The Swede (25 page)

“Around here, you get fired for saying stuff like that in the service.”

“I think we’ve both qualified ourselves for suspension of service, but on completely different grounds.”

“That’s enough.” Shauna stood up. “And so . . . shall we go?”

“Surely there’s someone we haven’t touched on?”

Shauna turned around with the water at her waist. “Must you really?”

“Mary,” said Grip firmly. “She’s missing.”

“And Vladislav, by all means.” Shauna ran her hand across the rippled surface of the water. She didn’t seem surprised by the turnaround.

“Mary first.”

“Yes, it’s simple.” Shauna blew in her hand and then opened it, as if something had gone up in smoke. “Mary got away. Mary as we know, through, yes, what do we know of her? We know her only through N.”

“But she was . . .” Grip closed his eyes thoughtfully.

“She was not on the surveillance tapes from the bank,” Shauna filled in.

“She waited in the car.”

“Exactly—according to N. And when they were in Toronto, before they crossed the border. They gathered at a bar, but according to the receipt, they paid for only four drinks.”

“Mary drank water,” recalled Grip.

“N. said that, yes. He wasn’t stupid. He wove it together well, he had explanations for everything we could verify.”

“That she’ll be erased, turned to smoke? Is that what I should believe?”

“N.’s history is essentially correct. But Mary, she was entirely his own invention.”

“How many people have been working on this? Checked up? The police in Kansas, FBI?”

“Hundreds of police officers and agents. Take the factory hall. N. said she’d lived there for several years, right? But the rent was only paid a couple of weeks before they got there. The transactions can be traced to Adderloy. And at the hospital, where they took the blood.” Shauna shook her head. “No one that fits her description has ever worked there. It’s a dead end. They stole the blood from there, but Mary, N.’s Mary, never set foot in the place. That Turnbull was a blood donor, anyone could find that out.”

Grip looked long at her. “So all of it was but the mirage of a mangled soul?”

Shauna gestured that it was obvious. “Everything, the whole story works without her. Who knows, maybe on Weejay’s, while at the beach, there was someone, Jane Smith. But not since. When they came into the States, they were only four. Four men.”

Grip sank completely beneath the surface, blew air out for a few short bursts, and rose again. When the water had run off his face, he said, “But you forget one thing—the pelicans. You’ve heard of them—Reza spoke clearly about them pretty recently, and so did N. They flew in a line, until someone started shooting at them.”

“I know.”

“And it’s still just you and me here in the bathhouse. The walls here are old and deaf.”

“Do you mind if we go down and swim in the pool?” suggested Shauna.

“Not at all.”

They walked with their towels around them through the covered arcade. The stairs to the pool were at the far end. All the little echoes off the tiles were their own.

First, only quiet, wet steps, then Shauna said, “Do you remember Chung Ling Soo?”

“Mm, your father’s posters.”

“Exactly, the posters. Actually Soo was an American named Robinson. As a magician, he never had much success until he put on a pigtail, made himself up to look Chinese, and went off to Europe as Chung Ling Soo. From that moment on, he became Chinese, both on and off the stage. Never spoke with journalists except through an interpreter, and during performances, he said not a word, just waddled around like an old man. Enthralled, amazed, fooled everyone. The trick was greater than anything he did on stage. He lived it.”

They walked down the stairs.

“Some people get away with everything,” Shauna said, picking up a lost thread again. “Vladislav is wanted in all fifty states, and the rest of the civilized world. Dozens of my agents, they say they’re on his tracks. That it’s only a matter of time. Vladislav can’t even order food in a restaurant without people noticing him.”

