The Last Pilgrim (35 page)

Bergmann nodded.

“What else? You know more about Holt. You haven’t sat here since 1951 without knowing a lot more. I’m sure of that.”

Faalund made no move to answer.

“Why did you open the door when I asked you who
murdered
Kaj Holt?” said Bergmann. “Because he was murdered, wasn’t he?”

He didn’t know how long the two of them sat there staring at each other. Sunlight fell in streaks over Faalund, who was gripping the arms of his chair so hard that his knuckles turned white.

“It’s strange,” said Faalund at last. “You’re the first person who has dared to say it out loud.”

“Say what?”

“That Carl Oscar . . . that Krogh killed those two women and the little girl up in the woods.”

Bergmann felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Two men had said the same thing in the last two days.

“But I asked you a question,” he said.

“And I’m telling you the answer,” said Faalund. “It was him. It was Krogh. If anyone could have killed them, it was Carl Oscar Krogh.”

“I thought you doubted he could have killed Agnes Gerner, since she wasn’t a Nazi.”

“No. It’s just that I’m positive Agnes was working for Kaj.”

Bergmann put his pen down on the side table. He shook his head. He no longer understood a thing.

“And Holt knew that Krogh had killed them?”

“I think so,” said Faalund in a low voice.

Bergmann waited in silence.

“I think I was . . .” Faalund spoke so quietly that Bergmann could barely hear him.

“Yes?”

“I was probably the last person to talk to Kaj. He’d been in Lillehammer that day and was leaving for Stockholm in the evening. I happened to run into him in the office. I knew him well enough to see that something was very wrong.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. Finally Bergmann gestured toward Faalund, to encourage him to go on.

“He’d unofficially interrogated a German in Lillehammer. A man by the name of Peter Waldhorst. That’s all he would tell me. I promised not to tell anyone about the interrogation, but a few years later, I made my own inquiries to find out what happened to that German.”

Faalund explained that he’d found out that Waldhorst had been in the Gestapo in Kirkenes, but all traces of him had disappeared after that. Bergmann took notes automatically, letting Faalund talk. It sounded as though he’d spent several years trying to track him down.

“What do you think this Waldhorst told Holt?”

“That Krogh had killed the woman and the girl,” said Faalund, though it sounded more like a question than a statement.

“But why? I don’t understand . . . You say that Agnes Gerner wasn’t a Nazi, that she most likely worked for Kaj Holt.”

Faalund cleared his throat, but not a word came out. He filled his glass again, but this time his hand was visibly shaking.

They sat in silence for a long time until Faalund suddenly exclaimed, “That’s the only answer that makes any sense! Don’t you understand?” He stared at Bergmann, clutching his glass in his big hand. Then he closed his eyes as he raised the glass to his lips.

“Don’t I understand what?” asked Bergmann quietly.

Faalund seemed to be gathering his strength. He still had his eyes closed as he took a deep breath.

“I’m going to tell you what I really think, Bergmann. I never thought I’d ever tell this to a living soul. I think that Kaj doubted it was Gudbrand Svendstuen who betrayed the Resistance in the fall of 1942. Gudbrand didn’t know enough to do any real damage. But we needed a scapegoat, and London needed one too. Liquidating Gudbrand would be enough to frighten off anyone from turning traitor for a long time. Or so we thought. It was wrong, but people were panicking. There was no time to think clearly. And that’s why I think Kaj—either toward the end of the war or right after it was over—made a list of people who actually did possess enough information to have done such major damage.”

Faalund opened his eyes and looked at Bergmann, who was frowning.

“Which was why he interrogated Waldhorst. To find out who the real traitor had been.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” asked Bergmann.

“What do you think I’m trying to tell you?”

“So it wasn’t Krogh who liquidated Svendstuen?”

“A twist of fate,” said Faalund. “The gun was meant to be found in Gudbrand’s hand.”

“So you’re saying that . . .”

“Why was there no file on Krogh in Lillehammer?” asked Faalund. “He was the only Resistance member, absolutely the only one, who had no file. Did you know that?”

“You mean that . . .” said Bergmann, shaking his head. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything more.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes.

Bergmann was about to break the silence, but Faalund beat him to it.

