The Swede (14 page)

The bang rang out, and a thin streak of blood splashed out a few feet across the floor. Turnbull murmured low, and moved slowly, like a larva in the dirt. Mary sat with the medical bag beside him on the floor. She waited, poking around the entrance and exit holes in his pants. The thin fingers of her rubber gloves were shiny red. The wounds had slowly started bleeding, but didn’t spurt. He let out a long-drawn cry while Mary quickly bandaged his thigh. That was it. He was gone, stunned. Now all that remained was to let the nightmares descend on him.

All five of them sat in the Impala, the men in suits and sneakers with the machine guns and some bags at their feet. Reza stroked his head, N. smelled powder from the gun inside his jacket. Mary, after turning off the car radio, drove upright and confident.

“Do you feel it?” said Vladislav, his eyes in the distance. “It’s like it was then.”

“What do you mean?” said Reza, who sat nervously, jiggling his legs.

“Exactly like after the wave. Don’t you feel it . . . everything disappearing. The world disappearing.” No one said anything. He added: “Now you can do anything.”

First Federal United. In front of the bank, a no-parking zone, completely empty. The lone black Impala disappeared as soon as the men got out, Vladislav going first through the glass doors. White athletic shoes, black suit and hood, submachine guns like exclamation points as to why they were there. From a vast mosaic on the wall behind the tellers, Indians in garish robes stared down at the invaders. N. and Reza leaped and slid, half sitting, across the counters into the office landscape behind.

“The money—all of it!”

They tossed nylon bags to the tellers. A young man stood paralyzed,
but the woman next to him picked up a bag from the floor and started throwing cash into it.

Adderloy stood, supervising, by the entrance to the vault with the safe-deposit boxes, while Vladislav went farther in to take care of the teller booths at the other end himself. As he turned the corner, he fired a few shots straight up. The echo was painful and paralyzing, off the black marble floors and mosaics on the walls. The ceiling was so high that it took a few seconds before the clouds of plaster debris rained down over the crouching customers.

“Hurry up!” roared Reza, behind the tills.

Adderloy had locked his focus on a single person. A man wearing a white shirt, blue pants with dark stripes. And a holster. Adderloy tried to keep his eyes on the bank guard’s hands, but they were hidden by the elderly women customers who surrounded him. His face was visible: narrowed eyes, as if staring straight into the biting wind, and his chest was heaving. Something slid along the floor as a bag from Vladislav’s side of the bank appeared from behind the corner. N. and Reza, hanging their bags over their shoulders, started moving.

In all their detailed planning, they’d never discussed the guard. It wasn’t something they’d overlooked, it was something they’d avoided.

The guard’s first shot tore a white streak through the brownish-red mosaic of a buffalo herd. The next hit the back of a woman standing near him. She fell headlong as the others threw themselves down around him. The guard, one Stan Moneyhan, retired vice squad, had never once during his career as a police officer drawn a weapon. This time it was different.

He had tripped over one of the elderly and fallen over. Now he lay on his back holding the gun in both hands between his knees. It looked odd, a low-profile shooting tower, using his heels to turn.
Maybe just doing his best after his fall. Getting some initiative back. Only he wasn’t in control. He aimed at Adderloy but kept the gun too low and his head too high. His whole body seemed to shake. He was never even close to hitting him, not even when he aimed. If he saw anything at all. It was totally random—a senseless shooting.

Wood splinters flew through the air, seeming to fall from everywhere. N. and Reza threw themselves flat on the floor. Cashiers and clerks disappeared under their desks, someone shouted, the bullets ripped through the plywood of the furniture. N. saw a face falling forward near a table leg. Eyes closed, as if in sleep. A few muffled blasts, a pause between each. Adderloy returned the fire but never hit the guard. Instead, their view of the street and the town square disappeared, as the huge glass panes cracked all the way out to their frames, whitening like ice. As if Adderloy didn’t want to hit the guard, but instead incite him even more.

It was into this situation that Vladislav came running, low and fast. Passed right next to Adderloy, who had fallen back against the wall from the recoil. A moment of consensus between the two men, amid the chaos. Adderloy’s barrel moved aside, giving way to Vladislav. Stan Moneyhan lay on his back and twisted himself to reload. Legs floundering, he swayed as if he couldn’t get up, when in fact he was trying to reach an extra clip somewhere at the back of his belt.

