The Last Pilgrim (27 page)

“The last time I talked to Carl Oscar was a few weeks ago,” he said finally, getting up and walking over to the window. “And he was again obsessed with the Holt case.”

Bergmann clutched his ballpoint pen in his right hand. He crossed out the word “rubbish” and wrote “Holt.” A tiny glimmer of hope made him feel suddenly lighter.

“You talked to Krogh?” he asked.

“I
frequently
talked to Krogh,” said Moberg, a bit indignant.

“Did he call you, or did you call him?”

“I called him. Carl Oscar wasn’t the type to call people at all hours of the day and night. I always called him. Not the other way around.”

“You said it was a few weeks ago. Can you be more precise?”

“Hmm. Maybe two weeks ago.”

“Before or after the three skeletons were found in Nordmarka?”

Moberg frowned. Again he did that breathing exercise of his, holding his breath and then letting it out.

“Before or after May 16?”

“After.”

Bergmann leafed back through his notebook.
So we’re back to square one,
he thought, looking at the triangle he’d drawn. One corner said “Krogh,” the second “Nordmarka,” and the third, on top, was labeled “Kaj Holt.”

“And he was once again
obsessed
with the Holt case?”

Moberg nodded. “Do you really think there could be some connection?” he said in a low voice.

“At the moment we’re not speculating,” said Bergmann.

Moberg looked as if he had more questions about the three people found in Nordmarka. At least Bergmann imagined so.

“So you know absolutely nothing about those three females?” Bergmann persisted. “Or who might have killed them?”

“No.”

“And Krogh didn’t say anything?”

Moberg shook his head. “Not a thing.”

“What about Gustav Lande? What do you know about him?”

“No more than what has been published in the newspapers. And I’m probably the source of a lot of that information. Lande was a lawyer and merchant, an NS supporter with close ties to the business activities of the SS and to the German trade attaché both before and during the war. He owned the Knaben mines and many other enterprises, you know. He was very important to the Germans here in Norway. He opened a lot of doors for them, and he believed in the Greater Germanic Reich. What more could the Germans have asked for? Lande was an extremely prominent man, right up until he took his own life and disappeared from memory.”

“But someone killed his fiancée, his daughter, and his maid.”

Moberg nodded several times as he stroked his beard.

“Gustav Lande was so important to the Germans that his family may have been targeted by the Resistance. Am I right?” Bergmann insisted.

Moberg shifted restlessly.

“Yes.”

“The National Police investigated the case as a possible terrorist killing, as they called it. A man committed suicide at Nazi HQ while the interrogations were being conducted. I mean, it seems entirely possible that the Resistance killed those three people up in Nordmarka.”

Moberg didn’t reply. Instead, he took off his glasses and rubbed his close-set eyes.

“Do you think that Krogh may have known who killed them?” asked Bergmann.

Moberg repeated his breathing exercise, as if he were a free diver about to plummet to an unknown depth. He held his breath for a long time. When he released it, his face was crimson, his breathing labored.

“You must realize that this is a sensitive matter. It’s practically the last taboo subject in this country. Carl Oscar declined to deny the claim that I made in a book published in the seventies that he had liquidated Gudbrand Svendstuen. But aside from that indirect admission, he remained as silent as a clam. Nobody would run around boasting that they’d killed someone, Mr. Bergmann. To be honest, I can’t shed much light on the matter. And very little research has been done about who killed whom in Norway. Almost nothing compared to what we know happened in Denmark. When it comes to questions of liquidation, that is.”

“Everything indicates that this was a liquidation,” said Bergmann. “And Krogh was murdered. That must be a sensitive matter too. Even more so, if I have to call you in for an official interview.”

Moberg held up his hands.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “If, and I underscore the word
if
, those three were killed by the Resistance, then it’s highly likely that Carl Oscar knew who did it.”

“Is it possible that Kaj Holt also knew who killed them?”

Moberg nodded. Then he sat down in front of his computer. A few seconds later a page slid out of the printer behind him.