Shauna stopped at the landing and turned around. “No, don’t say anything,” she said, and put a finger to Grip’s lips. “Nothing.” She eased her finger a quarter inch, but still kept it as an exclamation point in front of him. “I don’t believe them—they won’t get
him. Vladislav is a human exception. He’s the one who enters the elevator at the last second, turns the corner, misses the train that gets stopped by the police. It’s unintentional, but a true talent. A kind of law of nature he became aware of only when he escaped from that bus, after the tsunami. He went his own way at the right moment after Topeka, and now he supports himself on contracts. Lives as a hit man. Fearless, unstoppable, starting to get a certain reputation. Four months ago in New Orleans, five bodies were found in a luxury suite at the top of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. A showdown, and someone down there seems to have hired our Vladislav. Apparently he checked into the same hotel days before, was a nuisance when he ordered food, talked back, everyone who worked in the restaurant recognized him. And then he disappeared from the picture, as only he can.”

She touched Grips lips again, stroking them. “If I ever, if I could in the slightest way, say to myself that I was in contact with someone like Vladislav, then I would be very careful about him. You know, once you’ve lost your virginity . . . having the power to summon a demon, imagine being able to do that. Sooner or later it will come in handy.”

The pool water was so still that it felt illicit to go in. Shauna shot out first from the ladder. Grip dove in silently behind her. On the far end stood a huge statue, a bare-breasted woman with a vacant marble gaze. In the stillness, with the pillars surrounding the arcades and the glow that filtered up from a few lights on the bottom of the pool, it was like swimming in a temple, or an abandoned banker’s palace by night.

They glided side by side.

“The pelicans . . . ,” said Shauna. She swam first, didn’t look back.

“Vladislav,” Grip filled in, “he asked me who said they should shoot the pelicans. You know what I replied. So if you found a bag of blood in Adderloy’s freezer, then once again Mary exists. She was much more than just N.’s imaginary creation.” That Shauna swam on without a word was answer enough. “All your officers, agents—”

“They know nothing about N. His story is the concern of only a few people in Washington—Stackhouse and his group. And that circle has completely dismissed the idea of Mary. All the others, my officers and agents, as you call them, they haven’t even asked the question. For them there is no fifth person, no woman.”

“Then here’s to Vladislav staying at large, and never getting interrogated.”

“Let’s hope so.” Shauna pulled through her strokes, brushed against the tile, and turned under the statue. She glanced in Grip’s direction and stopped in the middle of the pool.

“You want me to try some guesses?” said Grip.

“No, that won’t be necessary. Mary was mine, she’s mine. She was there, and now she has been sent underground. She made herself unusable. It was Adderloy she was supposed to get—and now that has finally been accomplished, but she made herself a criminal in the process. Meant well, but pushed too far. Fortunately, I was her contact, the only one.”

“Everyone has a boss. What about your superiors?”

“They knew I had a source, but not who, not where. Adderloy is a sensitive subject. You remember I sent two agents after him, who then lay bloated in a morgue in Bangkok. It was impossible to move forward after that, to work with foreign police, to build trust among my own agents. Everything went at a snail’s pace. We had no chance of success, only kept up appearances. Mary was the
opportunity that emerged. She didn’t belong to the agency, but she had what was necessary to do this. She moved freely like no other. So we put up lots of smokescreens for her sake, and so no one would know we’d gotten someone so close to Adderloy. My bosses got only short reports that didn’t disclose the source.”

“No small stuff she got mixed up in—people killed at the bank, and then Turnbull’s death sentence.”

“Funny how the military always gets away with these things—bombs a wedding party, excuses itself, and that’s the end of it. Why can’t the same go for someone sent out by law enforcement? Mary was far behind the front lines, and alone. For obvious reasons, she and I couldn’t often be in touch. She always had to consider whether to quit or keep going, constantly weigh profit against loss. They shot Turnbull in the leg, sure, she was in on it. But they would have shot him even if she hadn’t been there. And as for the bank victims, Mary couldn’t possibly have predicted how diabolical Adderloy actually was.”

“Insanity.”

“Don’t pretend you’re upset. You don’t exactly play dollhouse with the world yourself. Yes, a terrible mistake. But she thought . . . and I thought . . . there was more going on. That it would be possible to get more than just Adderloy. This thing with his rebel movements and the question of who was funding them. I imagined there was more, told myself there was, let everything go on too long. Thought he’d lead us to bigger and uglier fish. But there was no one. They’d turned their backs on him. That’s precisely why Adderloy was in Topeka. I understand that now, but now it’s too late.”

