The Last Pilgrim (22 page)

“You make me feel alive again,” he whispered in her ear. A shriek came from across the table as one of the young women burst out laughing in response to something one of the other guests had said. The German officers joined in, laughing in a boisterous and vulgar way that would have been more appropriate out in a field than here at the Rainbow.

Agnes smiled and reached out to squeeze Lande’s hand. He looked away for a moment, as if he were embarrassed by what he’d said. Agnes studied his profile. Though he couldn’t be more than forty, his hair was already gray. His face was almost free of wrinkles, and although not exactly handsome, he was attractive and had nice eyes.
Even if he
is
a Nazi,
thought Agnes.

A light rain was falling from the black sky as Agnes Gerner stood on her street. The cab she’d taken from the Rainbow had driven off, and Hammerstads Gate was utterly quiet. She’d been fumbling for her keys in her purse when she’d paused at the sound of an approaching car. Had it followed her here? The headlights only came on when the car was ten or twelve yards away. Though she still couldn’t find the damn key, she made it to the front door faster than she would have thought possible, considering how drunk she was.

She looked over her shoulder and saw two faint lights from under the blackout headlights. Thank God. It wasn’t the Germans. They would never drive a Dodge—at least she thought it was a Dodge. But it wasn’t a taxi either. She made a futile attempt to hide her face under the brim of her hat, then turned back to the door to keep searching for her key. Through the faint sound of the rain, she could hear the car behind her slow down. Then it sped up again and disappeared.

At last she found her key.

She cautiously climbed the stairs to the third floor. By the time she reached the landing, she felt so tired she could hardly stay on her feet. For a moment she stood swaying in front of the door on which, for some reason, her mother had put up an expensive brass sign engraved with the name “Gerner.” Images from the evening whirled through Agnes’s mind: the glittering chandeliers, the way Lande smelled, the candid behavior of the German officers toward her, and the fear of what Schreiner might do, although that had gradually lost its hold on her. But most important of all: Gustav Lande, who had not once made a pass at her or pressured her for anything but the pleasure of her company that evening. When she said that she needed to be going, he didn’t try to stop her or persuade her to join the after-party at his villa in Vinderen. All he’d done, aside from paying her cab fare, was to stroke her cheek and thank her for a most enjoyable evening. Agnes had almost forgotten that Lande was a Nazi who had practically single-handedly saved not only Quisling’s career but the finances of the Party.

When she finally unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped inside, she started to cry. In a strange way she’d been on the verge of tears ever since she’d leaned close to Lande when they danced for the first time and her thoughts had turned to the Pilgrim.

Stop it,
she thought.
Stop it, you sentimental bitch.
She bit the inside of her cheek, just as she’d done when that damn Christopher Bratchard made her shoot Bess. With quick, determined steps, as if she’d suddenly sobered up, she walked across the parquet floor and kicked off her high heels. Then she drew the blackout curtains in front of the two big windows in the living room. The light from the floor lamp next to the sofa hurt her eyes, as though reminding her that she mustn’t forget why she’d ended up at Gustav Lande’s table.

Only when she turned around did she notice that she’d left the front door open.

What was that?

A sound.

In the stairwell.

A shadow fell across the floorboards in the entryway.

She opened her mouth to scream, but stopped herself. The outline of a man filled the doorway. The light from the floor lamp didn’t reach that far, so it was impossible to see his face. No lights were on in the stairwell, and the entryway was pitch dark.

My purse,
she thought as the man took a step forward.
I have to get my purse!
But she was incapable of making the slightest move forward. It wasn’t Schreiner, and it couldn’t be Gustav Lande.

“Didn’t you see me?” the man said quietly as he closed the door behind him. “I was sitting on the stairs right behind you.” He took off his hat and stood there, holding it in both hands.

The familiar voice was like a punch in the stomach. He’d been gone for two full months, and now, on this very evening—this strange evening—he was standing there in her entryway.

“Where have you been?” she said, speaking so softly she could barely even hear herself. Or maybe her words were just drowned out by the blood hammering in her temples.

The Pilgrim’s face seemed to have changed over the past two months, just as everything else had changed. The last time he was here, sneaking in like a thief in the night, it was still winter outside, and the world had seemed impossible. But now mild winds were sweeping through the city, leaves were appearing on the branches of the birch trees, and there was a sense that all the evil would come to an end one day.

He came over to stand in front of her.

“You’re back,” she said.

Suddenly he began kissing her. Then he tore off her dress.

Agnes practically bit him bloody, and she let him come as deep inside her as he could, as if she wanted only one thing, and that was to carry his child. Afterward, he lay on top of her for a long time. Their heartbeats seemed to merge into one, and she tried to hold on to him when he rolled off the sofa and went to find his coat on the living room floor. She studied his boyish, almost ungainly body as he rummaged through his pockets. When he found his cigarettes, he lit one without turning around.

When he still hadn’t turned around after several minutes, Agnes got up. Only then did she notice how cold she was from lying naked on the sofa. She put her arms around him from behind.

“You smell like aftershave,” he said in a low voice. “And it’s not Schreiner’s.”

Agnes turned him around. His eyes were wet with tears. It was the first time she’d seen him cry. In fact, it was the first time she’d seen him show any emotion at all.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Are you seeing someone else?” he said. Agnes held his head in her hands. His face was still so handsome, so astonishingly symmetrical, almost feminine. Only the dark smudges under his eyes and a slightly distant look told her that something had happened. Something she didn’t know about, something she might not want to know about.

“I spent the evening with Gustav Lande,” she whispered, as if the whole building might hear them. There was a sudden thudding in the water pipes, followed by the sound of a man urinating upstairs, audible through the open bathroom door.

