The Swede (19 page)

“Hang on, back up a little,” said Grip. “There’s a hole.”

“You mean—Topeka.”

“Why would Adderloy want to organize a bank robbery in Topeka?”

“It was to punish Turnbull and his Southern Baptists for the way they behaved after the tsunami—but most of all, the group needed money.”

“Sure, that’s how Adderloy sold it at Weejay’s. And at least N. went for it, maybe Reza too. But what was the game really about?”

“You mean, why did Adderloy enter in?”

“Adderloy steals art and plays with rebel movements, you said so yourself. He wasn’t the type to get upset over some Baptists’ moral backwardness.”

Shauna sat silent for a few seconds. “It’s both harder and easier than that,” she said then. “Adderloy actually cares a great deal about Southern Baptists. Before he inherited a small fortune from a childless uncle, he spent a few years in intelligence during the Reagan era—early eighties, it was a long time ago. But people got to know him, contacts were made. I didn’t know that two weeks ago, but I know that now.” Shauna rubbed her calf. “If you piece together rumors and actual events, you end up with this: in the early nineties, Adderloy began freelancing. What I was talking about before, the rebel movements, a salesman trading in violence and power. He wanted more action and less talk. It wasn’t his convictions that mattered to him, but the money he got to play around with. Greed rules, and I’d thought until recently that it was all about foreign capital supporting him—I completely bought it. But in the South and Midwest, the churches out there, do you have any idea how much money they have? And what they’re willing to spend it on? Small character-building projects around the world—the crusades of our era. Adderloy made it happen. He was the intermediary from the donors in Texas and Mississippi to rebel movements and strange opposition leaders across the Middle East and throughout Asia. Everything from weapons to rallies to buying candidates that pretended to support democracy—with Adderloy pulling the strings. Business wasn’t hurt by
September 11. Of course he pulled in fat commissions, while satisfied people in Washington watched, looking through their fingers. Adderloy made things happen that can’t be aired in committee hearings.

“But then . . . should we call it international developments? Everything that went wrong in Iraq and the whole mess that followed, the value of the United States’ stock in the world. Those with the money began to hesitate when simple crusades didn’t work. The fact that Bush’s agenda wouldn’t last forever, even if he’d just been reelected, yes, that was felt right down to the Bible Belt. Belatedly, people got cold feet. Although they had a few years left, there were many who understood that they’d be swept out with the Bush clan. And they, they wanted to make sure they wouldn’t fall too hard.
Summa summarum
, fewer and fewer checks got written. Adderloy paid no attention to the fate of the rebels or the jackals—it was the drying-up of his income that got to him, cutting into the life he lived, his extravagance. He was furious when he no longer got invited into the inner sanctums. If southern ministers at least believe that they follow the Ten Commandments, Adderloy has no such scruples. His plan B was blackmail and revenge by example. Turnbull’s fanatics weren’t major players in all this, even though they coughed up a little money—really no one cared. But they were, after all, a church like all the others. ‘Look at this,’ said Adderloy to those who’d turned their backs on him—he picked up Turnbull and crushed his nasty little sect in front of everybody. Adderloy made sure everyone who was supposed to see got the message. And you have to admit, see how brilliantly he always plays multiple strings? He made sure to get Reza Khan on board, and then saw to it that he got busted. The nightmare—Pakistani Islamists in America’s heartland—came true. Now the churches could start giving him money again without losing face.”

“As good Christians,” said Grip.

“They’re all good Christians, except Turnbull’s defunct church.”

“But now?”

“Now, absolutely nothing will change. Business as usual,” said Shauna. “I can’t prove it. All of this, what I’m saying here, it dies in the sea breeze of Diego Garcia. What I know is from confidential conversations and a couple of tips in repayment of old debts. Nothing of the slightest value in a court of law. None of the good old boys want to be reminded of Adderloy, especially not those who watched silently from Washington. Hush-hush, lips sealed. The executions of Reza and Turnbull are just the final touches.”

“So, good,” said Grip, sitting up on his towel. “For you, I mean—that you’re back on Adderloy’s trail again.” Shauna looked incredulously at him. And it was true, Grip wasn’t going to be led astray. Not going to let her confuse the main event with the sideshow. “You know, Adderloy isn’t my business,” he said. “I’m on a completely different side of things.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, I have every reason to believe that a Swedish citizen is being illegally held in custody, here on Diego Garcia.” He said it in a loud voice, a little formally. He wanted to call her on it.

Shauna tilted her head. Knew exactly how to pose so as to exude total confidence. So well that you could easily believe that she’d never given it a thought. Sun and skin. Swimsuit, salt water, and deep ocean. She knew her shit. There was no one around to hear them, no one who’d ever remember. Who was he squawking for? It was just the two of them there. There was only here and now.

“Oh, before you go on about formal charges and extradition,” she began, “why not enjoy yourself a little. A day like this, how often do you get one?” She turned her face toward the sun. “You’re not even here. You’re in New York, no one knows anything different. Right?”

She looked up, expecting an answer, as greedily as someone who’d
accused a lover of infidelity. A sound in the distance rose and disappeared just as quickly, the whistling throttle of a distant jet engine.

