Last Will (17 page)

Berit tossed her cup, sandwich, and napkin into the garbage can.

“Nemesis,” she said. “That’s the name of the Greek god of revenge and retribution. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Annika said.

SUBJECT: The Price of Love

TO: Andrietta Ahlsell

Bertha Kinsky arrives in Paris in early May 1876 to work as Alfred’s secretary. She’s thirty-two years old when they meet, an Austrian countess; she’s beautiful, unmarried, extremely intelligent—and very poor.

They meet at the morning train and take Alfred’s cab to breakfast at the Grand Hotel. Bertha, who went on to become an internationally famous author, describes the journey:
The rays of sunlight played with the shimmering fountains of the Rond Point, and made the lanterns and harnesses of the countless vehicles sparkle.

They talk about the world and about people, about current affairs and eternal problems, Alfred is even able to talk about his experiments and she understands. They talk about art and life, and they talk about peace.

Alfred is concerned about what his inventions might do. He isn’t a violent man—quite the contrary! He believes that the art of war is in its very early stages, that an arms race is imminent. His conclusions are many decades ahead of their time: when destructive weaponry has finally reached its apex, fear will
force
people to live in peace with one another.

They have one week together. One week at the Grand Hotel in Paris. Alfred has found something he will never find again. He realizes this almost at once, that this is unique, here she is! And he asks her openly: is her heart free?

She replies honestly: there is a man, a young nobleman, whom she is not permitted to marry. She is too poor and too old, but her heart is his.

And Alfred goes; he leaves the Grand Hotel in Paris and when he returns she is gone. She has sold her last diamond necklace to pay her hotel bill.

She has fled to Russia with the young man. She marries Arthur von Suttner on June 12, 1876, and spends nine years in exile, living in the Caucasus mountains in a place called Mingrelia. She becomes an author and peace activist, but she never forgets. Bertha stays in touch with Alfred Nobel for the rest of his life, but almost only by letter. They meet on a few occasions after the summer of 1876, the terrible summer of 1876.

Alfred, Alfred, how he suffers in his apartment in Paris! How he grieves in his grand house on the Avenue Malakoff, painfully aware of the vacuum in his life. During the summer of 1876, when he is stumbling blind, worse than ever before, he reaches out his hand, and there stands a woman in a florist’s in Baden bei Wien. Her name is Sofie Hess, she is young (only twenty years old), she is an orphan and
alone
(just like him), she is pretty, and she reminds him, at least superficially, of Bertha.

Perhaps she could become like
her
. Perhaps Alfred could turn Sofie into a
dame du monde
. Perhaps she could become a countess with the ability to discuss the great issues of life.

How Alfred tries! How he exerts himself! He educates, informs, equips her. Perhaps he loves her, because he gives Sofie a villa in Ischl and a large apartment in Paris (not far from his own). Or perhaps he merely possesses, buying something that he cannot have.

But Sofie isn’t so young. She isn’t twenty, she’s almost thirty. She isn’t an orphan, her father Heinrich is alive.

She is merely alone, alone in her large apartment in Paris on the Avenue d’Eylau, alone and bored.

Alfred is so
dull
. He does nothing but make new demands. He travels around his factories and writes loooong letters, about projects and experiments and legal problems and dynamite companies and Sofie yawns, she replies in her childish handwriting and tells him gossip and asks for more money.

Dearest Alfred, when do you realize that you have been deceived?

When you find out that father Heinrich is alive? When Sofie returns to Vienna and calls herself Frau Nobel? When she admits that she is expecting another man’s child?

Her coquettish begging echoes through the years:

My dearest Alfred!

I haven’t heard from you for a long time. I am also extremely concerned because I myself am very poorly and have no peace … I have no money to live on and must today pawn my last brooch. I have never experienced anything this bad before. I am quite wretched. And the poor child—what do the fates have in store for it?

Fondest wishes and kisses from your

Sofie

What must the industrial magnate have thought when he read this text in its big, round lettering? What strings is she plucking, the girl who never became a lady? What is it in her ingratiating tone that persuades him to send money, again and again
and again
?

Alfred, Alfred, why do you allow yourself to be exploited?

My dearest Alfred!

I can find no apartment, for they are all too dear … I am wretched. It is depressing to spend the winter living in a hotel room with a small child, with nothing but terrible food … Will you give me permission to use your surname? Can you send some money? You are all I have in the world.

Now I send you heartfelt kisses

From your eternally beloved

Sofie

Three million kronor. That is how much he sends, every year, the equivalent of three million kronor!

How incredibly starved he must have been, how incredibly alone and abandoned.

How much he pays, and how little he gets in return.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15

Anders Schyman knocked gently on the glass door to Annika’s office. The reporter looked up in surprise from the paper she was reading and gestured for him to come in.

“What can I help you with?” she asked, getting up to move the clothes she’d tossed over the only other chair in the room.

Schyman pulled the sliding door closed behind him and adopted what he hoped was an open, neutral expression.

“I wanted to know what was happening with the disclosure ban and your job,” he said, managing to sound both pedagogical and friendly. “How do you think it’s working? Is there much of a clash?”

