The Last Pilgrim (54 page)

He seemed to wake up.

“It’s so awful,” she said, avoiding his eye.

Cecilia came into the room and sat down on Agnes’s lap. She stroked the child’s hair while Cecilia took her other hand and opened the book she’d brought with her. An old, worn picture book.

“By the way . . . Could you close up Rødtangen today?” said Lande, fixing his eyes on her again. “We should have done it last weekend, but . . . Well, it’s a big job. Take Johanne with you, of course. She knows the routine even better than I do.”

Agnes didn’t reply. She was looking at her own reflection in the windowpane. Cecilia leafing through the book. Her warm little body, the beating of the child’s pulse were suddenly too much for her.

“Did he have any children?” she asked. “Research Director Rolborg?”

Lande turned around. He stopped knotting his tie and nodded.

“A son.”

Then he turned back toward the terrace and continued with his tie.

A tear ran down Agnes’s face.

“Who had children?” asked Cecilia.

“Nobody,” said Agnes.

“We were just talking about Rødtangen,” Lande said. “You’re going out there today.”

“Rødtangen!” Cecilia cried. “We’re going to Rødtangen!”

“Yes,” whispered Agnes, stroking her hair. “We’re going to Rødtangen today.”

CHAPTER 65

Friday, June 20, 2003

Hotel Berlin

Lützowplatz

Berlin, Germany

An oppressive heat struck Tommy Bergmann as the doors to the arrivals hall at Tegel Airport slid open. The humid air made his long-sleeved shirt stick to his body. He tossed the bag holding his newly purchased underwear and socks into the taxi and sank back in the seat.

“Hotel Berlin,” he told the driver. The name was so ordinary that he had his doubts about whether the hotel even existed.

“Lützowplatz,” said the cabbie, his tone suggesting he’d be up for chatting. To shut out any such possibility, Bergmann closed his eyes and leaned his head against the windowpane.

The hotel had been newly remodeled and was much too modern for Bergmann’s taste, but the view of the Tiergarten was almost worth the whole trip. He gazed out at the dark green leaves of the trees bathed in the afternoon sun and the gilded Victory Column. He opened the window facing the street, allowing the sound of the traffic to wash over him for a while.

His cell phone rang from the desk.

“Don’t do anything down there until we’ve contacted the German police. Do you hear me? Do not question Waldhorst until you have Derrick or one of his colleagues with you.” Reuter’s voice left no doubt that he would be unwilling to even consider any objections Bergmann might propose.

Bergmann looked at his watch, thinking that this was going to be a long weekend. There was little chance that anyone in Oslo would send over a formal request to the police in Berlin late on a Friday afternoon. And if, against all expectations, they actually did follow through, he’d heard enough about German bureaucracy to give up hope of anything happening today.

He began looking for the minibar in his futuristic hotel room. After a few minutes he had to conclude there wasn’t one, so he went down to the hotel bar and ordered a pint of beer and a double whisky.

It was already nine o’clock when Bergmann decided to go out to Peter Waldhorst’s place anyway. After all, there was nothing illegal about taking a drive through town. He recognized the streets as they got closer and the fashionable homes gave way to mansions and parks.

By the time the cab turned onto Waldhorst’s street, his back was soaked with sweat from leaning against the leather seat. A blessedly cool breeze blew over the sidewalk as he got out of the cab. For a moment he just stood there, gazing at the red taillights of the big Mercedes as it headed back to town.

Bergmann turned to face the villa. In the twilight it looked abandoned. Not a single light shone in any of the windows. The outdoor lights weren’t on either, even though they were probably controlled by photocells.

That’s strange,
he thought as he took his cell phone out of his pocket and looked for Waldhorst’s number.

He studied the house as the phone began ringing.

The windows remained dark. No sign of life anywhere inside. Finally it jumped to voice mail, but there was no recorded message. All Bergmann heard was a rushing sound, followed by the unmistakable beep that indicated the caller could leave a message.

Bergmann hung up.

He had a feeling that Waldhorst had left the house for good. And that now it was too late.

