The Last Pilgrim (13 page)

When he was halfway through his cigarette, he heard footsteps approaching.

“So this is where you’re hiding.”

Hadja came up to him with an almost apologetic smile and removed her sunglasses before sitting down next to him.

“Can I bum one off of you? I just can’t manage to quit altogether.”

He studied her fingers as she pulled a cigarette out of the pack. Her hand seemed to be attached a little crooked to her forearm, and her nails looked white against her glowing olive skin. He imagined that she left her hand on his a little longer than necessary when he lit her cigarette.

“Did you get your hot dogs for lunch already?” she asked, fidgeting with her sunglasses. “At the kiosk?” She nodded toward the entrance to the gym.

Bergmann couldn’t help but laugh.

“I only eat lunch at gas stations,” he said.

“Oh, I forgot,” she said, taking a drag.

“Have you been on vacation? You’re so tan.”

Hadja smiled. “Yes, I’ve been in Morocco. I got home yesterday. Sara’s been staying with her aunt . . . She probably missed some practices.”

She smiled again, and Bergmann thought that as long as Hadja kept smiling at him like that, Sara could miss as many sessions as she liked.

“Visiting family there?”

“In a way,” she said. Her face took on a serious expression. “Yes, you could probably say that . . . Papa . . .” She stopped and seemed to ponder what to say as she took another drag. “It wasn’t very worthwhile, to tell the truth . . . It’s a long story. I probably shouldn’t have gone at all.”

“All right—” Bergmann said as his cell phone rang. He stood up slowly and took it out of the pocket of his shorts. He stared at the familiar number of the dispatch switchboard for a few seconds.

“Bad news?” Hadja asked.

“Probably,” he said. Their eyes locked for a moment as he raised the phone to his ear.

“This is Karlsvik, in Dispatch,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Something in Karlsvik’s tone made Bergmann look at Hadja.

“Yes?”

“Well, Monsen called and asked me . . .” He paused. “A guy apparently got knocked off up on Dr. Holms Vei,” he said. “Among other things. Apparently it’s damned . . .”

“Damned what?”

“Damned awful.”

“So, who was it?”

“Monsen from Kripo thinks it’s a . . . a Carl Oscar Krogh.”

“
A
Carl Oscar Krogh?” Bergmann said, thinking,
All hell is going to break loose. And Leif fucking Monsen is tossing the grenade right in my lap.

“Well, I’ve never heard of the guy, but Monsen . . .” said Karlsvik. He let the sentence die out.

You idiot,
Bergmann thought.

“Anyway. It’s a madhouse up there. The housekeeper found the old man. Reuter’s on his way up from Strömstad, down in Sweden, and he asked Monsen—”

“The housekeeper?” Bergmann broke in. He looked back at Hadja.

Karlsvik cleared his throat. Then he said something about a stabbing.

At first Bergmann thought he’d misunderstood.

“At least fifty stab wounds?” he repeated quietly.

“His eyes are gone,” said Karlsvik.

Bergmann shut his own eyes.

“I’ve got to go,” he said to Hadja.

She frowned.

“Is it
that
bad?” she said.

“You’ll have to pretend you didn’t hear anything I said until the news hits the papers.”

He held out the pack of cigarettes to her. She shook her head.

“That’s enough for today,” she said, getting up. Bergmann lit himself another, took a deep drag, and exhaled hard through his nose.

“Can you find Drabløs for me?” he asked, looking at the clock. “Tell him I have to go back to work, and he has to take charge of the last two games. He can call me if he needs to, but it would have to be really important.”

Hadja nodded.

“It was so nice to see you again,” she said.

CHAPTER 19

Thursday, August 24, 1939

Seven Oaks Court

Kent, Great Britain

If anyone had asked her how many shades of green there were in the world, she would have told them to go to Westerham Ponds and try to count them. Agnes Gerner turned around one last time to gaze down the path lined with willow trees. She could see the water glittering amid the foliage in the distance. Bess was waiting for her at the top of the path. She knew what she would see up there, a vast infinity of green beauty. The rolling landscape would stretch before them, glowing with oxeye daisies and Scottish bluebells and all sorts of butterflies, and far off on the horizon they’d be able to glimpse Seven Oaks Court, the red-brick manor house where she had spent so much of the last six months.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she heard someone say behind her. Christopher Bratchard had walked a few steps ahead of her on the way back. A gentleman never walked behind a lady in skirts going up a stairway or a slope of any kind.

