The Chosen (50 page)

Eden thought she understood what had gone on. The press wrote about Gideon Eisenberg and the woman who had been his lover. They made much of his past and his childhood experiences. But Eden
knew better. The attack on her children confirmed that she had been right all along. The murders that had devastated the Solomon Community were related to the events on the West Bank all those
years ago. The only thing she couldn’t work out was who Mona Samson was, and why she had followed Efraim to Eden’s apartment.

Eden could not leave these questions unanswered. On her second day in Israel she made contact with Mossad. She explained her business in one sentence, and was given an appointment to meet the
man who had been Efraim Kiel’s boss.

‘I want to know why Mona Samson wanted Gideon Eisenberg and Saul Goldmann’s children dead,’ she said.

‘You’re asking for information that I am not at liberty to give you,’ he said. ‘You must realise that, even though I obviously have the greatest sympathy for you and
your family in view of the tragedy that has befallen you, and the pain it has caused you. I really am very sorry for your loss.’

Eden had never been so close to killing another human being.

‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t go to the press with the whole thing,’ she said. ‘Or to my employers in Sweden.’

The man thought it over. For a long time.

‘You’re playing a dangerous game,’ he said eventually. ‘And I will allow you to win. But everything I tell you stays between us. I have a question for you first of all:
what was the connection between Efraim Kiel and your children?’

Eden accepted his rules without hesitation.

‘He was their father,’ she said.

She could see that the answer was unexpected, in spite of the fact that it should have been obvious, given the circumstances.

‘I understand. Did Efraim know that?’

‘I answered your question. Now you answer mine.’

Efraim’s former boss gave a wry smile, then told Eden what she had already heard from Fred Banks in London. It was only when he reached the end of the story that she found out who Mona
Samson was.

‘Mona Samson, or Nadia Tahir to give her her real name, was the Paper Boy,’ he said. ‘The source Efraim ran in the Palestinian village on the West Bank. And it was her son who
died in the explosion.’

He spread his hands wide.

‘It’s a terrible story from start to finish. Gideon and Saul left Israel after that, which was a sign of weakness, if you ask me. But I suppose everyone makes their own
judgement.’

Eden wasn’t interested in making a judgement. She was trying to feel something after what she had just learned, but she couldn’t. The fact that the woman who had murdered
Eden’s daughter had lost her child herself was of no importance.

‘How come she was carrying Israeli passports?’ she asked.

‘That was down to Efraim. Her life would have been in danger if she had stayed on the West Bank after the deaths of her husband and son; she was at considerable risk of being exposed as a
source. We offered her the chance to disappear in another country, but she wanted to stay in Israel, so she was granted Israeli citizenship. It was no big deal; her father was an Israeli, after
all. A year ago she contacted us and asked for a new identity; she said she thought she was being followed. It was then that she became Mona Samson.’

‘Do you think Efraim was involved in the murders?’

The man’s expression hardened.

‘Of course not. Nadia was behind all this, and she persuaded Gideon to go along with her by exploiting the terrible experiences he had been through as a child. I can guarantee that he didn’t know what her real motive was: to avenge the death of her son. Efraim was the only one who had met her; Saul and
Gideon had no idea who she was, what the Paper Boy looked like.’

‘So the fact that Efraim was in Stockholm when this all kicked off – that was pure coincidence?’

He nodded.

Eden thanked him for his help, and got to her feet. The man she had come to see also stood up.

‘We’d still really like you to join us, Eden,’ he said. ‘Any time.’

She didn’t answer; she just turned and left.

Mikael was still signed off so that he could recover from the bullet wound. Saba was the one who had healed the fastest, although she often asked about her sister Dani. Time and time again they
explained that she was gone.

‘She’s not coming back. Ever,’ Eden said, feeling as if she was about to fall apart.

How many times could one heart break?

An infinite number of times.

Tears poured down her face without her even noticing. When she was driving the car. When she was out shopping. When she was watching TV. When she was cooking.

She exercised as frequently as she could, often twice a day. Physical exertion and pain became a balsam for her soul.

‘You have to forgive yourself,’ was the last thing GD had said to her. ‘You couldn’t possibly have foreseen this.’

But that was exactly what she had done, and still she had failed to act decisively enough. If only she had explained to Mikael why they had to get out of the apartment, why they weren’t safe there. She also hated herself for the misjudgement she had made when she first walked in; she had simply assumed
that Mikael must be dead, since Efraim was lying on the bed with the children.

Mikael was haunted by the same demons. He blamed himself because he hadn’t done what Eden said. Their anguish grew into a monster that threatened to destroy everything they had left.
It was as if they were caught in a raging torrent, and neither of them had the strength to stay afloat.

They were being carried away from all their routines, away from one another.

Until the day when Eden realised she was pregnant, and saw a light flicker in Mikael’s eyes. A faint light, but it was there.

And she knew that she couldn’t wait for him any longer. He had to know what she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him for five long years.

She told him one night when they were both lying awake. Her voice was no more than a whisper, and she couldn’t look at him as the words left her mouth.

‘You’re not Dani and Saba’s father.’

Her whole body was shaking.

She could feel the tears trickling down her cheeks, seeping into her hair.

Mikael lay there motionless.

On his back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, he reached out and took her hand in his.

‘I’ve always known that,’ he said.

T
o begin with there was only the title. The very first time I visited my publisher, Piratförlaget, I said that the title of my fifth book would be
The Chosen
[
Davidsstj
ä
rnor
]. Looking back that seems completely incomprehensible. I never even thought that I would write five books. Or six, actually – I’ve started writing
children’s books too.