“I think that Carl Oscar Krogh was the double agent Kaj was looking for.” He slapped his big hand on the armrest of his chair. “There. I said it. But I’m just an old drunk, right?”

“No.”

Faalund snorted.

“Go ahead and tell me I’m not just an old drunk.” He drained his glass. His expression had closed and he had a remote look in his eyes, as if to suggest that this conversation was now over for good.

CHAPTER 39

Saturday, August 22, 1942

Villa Lande

Tuengen Allé

Oslo, Norway

Gustav Lande had just tapped his fork against his crystal glass and was now standing at the table with a small piece of paper in his hand. Agnes could see how nervous he was and tried to calm him with a gentle smile, but the page nonetheless slipped out of his fingers, carried away by the warm, fresh breeze blowing in from the open terrace doors. The paper eventually settled on the floor at Lande’s feet.

The two dozen guests burst out laughing, and finally Lande had to smile too, if a bit uncertainly at first. Then he seemed to give up and joined in, laughing as merrily as he could. But he left the piece of paper on the floor.

Agnes surveyed the guests as she held Cecilia’s hand. At Brigadier Seeholz’s request, the little girl had been allowed to come downstairs. No one should need to sleep on such a beautiful summer evening, he’d said. And Agnes had to admit that he was right. She looked down at the little hand in her own. Both were suntanned after spending the summer at Rødtangen. Cecilia’s hair was blonder, and Agnes thought it still smelled of sunshine and hope. If a Nazi could produce such a wonderful child, there must be hope for everyone in this world, maybe even herself. Cecilia’s hip even seemed to be doing better after the summer; all the swimming that she’d done with Agnes had worked miracles for the little girl.

Lande again tapped on his glass. Agnes knew what was coming. Her blood vessels constricted and she felt a pounding against her skin. Her pulse had quickened so suddenly that she hadn’t had time to register it. Gustav gave her a smile, and she smiled back, but then lowered her eyes. Seeholz’s chair creaked as he sat beside her. She glanced at him, but then regretted looking in that direction as she met the eye of Peter Waldhorst, seated across from her. He smiled briefly and silently raised his glass to her. Then he downed his drink and began looking around the room. He signaled to the waiter, who moved soundlessly around the table to pull out the bottle of white wine that was sitting in a cooler in front of Waldhorst. Waldhorst leaned toward the woman seated next to him and whispered something in her ear as all other conversation faded.

“My dear friends,” said Lande. A slight break in his voice indicated he was still not in complete control of the situation. “We . . . How should I say this? We have gathered here so often, though in my opinion not often enough, but today . . . Well, I have invited all of you here to officially salute General von Manstein and the Führer for the fall of Sevastopol this summer.”

The group broke into spontaneous cheering, thanking both the Führer and every soldier who had given his life in the fight against the Bolsheviks. Agnes found herself thinking about her own sister—something she did only rarely—who was somewhere between the Führer’s Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia and either Moscow or Sevastopol.

“But there’s more. There’s more!” Lande picked up his Bohemian-crystal wine glass. “There are two other very special reasons I’ve invited you here to my . . . modernist home.” Lande raised his glass to Seeholz, who had claimed earlier that evening—only half jokingly—that the house could be said to be too much in the Bauhaus style. “First of all,” he said. “Business.”

“Business,” said Seeholz, giving Agnes a poke. “Always business, right?”

Seeholz’s remark caused a quiet murmuring around the table, if for no other reason than to give him the attention he craved. Cecilia clutched Agnes’s hand and looked up at her, her green eyes shining. Agnes pulled her close, setting her on her lap.

“Second, love,” said Lande.

“Finally,” said Seeholz. This time there was loud laughter.

“So first, let’s talk about molybdenum,” said Lande.

“That’s
our
love,” replied Waldhorst from the end of the table as he drained his glass. Laughter resounded through the dining room. The fresh breeze again swept through the room, fluttering the linen drapes at the French doors. The drapes billowed into the room for a moment, then fell back into place. Agnes looked at the other guests before turning her gaze to Waldhorst. He was staring at her, as though gazing right through her, deep into her soul. She dismissed the idea and bent over Cecilia, stroking the child’s cheek, breathing in the scent of her newly washed hair, noting her quick pulse, thinking that she and the Pilgrim should have had a child like this.
If only you were mine,
Agnes thought, taking the soft little hand in her own.