The Pilgrim wiped away his tears. Agnes took the cigarette out of his hand and went into the bedroom. Still naked, she got under the covers and took two final drags. As he stood in the doorway, running his hand through his hair, he looked like a child compared to Lande.

“I spent the evening with Gustav Lande,” she repeated. “Do you understand what that means?”

The Pilgrim walked slowly across the room and sat down on the bed beside her. After stroking her hair for what seemed like an eternity, he lay down on top of her and clung to her body like a child, as if he wanted nothing more than to disappear into her and never come back to this world again. Agnes lit another cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, then stroked his back. The smoke rose to the ceiling in the faint light coming from the living room.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

She waited for him to merely sigh in that dramatic way of his, but nothing happened. He almost seemed to be deliberately holding his breath. Finally she felt him breathe again.

“Did you forget about Gustav Lande?” he whispered. “If they catch you, and you know my name . . .”

“Tell me.”

“Carl,” he said. “Spelled with a
C
.”

Agnes started laughing, first quietly, then louder. She couldn’t help herself. Of all the names she’d imagined for him, Carl was the last one that would ever have occurred to her.

“What’s so funny?” he said, pressing his face against the hollow of her throat. “It’s actually Carl Oscar,” he told her, getting up.

Agnes laughed so hard that she finally had to hide her head under the covers. The Pilgrim said something that she didn’t catch. Suddenly he pulled the warm covers off her.

“Carl Oscar Krogh,” he said, staring at her, his face expressionless. “Carl Oscar Krogh.”

Agnes stopped laughing. He seemed to be trying to convince himself the name was really his.

He sat on the bed, staring at her for a long time. Finally he pulled the covers back over her naked body.

“I’m not laughing at you,” she said, reaching out her hand toward him. “I love you, Carl Oscar.”

Before she could touch his unshaven cheek, he turned away.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, sitting up now, without covering her breasts.

The rain was coming down harder, pounding against the windowpane.

Carl Oscar Krogh lit a cigarette and went over to the window. The blackout curtain hadn’t been closed, but he didn’t seem to notice. He stood there with the cigarette hanging from his lips for several minutes as he stared out at the rain.

Agnes got out of bed, went over to him, and put her arms around him. His body felt cold from standing at the window.

“Don’t stand here like this. Someone might see you,” she whispered in his ear. He shook her off. She sighed in resignation and drew the blackout curtains. Krogh opened them again.

“Why were you gone so long?” asked Agnes, crossing her arms.

He sighed, then shook his head.

“Number 1,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette and letting the smoke out through his nose, then his mouth. “He thought I should lay low for a few weeks.”

“Eight weeks,” said Agnes. She was about to say his name again, but it suddenly didn’t seem right. She thought of him as the Pilgrim.

“I killed a man,” he said. His voice was flat, lifeless, as if he were reading a statement that he himself didn’t understand. “That’s why I had to . . . leave you.” He opened the window and tossed out his cigarette.

Agnes didn’t speak, merely pressed herself closer to his back.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I killed a man.”

“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said, running her hand over his chest, which was bare as a child’s.
We’re both children,
she thought.
And now Number 1 has made this child kill another human being.
It was necessary, she knew, but she didn’t want to know anything more about it. She didn’t want to think about how Number 1 might destroy the Pilgrim—Carl Oscar! Her own Carl Oscar—if things continued this way.

“One of our own,” he murmured to himself. “He had two children, two small children. I lured him into a trap, Agnes. Now he’s lying out there in Østmarka, buried, gone forever.”

“I don’t want to know,” she said. She knew full well that they lost people. Far too many. And that there was no mercy for traitors. But she didn’t want him to tell her anything more.

“Number 1 gave me an assignment. I carried it out. I buried him myself.” He was talking to himself now.

“Come here,” she said, turning him around. He avoided looking at her, staring instead at the strip of light coming in the door from the living room. Moving like a sleepwalker, he went back to bed with her.

Agnes lay close to him until dawn, when a grayish light began filling the room. Neither of them had slept, nor had they said a single word all night.

“Carl Oscar,” she said, propping herself up on her elbow to get her first good look at him in daylight since March. She ran her finger along his straight nose, then over his strong chin. “Will you marry me? When all this is over?”

“This war is never going to end,” he whispered, keeping his eyes closed.

CHAPTER 29

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Police Headquarters

Oslo, Norway

The large conference room in the restricted area on the seventh floor of police headquarters was filled with investigators who didn’t have the faintest idea why real-estate entrepreneur and former trade minister Carl Oscar Krogh had been murdered with exactly sixty-two stab wounds. This was something the whole country now knew after the police chief had held a quickly organized press conference the night before. No doubt he’d consulted with or received orders from the police commissioner, who for his part had probably sought advice from Norway’s minister of justice.

“As I’m sure you realize,” said Fredrik Reuter, standing, his shoulders stooped, in front of the screen, “there is now a certain amount of pressure to solve this case.” He gave them a wan smile. Tommy Bergmann would have bet big money that Reuter hadn’t slept more than two or three hours. And judging by the wrinkled state of his uniform, he may have slept on a cot in his office.

“The only thing most people don’t know yet is what the murder weapon looked like.” Reuter stifled a yawn and pressed a button to display a close-up of the Hitler Youth knife lying in a pool of blood. “If we make this public, I fear that the tips we’ve gotten so far will seem moderate in comparison.” That prompted a few laughs, not because it was funny but because people under tremendous pressure often laugh in the hope of drawing attention away from the fact that they’re on their knees.