“Look at this,” he said. “This is a list of the five people in Carl Oscar’s group who are still alive. But I don’t think they can or will tell you anything specific.”

Bergmann took the piece of paper and glanced at the names. He had a feeling that he’d forgotten something.

“Holt took a great deal of information with him to his grave. A great deal indeed,” said Moberg sadly. “Any historian would give his right arm to bring him back to life. Yes, I’d say there’s a hundred percent chance that Holt knew who liquidated them. I mean, if they were, in fact, liquidated.”

“What did you tell Krogh about Holt? The last time you spoke on the phone.”

“The same thing I always say whenever anyone gets obsessed with something,” Moberg said, giving him a brief smile.

“And what’s that?”

“That this mania will only prevent you from seeing things clearly.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t fall into the same trap that Carl Oscar did. Don’t waste your time on Kaj Holt. It was tragic enough that he took his own life. Don’t make it even worse.”

Bergmann stared at Moberg for a moment, then back down at the list. Only five of them were still alive. All the others had a red cross printed next to their names.
Krogh’s killer could be one of these five,
he thought. In his notebook he wrote himself a reminder to have someone cross-check Krogh’s phone records with the visitor lists at the Oppsal nursing home. He leafed through some of the previous pages in his notebook. Something had flitted through his mind during the last half hour, something he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

That’s it,
he thought as he came upon a printout from the Internet that was stuck in between the cover and the first page of his notebook. The article about Holt quoted a book written by Moberg, but there was also a reference to another author by the name of Finn Nystrøm.

“So,” said Bergmann. “I see that Finn Nystrøm is mentioned in connection with things that have been written about Holt.”

He raised his eyes to look at Moberg.

Moberg leaned his head against the back of his chair. Sunlight came in from the window to his right and lit up his face. Yet his expression had darkened, as if he were suddenly filled with rage, or maybe it was sorrow. Bergmann couldn’t tell for sure, but something was seriously wrong.

“Does he still work here?” he asked.

Moberg didn’t reply. He merely stared vacantly into the distance.

A long silence ensued. Not a sound was heard, either outside or from the corridor.

“No,” Moberg said at last. “Finn doesn’t work here . . .”

“Where—”

“He hasn’t worked here since 1981.” Moberg seemed to have pulled himself together, and he shifted his gaze back to Bergmann. “But he’s the one you should have talked to about all this. Not me.”

“Talked about what?” said Bergmann, jotting down several exclamation marks after Finn Nystrøm’s name.

“About Kaj Holt.”

Bergmann felt his pulse hammering in his left temple. He leaned forward, suddenly aware there was no time to waste.

“Where can I find—”

“Finn?” said Moberg. A melancholy smile flitted across his face and disappeared. “He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Holt, but no one was very interested in it, other than me. Captain Kaj Holt didn’t fit into the generally accepted narrative about World War Two in Norway, you see. And he never will. Finn’s dissertation is probably gathering dust somewhere in the university library. Provided he hasn’t had it removed and shredded. And God knows it was a miracle that he managed to get a PhD dissertation out of Holt’s story, considering the meager resources available. He made countless trips to Moscow, London, Stockholm, you name it.”

“So where is he now?”

Moberg held up his hand. Bergmann saw that the armpit of his pale-blue short-sleeved shirt was dark with sweat.

“Finn was the most talented student I’ve ever had. I became a professor at a young age, but Finn . . . he was unique. I took him on as a research associate and coauthor of two books. And to be perfectly honest, he wrote most of the last one. He was juggling way too many things. He started as a research associate, then became an associate professor after he received his degree. In addition to teaching classes and writing books with me, he was working on a major research project.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know,” said Moberg. He got up, looking very tired now, more like the retiree he would be in a few weeks’ time. He went back to stand by the window. “It was damned cold that summer. Do you remember?” he asked. “Back in ’81?”

“No,” said Bergmann.

