The Swimmer (3 page)

She pulled the pilling Helly Hansen shirt over her shoulders, and replaced it with a light, tight top and an asymmetrical cardigan. She replaced the worn-out corduroy pants, which were actually her grandmother’s, with jeans of Japanese denim. She stepped into a pair of limited edition Nikes, forgoing the insulated rubber boots she’d worn on the morning hunt. Applied a little bit of smoky makeup around her eyes. A few strokes of a brush through her jet-black hair. She looked like a different person in the mirror above the small white dressing table. The floorboards creaked as she moved.

Klara rose from her chair and opened the door to a crawl space. Carefully, with much practice, she leaned into the darkness and pulled out an old, worn shoe box from which she took out a pile of photographs. She spread them out on the floor and crouched down in front of them.

‘Are you looking at those old photos again, Klara?’

Klara turned around. Her grandmother seemed almost translucent in the pale light streaming in through the small attic windows. Her body was so brittle and fragile. If you hadn’t seen it for yourself, you’d never believe she could still hoist herself up to the top of the gnarled apple trees to beat the birds to the last of the fruit.

She had the same ice blue eyes as Grandpa. They could have been siblings—but that was no joking matter out here in the archipelago. Her face had a few lines but no wrinkles. No makeup, just sun, laughter, and salt water, she used to say. She didn’t look a day over sixty, but she was turning seventy-five in a couple of months

‘I just wanted to take a look, you know,’ replied Klara.

‘Why don’t you take them to Brussels with you? I’ve never understood why you don’t. What good are they doing here?’

Grandma shook her head. Something sad and lonely flashed through the blue of her eyes. For a moment it looked as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind.

‘I don’t know,’ Klara said. ‘That’s just the way it has to be. They belong here. So tell me, are there any saffron buns left?’

She collected the photographs and put them gently back into the shoe box, before following her grandmother down the creaking stairs.

‘Oh, there she is! She’s got her city slicker clothes on and everything!’

Bo Bengtsson was already waiting on the dock when Klara walked down toward it. As she had so many times before. It was as if her feet found their own way. As if her brain or spine weren’t needed to avoid the roots, rocks, puddles.

‘Quit it, Bosse. You sound like Grandpa,’ Klara said.

They hugged each other awkwardly. Bosse was a few years older than her, and they’d pretty much grown up together out on the island. He was like a brother to her. Two siblings with opposite appearances and personalities.

They were an odd couple. Klara was small and slight, always top of her class, but so good at soccer that she’d played on Österviking’s boys’ team for a while. Bo liked fishing and—when he got a little older—hunting, drinking, and fighting. She was always on her way out of there. He would never even consider leaving the archipelago. But they had gone to school together day in and day out. During the warmer half of the year they took the school boat, and in the winter they traveled by hovercraft. Things like that create a bond stronger than most.

Klara jumped on board and lifted the battered fenders of Bosse’s old workhorse of a boat while he maneuvered away from the dock. When she was done, she joined him in the small wheelhouse. The waves were rising outside the dirty portholes, their peaks white and purposeful.

‘There’ll be a storm tonight,’ Bosse said.

‘That’s what they say,’ Klara replied.

Brussels, Belgium

The small park looked bare, icy, and nasty from George Lööw’s panoramic window on the seventh floor of the office building of Merchant & Taylor—the world’s largest PR firm—situated next to the Square de Meeûs in Brussels. George Lööw hated December. Above all, he hated Christmas. He could see the Christmas decorations along the rue Luxembourg that led down to the European Parliament, and they filled him with irritation. And it wouldn’t be over even when December finally came to an end, because the lazy goddamn municipal workers would leave that shit up until February.

Just a few more days until he’d be forced to go home to his family’s huge apartment on Rådmansgatan and give the annual accounting of his life. The apartment would be decorated with candles and an Elsa Beskow tree. The tasteful Advent stars would be lit, his old man’s desserts table would groan under all the marzipan, the toffee made by his new wife, Ellen, and the absurdly expensive chocolate George brought home from Brussels every year that they dutifully, and not without some embarrassment, added to the table.