CHAPTER 66

Sunday, September 27, 1942

Villa Lande

Tuengen Allé

Oslo, Norway

After Gustav Lande had been picked up by a cortège from the Wehrmacht, Agnes Gerner climbed the stairs to the third floor and locked herself in the bathroom. Unable to form a single clear thought, she lay down on the floor. For several minutes she lay staring at the light-brown tiles. If she closed her eyes, the nightmare continued. If she kept them open, she stared straight up at the white ceiling, as white as it would surely look, flickering before her eyes when Waldhorst decided to arrest her and hang her from the ceiling in the cellar at Victoria Terrasse. She chose to shut her eyes. Bess, with her head cocked, turned into the private secretary; then the research director’s blood struck her mouth and entered her stomach, which Waldhorst sliced open with a knife, from her pelvis to her breastbone.

She slowly realized that someone was knocking on the bedroom door. The maid’s voice almost didn’t penetrate the two closed doors.

Agnes wriggled over to the bathroom door.

“Yes?” she said weakly.

“There’s a German soldier at the door,” said the maid.

CHAPTER 67

Monday, June 23, 2003

Tiergarten

Berlin, Germany

Tommy Bergmann leaned over the railing of the black bear enclosure at the zoo. He really should have gone home on Saturday, but instead he’d rambled all over Berlin, walking more than he’d done in the past ten years. He’d bought some new jogging shoes and a map, and practiced several phrases he remembered from his high school German classes. He’d also eaten more than was good for him. It had rained pretty much all weekend, which had put him in a remarkably good mood.

He was so fascinated by the roughhousing between two bear cubs that he almost dropped his ice cream over the edge when his phone vibrated in his pants pocket.

“Someone will meet you at your hotel in two hours,” Fredrik Reuter said on the other end of the line. “What the heck is going on there anyway? Are you at the circus?”

Bergmann kept his gaze fixed on the bear cub that had just taken a tumble. The other cub came over to see if everything was all right.

“The zoo,” he said.

“You must feel right at home.”

“You ought to be a comedian.”

“Okay, okay. Anyway, someone will be at your door in two hours.”

“I’m impressed,” said Bergmann.

“It’s not my doing. I put in a request on Friday as soon as you left. Germany is quite an orderly country, you know. They have cops too.”

“You don’t say,” said Bergmann.

“His name is Udo Fritz,” said Reuter.

“You’re kidding, right? That’s quite a name . . .” said Bergmann. He dropped his ice cream cone down into the bear pit, where it smashed silently on the ground. Even amid all the hubbub, the two bear cubs noticed that something had fallen down to them. Bergmann was secretly rooting for the cub that had lost the fight. But naturally the other one triumphed this time too. The loser slunk away from the cone with his head hanging.

“I wish I were,” said Reuter.

Udo Fritz,
Bergmann said to himself.

After grabbing dinner at the hotel, he sat down in the lobby and waited for the infamous Udo Fritz.

For a while he pondered what he was going to say to Peter Waldhorst. Something surprising, something that would knock him off his guard. Like, he knew that Carl Oscar Krogh had been a German agent. But it would hardly be news to Waldhorst that Bergmann knew that. Waldhorst was the sort of man who wasn’t just a couple of moves ahead—he was several entire games ahead of most people. Bergmann realized what had been bothering him subconsciously. How could he, Tommy Bergmann, with two courses in investigation from the police academy under his belt, outmaneuver an old fox who had been
both
an Abwehr and a Gestapo man?

What if Waldhorst himself had killed Krogh? Bergmann had to get him to leave his prints on something somehow. That shouldn’t be too difficult. It would be inadmissible as evidence, but it would at least convince Fredrik Reuter that Waldhorst was the killer.

Detective Udo Fritz was easy to spot. Bergmann heard the officer asking for him at the front desk.

He got up from his seat in the bar and was standing at the end of the counter before the receptionist even managed to look him up in the room registry.

“I think I’m the one you’re looking for,” he said.

Udo Fritz turned around. Bergmann instantly pegged Fritz as a cop, and it was obvious that Fritz came to the same conclusion when he saw Bergmann.