“I thought about it in the fall. That the summer had knocked the wind out of him, his project, his life. But I have no idea where he is now. I haven’t seen Finn in twenty-two years. He never came back after that summer. He’d cleaned out his office, so he must have had some sort of plan. I went over to his apartment several times. I called him. His parents were dead, and he had no siblings. Just a casual girlfriend, actually several. But Finn had disappeared. I went to the places he used to frequent. He was gone.”

“Places he used to frequent? What do you mean?”

“Everyone has his weaknesses, and Finn certainly had his.”

Silence. Bergmann chose not to delve into what Finn’s weaknesses might be.

“So you have no idea where he is?”

“Not a clue,” said Moberg without turning around. He leaned his forehead against the windowpane and stood there with his eyes closed for a moment. “I liked Finn. He was the kind of person everyone likes. I did everything for that man, and then he disappeared, taking with him everything—the documents, the research project he’d spent three years working on, everything.”

Bergmann stood up. Moberg looked drained.

“I’ll see if we can find him. If he’s dead, I’ll at least be able to confirm it.”

The two men stood there, staring at each other. Bergmann thought Moberg was a damned poor liar.

“All right,” said Moberg. “Finn . . . he lives up in the mountains. He’s fine. I just don’t think he’d want to get mixed up in this. It might make him start working again . . . and, well . . .” Judging by Moberg’s expression, he seemed ashamed. Trying to divert Bergmann from the subject of Kaj Holt and Krogh’s inquiries into his death in Stockholm had been little more than a feeble attempt to keep him away from Finn Nystrøm.

“In the mountains, you said?”

“Vågå or Lom, or whatever it’s called up there. You’ll find it.”

Bergmann reached for the door handle. An old calendar from 1988 hung from a hook right in front of him.

“One last thing. What was the subject of Finn’s research project? The one he was working on when he disappeared?”

Moberg took in a deep breath through his nose.

“Liquidations.”

CHAPTER 33

Early Saturday Morning, May 22, 1942

Villa Lande

Tuengen Allé

Oslo, Norway

Gustav Lande gently caressed Agnes Gerner’s bare arms, touching her as if they were the only two people in the world. She closed her eyes and fleetingly imagined it was the Pilgrim who stood there with her on the front porch on this warm spring night.

“Thank you for a wonderful evening,” said Lande, removing his hands. His voice sounded remarkably lucid given how much he’d had to drink. “Are you sure you won’t join me for a little nightcap?”

“I really must be getting home.” Agnes turned and placed her hand on his. He enclosed it in both of his.

A cacophony of voices issued from one of the houses down the street, shouts pouring into the darkness. Several Germans had started in on what sounded like a drinking song. Lande shook his head, then nodded in the direction of the noise.

Agnes thought to herself that she had nothing against Gustav Lande, other than the fact that he was thirteen years older than her and a staunch Nazi.

He was still holding her hand.

“We’re going out to the summer house next Friday. There will be a small party on Saturday. It would be so nice if you’d care to join us.” He reached for her other hand, then let it go. “I think Cecilia would also enjoy seeing you. That is, if Schreiner has nothing against it.”

Agnes uttered a sigh and then slipped her arm around his waist.

“He and I are finished, Gustav.”

Lande gave her a long look. Then he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

“Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

“Saturday?” said Agnes.

“You’re welcome to go out there with us on Friday evening, if you like. That would make Cecilia happy. It’s up to you, of course.”

She leaned in close, kissing him lightly on the lips and stroking his back.

“I’d love to,” she said, pulling away, about to slip past him to the cab. “So, Gustav . . .”

He was breathing hard. For a moment he seemed disinclined to let her go, but then he released her hand.

“You’ll phone me?” she said, opening the cab door and then turning to look at him.

She sank onto the seat and closed her eyes. The whole evening flitted through her mind.

“Hammerstads Gate,” said Lande to the driver, handing him a banknote before he tapped lightly on the roof of the cab.

Drive,
thought Agnes.
For God’s sake, just drive.

The driver turned the key in the ignition, and the eight-cylinder engine started up with a roar loud enough to wake up the entire neighborhood.

Agnes felt her shoulders relax and her pulse slow as the driver put the cab in motion.
The danger’s over,
she thought.