His family, stuffed and bulging with Christmas food, would sit scattered around on classic Svenskt Tenn sofas with steaming cups of homemade mulled wine in their hands. Full of their pathos and their bloody hypocrisy, they’d exchange condescending glances while asking George about his job as a
lobbyist
, a word they pronounced as if it were
excrement
or
arriviste
.

‘Assholes,’ hissed George to his empty office.

The little coffeemaker sputtered and filled his Nespresso cup halfway. It was his third espresso this morning, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. He was uncharacteristically nervous about his morning meeting with a new client calling themselves Digital Solutions. George’s boss, the American CEO of the European division, Richard Appleby, said they had specifically asked for George. That was good in and of itself. Word about him had apparently started to spread. That he was a man who got things done in Brussels. That he could change which way the wind was blowing.

But it was uncomfortable as hell not to know anything about them. There were literally thousands of firms named Digital Solutions. Impossible to know what this one actually did. There was no way to prepare. He would just have to use his charm and drive. As long as they paid his generous fee there was nothing to worry about. Merchant & Taylor had no scruples.
You pay, you play
was the unofficial motto. Chemicals, weapons, tobacco. Go right ahead. Hadn’t Appleby even represented North Korea for a while back in the early 1990s? Or was that just a rumor? Whatever. But George preferred to know something about the client he’d be sitting across from before a meeting began.

He was still sweating from an early squash game at the gym. The light blue Turnbull & Asser shirt stuck to his back. Hope it stops before the meeting, he thought. This coffee probably wouldn’t help matters.

He knocked back the espresso with a grimace. George drank his coffee like an Italian. Just a quick espresso on the go. Sophisticated. Stylish. Even when he was alone in his office, he took his coffee standing up. It was important to never drop the attitude.

Nine fifty-five. He gathered a stack of papers, a pad, and a pen. The papers had nothing to do with Digital Solutions. But the client didn’t need to know that. He didn’t want to look like a goddamn intern, going into a meeting with just a pen.

George had loved the conference room on the corner of the seventh floor since joining Merchant & Taylor, and always booked it when it was available. The corner room’s two glass walls faced the interior of the office floor, where George himself had begun his career. If you pressed a button next to the power switch behind the door, the glass walls instantly frosted over, becoming as opaque as thick ice. The first few weeks on the job, when George sat in front of his computer, working on uninteresting business analyses for customers in the sugar industry, auto industry, polymer industry, whatever, and writing brain-dead newsletters, he thought those glass walls were the coolest thing he’d ever seen. He loved to watch the more experienced consultants float across the wooden floor in their handmade Italian leather shoes and disappear into the ice cube. Epic.

Nowadays George was the one gliding across the floor on his way to the ice cube. He felt their eyes. Looks just like the ones he used to throw when he was sitting there on the floor. Many of the people he’d started working with were still there. Not all of them had had the same rocket career trajectory as George, and maybe not all of the eyes following him were entirely adoring. But everyone put on a good face. Waved. Smiled. Played the game.

It still felt like a fluke that he’d managed to land this job after resigning from Gottlieb, a Swedish law firm, three years ago. The fact that he was working at Gottlieb with something as crude as corporate law, and mergers and acquisitions, had been difficult for his old man to accept. In the Lööw family if you became a lawyer in private practice, you practiced criminal law. Big principles, right and wrong. Nothing as
dirty
as business transactions and money. That was for upstarts ‘without ancestry, habits, or wit,’ as the old man used to say. At least he wasn’t aware of the actual circumstances surrounding George’s resignation.

Though the old man had been somewhat appeased when George, after his sojourn at the law firm, had been accepted into a prestigious postgraduate program at the Collège d’Europe in Bruges. A bona fide elite school in the French mold with a fast-track into the EU crème de la crème in Brussels. They’d finally make something out of the kid. Maybe he’d end up at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs? Or the European Commission in Brussels? Something proper.