On the drive out to Grunewald, they exchanged some polite small talk. Fritz seemed utterly uninterested in what Bergmann was doing in Berlin, and that suited him just fine. He leaned back in his seat and listened to the chatter on the police radio, even managing to catch a word here and there. Then he started to wonder what life had been like when German was the language of command in his own city. Back when Peter Waldhorst had fallen for Agnes Gerner.

And killed her?

The thought had crossed his mind every so often.
Maybe my hunch is right,
Bergmann thought. But the motive still baffled him.

CHAPTER 68

Sunday, September 27, 1942

Berkowitz Apartment

Oslo, Norway

The young SS sergeant cast a quick glance at her in the backseat. Agnes Gerner looked away and tried to convince herself that her mouth smelled like toothpaste, not vomit. When the maid had announced that a German soldier was at the door, Agnes had bent over the toilet seat and emptied her stomach as quietly as possible. Then she went downstairs to the second floor. The maid had a strange expression on her face, as if to say, “I told you so!” From the next to last step, Agnes could see the German’s black trouser legs and understood that he wasn’t any ordinary Wehrmacht soldier. She had to grasp the banister more tightly for a few seconds.

She fumbled for her purse. In her panic she hadn’t managed to take out the cyanide pill, and now she didn’t dare open her purse for fear that he would stop the car and empty out the contents on the backseat.

At the intersection by the Majorstua building, she stared at Helge K. Moen’s salon.
Who blew the whistle on me?
she wondered. She said a silent prayer that the sergeant would take a right down Kirkeveien and not drive straight ahead. Heading straight down Bogstadveien could only mean one thing. Agnes watched a little girl doing hopscotch jumps as she crossed the street with her mother. As the soldier stepped on the gas and drove across the crosswalk, Agnes thought of Cecilia and was sure that she’d seen her for the last time.

Victoria Terrasse,
she thought.
They’re going to lock me up next to the Pilgrim, just so I can hear what they do to him.
Maybe
Brigadeführer
Seeholz himself will torture him. By this time he must know that the Pilgrim was the great love of her life. What was it he’d said? That she should be good to Gustav Lande? And now this? Not merely one, but two murders, on the same day the crazy Brits had recklessly tried to bomb Victoria Terrasse?

When they turned down Frederiks Gate, Agnes was only seconds away from confessing everything. Just before she closed her eyes, she noticed black clouds hovering over the palace, the swastika flag hanging limply, waiting for the first raindrops. None of what she had expected came to mind. No images from her childhood—of her father, her mother, or of all the world’s evil—flashed through her mind, not even a vision of the secretary’s soundless scream.

The car turned right up Drammensveien.

The next turn will be to the left,
she thought.
In just a few feet.

A jolt passed through the car, and the soldier shifted to third gear at the top of the small hill.

Agnes couldn’t help it.

She opened her eyes and spun around in the seat to glimpse the fortified white building of Victoria Terrasse standing undamaged. Black smoke was rising out of one of the collapsed buildings next door.

When she turned back she met the eyes of the young SS sergeant in the mirror and a light blush spread up her cheeks. When the driver turned up Bygdøy Allé, there was no longer any doubt. Agnes thought that she should have said something about how terrible it was, this attack on Victoria Terrasse, that the British would obviously lose the war. But not a word crossed her lips.

“Kommen Sie, bitte?”
said the SS sergeant when they had parked outside the white apartment building where Peter Waldhorst lived. There was not a soul around. She peered across the street at Frogner Church, thinking that she wasn’t even going to get a funeral. That her mother probably wouldn’t bother.

The ironclad heels of the SS sergeant struck the sidewalk behind her.

What have you done with the Pilgrim?
she thought as he pressed the doorbell.
Why did he drive me past Victoria Terrasse? So I would understand that they know who I really am?

“Fräulein Gerner für den Hauptsturmführer,”
he said into the intercom.

The door buzzed open.

The stairwell smelled of soap. She thought it would be the last smell she would ever remember. How she made it up the five floors she didn’t know, but she now stood on the sixth-floor landing. The brass plate with the name Berkowitz was still on the door. Waldhorst must have taken a perverse delight in the fact that it hadn’t been replaced.