The silence was palpable as everything hung in the balance, Vladislav’s blunt submachine gun resting against his hip. He kept a hand on it, cool, even taking the time to give Adderloy a long look. There was something flagrant in it. As if all his waiting was a provocation, just standing there, not even looking at the guard.

Moneyhan found the clip, fumbled, lay on his back again, got the gun ready.

Vladislav’s movements were the same as on that beach once,
when Mary sat in her deck chair and Reza hesitated. They hadn’t even gotten to know Adderloy yet. The same steps, the same smoothness. Something you barely had time to perceive before it was already done.

The guard took all three shots in the chest.

Until that moment, everything had had an explanation.

N. didn’t know, had his face in the carpet behind the booths. Reza, however, who’d stood up immediately when the bullets stopped tearing around them, had seen it all.

Watching him from the floor, seeing how Reza winced but wasn’t scared by the three shots, N. instinctively realized that something was over. In an instant, he got to his feet and moved forward. His breath snorting, his mouth dry, hurting from the unwieldy nylon bag hitting against his back. He saw people lying helter-skelter on the floor on the other side of the booths, but it was only an impression, no thought of who was dead or who only hunkered down.

Reza also ran. When he got to the counter, he shouted something in despair. A stream of foreign profanity.

Afterward, it was difficult to get consistent stories from witnesses, beyond that it was the man suddenly appearing from the back who put an end to Stan Moneyhan. The guard’s death had seemed like an execution, so they said. The people in the bank had lain and waited, praying, while the men in black suits and hoods moved carelessly among them. In the hearings several witnesses believed there were at least six black-clad men. Someone considered particularly reliable claimed, under oath, that there were three. One had seen hand grenades. Another had heard the robbers speaking Spanish. A scrap dealer from Wisoma County rattled off all the types of weapons he’d seen during the robbery, as mechanically as an evening prayer.

The bank surveillance cameras proved inadequate. Two were completely out of focus. The little that could be determined from the tapes showed, however, that there were four people who robbed the bank—but in general the tapes were used to support a variety of groundless claims.

No one noticed how Reza stood and yelled, gesticulating at Vladislav. Or how Adderloy took out a pouch of blood from his bag. How he cut it up and let the contents flow out across the floor as he left the bank.

R
eza was the first to take off his hood after the car picked them up. He threw it on the floor, didn’t say anything, only let his eyes wander between Vladislav and Adderloy. Mary floored it for ten blocks, ignoring the traffic lights, then turned and began to zigzag.

When she slowed down, everything seemed to be normal around them: women with strollers, teenagers with skateboards. No one stared at the black Impala. Mary let go of the steering wheel with one hand, rested her fingers on the wide shift lever.

“Perfect, believe me,” said Vladislav, before she could ask. “Not a dry eye.”

Mary turned the rearview mirror so she could see all three of them in the back. N. sat in the middle with his eyes closed. Like the others, he had torn off his hood, but his eyes were closed and his breathing strained, as if he was fighting nausea.

“Or, what would you say—Bill?” Vladislav still had the submachine gun lying flat on his lap.

Adderloy, who sat next to Mary, only humphed in response.

“Sorry?” said Vladislav, pushing.

Adderloy smiled in a moment of delight that only Mary could
see. Then he pulled off the gloves for the second time that day, rolled them into a ball, and let them drop to the floor.

Reza stared at Vladislav, who avoided his gaze but kept track of the submachine gun sticking up between his knees.

“Did you secure it?”

No response. Vladislav pushed his hair to the side a little hesitantly and then leaned across N., grabbed Reza’s weapon, secured it, and put it on top of the bag at his feet. Reza’s jaw muscles pulsed stubbornly. Otherwise he was completely motionless, like a lizard on a wall. His and Vladislav’s eyes had not yet met. N.’s eyes remained closed, his breathing still violent.

“My guess is three dead,” began Vladislav, “and at least as many wounded.”

Adderloy looked out on the street, as if he were amused by reading the signs, or thinking about the weather. As if nothing had happened, as if nothing was going on in the seat behind him. Mary sat with both hands on the wheel again.

Vladislav set his foot on Reza’s submachine gun and turned so he could look him in the eye. “Who feels most alive now—them or us?”

Reza remained still as a lizard, only his jaws twitching.

“Them or us?”

