The Last Pilgrim (58 page)

Johanne was waiting for her. She had her arms crossed, as if to block her entrance. Cecilia was standing just behind her. Agnes tried to move past, but the maid stood in her way.

“We need to turn around,” Johanne said in a low voice. “Unless you want to carry her all the way back.”

Agnes didn’t reply.
She’s probably right,
she thought. And if they were going to do it, it had to be now.

The maid’s eyes narrowed. Her pointed nose looked bigger than ever.

Agnes opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“Where are you taking us?” asked Johanne.

Agnes didn’t know what to say.

“I know what you are. Don’t you realize that?”

Cecilia poked her head around the maid to find out what was going on.

“Are you trying to take us as deep into the woods as possible?” said Johanne.

Don’t be afraid,
thought Agnes. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Only a faint quaver at the end revealed her fear.

“Herr Waldhorst asked me to keep an eye on you,” the maid said again, as if the very words were dangerous. An almost imperceptible smile appeared on her face.

Agnes slowly shook her head. It was too late. It was all too late. There was no way back.

“I’m not scared of you. Do you think I am? It was you, wasn’t it? In the newspapers? But Mr. Lande won’t be in the dark for long. Just wait until we get back.”

But Agnes was no longer listening. Through the rain she was staring at Cecilia, who was holding on to the maid’s anorak. The barrel of the Welrod was jabbing into her left breast. The rain must have made the gun visible through the sleeve of her coat.

She had never intended for it to end like this.

My little girl.

“You should have been my little girl,” whispered Agnes.

His and mine.

The Pilgrim’s and mine.

“Run, Cecilia!” Johanne cried. “Run!”

CHAPTER 73

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Hotel Berlin

Lützowplatz

Berlin, Germany

The rain was coming in through the open windows of his hotel room. Tommy Bergmann lay in bed for a few more minutes, staring up at the white ceiling. It took him a moment to remember what day it was, what city he was in, and what he was doing there.

He must have fallen asleep earlier, either from exhaustion or disappointment. As soon as he arrived back at the hotel, he had dutifully picked up all the faxed documents, which the desk clerk had stacked up on the counter for him.

“I don’t really need these,” he’d considered saying. But he’d taken them to his hotel room anyway without so much as a word of thanks.

Then he’d briskly leafed through the fifteen pages that Avis had faxed over to police headquarters in Oslo. The quality left something to be desired after being sent through two fax machines, but it was good enough for Bergmann to conclude that no Peter Waldhorst or Peter Ward had rented a car from Avis and then brought it back to the train station, the airport, or the Lillestrøm office on Sunday, June 8, 2003.

He lit a cigarette and went over to the window that faced the broad avenue. He held his hand out the window for a moment, allowing the rain to soak his skin.

Then he stared back at the stack of papers on the desk. He trudged over to it, feeling defeated, as if there was no point in expanding their search to rental cars returned on any of the next few days after the murder. When he reached the desk, he leafed through the pages once more. None of the names got his attention.

He dropped the whole pile into the wastepaper basket under the desk. A few pages landed on the floor, and he resisted the impulse to tear them into tiny pieces and toss them out the window.

He had a sinking feeling inside, a heavy, black stone of disappointment weighing him down. Maybe it was the sense that he’d wasted so much time and effort on this case. Maybe it was the thought that old Waldhorst had managed to wrap him around his little finger.

Bergmann tried to push that thought to the back of his mind and accept the fact that he was going to have to start from the beginning.

He stood at the window by the desk and tried to locate the Bendlerblock, where Claus von Stauffenberg of the German Resistance had been shot in July of 1944. He could at least stop by to take a look before he went back home. But he eventually gave up—there were just too many buildings in this town. He stared down at the papers he’d tossed in the wastebasket. He bent down and picked up the three or four pages that had landed on the floor. The first two contained information about a forty-year-old Brit who had rented an Opel Astra at Oslo Airport on Friday, June 6, and brought it back to the airport on Sunday. The first page showed a copy of his driver’s license. The next page was the form he’d filled out with the car’s license-plate number and starting mileage, as well as his personal information. Bergmann studied the photo on the driver’s license. Just as fucking uninteresting as all the other twenty-four individuals who had rented cars that weekend. He tore the two pages into strips and dropped them on the floor.

Just as he was about to head out the door, he paused for a moment, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. For several seconds he was overwhelmed by the feeling that he’d forgotten something important. But what was it?

No,
he said to himself, shaking his head.
It’s nothing.

As he waited for the elevator, the feeling came back.

What the hell have I forgotten?
he wondered as the doors opened down in the lobby.

The feeling was still there, lurking at the back of his mind, when he opened the umbrella he’d borrowed from the hotel and tried to settle on a route to the Bendlerblock based on the directions he’d received from the desk clerk.

When he reached the canal, he saw it: the yellow building was situated between two others about three hundred feet to his right.

Paradoxically, the rush of traffic on the wide avenue behind him actually made it easier for him to concentrate. He fixed his eyes on the canal. The sound of the rain steadily striking the water helped him to gradually formulate a clear image in his mind. That was when he realized what he had forgotten.

Three people were killed,
he thought as he avoided the worst of the puddles on the sidewalk.

A little girl, a woman, and a man.

And that’s what I don’t understand,
thought Bergmann.

He pictured Peter Waldhorst’s face when he’d asked whether Gretchen was Johanne Caspersen. It had been nothing more than a wild guess, but Waldhorst looked as if he’d been waiting for that question for years. For decades.

Waldhorst met his second wife at Tempelhof Airport in the summer of 1963. Several months later, a woman starts phoning Krogh at home. Late in September, maybe on the anniversary of the very day when Agnes Gerner, Cecilia, and an unknown male were killed.