Annika Bengtzon sat down again, sighed heavily and threw a half-eaten Lucia bun into the wastebasket. She had brushed her hair and looked as if she’d actually slept for once.

“I can’t see any problems,” she said, “but I get the impression that Berit and the others are finding it a nuisance. They think I’m holding back on a load of information that I don’t actually have, and they’re tiptoeing round me even though there’s no need.”

The editor in chief sat on the other chair and nodded.

“Yes, that’s the impression I’ve got as well,” he said, “and I think it’s an unfortunate situation. I know you can’t tell me, but I’m going to ask anyway: do you know anything that you haven’t told us? Anything that could be of the slightest interest?”

Annika looked at him with her heavily made-up eyes. There was something about her that always unsettled him, as if she knew something about him that she shouldn’t.

Now she stared at him in silence for several seconds.

“Two things,” she finally said. “There are two things I noticed but
haven’t said. As far as I can see, they wouldn’t add anything of value to our reporting, but they haven’t been released publically yet, I presume for reasons connected to the inquiry.”

“I’m not going to ask what they are,” Schyman said, “but as long as there’s anything you haven’t told us, it complicates matters.”

“Her eyes,” Annika Bengtzon said. “She had yellow eyes. I’m absolutely sure of it, because I’d never seen anyone with such unusually colored eyes before. But that hasn’t been mentioned anywhere. They changed it on the photofit as well—she’s got green eyes on that.”

The editor in chief nodded, surprised at the confidence. He decided to wait for the second one without saying anything.

“And her bag,” the reporter said. “She had an oblong, silver-colored evening bag with a small shoulder strap. Inspector Q told me that a small gun with a silencer would fit in something like that.”

He nodded again.

“And those are the two things,” he said.

“Those are the two things,” Bengtzon confirmed.

“That wasn’t worth making too much of a fuss about,” Anders Schyman said with a smile.

The reporter sighed again, and reached for an unopened bar of chocolate.

The editor in chief decided to put his cards on the table.

“You know,” he said, trying not to sound forced, “I think it would be best for everyone if you took some time off while all this is going on.”

Annika Bengtzon stiffened, and put the chocolate down without eating any.

“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

“You being here means that there’s an atmosphere in the newsroom, your colleagues are worried about getting you into trouble, and they’re holding back in their contact with the police to make sure it doesn’t look like you’ve told them anything. To be blunt, it’s restricting our actions, and it’s spoiling your relationship with your colleagues.”

The reporter looked down at the bar of chocolate, fingering the silver foil.

“You’ve arranged this very neatly,” she said without looking up.

“What?” he said, then bit his tongue, because he knew exactly what she meant.

She let out a laugh, then leaned back in her chair and looked him in the eye.

“I know you’re angry,” she said. “You didn’t get the job as head of the Newspaper Publishers’ Association, and you think it’s my fault.”

She laughed again.

“Who am I trying to kid?” she said. “It
was
my fault—I made you publish that article showing that our proprietors are a bunch of hypocritical hyenas, and I appreciate that they’re furious and withdrew your nomination. Are you firing me?”

“Absolutely not,” Anders Schyman said, feeling strangely relieved that she understood the extent of the situation. “I’m serious about the disclosure ban, your position among your colleagues is unsustainable. I can live with the rest of it, and our proprietors as well. It didn’t exactly create too many ripples in other media …”

“Of course not,” Annika Bengtzon said. “They were just pleased that TV Scandinavia disappeared.”

The editor in chief shrugged.

“The general view was that democracy will survive without yet another American commercial cable channel. I want you to take some vacation until things have calmed down on the terrorism front.”

“Not vacation,” the reporter said. “On leave with full pay. Access to the archives and databases with my own password so I can work from home on my own computer. Ten free taxi rides each month.”

Anders Schyman felt a sense of purely physical relief—this had gone much easier than he had anticipated.

“Full pay and a password,” he confirmed, “but no taxis.”

She shrugged and broke off a piece of chocolate.

“Can I go straightaway?”

Annika sat like a statue as the editor in chief left her glass office and pulled the door closed behind him.

Shit, she thought. I didn’t actually think he’d do it. I didn’t think he had the stomach to shove me further out into the cold, out of the fridge and into the freezer, but he did it, he actually did it.

She sat back in her chair with a slow sensation of falling, the usual sign of an imminent panic attack, preceding the angelic chorus, but nothing happened; she didn’t faint, and the angels kept quiet.

It’ll actually be quite a relief to escape this place for a while, she thought, then immediately felt a sense of grief, already missing the reassurance of having a context, the vital feeling of belonging somewhere.

I can find another home, she thought, realizing that she was on the point of tears. She pulled herself together and blew her nose in an old napkin, forcing her self-pity back down again.

She logged into the computer and began going through her files and folders. Anything she thought she might need she sent off to her online archive at [email protected].

“What did Schyman want?”

Berit had put her head around the door.

“He’s sent me home on indefinite leave,” Annika said, taking a deep breath. “He doesn’t want me back until this whole terrorism story is over.”