I am sitting at my desk trying to remember what it felt like to write
The Chosen.
It isn’t particularly difficult, because I have never enjoyed writing something so much in my
whole life. I have been fascinated by the history of the Jewish people and the creation of the state of Israel for such a long time; how could I resist the temptation to write a book with that
title at some point? When I had finished, I wept; the sense of loss was so overwhelming. You can write a book only once. Everything that follows – the re-reading, the revision – is something else.
Something that, for me, doesn’t have much to do with writing. So when
The Chosen
was finished, I felt bereft. There was only one cure: to start a new project as soon as possible,
because it is when I am writing that I feel best of all.

I thought we could have a little chat about that, dear reader.

About the importance of feeling good. And about where I was in my life when I wrote this book.

A few years ago I wrote a piece that was published when
Unwanted
[
Askungar
] came out in paperback in Sweden. I said that we must get better at following our heart, at devoting ourselves
to things that give, rather than take, energy. I differentiated between what we do because it is right and strategic (or ‘good for our career’), and what we do because we want to. And
writing was – and is – exactly that: something that I want to spend time on because it is so much fun. Because it makes my life better on so many levels.

Yet for a long time I insisted on marginalising my writing, keeping it as a leisure activity. In spite of the fact that I was producing a book a year, and had been published in a dozen
countries, I carried on working full time, often in locations in a constant state of re-organisation, with almost comically poor leadership which suppressed both creativity and productivity. I used
to say that I would never be able to resign. This was based on the erroneous assumption that if I stopped working, I would also lose contact with the politics of international security, and to be
honest I can’t imagine my life without that contact. As time went by, it became clear that I had been wrong. I could integrate what was going on in the world with my writing, as long as I had
the courage to expand my authorship to include non-fiction texts and perhaps journalism. And if I missed having a job, I could always apply for a new one.

So since January 2012 I have been a full-time author, and at the moment there is very little from my old life that I miss. The transition between old and new was actually supposed to happen at
the end of 2010 / beginning of 2011, but then I got another allegedly good job. In Vienna. As a counter-terrorism expert. That was something I couldn’t say no to, and so 2011 became yet another year when I worked and wrote at the
same time.

I had so much fun that year!

And I was utterly exhausted.

Another dysfunctional workplace, where I was sapped of strength and energy. My airways hated the dry air in Vienna; I had a permanent cold. On top of that I did too much travelling, slept
too little, wrote at night, worked during the day, had visitors from Sweden at the weekends. Eventually I had had enough. I am too smart to carry on like that. I had to stop doing two jobs at once,
and I had to catch my breath. So that’s what I did. The autumn of 2011 was a long wait for my contract in Vienna to come to an end so that I could return home to Stockholm, where my new life
would begin.

And then everything went wrong. To cut a long story short, less than a week after I moved back to Sweden, I ended up in hospital, more ill and more terrified than I have ever been in my life.
Then I got better. The long version of the story doesn’t belong here, but I remember the feeling so well. The feeling that I was rotting from the inside. I lost every scrap of energy in just
a few days. My body felt like a small town where the lights were going out in one area after another. I was drowning. Try taking a deep breath with water in both lungs. It’s impossible.

Becoming aware of your own mortality is a good way of starting to examine both your lifestyle and life choices. When I looked back at the way I had lived over the past few years, it wasn’t
difficult to see that I had spent far too much time on things that I didn’t really value, but hadn’t had the courage to say no to. There was a cruel irony in the fact that when I had finally dared to make the leap, I was doomed to fall at the final hurdle. I couldn’t reconcile myself to that. Not
under any circumstances.

And I didn’t have to, as it turned out. Apparently I had brought a souvenir back from Vienna: streptococcus. Physically I recovered quickly; mentally much more slowly. I had seen my
own fragility, and to a certain extent I had become a different person, someone who was suddenly in a hurry. If I was ever struck down by a serious illness again, or affected by something else that
threatened my existence, I was determined not to stand there regretting a whole lot of important stuff.

In many ways, 2012 was one of the best years I have ever known. That was the year when I sat in the historic American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem beneath a clear sky studded with stars, and wrote
The Chosen.
Something I had dreamt of for so long: to spend time in Israel and write a book. It was magical, the most perfect writing experience ever.

It’s hardly surprising that I grieved when it was over, or that I love being a writer on a full-time basis. Because this is what I have come to realise: if you sort out the big things in
life, the small things will follow.

A year has passed,
The Chosen
is about to be published, and I am sitting here trying to come up with a sensible afterword. I don’t really have much more to say.

I have to add the obligatory disclaimer:

This story is entirely fictional.

I have even taken the liberty of inventing a completely new Jewish community in Stockholm, because I didn’t want to involve any of those that already exist.

The legend of the Paper Boy is also entirely my own invention.

I would really love to return to Jerusalem to write more books.

Because there will be more books. I feel calmer now, I no longer race through life like a sprinter. My head is already full of ideas for lots of new books.

At Piratförlaget they think I’m crazy when I keep on turning up with yet another new manuscript, but that’s fine. Dear Pirates, you have a very special place in my heart! What
would have become of me if we hadn’t found each other? Thank you for continuing to publish my books, and thank you for helping me to become a better writer. Special thanks to my publisher
Sofia and my editor Anna. I always put that sentence in my acknowledgements, and it is equally true each time.

I also have agents, at the Salomonsson Agency. You are wonderful and you are crazy! I only have to poke my nose around the door of your office for twenty seconds, and I have enough energy to run
a marathon in under two hours! I am so proud to be represented by you. Thank you for the enormous amount of effort you put into promoting my books overseas, and an extra big thank you to my agents
Jessica and Leyla.