Agnes turned to face him. He was staring at her again, as if searching for something—possibly a sign that his feelings were reciprocated. Feelings that an agent handler was forbidden to have. Especially a married one.

It had been his suggestion that they spend the day out in God’s country, as he called it, on this final day of their last week at Seven Oaks Court. All her instincts had warned her against being out here alone with him, several miles from anyone else. But what could she do? After all, she had placed her life in this man’s hands.

Very few people knew what had become of her in recent months, and even fewer what she was doing here. Some days even she hardly knew. Less than a year ago it had appeared to be a conscious decision, but it could just as easily be considered a coincidence.

She had attended a reception at the Norwegian embassy for an occasion she could no longer recall, and during the social hour she expressed an honest observation about her own mother. After her Norwegian father’s death her mother had married a British lord who was threatened with bankruptcy. This man, whom she hated intensely, was a leading supporter of the detestable fascist Oswald Mosley, a fact that distressed her half-British heart. Even worse, her sister in Oslo seemed to have adopted the same outlook as her new stepfather and her mother.

That evening Agnes had met an attaché from the British embassy in Oslo, who insisted on being addressed as Richard. Later that night, she and her girlfriend, whose father held a high-level post as a diplomat at the embassy, ended up in a newly opened French restaurant in Mayfair with the attaché and some of his friends from Magdalen College in Oxford. She fell hard for him. When he insisted on accompanying her home in a cab after she had imbibed far too much champagne, she wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d ended up in bed together. But instead of making a pass, he had merely kissed her hand as they stood on the stoop. When she, slightly bewildered, finally managed to get the key in the door, he cleared his throat and asked if they could meet the next day.

Christopher Bratchard now held out his arm to her, even though Agnes had no problem walking on the neatly groomed path. She was rescued by Bess, who emerged from the surrounding woods, racing at full speed with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. She cut between them and ran up the path toward Seven Oaks Court. Bratchard smiled and dropped his arm.
How I love that dog,
Agnes thought. The only thing she didn’t understand was why Christopher had insisted that she bring Bess along for the three weeks down here. Her mother had bought an English setter puppy for her right after her father died. It was practically the only good thing she could say about her.

“If only life could be like this forever,” Christopher said. He set down his gray field sack, took out a handkerchief from his tweed jacket, and wiped his forehead. Even in this heat he refused to remove his hat.

Agnes mumbled something in reply, keeping her eye on Bess, who was waiting at the top of the hill. Up there, she recalled, they would pass through a grove of oak trees before they emerged into the meadow. From there it would be less than a half hour back to Seven Oaks Court.

Just before they reached the hilltop, Bratchard fortunately began cross-checking her to make sure she remembered where and when she was supposed to meet her contact in Oslo.

“He’ll recognize you,” said Bratchard. It sounded as if he wanted to add, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

When they reached the top of the hill, they found Bess lying in the shade of a tree. Agnes called to her, wondering how the two of them would get along back home in Oslo. Was Oslo her home? No place was really home anymore.

Bess came over to them, wagging her tail as she circled them. Bratchard stopped again and pulled something out of his field sack. The folding spade that hung off the sack rapped on the gravel path. When he looked up, she’d expected Bratchard to give her that usual half-flirtatious smile of his, but his expression was serious. His chiseled features only further emphasized that this was not meant to be amusing.

Agnes looked down at his hand, and he opened it.

It was a little red ball, a dog’s toy.

They stood there looking at each other.

“Here, Bess!” Bratchard called, kneeling down. The dog came running, tail wagging.

What is he doing?
Agnes wondered.

Bratchard stood up and threw the ball as far as he could down the path toward the grove, and the dog took off after it.