Grip continued to swim in slow circles around Shauna while she floated on her back.

“Mary found Adderloy in Asia,” she continued, “when he was
looking for someone to rob the bank with, to plunge Turnbull and his Baptists into ruin.”

“And then later they snared the other three.”

“They chose themselves. Their lives, and especially N.’s life, were a lost cause. He became an easily manipulated victim.”

“So she reported to you and slept with N.”

“Do you find it strange? She lived under pressure, that’s what this stuff does to people. Haven’t you ever had your own fantasies?”

“There are limits.”

Shauna raised her head slightly and looked at him, then turned on her stomach and took a few strokes again. The light from below turned her shadow into several figures who swam across the walls. “Adderloy had arranged the factory hall,” she explained, “everything that was in it, paid the rent. But in order not to reveal how well planned everything was, he convinced Mary to let the others believe that she had done it, and that she knew Turnbull was a blood donor. This gave the impression that the whole thing was a ‘lucky’ coincidence, and not in fact a small part of a much larger mission that only Adderloy himself knew about. Mary went along with it, as a way to gain his trust.”

“But it was he who called the police?”

“Of course. It was Adderloy’s plan all along that Reza would take the fall. But Mary didn’t know that.”

Shauna and Grip were back under the marble woman. He tried to find a foothold at the edge of the pool, but the tile wall was completely smooth. He glided out again to Shauna, who was quietly treading water.

“And Mary,” he said, “stayed with Vladislav and N. until it was useless to try to get Adderloy again.”

“She tried a little later, at the motel. But Adderloy never appeared,
or rather: Vladislav came at her, and then the police came between them again.” Shauna glided on her back, looking up at the statue. “But Mary succeeded in one thing. Before Vladislav made them throw their mobile phones in the ditch, she’d sent a text with the car’s license plate. The information was called in, but they didn’t find the car until it pulled into that motel down in Florida. Not the police, and not the FBI. Everything points to it being Stackhouse’s wolf pack that came. I don’t know for certain, because Mary got away and went underground. She never saw N. get arrested, couldn’t confirm if they actually got him and took him away. So I never knew. And frankly, I didn’t care. I was busy getting Mary out of there, sweeping the tracks.” Shauna took water in her hand and splashed it over her face. “I swept like hell.”

“And the years went by,” said Grip.

“Yes, the years went by. But as you know, it was a thing that couldn’t be set right again.”

“Turnbull?”

“The bungling that left him on death row can’t be blamed on anyone else. Mary and I, we should have put a stop to it. However unpleasant he is, he didn’t deserve that. Not to die.”

“But eventually, with a little help.”

“You want me to say thank you?”

Grip ignored that, asked instead, “And where is Mary now?”

“Oh, you can live a lifetime in New York without having people know who you really are. She’s doing fine.”

“And the FBI agents and Kansas police—”

“They still think that there were only four men who robbed a bank in Topeka. That’s how many they have in the videos, and that’s how many drinks there were on the receipt.”

“There are many stones that cannot be turned, if this is to last.”

“Not at all.”

“Take the Lebanese,” he said. “If anyone questioned the two brothers at the restaurant, they’d talk about her. Maybe other things too.”

“The Lebanese,” repeated Shauna, “are surely decent people, but running a restaurant with only a student visa. That’s illegal. They were deported. Disappeared. I believe you could trace them on a flight to Ankara.”

“You do sweep.”

“I master the details,” Shauna corrected.

“You can’t ensure against everything. Pelicans, for example.”

“No, you know about them. But you, on the other hand, have your own pelicans: the trip to Gettysburg, and a night long before that went out of control in Central Park, perhaps at the top of Ninety-Sixth Street.”

