine. Mahmoud Shammosh. He’s wanted for a murder in Belgium, apparently.’

‘Doctor Death,’ Wiman said.

He smiled a thin, barely perceptible smile. Apparently the evening papers had updated their description to include Mahmoud’s status as a Ph.D. student. ‘Sometimes the tabloids really do nail it.’

Gabriella said nothing, just nodded.

‘Interesting friends you surround yourself with, Gabriella,’ Wiman said. ‘A terrorist, huh?’

He seemed to be savoring it.

‘What else should we expect from your past? Bank robbers, perhaps? Simple thieves, rapists?’

Gabriella blushed. The insensitivity of Wiman’s banter was unbelievable. She struggled with herself not to interrupt him.

‘I mean, the more interesting your history is, the better it will be for business, right? A suspected terrorist could be a gold mine for a young lawyer. Especially in this sort of case. Lawyer and terrorist, friends since university. They moved in different directions but were finally reunited in a protracted lawsuit with international overtones. The media will hit the roof. Regardless of how it ends, you’ll have made a name for yourself. And a name is the most important thing in this business.’

‘Okay,’ Gabriella said. ‘I’m not sure I understand. What are you trying to get at?’

She was confused. Where was Wiman going with this?

‘I believe it’s in our—your—interest to make contact with your friend the terrorist. When you do, make sure he hires you as his lawyer immediately, so Säpo can’t ask you any tricky questions. Lawyer confidentiality won’t protect you until he’s your client, as you probably remember from your bar exam.’

Gabriella was growing annoyed. She hardly needed reminding of one of the most basic rules of the legal profession. But at the same time, she felt relieved. Not only that Säpo’s interest in her might turn out not to be detrimental to her personally, but that she also might even be able to help Mahmoud with her boss’s blessing.

‘Once contact is established,’ continued Wiman, ‘and I have no doubt that will happen in the very near future, make sure Shammosh comes to Sweden. It’s absolutely essential, unless you happen to be a member of the Brussels Chapter of the Belgian Law Society, that is? Once he’s here, we’ll make sure to keep him hidden for a while, in order to maximize exposure. Eventually he’ll have to be extradited to Belgium, of course. And then we’ll have to cooperate with a Brussels firm—’

‘Maximize exposure,’ interrupted Gabriella at last. She couldn’t hold back any longer. ‘You mean this is a PR opportunity for the company, nothing else? This is my friend we’re talking about. And besides, he’s innocent. For God’s sake, shouldn’t that be our focus here?’

Wiman shook his head and smiled his razor thin smile again.

‘Gabriella, I appreciate your… how shall I put this… idealism? Loyalty?’

He articulated the words like questions, as if their meanings were genuinely unfamiliar to him.

‘There are different kinds of cases, Gabriella. There are cases where we have to win to get noticed, to get a name. And then there are cases where it’s enough to just be a key player. Where, in fact, it might ultimately be better not to win. Cases in which a draw is preferable, you might say. You call them PR opportunities. Well, maybe so. The law profession is a business. If
justice
is what you’re concerned with, you’d probably feel more at home with the Cardigans in the DA’s office.’

Gabriella took a deep breath. She was close to being associated with the Cardigans. That was never good.

‘Moreover, this isn’t just a PR opportunity for the company, it’s a PR opportunity for you. This could prove to be a decisive case for your career. This is how stars are made. Plus you’ll have the chance to help your friend. It’s win-win, Gabriella. Nobody loses.’

What was there to object to anyway? What Wiman was saying meant she’d have an officially sanctioned opportunity to help Mahmoud. If that was because Wiman wanted more media coverage for the company, well it didn’t really make much difference.
Win-win
. Gabriella swallowed the sour taste in her mouth.