N. didn’t exist between them, only his panting that wouldn’t stop. The car swayed on a curve. Music from somewhere outside came in and then faded away again. Reza drew his hand across his forehead and down over his face, a slow introspective gesture.

Then he whispered, almost hissed: “No one said anything about the guard, not anything about all this shooting.” He glanced at Adderloy.

“I hadn’t forgotten about the guard,” said Vladislav.

“We just hadn’t discussed what we would do about him.”

Reza looked miserable. “I saw you . . . ,” he said and tried to make a gesture, but his hand was too weak and fell down again.

“Welcome to America.” Vladislav snorted. He struck his machine gun, making it jump on his lap. “Was it you or I, Reza? Nope . . . it was us, it was
us
who shot every motherfucker in there.” He also gazed up at Adderloy, who remained silent.

N
. was breathing normally again. For a few moments the air felt fresh. His ears still rang from the shots inside the bank. He looked at his hands. Alone at the door of the old warehouse, he was about to unlock the padlock again.

He fumbled with the gun before he went in, held it a little in front of him as he stepped sideways through the slit. His eyes had to adjust to the gloom. The dusty sunlight from the small skylights lit up holes in the gray-blackness. He peered in and kicked the gritty concrete to announce his arrival. It was completely quiet, the air damp and smelling of iron. He could make out a wall.

Then he saw the figure, stretched out across the floor right where they’d left him. N. lowered his gun and approached. At first, seeing no signs of life, he poked at Turnbull with his toe, as if looking for a small animal that had disappeared into a thicket. Then he saw the fabric hood move over the mouth and two fingers of one hand start to twitch. The brown-red stain on the bandage had reached the edges, but it would hold tight a little longer.

Minutes left. No sirens.

N. pulled off the hood. Then he stood and looked at Turnbull as he lay on his side, disheveled and pale. He blinked, began to move. His eyes were wild, faraway, as if demons rushed at him from the
roof. He got up on one arm, his tongue moving erratically in his wide-open mouth. He rocked, fell back. His breathing was labored, hissing. As if he were drawing his last breath, over and over again.

You could feel the presence of death hovering in the room. No sirens outside.

N. remembered the head falling forward beside a desk in the bank. The hissing sound from the bullet that passed right by his own head. He remembered limbs sticking up from the rubble of a hotel. A pair of fish swimming around his legs. It was Adderloy who’d started it, the pointless violence that only he himself could explain. But it was this motherfucker on the floor who would have to pay, who would take the blame. Deep within, N. could feel, even though the price was high, that something within him had quieted. Soon it would be his turn, soon the fight would be over.

A sound, expected yet still a little too soon, got him to come to his senses, interrupting his thoughts.

He threw one last glance at the body on the floor and went out.

Vladislav had shouted, impatient. It was just him there, the others had already moved on. N. nodded without looking at him, took the lock off the door, and left it open a gap. Vladislav stood with a rag by the Impala he’d prepared: the doors and the trunk were wide open, it reeked of gasoline.

“They’ve woken up,” he said and lit the rag with a lighter. Somewhere far away, they could hear sirens.

The flashover from the car was instantaneous. Vladislav shrank back from the heat, a black cloud rose straight up like a huge smoke signal. That was the idea.

N. felt the warmth right through his clothes when he threw the padlock in the flames. Soon the flames died down, but the fire only got hotter. Something black ran out from the car. Vladislav was
already sitting in the red Nissan, engine running. He knocked on the window, then it came down.

“You win, but let’s not go overboard.” He smiled wryly. “I’d really like to get going now.”

N. heard sirens again. They sounded much higher. Much closer. He thought he ought to be afraid.

Diego Garcia, 2008

I
WAS WITH HIM, INSIDE HIS
cell,” Grip had told Shauna at dinner the night before. “Yet he says nothing.”

Shauna just nodded. No questions. All the time in the world. The only thing she insisted on was that they go snorkeling together one day, she and Grip. She said she’d found a good beach.

One night’s sleep and half a day later, it was almost time for lunch. But Grip would wait: on the TV monitor, he’d just seen the prisoner sit down to eat, and decided to make another attempt to speak to him.