“New York, yes,” she said later. “Of course, you like art. Did you see . . . when you were in New York, did you see Christo’s
Gates
?”

“Well, as it happened,” he replied after a few seconds, “I walked by.” She couldn’t possibly know that he hated to be reminded of it.

“Imagine, more than twenty-five years before New York City said yes. When you first read about it, the project sounded so over the top, almost vulgar. Over seven thousand gates in Central Park. Why?” She laughed. “But then, think of Central Park in February: gray trees, frozen lawns. And then one morning, well, you saw the orange trail. The slightest breeze visible in the banners, which moved like slowly falling dominoes.”

“It was beautiful,” Grip managed to get out. “A beautiful spectacle.”

There was at least one coincidence too many. First at the officers’ club the other night when she’d gone on about Jean Arp, his sculptures. And now—Christo and Central Park. It was as if she’d drawn two cards from a deck—it was these two cards you thought about, the ones you least of all wanted to see. What would the odds be? Sure there are coincidences, there are always coincidences. Chance. But he had also seen a slightly too-thick folder with his name on it in one of the FBI’s offices in New York City.

“N. was what we were talking about, yes,” said Shauna, “his legal status. You know, my only privilege on Garcia is to question him, the man who we now know is Swedish. It’s the only thing I can do. Everything else is off limits. No questions about anything else to anyone else, just him. But you know as well as I do, I’m an American, he’ll never speak to me. Not a word. It’s only you who can get anything out of him, your presence. Help me out.”

“Sure, I can keep interviewing him,” said Grip. It was like admitting guilt, even if he just wanted to buy time.

“I appreciate that,” said Shauna. “Let’s find out who he is. Who actually did what, and then we’ll solve the formal process.”

Grip felt he had to take back some control, regain steering. “Make sure that someone looks at his feet, then. A real doctor. And that he gets a haircut. I want to see what he looks like.”

Shauna nodded. “The newspapers,” she said, “we’ll continue with them?”

Grip sat silent, sunglasses hiding his uncertainty. He groped for a moment, thinking.

“Sure,” he replied abruptly, and turned to her. “N.—whatever we should call him—he solved the crossword puzzle in one of the papers I gave him. Maybe he likes crosswords. Maybe they make him relax.”

Grip looked at the waterline, splashing a short distance away, then at the sand on Shauna’s feet. Her hands, her hair, her eyes. The black swimsuit.

“I’ll make a new list of papers for you tonight,” he added, to say something. She shrugged.

Whose useful idiot was he now? Shauna Friedman’s, Sweden’s—or just his own?

W
HEN
G
RIP ENTERED THE CELL,
N. looked at him defiantly. N. had gotten a haircut, not the typical prison crew cut, but short.

“I guess this is your work,” he said.

“They bandaged you up, so I thought they might as well give you a haircut too. Yes, at my suggestion.”

“So as to become more myself?”

“The tangled mess that hung there before couldn’t have been you.” Grip opened to a new page in his notebook. “Is the hair a problem?”

“I didn’t look like this before.”

“Is that so.” Grip wasn’t particularly interested.

“They’ve cut my hair to be like yours. Was that also your idea?”

Grip glanced, seeing the possible similarity. “No,” he said. “Maybe they think all Swedes have the same haircut, what do I know.” He shrugged. “Can we—”

“Go ahead,” interjected N.

“Yes.”

“You’ve read my entire statement: Weejay’s, Topeka, that fat fuck Charles-Ray, and all the rest, maybe you found some contradictions. Maybe you have a list of additional questions.”

Grip nodded. “Something like that. But first I simply want to know who you are.”

N. straightened up. “For whose sake?” Since Grip had no immediate answer, N. continued: “I know who I am, and I sit where I sit. So for whose sake?”

“Mine. Is that enough?”

“What does it matter?” said N., while Grip rolled the pen between his fingers. “At home, I’m sure there are lists of everyone who’s still missing. Taken by the Wave. I must be on there, the person I was must be on the lists. You could figure it out, among the entire families that never came back. But that’s no longer valid. You’ll only find the person who is no longer me.”

An emotion made him tremble, his fingers clenched above his knees to hold them steady. He’d decided to go for something.

“I worked with a Pole once,” he said then. “A Polish Jew who retired a year after I started the job. He said that when he was a kid, he didn’t even know he was a Jew, it was the Nazis that made him one. And now he was. Couldn’t be anything else.” N. gasped. “In the same way . . . in the same way, I’ve become someone I was not. Arab, maybe. They got that idea, and now I am one. Tortured to it. In every location, every step of the way here, they pounded, beat, and stabbed every single one of my convictions.” He tried to ignore the tears that rose in his eyes. “You know,” he said, and swallowed. “You know, when you’re being tortured, you become a child. There sit Mother and Father, watching as everything you are and were gets demolished. At the end, in the hole that’s left, sits someone else. Ask them out there, they’ll say that I hate the world. Now I do—they were right. And they need me. Evil must be given a face.”

“And you’re just a victim?”

“I’ve told my story. Guilt and innocence are now rather uninteresting.”

“You think so?”