Suddenly it came to him.

There
was
a name that had caught his eye when he was scanning the list of car-rental customers at Oslo Airport.

What an idiot I am,
Bergmann thought.

Gretchen.

Gretchen was a nickname. A
real
nickname.

CHAPTER 74

Monday, September 28, 1942

Kornsjø Train Station

Norway–Sweden Border

The sound of ironclad heels could be heard throughout the train car. Then there were a few seconds of silence before a compartment door was opened.

She paused as she raised her hand and stared into the flame from the silver lighter. She saw her reflection in the window and was just barely able to make out her facial features under her hat, the white cigarette hanging from her lips.

The boots stomped onward, approaching her compartment, then stopped. She heard the hollow thud of another door opening. Then muffled voices, nothing like the harsh sound of German. The door closed, and the German soldiers moved on.

She lit her cigarette, inhaled deeply, and studied the mark of her red lipstick on the paper. The light on the station wall glared above the letters spelling out Kornsjø and shimmered in one of the puddles on the platform. Three Wehrmacht soldiers stood silently under the arched entrance to the building. One of them was gripping the leash of a German shepherd. The dog tugged at the leash as someone was escorted out of a second-class car toward the back of the train. She couldn’t see what was happening, only the soldier, who pulled the dog back. A man was shrieking like an injured animal at the northern end of the platform. She found all this commotion oddly reassuring. For a moment she was able to actually feel something. Maybe one day she would be human again.

She took another drag on her cigarette, automatically knocking the ash into the ashtray on the wall. Then she took her identification papers and border pass out of her briefcase. Though she managed to keep her eyes open despite an overpowering weariness, she once again lapsed into a state of indifference. Never again would she sleep or even close her eyes for more than a fraction of a second. Because when she did, all she saw was the image of herself standing over the child, who lay still, very still, on the wet, muddy ground. Her green coat blended into the ground underneath her, and her eyes showed no fear. They were just wide open and staring, as if it were all a dream.

After a moment the train station grew quiet again. The door to the neighboring compartment was yanked open. Again she heard a German voice, possibly an officer speaking. It was so quiet she could hear him asking for the passengers’ identification papers.

It was her turn next. She fiddled distractedly with her cigarette case, as if she weren’t in this train compartment at all, but instead on Gustav Lande’s terrace, looking at the man seated across from her as he took his cigarette case out of the inside pocket of his tux.

A lieutenant with a soft-looking face tore open the door but said nothing as he gestured toward her. Three soldiers stood behind him. She held out her papers, but only far enough that he had to take a step inside the compartment to reach them. Just to show him that she couldn’t care less, she lit another cigarette, her hands completely steady, while the lieutenant looked through her papers. She had memorized everything, in case he started asking her questions, but she doubted he would dare.

“Bitte, Fräulein,”
he said, handing back her border pass with a nod. Then he cast a quick glance at her new passport and identification papers, which showed she was a secretary at the German legation in Oslo. The border pass stated that the purpose of her trip was to take up a temporary position as office manager at the German consulate in Göteborg. The lieutenant clicked his heels together and handed back her papers.

“Allow me to wish you a pleasant trip, miss.”

She got up and placed her hat on the rack overhead, running her hand gently over her hair as she studied her reflection in the windowpane. The platform was now deserted. Only the puddles remained.

As the train started moving, she sat down again and leaned her head back to look up at the netting of the rack. Her suitcase was a threatening presence. If the lieutenant had decided to open it, she would have been dead. Her real papers and a thousand Swedish kronor had been trustingly stuffed under a few pieces of clothing.

She listened to the ringing of the axles over the railroad ties for several minutes. As the cars filled with Swedish police officers, she stroked the cigarette case she had stuck in her pocket at the Østbane railroad station.

P.W.,
she murmured to herself.

P.W.

After the Swedish police officer had exited the compartment, she glanced at her watch for the first time, thinking that Gustav Lande must have landed in Oslo an hour ago. Maybe he was sticking his house key in the lock at this very moment. Maybe he was walking through the house, calling her name, then picking up the phone to call the summer house, and when he couldn’t reach her to call friends.

She stood up and stuck her hand inside her coat pocket to take out the photograph of him and his wife. As if she wanted to speak to the pregnant woman sitting on the rock in the picture, smiling, unaware of everything that was to come.

The next thing she remembered was the loud whistle of the locomotive at a crossing, a cigarette burning her fingers, ash falling onto her lap and possibly ruining her dress. As if that mattered.

The moon shone through the cloud cover, lighting up her face in quick flashes.

She pressed her hand over her stomach, which was teeming with life, a new life.

May God have mercy on your soul.

CHAPTER 75

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Hotel Berlin

Lützowplatz

Berlin, Germany

Tommy Bergmann swore loudly as he stood in the corridor after trying to open the door three times with his cardkey.

The lock finally clicked open on the fourth try, and he hurried over to the desk. He knelt down and first looked at the shreds of Avis papers lying on the floor.
No,
he muttered to himself.
It’s not any of these.
Then he picked up the wastebasket and dumped the contents on the bed. Before he began searching through the papers, he found Udo Fritz’s business card among the clutter on the desk.

Where have I seen that name?
he thought as he listened to the phone ringing on the other end.

Udo Fritz answered, his voice sounding wary.

“Gretchen,” said Bergmann as he started sorting through the papers on the bed, neatly setting aside the two-page documents of people who didn’t interest him.
The old woman,
he said to himself as he looked for her. How could he have overlooked that?

“Gretchen?” said Fritz.

“It’s a nickname, isn’t it?”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Bergmann was slowly making his way through the pile of papers, putting aside the paperwork of a Japanese woman.