“Come on,” said Bratchard without looking at Agnes.

They’d only walked a few steps when the dog came racing back to Bratchard with the ball in her mouth and dropped it in front of him. He picked it up and threw it into the grove once more. They kept walking. Agnes didn’t mind. It was only a whim, nothing more. Seven Oaks Court would soon come into view, and she would go straight to her room and rest until dinner. Tomorrow she would be sitting on the train back to London.

Just before they entered the grove, where the dog was hunting for the ball, Agnes saw Christopher take something else out of his field sack.

The sun seemed to vanish from the sky when she saw what he was holding. A big Webley revolver.

“When we enter the grove,” he said, nodding straight ahead, “you have to shoot the dog.”

Agnes opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The ground seemed to sway beneath her.

“I don’t think I . . .” she said softly.

Bratchard didn’t say a word. He held out the revolver to her. She had shot three pigs in her life, only to prove that she could, but . . . the man was insane.

“If you don’t do it, I will,” he said.

They looked at each other until the dog came back. The only thought Agnes had was that she couldn’t start crying.

As Bratchard held out his left hand to take the ball from the dog, he shoved the revolver into Agnes’s right hand. The knurled grip felt cold, and her wrist almost gave way with the weight of the heavy steel. A Webley would stop a charging bull dead in its tracks in a split second. Agnes turned to look at the skinny English setter chasing the ball that Bratchard had just thrown.

Their eyes met. His lips were pressed tight, and the shadow of his hat brim had turned his face gray.

“It’s too late, Agnes. You can’t leave the service.”

Agnes bit the inside of her cheek.
He’s going to kill me,
she thought.

Once more the dog came back.

She felt her legs go weak under her as she bent down to give Bess one last hug. She’d thought she would have her for ten or twelve years, until she got married and had kids. A happy life, as happy as she could be.

Bess looked at her as though expecting a reward, then looked at Bratchard. Agnes patted her one last time. Seconds later the dog took off into the grove.

Agnes followed. Fine rays of sunlight sliced through the dark-green foliage. Bess was rooting around for the ball in some ferns.

“Sit,” said Bratchard, standing right behind her about five yards from the dog. Agnes murmured a silent prayer.

Bess sat and looked up at Agnes with her head tilted to one side.

Papa, oh Papa,
she thought,
please forgive me.

She took a step forward, then one more. Bess remained still, but she had cocked her head even more, as if to say, “What are you doing?” Agnes was nauseated by the smell of the moist earth. She heard the sound of rotten leaves from last winter under her shoes. Nothing else, not even birdsong.

The dog’s narrow head was in her sights. The revolver no longer felt heavy, and her hand was steady. A thought ran through her mind.
I must be sick. Really sick.

“Now!” Bratchard whispered. “Don’t think. You must
never
think. Then you’ll find out how long a second is.”

The boom of the Webley unleashed chaos in the treetops. What sounded like thousands of birds shrieked in fright overhead and they took flight all at once, fleeing the hell below.

Half of the setter’s long, handsome head was smashed, and a torrent of blood—bright red like that of the pigs’—gushed out from what was left of its mouth. Bess stared at her with her undamaged eye, then dropped to the ground.

Agnes lowered the revolver.

“Give her one more,” Bratchard said in a low voice. “She’s still alive.”

Agnes took a step forward. Her own mouth felt like it was full of blood, and a metallic taste ran down her throat, into her stomach, sickening her. She gulped once, twice. Then she raised the revolver and shot away the rest of the dog’s head.
Don’t cry, don’t ever cry,
she urged herself. Never cry. That was what her mother had taught her when she was a girl: “You must never cry when someone can see you, Agnes, never.”

Bratchard took the revolver from her hand. He nodded to himself, watching her intently.

“You’re crazy,” she said softly, closing her eyes. But no tears ran down her cheek.

He whispered something, but she didn’t hear him. She tilted her head back and stared up through the branches above them. All the birds were gone; perhaps they would never come back.

“What did you say?” she whispered.