George knew that a career in Sweden was out of the question after his short stint at Gottlieb, so with his recent EU law degree in hand Brussels was the natural place to start looking for a job. He dismissed the idea of working at a law firm immediately. He was finished with boxes full of dry annual reports and endless nights of searching through hard drives for contracts and more or less fishy settlements.

PR firms proved to be something else entirely. Lavish offices. Hot chicks from all over the world in slim suits and high heels. Refrigerators stocked with free soda and beer. Espresso machines instead of filtered coffee.

To go from the gray, dirty sidewalks of Brussels into the cool and softly lit glass and wood office building of Merchant & Taylor, with its silent elevators and overall whisper noise-level, was heaven. Sure, the starting salary wasn’t as good as at the American law firms, but there was the possibility of really big money. After a few years they gave you a company car. And not just any old crappy car, but an Audi, a BMW, maybe even a Jag.

The huge English and American PR firms were the mercenaries of Brussels. They sold veneer, information, and influence to the highest bidder, regardless of ideological or moral convictions. A lot of people looked down on lobbyists. George loved them unconditionally from the first second. He was in his element. These were his people. His old man and the rest of the family could think whatever the hell they wanted to.

George stepped into the cube and closed the door behind him. It bothered him that his client was already sitting in one of the bright leather seats. The secretaries were instructed to have visitors wait in the reception area if they were early. But George didn’t let the client see his annoyance; he just casually frosted the glass with the twist of a button.

‘Mr Reiper! Welcome to Merchant and Taylor!’ he said as he slapped on his widest, most self-assured smile, and held out a well-manicured hand to a man, around the age of sixty, who was sitting slumped in his chair, in a position that seemed unaware of, or in direct opposition to, everything that might be considered ergonomic.

Reiper looked like he lived a profoundly unhealthy life. He wasn’t exactly fat, more half-inflated, with the loose outline of a neglected helium balloon. He was almost completely bald, and around the sides of his head ran an unruly wreath of slush gray hair. His face was sallow, as though he rarely went outdoors. A thick white scar ran from his left temple down to the corner of his mouth. He wore a shabby black polo shirt with a pair of dry-cleaned, pleated khakis, and had holsters for an iPhone and a flashlight in his belt. A dirty notebook and a blue Georgetown Hoyas cap were lying on the shiny glass surface of the conference table. His position in the chair, the slow movement of his finger on the screen of his phone, the way he didn’t even look up when George entered the room, gave Mr Reiper an aura of authority that seemed as obvious as it was ruthless. George felt the hairs on his forearms stand up: a purely primal response to the feelings of discomfort and disadvantage that his new client evoked. He knew instinctively that he never, ever wanted to hear the story behind Mr Reiper’s scar.

‘Good morning, Mr Lööw. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,’ said Reiper, finally taking George’s outstretched hand.

The pronunciation of his surname was almost perfect. Unusual for an American, George thought. His voice was throaty and a little sluggish. Maybe southern?

‘Have you had coffee? I apologize, our receptionist is brand-new. I’m sure you know how it is.’

Reiper gave a quick shake of his head and looked around the room.

‘I like your office, Mr Lööw. The detail of the frosted glass is, well, spectacular.’

They sat down across from each other, and George carefully arranged his completely irrelevant papers into a rough semicircle around his notebook.

‘So, what can we help Digital Solutions with?’ George said and switched on yet another smile that he considered worth every cent of the 350 euros he cost per hour.

Reiper leaned back and returned George’s smile. There was something about that smile, something about how it faltered because of the scar, that made George want to look away. And there was something about Reiper’s eyes. In the warm light of the conference room’s meticulously positioned spotlights they sometimes looked green, sometimes brown. Cool and expectant, they seemed to change color at random. Combined with the fact that he never seemed to blink, it gave Reiper the lazily ironic, utterly lethal expression of a reptile.

‘So this is the deal,’ Reiper said and slid a couple of stapled documents across the table at George.