“How was it,” said Grip softly. “N. said he was arrested at the motel, but Stackhouse argued that it happened later. And N. said that Mary was there, and you’re telling Stackhouse she wasn’t.” He drew a long, deep breath. “Maybe it suits more than one of us that N. is dead?”

The pool water lay still as a mirror.

“As long as you know where you have each other,” added Shauna, “that means everything,” and took a first stroke toward the ladder.

O
H, DO WE HAVE AN
apology?” said Ben, taking the bottle Grip held out to him. Champagne, a Bollinger ’96. Ben used to point it out in the locked glass cabinet of the neighborhood Polish liquor store often, saying it was absolutely wonderful, and something of an excuse for why his wallet was too thin. “Or are we celebrating?”

Grip was already sitting at the kitchen table in the cramped kitchen. He’d walked all the way from the bathhouse in Gramercy to the apartment in Chelsea. His hair had dried along the way. It was a half hour he’d never be able to describe—how he’d gotten there, what he’d been thinking. It was a leap between worlds. An airlock had closed behind him, and he hadn’t looked back over his shoulder, not even once.

It was only when he passed the Pole’s shop window with its sun-bleached labels that he’d felt empty-handed. Once inside the store, at first he had no idea, then recognized the bottle. Grip wasn’t in the habit of showing up with gifts.

“I know,” said Ben with his back to him, “I won’t say a word.”

“It’s been more than three weeks since you heard from me,” Grip filled in. His hand moved absently through a stack of magazines and art catalogs on the table.

“Four.” Ben set down the champagne. The Pole had dusted it off and bowed when he sold it. “No phone, not even Internet?”

“Sure, there was.”

“I’m not the jealous queen. But tell me it was necessary.” Ben was standing with his back to Grip, fiddling with something on the kitchen counter. It was after ten. Ben always ate late if he ate at home, said he was too restless early in the evening. At his shoulders, his white shirt still showed traces of having been ironed, but over the hips it hung wrinkled and untucked. He put down his knife and leaned on his hands, waiting.

“I didn’t want to risk anything,” said Grip finally.

“Risk, it’s always—”

“Especially not this time,” interrupted Grip, raising his voice.

Ben didn’t listen. “If something had happened to me, it would have been impossible to get hold of you.” His forearms stuck out of the upturned cuffs; they looked thinner than ever. “It’s not enough that you
think
of me.”

“I was hardly thinking of you at all, I . . . it doesn’t work that way. There was no time for that, but unlike those fucking doctors, at least I have tried to save your life.”

Ben turned around, looked uncertainly at Grip, who shook his head. A kind of apology.

“No more art stuff now,” said Grip then, “okay?” He tried to smile, but it was strained. “Nothing like that, not even appraisals on the side. Nothing.”

Ben stroked his temple. “You look tan.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been traveling, the sorts of tasks you do . . . for Sweden . . . somewhere.” He squinted uncomfortably. “Or was it about the jobs you did here, Arp and that other thing?”

“Drop it.”

But Ben went on. “My appraisals, they’ve never hurt anyone.”

“Ben, the door. I don’t want you leaving the door open.” An attempt to change the subject. When Grip got there, the door had been unlocked, he’d simply walked in. It was an old quarrel.

Deaf ears.

“What you helped with, Ernst, those aren’t exactly things that people have had to die for.”

“Ben . . .”

But Ben just laughed and said, “You haven’t had to kill anyone, right?”

The look.

For a moment, the airlock opened that would forever be kept closed, and something appeared in the gap. A ghost. As when a soul leaves a deathbed.

“We exist, Ben—we exist again,” said Grip, then looked somewhere to the side. “We don’t have to worry.”

A consensus. The gap was closed. Maybe a minute passed.

“Vegetable soup, yes, with a few small pieces of meat.” It was only Ben, he of anyone, who could shake off death when it hovered in the room. Not his own, but always that of others. He looked at the bottle. “And Bollinger Grande Année ’96. How long are you staying?”

“I’m just here overnight.”

“That’s perfect.”