“As you all know,” said Lande, taking a step back, “thanks to my friend Ernst Seeholz, I am the fortunate investor in the Knaben mines.”

“Now, now,” said Seeholz.

“Knaben is a valuable asset to our cause but, as we all must acknowledge, it’s not enough,” said Lande. “The Führer needs more of this wonderful metal to break the Bolsheviks and bury Stalin and his cohorts forever. I’m pleased to tell you now that I had a meeting yesterday with Research Director Rolborg of Knaben Mines. And it was a breakthrough meeting. As I’ve said before, I’ve put this man—who can only be called a geological genius—in charge of mapping the occurrence of molybdenum all over Norway. And he has discovered a deposit of historic proportions in Hurdal, of all places. Rolborg thinks it can produce six times as much as Knaben. Rolborg is the only person who knows the exact details for now. I don’t know where the site is, or how much ore there is, but he’s the most honest man I know, and I have no reason to doubt his claims.”

Lande paused and reached for his glass. No one said a word.

“Rolborg says there’s enough molybdenum in the ore up there to armor two thousand combat vehicles this year, which would significantly reduce our losses resulting from the Russians’ tungsten. A divine blessing for all of us. And upon closer consideration, I’m willing to discuss the possibility of inviting my dear friend, Ernst Seeholz, to join the business.”

A mischievous smile appeared on Lande’s face, the smile that made Agnes able to tolerate him and this assignment of hers. The smile that revealed the sort of man he might once have been.

Stop it,
she thought.
Just stop it.
She knew what he was about to say. And to top it all off, there was this news about the molybdenum. Two thousand vehicles to be armored with one of the earth’s rarest metals. Strong enough to help the German forces penetrate the Russian antitank defenses. The Russians would lose the Eastern Front.

Agnes took no part in the conversation that arose around the table. Most people seemed to be discussing this magic metal and its endless potential for the cause, but she couldn’t really comprehend their words. Nothing was making any sense to her until she once again heard tapping on a crystal glass.

“After Sonja died—your mother, Cecilia,” Lande began, his voice quavering. He looked at his little girl with those sad eyes of his, and Cecilia clutched Agnes’s hand even harder. Agnes pressed her face against the child’s curls, breathing in her scent and feeling a pang of guilt for wishing that Cecilia were her own child, that she had given birth to her, given her life, created her from her own self.

“I never thought that life would smile upon me again.”

Gustav Lande cleared his throat. Out of the corner of her eye, Agnes saw Seeholz’s Norwegian girlfriend wiping tears from her eyes with a linen napkin.

“Until one evening when, out of the blue, I met this woman, this divine beauty, who will soon be my wife.”

Lande walked over to Agnes. She wasn’t the sort to blush, but she couldn’t help it when he placed his hands on her shoulders.

You don’t know who I am,
she thought.
You have no idea.

The applause went on for a long time. As she stood up and kissed him, she thought,
I love the Pilgrim. I’m going to run away with this child, run away with both of them.

Agnes put her arms around Gustav. He pulled her close and whispered in her ear, “I love you.”

Only now did she notice Johanne Caspersen standing in the doorway. That horrid creature who would remain forever unmarried. She was giving Agnes a look that could have killed. When Agnes sat back down, she studied the heavy gold engagement ring on her finger. Then she looked across the table at Peter Waldhorst, determined to show him that she was not afraid of him. But his expression surprised her. He looked as though he might die on the spot. His face looked pained, as if he were undergoing the worst kind of torture. A second later he whispered his apologies to the woman seated next to him and hurried out of the room.

CHAPTER 40

Saturday, June 14, 2003

Hotel Gyldenlöwe

Uddevalla, Sweden

“Peter Waldhorst?” said Finn Nystrøm on the phone. Tommy Bergmann was standing at the window on the fourth floor of his hotel, looking down at the pedestrian street that led toward downtown. With his free hand he opened a can of strong Norrlands Guld beer that he’d bought at the state liquor store ten minutes before. His visit with Iver Faalund had made him thirsty and confused, and also a great deal wiser. Or at least he thought so.