“Listen to what I’m saying. Guilt and innocence are of no importance. I know what I’ve done, and I know that I’m sitting here. Right now, we share this cell. And you should listen to me.”

Grip became uncomfortable, self-conscious, and felt, at a stroke, all too exposed.

“Since they arrested me, and the whole way here,” continued N., “for several years—a fucking eternity—they let all the races on earth come at me: Arabs, Asians, Africans. The worst is always when they do it themselves, when the Americans make an appearance. Then it’s not just reckless. Then it gets very thorough.”

Grip glanced at the camera in the wall.

“Don’t worry, they can stand to hear what they already know,” said N. “Oh, they’re inventive, but it’s not their methods that we’re going to talk about, it’s the result. I guess I’ve confessed to everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything they wanted—signed, crawled, and prayed.” N. ran his hands over his legs. “Talk about pawn sacrifice—I had to pay twice for Mary, Vladislav, and Adderloy to get away. And now you’re here, for what?” He almost smiled. “They don’t beat me, at least not anymore.” He took a long look at Grip, too long.

“I like to do crossword puzzles,” he said then. “Can you arrange to get some magazines with crosswords in them?”

“Might be . . .”

“That’s all I want. They’re not beating me anymore, and I want to do crossword puzzles.”

Grip understood very well that they were bargaining over something, he just didn’t know what. “It’s time for a break. I’ll see.” He stood up.

As he left the cell and came out into the corridor, he saw a back vanish behind a corner. In the surveillance room, Stackhouse sat as usual at the monitors. He turned around shortly after Grip arrived.

“It’s not true,” said Stackhouse. The chair next to him was pulled out; there were some papers on the table.

“What’s not true?” said Grip while looking through some old stacks of magazines.

Stackhouse hesitated. “The torture,” he said, “that we would have . . . participated.”

“No, you knew perfectly well and did nothing, everyone knows that.”

“You don’t believe me.”

Grip looked up. “What would you think?” he said, and in that same moment, he realized the significance of the empty chair and the man’s back in the hallway. They’d decided not to give him any kind of head start—after all, he and N. spoke Swedish with each other. Now on Diego Garcia, there was at least one simultaneous interpreter.

Grip held out some papers. “Give these to him, and he needs a pen too. I’ll be back after lunch.”

“No pen,” said Stackhouse. “He can’t be alone with a pen. The risk is—”

“Then give him a fucking crayon,” said Grip, and walked out.

H
e got a hamburger at one of Garcia’s sleepy lunch joints. The rest of the base seemed to be busy driving trucks. Dusty convoys passed by incessantly in the heat. He got a second coffee in a Styrofoam cup, saw bomb bodies go by without tarps covering the loads. Why did N.’s cell suddenly feel so frightening?

N
. was sitting at the table solving crossword puzzles with a short, blunt pencil when Grip came back. He opened his notebook again, started asking questions. Details of how they’d crossed the border between Canada and the United States, an ambiguity about the time in Topeka, if he knew where Adderloy found his weapons. N. answered, but continued doing his crossword puzzle in the newspaper. Grip ignored his impulse to tell N. to put down the newspaper. N. was scribbling, Grip thought.

What was it N. had tried to say before lunch? Something as simple as protecting the memory of a lost family? Not clearing up the matter of his identity, allowing all the dead to remain dead. Certainly, but there was something more.

“First mother,” said N., in the middle of a statement about something in Topeka. “Three letters—Eve—don’t you think?”

Grip sat silent, eventually asked another question. N. replied mechanically; Grip noted the answer.

Obviously, Stackhouse’s minions would never release N., both because of what they’d done to him and what they’d found out. What the hell am I doing here? wondered Grip. For whose sake? No more questions. What he ought to do was go home. He closed the notebook.

N. saw that he was about to leave. He turned the magazine around on the table. “First mother—mustn’t that be Eve, here?”

Grip, already standing up, sighed.

“Not with a W, right?” N. continued, and pointed with his pencil. Grip looked and read. He’d written ARP in pencil in the three boxes.

“Obviously, with a V,” said N., and erased the whole word. “Here also, yes, it must be Shakespeare and Macbeth, but is Banquo the third word?” He pointed to the line of words that ran all the
way across the puzzle. “Banquo, the one whose ghost dogs Macbeth?”

Grip didn’t make the connection at first; then he read the long line again. N. had written: THEY INTERROGATED ME LAST NIGHT.

G
rip slept badly, and his view from the hotel room window that night was appalling. He’d grown accustomed to the sound of planes and proximity to the runway, those didn’t bother him anymore. In the mornings, he woke up to the weather reconnaissance and courier aircraft that landed early. But that night, after he finally fell asleep, he was awakened by a deafening roar. Got up sleepily to look through the blinds. The engines, they seemed to be coming from every direction.

Then he saw them, flashing anticollision lights and white navigation lights, constellations moving like a string of pearls across the sky. He saw the silhouettes ease off the runway, high-winged and bulging from their heavy loads in slowly rising trajectories. It was B-52s, bombers in waves. He thought he heard cheers from outside. A new wave of planes rolled out. They seemed to go on without end.