The man’s eyes were startled and hesitant when Grip walked in, as if his being released was as likely as getting a slap in the face. A state that lasted for a second. Grip had seen to it that there were two chairs in the cell—he took the other and sat down opposite. The man had food on his spoon, but it fell down on his plate. There was a hint of troubled breathing again. Grip saw the fear. He’d sat so that he was fully visible, not at the table, but a little distance away. Just at the edge of what at the moment seemed bearable.

“They don’t allow knives or forks, I see,” said Grip. There was
some kind of brown mess on the man’s spoon and on the plate, maybe chili. “Is it suicide or murder they’re afraid of?”

The man didn’t drop his gaze, let out a deep breath, and raised the spoon to his mouth.

“Child,” the man said then, with contempt. “They want to make you feel like a child.” He took a sip of water, and Grip did the math: no accent, not the Swedish taught to an immigrant, but clean. Not even a dialect. Educated?—probably. Age still unclear. The swelling had gone down, but the semi-long hair and beard made him difficult to assess.

“Do you know who I am?” asked the man and lowered his gaze.

“No,” said Grip. “Should I?”

“You said you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Yes.”

“Is this being recorded?”

“I suppose.”

“Are you alone?”

“I’m alone here from Sweden, yes.”

The man shoved together food on the plate with his spoon. “I can’t help it,” he said tiredly, after he stopped coughing. Although he seemed calm, he wrestled with his breathing.

“Your reaction, you mean,” said Grip. “The fact that you’re scared shitless by strangers.”

“The door opens at the wrong time. They have succeeded, I am a Pavlov’s dog.”

“I understand completely—”

“Sure,” interrupted the man mildly. He tasted the tip of the spoon. “I’ll tell you something that neither you nor they know.” He nodded toward the cell door. “How many different cells I have been in—no idea. Flights here and there. No impression of the outside world, only
the food, if there was any.” He held his spoon as if it were a pointer. “The food becomes your compass. When it’s finely chopped and you get this spoon nonsense, then you know who’s in charge. The Americans. But they have their ways too, the Americans—they prefer to beat and choke when you don’t tell them what they want. When you get those fucking flatbreads, then you know you’re with someone else. The Arabs, they prefer to stab and cut.”

“Where have you been?”

“Yemen, Bulgaria, Malaysia—I don’t know. Not sure. You get injections, everything becomes foggy. Flights back and forth.”

“How long has it been going on?”

The man glanced at one of the newspapers, then shrugged his shoulders.

“Several years?”

“It seems so.” The man was struck by something, a wave of emotion. He seemed to hold back a sob. The next moment, he seemed indifferent again. “I don’t remember much from when I arrived here—the syringes destroy and the hood blinds. But it was a warm wind, I felt it drag across my ankles.” He pulled up the legs of his coverall slightly. “Maybe there was a salty smell too, maybe the sea. But I might be wrong.”

“The Indian Ocean, we’re in the middle of it,” said Grip.

The man gestured toward the plate. “And it is Americans who run the show.”

“Yes.” Grip continued. “Where are the scars from?” He had seen the white streaks of scar tissue on his legs when the man pulled up his pants. Something similar also curled across his forearms. The damage wasn’t of the same type as that on the face, or the swelling that appeared under the bandages on his feet. Although the scars looked bad, they were healed.

“These,” replied the man, “they’re old.” He twisted and turned
his arms as if he were showing a forgotten tattoo. “A swim, shall we say. There was a strong current, I got cut, the doctors didn’t have the time they needed.” Then he touched his face and added: “There are others that are newer.” He looked Grip straight in the eyes, the defeated gaze suddenly full of rage. “They think I’m a Muslim. Some of them want so damn badly to believe it.”

“So what are you?”

“What do you think?”

“Swedish,” said Grip.

“Swedes can be Muslims.”

“Yes, but not you.”

“Why not?”

“You asked what I thought. This is getting ridiculous.” Grip sighed loudly.

“I’ve spent years stuck in ridiculous discussions.” The man cleared his throat. “Several days at a time, often with refreshing content. You never fall asleep during the inquisition.”

“Have you admitted that you’re a Muslim?”

“Many times.”

“Other things too?”

“More than I can remember.”

There was silence.

“You still don’t know who I am?” asked the prisoner again.

“No.”

“What are they saying about me?”

“They say they know nothing. They think you could possibly be Swedish.”

The man gently ran his fingertips along the edge of the table. He looked down at his fingers, the nail stubs, and then whispered, “Call me N.”